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Gape   Listen
verb
Gape  v. i.  (past & past part. gaped; pres. part. gaping)  
1.
To open the mouth wide; as:
(a)
Expressing a desire for food; as, young birds gape.
(b)
Indicating sleepiness or indifference; to yawn. "She stretches, gapes, unglues her eyes, And asks if it be time to rise."
(c)
Showing unselfconsciousness in surprise, astonishment, expectation, etc. "With gaping wonderment had stared aghast."
(d)
Manifesting a desire to injure, devour, or overcome. "They have gaped upon me with their mouth."
2.
To open or part widely; to exhibit a gap, fissure, or hiatus. "May that ground gape and swallow me alive!"
3.
To long, wait eagerly, or cry aloud for something; with for, after, or at. "The hungry grave for her due tribute gapes."
Synonyms: To gaze; stare; yawn. See Gaze.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Gape" Quotes from Famous Books



... an elegant bird, eyes nearly white, tinged with grey; legs and beak yellow, base of gape leaden-blue, junction of yellow ...
— Journals of Travels in Assam, Burma, Bhootan, Afghanistan and The - Neighbouring Countries • William Griffith

... driven to the heart, until again the sides were spread a-gape. In climbed the giant,—he did not think the fit would be ...
— Indian Legends of Vancouver Island • Alfred Carmichael

... there, with the Mission full in sight, its red tiles glaring fiercely in the noon-day sun, it occurred to him that his Emir would surely fall in love with the Sitt Hilda. Rent by the twofold anguish of the thought, he wandered aimless for an hour, and then returned, to gape at mention of an errand. His mother hurled ...
— The Valley of the Kings • Marmaduke Pickthall

... passed away. A winter campaign became inevitable, and the abyss which Peter's unerring eye had scanned began to gape. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson

... resentment everywhere against the Sinn Feiners. Behind one of the gates of the Park, a Sinn Feiner was lying face downwards in the hole he had made to be a trench, and the crowd climbed up the railings to gape at him. A youth thrust his way through the people and peered at the dead man, and then he turned to the crowd and said to them, "Let's get the poor chap out and bury him!" A girl looked at him resentfully, and hurried to a towsled woman ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine

... disclosed the tiny feet seeming already to kick feebly at existence. The nurse said something in French which Maria could not understand. Ida answered also in French. Then the baby seemed to experience a convulsion; its whole face seemed to open into one gape of expostulation at fate. Then its feeble, futile wail filled the ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... Staff would make no attempt at self-repression; and I have been told how the idle and the curious would congregate outside upon the pavement and listen to the voices of the wits within, and wait to gape at them as ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann

... ledges of rock, hollowed into caverns underneath, by the insidious beating of the trade wind waves. The chiseled doorways to those caves are rare specimens of Nature's mysterious work; some large, some small and of queer, fantastic shapes; that black-mouthed gape at chance passers, while towering high above, a roof of table land—arid, scorching pampas, is just as uninviting as the water way below. So desolate is that part of the coast that it is but little known. Don Nicholas and a group of Peruvian officers to whom ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton

... site of ancient days, But Cadiz, rising on the distant coast, Calls forth a sweeter, though ignoble praise. Ah, Vice! how soft are thy voluptuous ways! While boyish blood is mantling, who can 'scape The fascination of thy magic gaze? A cherub-hydra round us dost thou gape, And mould to every taste ...
— Childe Harold's Pilgrimage • Lord Byron

... creaking door,—a normal, noisy soul, to whom life was a succession of laborious days spent between the cooking stove and the washtub with a regular Saturday night, in her best clothes, at the motion-picture theater at Sag Harbor to gape at the abnormality of Theda Bara and scream with uncontrolled mirth at the ingenious antics of Charlie Chaplin. An ancient Ford made possible this weekly dip into these ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton

... creatures towards whom their predominant feeling is one of mingled terror and abhorrence, and who, during the whole of their national existence, have been, as the earth, trampled beneath their feet, yet ever threatening to gape and swallow them alive. It is not all this alone which makes it unlikely that the Southern planter should desire to free his slaves: freedom in America is not merely a personal right, it involves a political privilege. Freemen there are legislators. The rulers ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble

... struck in one of her ha'penny volumes with the translation of a French proverb according to which such a door, any door, had to be either open or shut; and it seemed part of the precariousness of Mrs. Jordan's life that hers mostly managed to be neither. There had been occasions when it appeared to gape wide—fairly to woo her across its threshold; there had been others, of an order distinctly disconcerting, when it was all but banged in her face. On the whole, however, she had evidently not lost heart; ...
— In the Cage • Henry James

... mareschal himself arrived. So here, the Bishop (as we find by his dedication to Mr. Churchill the bookseller) has for a long time sent warning of his arrival by advertisements in Gazettes, and now his Introduction advances to tell us again, Monseigneur vient: In the mean time, we must gape and wait and gaze the Lord knows how long, and keep our spirits in some reasonable agitation, until his Lordship's real self shall think fit to appear in the ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. III.: Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Vol. I. • Jonathan Swift

