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Murky   Listen
adjective
Murky  adj.  (compar. murkier; superl. murkiest)  
1.
Dark; gloomy. "The murkiest den." "A murky deep lowering o'er our heads."
2.
Obscured by haze or mist; clouded; turbid; as, poor visibility in the murky water.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Murky" Quotes from Famous Books



... to a truer appreciation of my essentiality to their happiness. My mother had long been haunted by a conviction that I should meet an early death by drowning or an accidental gunshot, and this very morning she had awakened from a dream in which she saw her only child floating on the murky waters of the mill-dam. Rushing to my room and finding me gone, she had had her worst fears confirmed, and at the moment of my reappearance Mr. Pound was endeavoring to console her for her loss and to bring her to a state of Christian resignation. So all ...
— David Malcolm • Nelson Lloyd

... below, that we may gain Tidings from those who traverse the wide main. Or tread we now some spot of wizard-land, And mark the sable trump, that may command The brazen doors to fly, and with loud call 180 Scare the grim giant in his murky hall! Hail, solitary castle! that dost crown This desert summit, and supreme look down On the long-lessening landscape stretched below; Fearless to trace thy inmost haunts we go! We climb the steps:—No warning signs are sent, No fiery ...
— The Poetical Works of William Lisle Bowles, Vol. 1 • William Lisle Bowles

... few who heroically made the movement were instantly cut down. At the Place de la Revolution, one hundred thousand people were gathered in silence around the scaffold. The instrument of death, with its blood-red beams and posts, stood prominent above the multitudinous assemblage in the damp, murky air. ...
— Maria Antoinette - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott

... Six murky things moved from the open wall towards the cameras, which fell back to the opposite side of the room. Each was large, many times the size of a man, but somehow indistinct, for the cameras didn't convey any sense of shape or form. For an instant, one of the screens flashed a picture of ...
— Alien Offer • Al Sevcik

... not answer. Her pertness, her Anglo-Saxon vivacity, were gone; her face was wooden, expressionless; her restless eyes slow-moving and dull; her cheek-bones, always noticeably high, looked higher, and her skin was murky ...
— 'Me-Smith' • Caroline Lockhart

... during the next minute, as the tiers of lights dimmed slowly from white to yellow, then a red, and nothing was left but the murky mourning of the night, which hung over all like ...
— Aircraft and Submarines - The Story of the Invention, Development, and Present-Day - Uses of War's Newest Weapons • Willis J. Abbot

... hot.... I hold in my hand a Japanese paper-fan with a design upon it of the simplest sort: one jointed green bamboo, with a single spurt of sharp leaves, cutting across a pale blue murky double streak that means the horizon above a sea. That is all. Trivial to my Northern friends this design might seem; but to me it causes a pleasure bordering on pain.... I know so well what the artist means; and they could not know, unless they had ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn

... roofs and iron towers have grown None knoweth how high within the night, But in its murky streets far down A flaming terrible and bright Shakes all the stalking shadows there, Across the walls, across the floors, And shifts upon the upper air From out a ...
— Alcyone • Archibald Lampman

... the moan of eternal sorrow! Behind roars the bottomless abyss, black with the gloomy mists rising from the woes of the Past: Before lies the far-off Heaven, burning and blazing with flames red as of blood: Around struggle the swimmers, in surges so cold, hopeless, and murky, That from each as he floats onward is forced the cry; 'WOE! THE CURSE ...
— The Continental Monthly, Volume V. Issue I • Various

... thousand doors which lead to romance. Besides, the lives of none of us are quite so simple as they seem. Even youth has its secret chapters. This young man, for instance, might be on his way to Australia, happy in the knowledge that he has escaped from some murky chapter of life which will now never be known. He may write to his friends, giving them a hint. The whole ...
— The Evil Shepherd • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... placed the explosive. Then the Advance was withdrawn to a safe distance. There was a dull rumble, a great swirling of the water, which was made murky; but when it cleared, and the submarine went back, it was seen that the wreck was effectively broken up. It was in two parts, each one easy ...
— Tom Swift and his Submarine Boat - or, Under the Ocean for Sunken Treasure • Victor Appleton