... down) Be off, all of you— don't stand and gape at a woman who is crying! (Felicity exits R., D. Mercury assisted off. Fel. places his chair back as before. Dormer goes off through the group; the rest sorrowfully disperse, looking over their shoulders at Kate. As ...
— The Squire - An Original Comedy in Three Acts • Arthur W. Pinero

... Mistress young, and safe, it wou'd content you; Then Husbands, weary'd out with Spouse alone, And hen-peck'd Keepers that drudge on with one, I fancy hither wou'd in Crouds resort, As thick as Men for Offices to Court: Who'd stay behind? the Beau above Threescore, Wou'd hobble on, and gape for one bit more; Men of all Stations, from the Nobles, down To grave Sir Roger in his Cap and Gown, Wou'd hither come. But we some time must take, E'er we a Project of such moment make; Since that's ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume IV. • Aphra Behn

... bloodthirsty anarchists, and the theatrical discoveries of the police—it was a breathless time, when even Milly seized upon the newspaper of a morning. Then gradually, as the police gathered in the little band of scapegoats, the tension relaxed: people went to the celebrated Haymarket to gape at the spot where the crime against ...
— One Woman's Life • Robert Herrick

... drought the thirsty creatures cry, And gape upon the gather'd clouds for rain, And first the martlet meets it in the sky, And with wet wings joys ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol I - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden

... results. And self-expression, I find, is the breath of life to my soul. But I've scarcely time to do my hair, and my complexion is gone, and I've got cracks in my cheek-skin. I'm getting old and ugly, and no human being will ever again love me. Even my own babies gape at me kind of round-eyed when I take ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer

... that of the Scanderoon,—a bird of nearly the same size. The beak is longer, thicker, and broader than in the rock-pigeon, proportionally with the size of body. The eyelids, nostrils, and internal gape of mouth are all proportionally very large, as in Carriers. The foot, from the end of the middle to end of hind toe, was actually 2.85 inches in length, which is an excess of .32 of an inch over the foot of the rock- pigeon, proportionally ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication - Volume I • Charles Darwin

... you, I warned you. I left you alone for ten weeks; but could that make you doubt it was coming? Not for worlds, not for millions, shall you give yourself to that roaring crowd. Don't ask me to care for them, or for any one! What do they care for you but to gape and grin and babble? You are mine, you ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. II (of II) • Henry James

... sombre and vexed exhaustion. His bag in hand, his head lowered, he strode straight behind the counter, and let himself fall into the chair, as though he had tramped all the way from Dover. It was early morning. Stevie, dusting various objects displayed in the front windows, turned to gape at him with ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad

... had been walking to and fro round the wheels of his carriage, whistling briskly, could only gape when he heard these words; while Arkady coolly pulled his luggage out of the carriage, took his seat beside Bazarov, and bowing politely to his former fellow-traveller, he called, 'Whip up!' The coach rolled ...
— Fathers and Children • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev

... women and children, the latter stark naked, had gathered to gape at the strangers. Isobel moved toward them, began immediately ...
— Border, Breed Nor Birth • Dallas McCord Reynolds

... store was reached and Mrs. Bobbsey let Freddie and Flossie take their time in looking into the several windows. One was full of dolls, which made the little girl gape in wonder and delight. ...
— The Bobbsey Twins - Or, Merry Days Indoors and Out • Laura Lee Hope

... appearance; though, of course, Father, as she knew him, was not in the least like that infant. At the rest of the photographs she looked politely, but it was hard work to keep from yawning, and at last her mouth suddenly opened of itself and gave a great gape. ...
— The Happy Adventurers • Lydia Miller Middleton

... small gale of winde, and this day we had sight of the Island of Cyprus. [Sidenote: Cauo de la Griega.] The first land that we discouered was a headland called Cauo de la Criega, and about midnight we ankered by North of the Gape. This cape is a high hil, long and square, and on the East corner it hath a high cop, that appeareth vnto those at the sea, like a white cloud, for toward the sea it is white, and it lieth into the sea Southwest. This coast of Cyprus ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, - and Discoveries of The English Nation, Volume 9 - Asia, Part 2 • Richard Hakluyt

... gone. Who cares for grades and standings now? The girls, that always are so smart, gape lazily, and stare at vacancy wishing.... They don't know what they wish, but if He had a lot of money, why, then they could help the poor, and all like that, and have a new dress ...
— Back Home • Eugene Wood

... usually the case with people who go over houses, Mr. Guppy and his friend are dead beat before they have well begun. They straggle about in wrong places, look at wrong things, don't care for the right things, gape when more rooms are opened, exhibit profound depression of spirits, and are clearly knocked up. In each successive chamber that they enter, Mrs. Rouncewell, who is as upright as the house itself, rests apart in a window-seat ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens

... a beautiful morning, but Jimmy could do nothing but gape; his feet felt very heavy, and he wished that he had never put on the clown's clothes and left his own behind. Still he made sure that he should be able to reach Chesterham some day, and presently he passed a church and an inn and several small houses and poor-looking shops. With ...
— The Little Clown • Thomas Cobb

... back of the garment should be quite flat, and padding may be needed in the case of hollow backs, as there should be no high water line across the back defining where corset ends and back commences. The collar should fit nicely into the neck at the back, and not gape open from being cut too low. There should be no fulness at the top of the sleeves, for nothing looks more unsightly than "bumpy shoulders" on horseback. It would be well for the wearer when trying on, to lean back and extend ...
— The Horsewoman - A Practical Guide to Side-Saddle Riding, 2nd. Ed. • Alice M. Hayes

... did gape an' luke, To see us all delighted, An' ivvery one did say "Begum, Aw wish ...
— Revised Edition of Poems • William Wright

... think of economizing strength, picking out the best going, keeping out of the sun, saving your wind uphill, flying down any slope. It was cool still, and the dew had laid the dust; there was no traffic and scarcely anyone to look back and gape as he ran by. What he would do, if he got there in time—how explain this mad three-mile run—he did not think. He passed a farm that he knew was just half-way. He had left his watch. Indeed, he had put on only his trousers, shirt, and ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... had come down last year"—he added, turning to Jane—"you would have seen the bridegroom going from door to door, followed by all the boys in the village—he never recovered. There he went, shake, shaking his head—and gape gaping with his mouth. "Twas good sport to teaze him. I've set my dogs on him myself; but he never took the least notice. 'Twas a ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 • Various

... air. But thear yo'd find yor judgment missed, For shoo's a mooast uncommon twist; Whear once shoo's called to get a snack, It's seldom at they've axt her back. To a cookshop we went one neet, An th' stuff at vanished aght o'th' seet, Made th' chap at sarved us gape an grin, But shoo went on an tuckt it in; An when aw axt ha mich we'd had, He sed, "It's worth five shillin, lad." Aw sighed as aw put daan mi brass,— "Well, God bless thi ...
— Yorkshire Lyrics • John Hartley

... by a real templar saved, Is it the less a miracle? The greatest Of all is this, that true and real wonders Should happen so perpetually, so daily. Without this universal miracle A thinking man had scarcely called those such, Which only children, Recha, ought to name so, Who love to gape and stare at the unusual And hunt ...
— Nathan the Wise • Gotthold Ephraim Lessing

... Garwood surrounded by a curious crowd but in possession of the car. I looked about for Duncan and Reginald. They had apparently been swallowed up in the crowds of idlers which seemed to be pouring out of nowhere, collecting to gape at the excitement, after the manner of a New ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve

... San Remo is a fortress as well as a dwelling-place. Over its gateways may still be traced the pipes for molten lead, and on its walls the eyeloops for arrows, with brackets for the feet of archers. Masses of building have been shaken down by earthquakes. The ruins of what once were houses gape with blackened chimneys and dark forlorn cellars; mazes of fungus and unhealthy weeds among the still secure habitations. Hardly a ray of light penetrates the streets; one learns the meaning of the Italian word uggia from their cold and gloom. ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds

... through the great Time-hall, Stately and high; The little men climb the low clay wall To gape and spy; "We wait for the Gods," the little men cry, "But these ...
— Leaves of Life - For Daily Inspiration • Margaret Bird Steinmetz

... whence it originated even those who had been the most intimate with him were at a loss to conjecture. And now on the morning after the meeting, when he walked into the mill-yard, while some looked on him with the sort of wonder with which a crowd would gape at some strange animal, the like of which they had neither seen nor heard of before, others began to assail him with gibes and taunts and coarse would-be witticisms. But Foster bore it all unmoved, never uttering ...
— True to his Colours - The Life that Wears Best • Theodore P. Wilson

... looked bare and cold, and rather dusty, as if it had been neglected lately; its deal shelves with their large white labels and wide empty spaces seemed to gape hungrily—a cheerless place altogether, with nothing comfortable ...
— Penelope and the Others - Story of Five Country Children • Amy Walton

... see quite plainly by merely closing his eyes, there was an imposing residence that bore the same relation to Crowheart which the manor house does to the retainers upon a great English estate. He could see a touring car which sent the coyotes loping to their dens and made the natives gape; not so close, but equally distinct, a friendly hand was pointing the way to political honors whose only limit was his own desires. And Augusta—his smile of complacency did not fade—she was equal to any ...
— The Lady Doc • Caroline Lockhart

... buttress of the castle completely exposed to the eyes of Marjory, by the gleams that flared from the torches; and she saw him deliberately go through the operation of making the projection available for the purpose of a gallows, by binding the cord to it, and suspending a running noose, which seemed to gape in grim gesture for its victim. The moment the rope was suspended, James pointed to it, and asked the warder to proceed and answer his questions. The terrified man cast a wild eye on the relentless crowd around ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume III • Various