... Chiltern's remark. I only know, for my part, that the Ladies' Gallery is a murky den, in which you can hear very little, not see much, and are yourself ...
— Faces and Places • Henry William Lucy

... saw through the murky reek that Gentleman Geoff was down at last, his head cradled in Billie's arms, a spreading stain upon the soft white silk of his shirt. Thrusting his rifle into the hands of a neighbor, Thode leaped from the table, and as he reached ...
— The Fifth Ace • Douglas Grant

... were panting for each other's blood from the start, and before they had been urged over a quarter of the way they found an opportunity of warfare, and seized it simultaneously. Then the air grew murky with sound—cockatoo shrieks, mingled with cat calls and fluent Chinese, cutting across Hogg's good, broad Scots. Naturally, the strings of the harness became fatally twisted immediately, and soon ...
— A Little Bush Maid • Mary Grant Bruce

... March day was closing in over London with that murky suggestion of hopelessness affected by metropolitan eventide when Jack Meredith presented himself at the door of ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman

... many recollections brought up by their perusal; so much to talk about and discuss, that very little work was done. The weather, however, was now becoming much colder, and, for the last two days the sun had not shone. The sky was of one uniform, murky, solemn gray; and every thing announced that the winter was close at hand. Martin, who had been hunting, when he came home bid them prepare for an immediate change in the weather, and his ...
— The Settlers in Canada • Frederick Marryat

... the Wash the sun went down—the sea looked black and grim, For stormy clouds with murky fleece were mustering at the brim; Titanic shades! enormous gloom!—as if the solid night Of Erebus rose suddenly to seize upon the light! It was a time for mariners to bear a wary eye, With such a dark conspiracy between the ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley

... had gone thither into retreat, that he might cleanse his pious, murky soul against ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini

... sunshine gleaming through a few holes in the roof, and the dark, black, smoky vaults in which the cumbrous machinery was heard rumbling away in the distance—while the moving parts were dimly seen through the murky atmosphere, mixed with the sounds of escaping steam and rushes of water; with the half-naked men darting about with masses of red-hot iron and ladles full of molten cast-iron—it made a ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth

... through the cracks and creeping into the room. The meteorologist of the Second Army was often a gloomy prophet, and his prophecies were right. How it rained on nights when hundreds of thousands of British soldiers were waiting in their trenches to attack in a murky dawn!... We said good night to General Harington, each one of us, I think, excited by the thought of the drama of human life and death which we had heard in advance in that glass house on the hill; to be played out by flesh and blood before many hours ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs

... gave him a coat of mail. Young Foresto brought him his sword and shield. Climbing the keep-wall, Cercamorte squinted down into the murky courtyard. That whole place now swarmed ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various

... we first came into contact perfectly well. It was a Saturday night, and we were boiling off. The boiling-house was but very dimly lighted by two murky oil-lamps, the rays from which could scarcely penetrate through the dense atmosphere of steam which rose from the seething coppers. Occasionally a bright glow from the furnace-mouths lighted up the scene for a single instant, only to leave it the ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley

... clear, sensitive, and tonally just. It is not surprising that he seized upon Ricci's opaque watercolors. The paintings of the Venetian masters had darkened in ill-lit churches, the shadows had become murky, there were too many figures. But the Ricci paintings were small and ...
— John Baptist Jackson - 18th-Century Master of the Color Woodcut • Jacob Kainen

... down the platform of one of the principal stations in the town a lady paced, every now and then peering into the murky darkness, or waylaying a passing porter to ask when the down-train was due. She was tall and slender, but the huge bonnet and thick veil which she wore so effectually concealed her face that it was impossible to make out whether she was young ...
— Aunt Judith - The Story of a Loving Life • Grace Beaumont

... on fire by the bright sun, Which slowly, slowly to extinction goes, The while she, girt with splendour burning lies; Yields to her star antagonistic fief Through that which towards the sky to Heaven ascends. Black smoke, and sombre fog of murky hue Concealing thus his radiance from our eyes, And veiling that which makes her burn and shine. And so my soul, illumined and inflamed By radiance divine, would fain display The brightness of her own effulgent thought; ...
— The Heroic Enthusiast, Part II (Gli Eroici Furori) - An Ethical Poem • Giordano Bruno

... over London, on account of wood being the principal fuel burnt in the former, and coal in the latter, hence Paris seen from a height, every object is visible from the clearness of the atmosphere, whilst London under the same circumstances is capped by a murky sort of cloud by which the greater part of ...
— How to Enjoy Paris in 1842 • F. Herve

... rumpled mountains where the blue haze hung low and protecting as though over mysteries and treasures which awaited one man and one alone. Robert Fairchild momentarily had forgotten the foreboding omens which, like murky shadows, had been cast in his path by a beaten, will-broken father. He only knew that he was young, that he was strong, that he was free from the drudgery which had sought to claim him forever; he felt only the surge of excitement ...
— The Cross-Cut • Courtney Ryley Cooper

... the sun had risen in a warm and glorious splendour above the smooth immense gleam of the enlarged estuary. Wisps of mist floated like trails of luminous dust, and in the dazzling reflections of water and vapour, the shores had the murky semi- transparent darkness of shadows cast mysteriously from below. Powell, who had sailed out of London all his young seaman's life, told me that it was then, in a moment of entranced vision an hour or so after sunrise, that the river was revealed ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad

... was wholly overcast with dense, murky vapours, which totally hid the sun, and the air was excessively hot, moist, and sultry as before a thunderstorm—an unusual phenomenon in Womla. Black boulders and crags, speckled with lichens, and carpeted with coarse herbage, ...
— A Trip to Venus • John Munro

... the world. We had exchanged the bleak regions of perpetual snow and of impenetrable barriers of ice for those of brightness and 'the rich hues of all glorious things.' We had left over our heads the murky sky and cold fogs of the frigid zone to revel under the ...
— A Journey to the Interior of the Earth • Jules Verne

... cross-country through the murky night like the wind, and in a very few minutes Dodge was again on the spot where he had left his brother priest. There the mare shied once more and showed every sign of fear, and the parson, looking about him, espied a short distance off the gruesome spectre he had originally ...
— Legend Land, Volume 2 • Various

... crack of his rifle. A faint light appeared behind the dining-tent, over the distant trees, like the light of London seen from twenty or thirty miles' distance in the country, a faint, suggestive, murky grayness in the sky, making ...
— Mr. Isaacs • F. Marion Crawford

... and uninteresting place, situate in a most unwholesome locality, lying opposite to a murky swamp, whose poisonous vapours spread disease and death around. It is the highway to Sandusky city, an inland border town, rendered famous for the obstinacy with which the inhabitants and a body of U.S. Infantry defended a fort there ...
— An Englishman's Travels in America - His Observations Of Life And Manners In The Free And Slave States • John Benwell

... good enough to invite me again the next year, 1892, but by that time I was seated in an editorial chair, and could not leave London. In the place of the brilliant sunshine of Assam, the grimy, murky London atmosphere; instead of the distant roars from the jungle, the low thunder of the big "machines" in the basement, as they began to revolve, grinding out fresh reading-matter ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton

... Poland shall arise, And Schleswig-Holstein be extremely perky; Alsace-Lorraine shall look with loving eyes To a clear dawn, where now the mists are murky, And messengers of peace shall stray On Balkan mounts, and my Aunt May Has frequently been heard to say That she intends to give ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, December 2, 1914 • Various

... is spread O'er each turret's murky head, While from th' Owlet's dismal cry Intruding ...
— Translations of German Poetry in American Magazines 1741-1810 • Edward Ziegler Davis

... have seen swimming out in the ocean two miles or more from shore, is in Borneo a voracious man- eater. It skilfully stalks its prey in the murky rivers where Malay and Dyak women and children come down to the village bathing place to dip up water and to bathe. There, unseen in the muddy water, the monster glides up stealthily, seizes his victim by the leg, and holding it tightly backs off into deep water ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday

... the precursor of a thunder-gust. The breeze, strengthening to a brisk gale, made Arlington hold fast to his hat, and caused the long streamers of Spanish moss to wave like gray banners from the limbs of the cypress-trees. The air grew murky, clouds were flying in dark blotches. A hurricane was sweeping across the country; the loud rush of it came roaring up the stream; it lashed and twisted and tore trees; poured down torrents; thundered around ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable

... lounging (so he told Amyas) one murky day on Bideford quay, when up came Mr. Salterne. Cary had shunned him of late, partly from delicacy, partly from dislike of his supposed hard-heartedness. But this time they happened to meet full; and Cary could not ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley

... that closed the entrance of the vault had been removed. But the descent of Avernus was not facile, the steps being steep and broken, and the roof so low. Young Mervyn had gone down the steps to see it duly placed; a murky, fiery light; came up, against which the descending ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu

... out your limbs! The air is murky overhead; there is darkness on the sun, and the fish do not leap in the water; there is no dew on the grass, and the birds do not sing sweetly. With sorrow after you, Daly, till death, there never will be fruit on ...
— Poets and Dreamers - Studies and translations from the Irish • Lady Augusta Gregory and Others

... him on the saddle, and had taken the reins from his hands; and a worse gloom than the murky atmosphere ...
— Wee Wifie • Rosa Nouchette Carey

... glory upon peaceful miles. Nowhere was a sign of wallow, path or road, and the coulee yawned, white-lipped. Even the Missouri was not unchanged. For, away to the northwest, there had been a mighty rainstorm, and the murky river tumbled by in waves that ...
— The Plow-Woman • Eleanor Gates

... itself was of murky material, built in the late nineties; in response to the steadily growing need of small apartments each floor had been thoroughly remodelled and rented individually. Of the four apartments Anthony's, on the second ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald

... is indicated by a change in the atmosphere of the field. Instead of reflecting or remaining translucent, the agent will appear to cloud over. This will appear to become milky, then to be diffused with colour which changes to black or murky brown, and finally the screen appears to be drawn away, revealing a picture, a scene, figures in ...
— Second Sight - A study of Natural and Induced Clairvoyance • Sepharial

... four others, who, drained of nearly all their life-blood, lay crouched together in helplessness, with the hoods of their ragged grey overcoats drawn down on their faces. These latter gazed at the murky sky in listless indifference, or at what was going on in a sort of weary surprise. Among them was ...
— In the Track of the Troops • R.M. Ballantyne

... for the most part of the poorer order. In the thoroughfares where shops abound, the sordid struggle with poverty shows itself unreservedly on the filthy pavement; gathers its forces through the week; and, strengthening to a tumult on Saturday night, sees the Sunday morning dawn in murky gaslight. Miserable women, whose faces never smile, haunt the butchers' shops in such London localities as these, with relics of the men's wages saved from the public-house clutched fast in their hands, with eyes that devour the meat ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins

... was a movement on board, all hands turned out forward. There were no decks to wash down; and, if there had been, the water was hardly fit, in the judgment of the mate, for this purpose, for it was murky, and looked as though it was muddy; but it was not so bad as it appeared, for the dark color was caused by vegetable matter from the jungles and forest, and not from the mud, which remained at the bottom ...
— Four Young Explorers - Sight-Seeing in the Tropics • Oliver Optic

... and literary study. In their scientific zeal they have repeatedly overturned what were once regarded as fundamental dogmas. Unfortunately the first reports of their work suggested that it was only destructive. The very foundations of faith seemed to be shaking. Sinai appeared to be enveloped in a murky fog, instead of the effulgence of the divine glory; Moses seemed to become a vague, unreal figure on the distant horizon of history; David's voice only faintly echoed through the Psalter; and the noblest messages of prophet, sage, and ...
— The Origin & Permanent Value of the Old Testament • Charles Foster Kent