... hath taught stil peace to growe. No forreine bannisht wight shall ancre in this port, Our realme it brookes no strangers force, let them elsewhere resort. Our rusty sworde with rest shall first his edge employ, To polle their toppes that seeke, such change and gape for ioy. ...
— The Arte of English Poesie • George Puttenham

... proud maid, for the grave doth gape, And strangely altered reflects thy shape; No dainty charms it doth disclose, Death will ravish thy beauty's rose; And all the rest will leave to thee When dug thy ...
— Mollie Charane - and Other Ballads • Thomas J. Wise

... ages—could comprehend. And why not? The mind of man is capable of anything—because everything is in it, all the past as well as all the future. What was there after all? Joy, fear, sorrow, devotion, valor, rage—who can tell?—but truth—truth stripped of its cloak of time. Let the fool gape and shudder—the man knows, and can look on without a wink. But he must at least be as much of a man as these on the shore. He must meet that truth with his own true stuff—with his own inborn strength. Principles? Principles won't do. ...
— Heart of Darkness • Joseph Conrad

... men to yawn or gape? A. It proceeds from the thick fume and vapours that fill the jaws; by the expulsion of which is caused the stretching out and expansion of the jaws, ...
— The Works of Aristotle the Famous Philosopher • Anonymous

... Oh, it was all very well for you, Strammfest. But think of me, of me! standing there for you to gape at, and knowing that I was no goddess, but only a girl like any other girl! It was cruelty to animals: you could have stuck up a wax doll or a golden calf to worship; it ...
— Annajanska, the Bolshevik Empress • George Bernard Shaw

... all those things go, do they not gape, and even with open mouth fix their eyes fast on her; and have not all men more desire unto her than unto silver or gold, or any goodly ...
— Deuteronomical Books of the Bible - Apocrypha • Anonymous

... They come to look, and they prefer to stare. Reel off a host of threads before their faces, So that they gape in stupid wonder: then By sheer diffuseness you have won their graces, And are, at once, most popular of men. Only by mass you touch the mass; for any Will finally, himself, his bit select: Who offers much, brings something unto many, And each ...
— Faust • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

... frantic dance round the combatants, screamed shrilly, and made dangerous, ineffectual darts at Tray. The servant girl neither danced, nor screamed, nor made darts; she stood stolidly still, with something between a gape and a grin on her broad red face. She had not the passion for dog-fights entertained by the gamins of the streets, such fights were simply immaterial trifles to her amidst the weightier concerns of her life; ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Sarah Tytler

... hundred tons of spices of all kinds. We passed the island of St Helena, near which we saw certain fishes of such enormous bigness that one of them was as large as a great house. When they rise above water, or gape or yawn, the upper jaw covers all the forehead, as it were a soldier in shining armour, and when they swim along the surface of the deep, the forehead seems three paces broad. As they swam about near the ships, they raised such a commotion in the sea that we discharged all our artillery to drive ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VII • Robert Kerr

... eight thousand dollars, and again she is easier to obtain than such a superior greyhound. Hurry now, Lehndorf, and arrange the hunt for me. Let the servants put on their new red hunting suits and my huntsman also his new livery, that the curious Berlin people may have something to gape at. Away with you, Lehndorf! You, pages, take the baskets, now I am ...
— The Youth of the Great Elector • L. Muhlbach

... against unwelcome company. And most company seemed unwelcome, although at times, when the right persons appeared at the right moment, he could be happy as a child and unbend in a manner that made Keith gape with wonder. When her good mood prevailed, the mother, too, was touchingly eager for the diversion provided by a chance visit, but when the dark moments came, she shunned everybody, while at the same time she watched any prolonged failure to call with morbid suspiciousness, ascribing ...
— The Soul of a Child • Edwin Bjorkman

... And by some devilish cantrip[78] slight, Each in its cauld hand held a light, By which heroic Tam was able To note upon the haly table A murderer's banes in gibbet airns;[79] Twa span-lang, wee unchristened bairns; A thief new-cutted frae a rape, Wi' his last gasp his gab[80] did gape; Five tomahawks, wi' bluid red-rusted; Five scimitars wi' murder crusted; A garter which a babe had strangled; A knife a father's throat had mangled, Whom his ain son o' life bereft— The gray hairs yet stack ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various

... benefit of gorging the operatives with turkey and sheathing their offspring in red mittens? It was just like the end of a story-book with a pretty moral, and Amherst was in the mood to be as much taken by the tinsel as the youngest mill-baby held up to gape at ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton

... sacred beetle; it is the calm advent of death. With wings slackly quivering, softly they die and drop from the wires. Next day, both corpses are remarkably lax; the segments of the abdomen separate and gape at the least touch. Remove the hairs and you shall see that the skin, which was white, has turned brown and is changing to black. Corruption is quickly doing ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre

... law books, ranged very orderly, calf-bound, make up a reverend pharmacopoeia, where you shall find precepts of iron, smelted from trespasses and old-time bickerings, whose long-dead authors, could they but come to life, would gape and stare and scratch their humble heads to find their ...
— Berry And Co. • Dornford Yates

... mouth!" he said angrily. "Doan't bellow like that, or I'll hit 'e awver the jaw! Do'e think I want the whole of Exeter City to knaw my errand? What's theer to gape an' snigger at? Caan't 'e treat a ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts

... Captain Jack's parting word to him to dissemble all outward signs of astonishment at what he might see when he entered the city; to walk on without stopping to stare or gape, to look as though such sights were of everyday occurrence in his life, and to bear himself with a bold and self-sufficient air, as much as to tell the world at large that he was very well able to take care of himself, and that roisterers ...
— Tom Tufton's Travels • Evelyn Everett-Green

... sufficiently differing from those of a blew Fly, though indeed they seem to be both the same kind of Organ, and to serve for a kind of smelling; beyond these were two indented jaws DD, which he open'd side-wayes, and was able to gape them asunder very wide; and the ends of them being armed with teeth, which meeting went between each other, it was able to grasp and hold a heavy body, three or four times the bulk and weight of its own body: It had only ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke

... your eyes when I mention it, but I know you won't funk it. We mean to get hold of all the School prizes at Grandcourt this term, if we can. (Sensation.) Yes, you may gape, but it's a fact! Of course, I can't beat Smedley for the gold medal. (Yes, have a try!) Rather! I mean to try; and Smedley will have to put on steam. (Loud cheers.) Then Stafford is going to cut out Branscombe—(Boo-hoo!)—for the Melton ...
— The Master of the Shell • Talbot Baines Reed

... softly, so softly that the Horse did not see her till she was within twenty feet; then he gave a start that swung the tightened picket-rope up into the air, and snorted gently. Tito went quietly forward, and opening her wide gape, took the rope in, almost under her ears, between the great scissor-like back teeth, then chewed it for a few seconds. The fibres quickly frayed, and, aided by the strain the nervous Horse still kept up, the last of the strands gave way, and the Horse was free. He was not much alarmed; he ...
— Johnny Bear - And Other Stories From Lives of the Hunted • E. T. Seton

... few who knew him, and of cloud to the many who knew him not, Dante Gabriel Rossetti lived apart from the gossip and tittle-tattle of a shallow age. He never trafficked with the merchants for his soul, nor brought his wares into the market-place for the idle to gape at. Passionate and romantic though he was, yet there was in his nature something of high austerity. He loved seclusion, and hated notoriety, and would have shuddered at the idea that within a few years after his death he was to make his appearance in a series of popular biographies, ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde

... of Des Sarts, as yet un-visited, we skirted the gape of the crater, climbing over craggy accumulations of wreckage, and traversed a tunnel with an arched roof and mildewed brick walls, like a wine vault. The floor of it was littered with the knapsacks and water bottles of dead or captured men, with useless rifles broken at the stocks and ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb

... accordingly not beautiful—their faces are like that of a pale, dirty, and weeping child with a cold in its head, who does not use a pocket-handkerchief. Jackdaws haunt the upper ledges and smaller caves that gape on all sides chattering like boys escaped from school, and anon a raven starts forth and hoarsely calls for silence. At the foot of the stooping crags, bowing to each other across the stream, lie masses that ...
— Castles and Cave Dwellings of Europe • Sabine Baring-Gould

... he traces the course of them. I have seen too much of success in life to take off my hat and huzzah to it as it passes in its gilt coach: and would do my little part with my neighbors on foot, that they should not gape with too much wonder, nor applaud too loudly. Is it the Lord Mayor going in state to mince-pies and the Mansion House? Is it poor Jack of Newgate's procession, with the sheriff and javelin-men, conducting him on his last journey to Tyburn? I look into my heart and think that I sin as good ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray

... gape t' anticipate The cabinet-designs of fate; Apply to wizards, to foresee 25 What shall and what shall never be; And, as those vultures do forebode, Believe events prove bad or good: A flam more senseless ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler

... at stake, damn it all! We want to stay precisely where we are, shoemakers and bakers, all together! But we must demand proper conditions! Scarcely one out of thousands can come out on top; and then the rest can sit where they are and gape after him! But do you believe he'd get a chance of rising if it wasn't that society needs him—wants to use him to strike at his own people and keep them down? 'Now you can see for yourself what a poor ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo

... dearly loved to tell stories. "I was reading that everlasting Belsham, and droning away as I always do, for Aunt soon drops off, and then I take out some nice book, and read like fury till she wakes up. I actually made myself sleepy, and before she began to nod, I gave such a gape that she asked me what I meant by opening my mouth wide enough to take the ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott

... not move, but stood as if carved out of a block of hardened putty by the hand of an artistic drill-sergeant; listening, though, with his ears, which looked preternaturally large from the closeness of the regimental barber's efforts, and seeming to gape. Then he left his rifle in a ...
— Fix Bay'nets - The Regiment in the Hills • George Manville Fenn

... For the aristocracy are the supreme instances of that frame of mind of which we spoke just now. Novelty is to them a luxury verging on a necessity. They, above all, are so bored with the past and with the present, that they gape, with a horrible hunger, ...
— What's Wrong With The World • G.K. Chesterton

... terrible long way, now here, now there and now close to the spot where Jason and the princess were hiding behind an oak. Upon my word, as the head came waving and undulating through the air and reaching almost within arm's length of Prince Jason, it was a very hideous and uncomfortable sight. The gape of his enormous jaws was nearly as wide as the gateway of ...
— Famous Tales of Fact and Fancy - Myths and Legends of the Nations of the World Retold for Boys and Girls • Various

... ye gape on me— What, doth he sleep, or feeds, or plays at games? Why, I would see him; I am weary for his sake; Bid my lord in.-Nathless he will but chide; Nay, fleer and laugh: what should one say to him? There were some word if one could hit on ...
— Chastelard, a Tragedy • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... want?" he called, and, though he used no name, Flora saw he knew with whom he was speaking. The Chinaman stood immobile, lifting his round, white face, whose mouth seemed to gape a little. Harry leaned far out and ...
— The Coast of Chance • Esther Chamberlain

... reason why he should bother changing his set course due north because he happens to pass a few towns away up here in the northern end of the State. Let the people stare all they want to. He's been used to having crowds gape at him, you know, and rather likes it. Besides, if he gets away, what does ...
— The Aeroplane Boys Flight - A Hydroplane Roundup • John Luther Langworthy

... Joseph Banks, M.P. for Grimsby, born in 1681, and eventually came to his distinguished descendant, Sir Joseph Banks; and on his death some of the Mareham land passed to the ancestors of the present Sir Henry M. Hawley. Other proprietors are now Major Gape, Messrs. J. R. Chapman, Joseph Lake, and ...
— A History of Horncastle - from the earliest period to the present time • James Conway Walter

... to fall asleep," continued the gunner. He yawned a few times, brushed the dust off his uniform, and said laughingly to Vogt: "It is nothing unusual on sentry-duty, you raw booby of a recruit! Nothing for you to gape about!" ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein

... in six days; in seven, her cargo might be transferred across the isthmus of Tehuantepec to the Pacific, and in fifty more reach China—total, sixty-three days. As an elucidation, let us suppose that the usual route to the same destination, round Gape Horn, from a more central part of the Union—Philadelphia, for example—is 16, 150 miles; in that case the distance saved, independent of less sea risk, would be as follows:—From the Delaware to Guassacualco, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various

... minority of the race. Their influence too is much less potent than is supposed. A slightly vulgarizing tendency proceeds from them, but in waves of decreasing intensity. Their vogue is chiefly a succes de scandale. Sensible people will gape at the spectacle without admiration, and even the reader of the society column in the sensational newspapers keeps more critical detachment than he is usually credited with. In any case neither the boisterous nor the shrinking multimillionaire has any representative ...
— The Unpopular Review, Volume II Number 3 • Various

... enough of silly coxcombs, young and old, of high degree, to be allured by the siren smiles of his "Countess;" and dupes of both sexes everywhere, to swallow his yarns and gape at his juggleries. In the course of his rambles, he paid a visit to his great brother humbug, the Count of St. Germain, in Westphalia, or Schleswig, and it was not long afterward that he began to publish to the world his grand discoveries in Alchemy, of the ...
— The Humbugs of the World • P. T. Barnum

... stand in the street and gape at the passers-by: thus do they also wait, and gape at the thoughts which others ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche

... stop workin', heh?" demanded their father, fiercely. "Leave me see you at it, do you hear? You stop another time to gape around and I 'll lick you good! Stop ...
— Tillie: A Mennonite Maid - A Story of the Pennsylvania Dutch • Helen Reimensnyder Martin

... tree in fruit. I have long had a vision of waving, sturdy, fruitful trees yielding nuts and other valuable fruit, and standing on our hilly and rocky land where now the gully and other signs of poverty, destruction and desolation gape at us. This vision of the fruitful tree also extends to the arid lands, there also vastly increasing our productive areas. Beyond a doubt the tree is the greatest engine of production nature has given us, and in its ability to yield harvests without soil injury on rough, rocky, and ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association, Report of the Proceedings at the Seventh Annual Meeting • Various

... animals are stored to be carried away as required, are constructed between tide-marks; and their denizens, accustomed to pass the greater part of the twenty-four hours beneath the water, open their valves and gape when so situated, but close them firmly when they are exposed by the recession of the tide. Habituated to these alternations of immersion and exposure, the practice of opening and closing their ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 431 - Volume 17, New Series, April 3, 1852 • Various