... herself abstractedly on a heap of fagots piled in the corner, and seemed busy in framing characters on the dusty floor with the point of her tiny slipper. So fresh and fair and young she seemed, in that murky atmosphere, that strange scene, and beside that worn man, that it might have seemed to a poet as if the youngest of the Graces were come to visit Mulciber ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... dark night with but a glimpse of the new moon when Harry left Captain McBean. From Bow Street to the "Hand of Pork" in Long Acre was only a few hundred yards, but murky enough, and Harry took Mr. Gay's ...
— The Highwayman • H.C. Bailey

... Sobriente in the infirmary, with swollen and bandaged face, and eyes that still seemed to see everything in the murky light of his own blood, Clarence felt the soft weight of the father's hand upon ...
— A Waif of the Plains • Bret Harte

... guide even unto death' and beyond it. The pillar that we follow, which will glow with the ruddy flame of love in the darkest hours of life—blessed be His name!—will glide in front of us through the 'valley of the shadow of death,' brightest then when the murky midnight is blackest. Nor will the pillar which guides us cease to blaze, as did the guide of the desert march, when Jordan has been crossed. It will still move before us on paths of continuous and ever-increasing approach to infinite perfection. They who here follow Christ ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren

... particular hospital is situated on the River Thames, in a notoriously damp and foggy part of the city; despite this drawback it was conclusively shown that the patients who lived night and day on the balconies breathing this heavy, murky, damp atmosphere, were relieved of their pains quicker, and more permanently, than those who were shielded in the ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Vol. 3 (of 4) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague

... murky and cool. A thin, struggling rain beat against the windows of Hubert's room when he woke. Things look different by the cold light of day, especially if the day be rainy, from the same things seen by gaslight. With Hubert's instant memory of the night before, ...
— The First Soprano • Mary Hitchcock

... in the storm, or a ray of sunshine shot through the murky clouds, all eyes were mechanically turned to the window, but only to turn them away again with a sigh; so completely had the waters invaded the land, that nothing short of the dove from Noah's Ark could have performed the journey ...
— Willis the Pilot • Paul Adrien

... had done and lamenting with grievous lamentation. Thus Allah gave them their reward of abjection in this world and prepared for them torment in the world to come; nor did they cease to abide in that murky and noisome place, whilst every day one or other of them died, till they all perished, even to the last of them;[FN183] and the report of this event was bruited abroad in all lands and countries. This is the end of the story of the King and his Wazirs and subjects, and praise ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton

... Grosvenor Bridge through the murky weather on its way to the coast, and a hundred times I cursed it for its lack of speed. I would have given much to be at the journey's end, and away from this motionless and inscrutable companion. His eyes were ...
— The Ghost - A Modern Fantasy • Arnold Bennett

... and full of the murky, greenish gloom of a November day, was the scene of a jostling crowd. The mail-boat train for South Africa stretched far down the long platform, every carriage door blocked by people bidding farewell, handing in bouquets of flowers, ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley

... with long silent strokes. He swam for a long time, the light shining softly over the water, and seeming to rise higher over his head, while the glimmering of the ship's lights grew fainter and more murky behind him. Then he became aware that he was drawing near to the land; great dark shapes loomed up over his head, and he heard the soft beating of waves before him. Then he could see too, as he ...
— Paul the Minstrel and Other Stories - Reprinted from The Hill of Trouble and The Isles of Sunset • Arthur Christopher Benson

... the leathery, pulpy body of the monster, but with no other effect than the sudden snapping of the inch line like thread. It was subsequent to this that, as the diver stayed his steps in the unsteady current, his staff was seized below. The water was murky with the river-silt above the salt brine, and he could see nothing, but after an effort the staff was rescued or released. Curious to know what it was, he probed again, and the stick was wrenched from his hand. With a thrill he recognized ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI. • Various

... up the river the little party progressed the narrower became the stream, until finally it was little better than a deep creek. Foliage of large trees overhung the water, making it almost as dark as night. The water was black and murky. ...
— The Boy Allies Under Two Flags • Ensign Robert L. Drake

... novel excitement of the brief encounter with Matheny or not. When Kentuck had left him, he stood for some time irresolute, with no wish for rest, and no desire to go anywhere in particular. He looked up to the sky. It was murky with filmy fog-clouds and dust not yet settled to the earth. Not a star was visible in the whole arch of heaven. He looked down the street, and his eyes, accustomed to the darkness, could just faintly distinguish the outlines of the wagons ...
— The New Penelope and Other Stories and Poems • Frances Fuller Victor