... is none of them all that is whole; their lips gape open for breath; They are clothed with sickness of soul, and the shape of the shadow ...
— Books and Habits from the Lectures of Lafcadio Hearn • Lafcadio Hearn

... object of interest in Heidelberg. What there is of interest in the sight of a big beer-barrel it is difficult, in one's calmer moments, to understand; but the guide book says that it is a thing to be seen, and so all we tourists go and stand in a row and gape at it. We are a sheep-headed lot. If, by a printer's error, no mention were made in the guide book of the Colosseum, we should spend a month in Rome, and not think it worth going across the road to look at. If the ...
— Diary of a Pilgrimage • Jerome K. Jerome

... of death, the jaws Of hell against us gape. Who from peril dire as this Openeth us escape? 'Tis thou, O Lord, alone! Our bitter suffering and our sin Pity from thy mercy win, Holy Lord and God! Strong and holy God! Merciful and holy Saviour! Eternal God! Let us not despair For the fire that ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various

... the grim monarch of insatiate Death; The shark rapacious with descending blow Darts on the scaly brood, that swims below; The crawling crocodiles, beneath that move, Arrest with rising jaw the tribes above; 60 With monstrous gape sepulchral whales devour Shoals at a gulp, a million in an hour. —Air, earth, and ocean, to astonish'd day One scene of blood, one mighty tomb display! From Hunger's arm the shafts of Death are hurl'd, And one great Slaughter-house the ...
— The Temple of Nature; or, the Origin of Society - A Poem, with Philosophical Notes • Erasmus Darwin

... thy title right or wrong, Lord Clifford vows to fight in thy defence. May that ground gape and swallow me alive, Where I shall kneel to ...
— King Henry VI, Third Part • William Shakespeare [Rolfe edition]

... angry; but that the Gilsons and Mrs. Corey, flap-eared, gape-mouthed, forward-bending, were very proud of their little Jeff. He saw that, except for their clothes and self-conscious coiffures, they were exactly like a gang of cracker-box loafers at Heinie Rauskukle's badgering a new boy ...
— Free Air • Sinclair Lewis

... conflict. And I retort your reproach of me, and say, that you will not be able to help yourself when the day of trial and judgment, of which I was speaking, comes upon you; you will go before the judge, the son of Aegina, and, when he has got you in his grip and is carrying you off, you will gape and your head will swim round, just as mine would in the courts of this world, and very likely some one will shamefully box you on the ears, and put upon you any ...
— Gorgias • Plato

... Milton, the "gorgons, hydras, and chimeras dire," of classical fable, frown on the passing visitor; and, though wrapped up in their dead and stony sleep of ages, seem not only the most strange, but also the most terrible things on which his eye ever rested. Enormous jaws, bristling with pointed teeth, gape horrid in the stone, under staring eye-sockets a full foot in diameter. Necks that half equal in length the entire body of the boa-constrictor stretch out from bodies mounted on fins like those ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller

... stands before him. Thrilled and startled he pauses not, "harrowed with fear and wonder like Horatio on the previous night, but at once addresses it, as he said he would, though hell itself should gape." No more dignified rebuke ever shamed terror from the soul than Hamlet administers to his panic-stricken friends, and when they would forcibly withhold him from following the Ghost, the steady determination with which he draws ...
— The Contemporary Review, January 1883 - Vol 43, No. 1 • Various

... them even while she makes use of them for the purpose of deception. She persuades him that a thing costs so much because he would kick up a row if its price were higher. And she always extricates herself from the difficulty cunningly by a means so simple and so sly that we gape with amazement when by chance we discover them. We say to ourselves in a stupefied state of mind 'How is it we did not see this ...
— The works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 5 (of 8) - Une Vie and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant 1850-1893

... Dockwrath found that the party was swelled to the number of eight, five other undoubted commercials having brought themselves to anchor at the Bull Inn during the day. To all of these, Mr. Kantwise introduced him. "Mr. Gape, Mr. Dockwrath," said he, gracefully moving towards them the palm of his hand, and eyeing them over his shoulder. "Mr. Gape is in the stationery line," he added, in a whisper to the attorney, "and does for Cumming and Jibber of St. Paul's Churchyard. Mr. Johnson, Mr. Dockwrath. Mr. J. is from ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope

... because on their brazen shields and helmets the sun was reflected more brightly than from yonder peak, the Fool turned to gaze at them as they wound past. In sooth, had it not been for that, he would never have given them a glance at all, not having much curiosity about the things other people love to gape at. ...
— A Williams Anthology - A Collection of the Verse and Prose of Williams College, 1798-1910 • Compiled by Edwin Partridge Lehman and Julian Park

... carrying out of the pattern; if in these places the thread is too loose upon the warp, the fabric will be uneven and pushed out of place; if on the other hand the thread there is too tight, the slits will gape, and if these are afterwards closed by stitching, the entire material will be drawn in. A new thread is never commenced actually at the margin, for it would then be seen upon the right side; it is quite easy to avoid this happening by commencing an inch further in. This may entail beginning ...
— Embroidery and Tapestry Weaving • Grace Christie

... been beautiful under its crown of luxuriant black hair, it now was distorted. While the eyes were closed, the mouth was open, very wide—an ugly, repulsive gape. ...
— The Winning Clue • James Hay, Jr.