... was nearing London; already the coquettish veil of smoke with which the "hub of the Universe" conceals the full horror of her ugliness from the eyes of critics, gave the summer sky a murky yellow tinge. Leonetta yawned, glanced across the vast city which she hoped would hence-forward be her home, and then suddenly recollecting that her mother and sister would probably be at King's Cross to meet her, quickly folded the letter that was lying on her ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici

... days' stay at Walloong, the weather was bitterly cold: as heretofore, the nights and mornings were cloudless, but by noon the whole sky became murky, the highest temperature (50 degrees) occurring at 10 a.m. At this season the prospect from this elevation (10,385 feet), was dreary in the extreme; and the quantity of snow on the mountains, which was continually increasing, held out a dismal promise for my chance ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker

... mud-turtles—of cranes, herons, and Qua-birds. Hundreds of these I saw perched upon the rotting half-submerged trunks—upon the cypress "knees" that rose like brown obelisks around the edge of the water; or winged their slow flight through the murky gloom, and filling the air with their deafening screams. On both sides of the trace towered gigantic trees, flanked at their bases with huge projections, that appeared like the battlements of a fortress, these singular protuberances rose far above the height of my horse—radiating ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid

... motley company that sat down in Hotel Brun the morning after our arrival in Bologna to a breakfast of murky coffee and furry beefsteaks, associated with sleek, greasy, lukewarm fried potatoes. I am sure that if each of our weather-bound pilgrims had told his story, we had been as well entertained as those ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells

... story of how he once took a drink from the Colorado river. The water is never very clear in the muddy stream but at that particular time it was unusually murky. He had nothing with which to dip the water and lay down on the bank to take a drink. Being very thirsty he paid no attention to the quality of the water, but only knew that it tasted wet. The water, however, grew thicker as he drank until it became ...
— Arizona Sketches • Joseph A. Munk

... game-keeper's paddock. Grayskin roamed the forest that he might become more familiar with the place. Late in the afternoon he happened to squeeze through some thickets behind a clearing where the soil was muddy and slimy, and in the centre of it was a murky pool. This open space was encircled by tall pines almost bare from age and miasmic air. Grayskin was displeased with the place and would have left it at once had he not caught sight of some bright green calla leaves which ...
— The Wonderful Adventures of Nils • Selma Lagerlof

... see. God willed, no doubt, to open to this elect the treasures of eternal beatitude, at the hour when other men tremble with the idea of being severely received by the Lord, and cling to this life they know, in the dread of the other life of which they get a glimpse by the dismal, murky torches of death. Athos was guided by the pure and serene soul of his son, which aspired to be like the paternal soul. Everything for this just man was melody and perfume in the rough road which souls take to return to the celestial country. After an hour of this ecstasy, ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas

... germs of the future limbs, persist, there is no sign in the grub of the eyes wherewith the Cerambyx will be richly gifted. The larva has not the least trace of organs of vision. What would it do with sight, in the murky thickness of a tree-trunk? Hearing is likewise absent. In the never-troubled silence of the oak's inmost heart, the sense of hearing would be a non-sense. Where sounds are lacking, of what use is the faculty of discerning them? Should there be any doubts, I will reply to them with the following ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre

... the houses and fading away above their tops into a dull, slate-blue sky. The wet street looked like a black canal; the blurred forms, less like vehicles than nondescript boats, moving over its inky surface, were indistinctly reflected therein; the gas-lights flared redly through the murky haze. It was not a pleasant evening in ...
— Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey

... thereupon swept the beach, the invaders did indeed waver for a moment—so closely it resembled the real thing. As the smoke lifted, however, by the murky glare of the torches they were seen to be less demoralised than infuriated. And now, upon the volley's echo, a drum banged thrice, and from a boat just beyond the water's edge the Troy bandsmen ...
— The Mayor of Troy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... and on through the long, murky hours of the night the battle raged on the lower reaches of the Kalvik. Boat crews clashed; half- clad men cursed each other and fought with naked fists, with oars and clubs; and when these failed, they drove at one another with wicked one- tined fish "pues." All night the hordes of salmon swarmed ...
— The Silver Horde • Rex Beach