... fire his secret thought, Fell unregarded to the ground, Unseen by such as stood around. The pious wind took it away, The reverent darkness hid the lay. Methought like water-haunting birds Divers or dippers were his words, And idle clowns beside the mere At the new vision gape and jeer. But when the noisy scorn was past, Emerge the winged words in haste. New-bathed, new-trimmed, on healthy wing, Right to the heaven ...
— Poems - Household Edition • Ralph Waldo Emerson

... pine, within whose rift he remained imprisoned for twelve years, tormented so greatly that his groans made the wolves howl, and penetrated the breast of every bear. Sycorax could not, proceeded Prospero, undo what she had done; it was his art alone that made the pine gape and set him free. Then he threatened the spirit that if he again murmured, he would send an oak, and peg him in its knotty trunk till he had howled away twelve winters. The spirit asked pardon, and declared his readiness to obey Prospero's commands. Prospero promised that if he did so, he would ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant

... composed or delineated, but they all strike the spectators more or less with surprise or admiration; and it is with us, as, I suppose, with you, and everywhere else, the multitude decide: for one competent judge or real connoisseur, hundreds pass, who stare, gape, are charmed, and inspire thousands of their acquaintance, friends, and neighbours with their own satisfaction. Believe me, Napoleon the First well knows the age, his contemporaries, and, I fear, ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton

... If it assume my noble father's person, I'll speak to it, though hell itself should gape, And bid me ...
— Hamlet • William Shakespeare

... how inconvenient it is to have no pocket in her gown, and she also knows how strongly the dressmakers protest against putting one in, because it is sure to gape open and look ugly. ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 30, June 3, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various

... The gape worm may be termed the bete noir of the poultry-keeper—his greatest enemy—whether he be farmer or fancier. It is true there are some who declare that it is unknown in their poultry-yards—that they have never been troubled with it at all. These are apt to lay ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 460, October 25, 1884 • Various

... which was so unlooked for, so incredible, that they could only gape and stare at each other. Tucked in the bow was a seaman's jacket of tarred canvas, of the kind used in wet weather. Sewed to the inside of it was a pocket of leather with a buttoned flap. This Jack Cockrell proceeded to explore, recovering from ...
— Blackbeard: Buccaneer • Ralph D. Paine

... place was in the prison of the Temple, too. It could not be very difficult to run one's head into the noose that caught so many necks these days. A few cries of "Vive le roi!" or "A bas la republique!" and more than one prison door would gape ...
— El Dorado • Baroness Orczy

... go back to his office; the globe-trotter didn't care about going out at night; and the Bo'sun tried to laugh the thing off. "You don't catch me going," he said. "There's nothing to be seen—just a lot of flash young rowdies dancing. You'll gape at them, and they'll gape at you, and you'll feel rather a pair of fools, and you'll come away. Better ...
— An Outback Marriage • Andrew Barton Paterson

... as complete as Pompeii, as desolate as Timgad amongst its African hills, you see the remnant of a pack of cards lying with what remains of the stock of a draper's shop; and the front part of the shop and the snug room at the back gape side by side together in equal, misery, as though there had never been a barrier between the counter with its wares and the good mahogany table with its decanters; then in the rustling of papers that blow ...
— Unhappy Far-Off Things • Lord Dunsany

... used to harry their cattle and pillage their strong-box looked to them a hero, a saint, a Christ, compared to these modern thieves who were environed with all the defences and impunity which the law and the State could give. When an earth-shock makes the soil under your feet quiver, and gape, and mutter, you feel that unnatural forces are being hurled against you, you feel that you are the mere sport and jest of an unjust deity. This was what ...
— The Waters of Edera • Louise de la Rame, a.k.a. Ouida

... Plague upon the race of man. 'O, for the sheathed steel, so late which gave 3965 Oblivion to the dead, when the streets ran With brothers' blood! O, that the earthquake's grave Would gape, or Ocean lift its stifling wave!' Vain cries—throughout the streets thousands pursued Each by his fiery torture howl and rave, 3970 Or sit in frenzy's unimagined mood, Upon fresh heaps of dead; ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley

... fanned dying hopes or silent longings. It made the light-hearted lighter in heart, the light-minded heavy in soul. Where there was a glimpse of heaven, it opened the heavens wider; where there was already hell, it made the abysses gape deeper. For those few moments each soul communed with itself, and met with a shuddering there, or an exaltation, as ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various



Words linked to "Gape" :   facial gesture, rictus, stare, goggle, be, gawp



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