... man does when he is taking photographs, so as to keep out the light from above, it will be all the better. Then, miss, you'd be perfectly amazed at what you could see through that glass at the bottom of the box! Even in northern regions, where the water is heavy and murky, you can see a good way down; but all about the tropics, where the water is often so thin and clear that you can see the bottom in some places with nothing but your naked eyes, it is perfectly amazing what you can ...
— John Gayther's Garden and the Stories Told Therein • Frank R. Stockton

... not only being diverted from her purpose, but led by a side tract to an unexplored profundity. On the further side of it she discerned, dimly, the undesirable. It was a murky region, haunted by still murkier presences, by Lady Cayley and her kind. She ...
— The Helpmate • May Sinclair

... the monster pile, then let them lie like herring-bones, or the seams of sand where the tide has been. And all the while from the smothering sky, more and more fiercely at every blast, came the pelting, pitiless arrows, winged with murky white, and pointed with ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore

... assistance to a soldier who was staggering by, and between them, across the torn field with its crimson and ghastly fruitage, with fragments of shrapnel hurtling above them, and with bodies of soldiers, dead and living, tossed into the murky air by constantly exploding shells, they half carried, half dragged the wounded man across the ravine and up the hill to a captured German trench, and turned him over to the stretcher-bearers to be ...
— The Flag • Homer Greene

... capitulation, and every effort was subsequently made to induce him to own allegiance to the conquerors. He was kept in prison for three years. "My dungeon," he wrote, "is lighted by the will-o'-the-wisp alone; no breath of spring cheers the murky solitude in which I dwell. Exposed to mist and dew, I had many times thought to die; and yet, through the seasons of two revolving years, disease hovered around me in vain. The dank, unhealthy soil to me ...
— The Civilization Of China • Herbert A. Giles

... replied in a voice rendered nearly inaudible by a peal of thunder that shook the mountain. A ball of crimson fire hung for a second in the murky sky and then shot into the valley. The guide glanced at Lynde, as much as ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich

... open; Anderton had gone to work quickly and with decision once he was sure we were taking on the major question. The television screen lit, but nothing showed on it but murky light, striped with streamers of darkness slowly rising and falling. The audio went cloonck ... oing, oing ... bonk ... oing ... Underwater noises, ...
— One-Shot • James Benjamin Blish

... The picture was to be painted at the dock, and the painter had already achieved a daringly suggestive impression in pastels of the familiar night-scene which he now described: the streaming, vivid torches, their rays struggling and drowning in the murky water, glimmering faintly in the windows of the black warehouse barely suggested at the side; the alert, swarming sailors, busy with ropes and tackle; and in the middle the dark, steep leviathan, fresh from the sea-storms, growing, ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore

... provokingly. Now and then came a crash of thunder which seemed to shake the earth; vivid lightning cut zigzags in the murky sky. The little islands of the Babuyan group in the Balintang channel seemed to rock in ...
— Boy Scouts in the Philippines - Or, The Key to the Treaty Box • G. Harvey Ralphson

... paper aslant towards the candle-end, which threw a murky yellow light upon the background of the garret, contrasting oddly ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird

... Lion,' or whatever they call it." He put a hand, rather timidly, on her sleeve, and Toni allowed him to lead her towards the entrance of the hotel, whose lamps shone bravely through the fog, making blurred splashes of yellow light in the murky grey gloom. ...
— The Making of a Soul • Kathlyn Rhodes

... no leaden coffin enclosed his relics, nor did the murky vault of his ancestors, open with creaking hinge to receive another of the race. No escutcheon darkened the porch whence they bore him; and no long train of mourners followed his ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman

... office of President of the United Slates. It was at that time far from being an enviable position. At home the country was rent into contending factions. Our foreign affairs were in a condition of the utmost perplexity, and evidently approaching a dangerous crisis. The murky clouds of war, which had for years overshadowed Europe, seemed rolling hitherward, filling the most sanguine and hopeful minds with deep apprehension. Russia, under its youthful Emperor Alexander, was rising to a prominent and influential position among the nations of Europe. Mr. Madison ...
— Life and Public Services of John Quincy Adams - Sixth President of the Unied States • William H. Seward

... O'Brien, a creature of wild impulses, whose notions of morality were as shifty as the quicksands, whose sense of right and wrong was so strangely warped? For the first time in her life the strong accusing light of conscience seemed to penetrate the murky recesses of her nature with an unearthly radiance that seemed to scorch her into nothingness. Her son had become her judge, and the penalty he imposed was worse than death to her. Of what use would her life be to her if the idol of her heart had turned against her? And yet, with all her remorse and ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey

... and a few friends as especially fitting and convenient for a chase of the fugitives. The bell brought no suggestion of this—though the dog snapped under his breath and stiffened his spine. And then he heard another sound, far off and vague, yet one that brought a flash into his murky eye, that lit up the heaviness of his Hebraic face, and even showed a slight color in his high cheek-bones. He lay down on the ground, and listened with suspended breath. He heard it now distinctly. It was the Boston boy calling, and the word ...
— Under the Redwoods • Bret Harte

... lightning beyond any other tree of the wood in Europe. To our rude forefathers, who dwelt in the gloomy depths of the primaeval forest, it might well seem that the riven and blackened oaks must indeed be favourites of the sky-god, who so often descended on them from the murky cloud in a flash of lightning and ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer

... Deep in a murky hole, Cavernous, untransparent, fetid, dank, The demiurgus of the servants' hall, The scuttle-bearing buttons, boon and blank And grimy loads his evening load of coals, Filled with respect for the cook's and butler's rank, Lo, the round cook half fills the hot retreat, Her kitchen, where ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, June 4, 1892 • Various

... The murky dimness of the sala was pressing in on Jimsy as it had on the girl, that other day. He was worn with vigil and torn with thirst, sick with dread of what might any moment come to them,—with remorse for bringing Honor there, tormented with his helplessness to save her. Even at his ...
— Play the Game! • Ruth Comfort Mitchell

... was already deepening to darkness, a gloom more noticeable far up in the heavens than among the myriad of lights in the city streets. For not a star was visible in the murky sky, and away in the west huge banks of inky clouds were sweeping up toward the zenith, indicating the rapid approach ...
— With Links of Steel • Nicholas Carter

... message. Thou know'st if it happen, As we soothly heard say, that some savage despoiler, Some hidden pursuer, on nights that are murky By deeds very direful 'mid the Danemen exhibits Hatred unheard of, horrid destruction 20 And the falling of dead. From ...
— Beowulf - An Anglo-Saxon Epic Poem • The Heyne-Socin

... in a single pair of thick socks, were almost frozen, while the rest of his body was roasting in the fierce heat of the conflagration. It wanted about two hours of dawn. There was not a breath of air stirring, and the flames shot straight up, murky red and clear yellow intertwisting, with here and there a sudden leaping tongue of violet white. Outside the radius of the heat the tall woods snapped sharply in the intense cold. It was so cold, indeed, that as the man stood watching the ruin of his little, lonely home, shielding his face from ...
— The Backwoodsmen • Charles G. D. Roberts

... of its high successes. Do you know Spezia?" "Not in the least; never was here before." "Well, sir, I have known it, I'll not stop to count how many years; but I knew it when that spot yonder, where you see that vile tall chimney, with its tail of murky smoke, was a beautiful little villa, all overgrown with fig and olive trees. Where you perceive that red glare—the flame of a smelting furnace—there was an orangery. I ought to know the spot well. There, where a summerhouse ...
— Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever

... both hands lopped off, lifting the stumps through the murky air so that the blood made his face foul, cried out, "Thou shalt remember Mosca,[1] too, who said, alas! 'Thing done has an end,' which was the seed of ill for the Tuscan people." And I added thereto, "And death to thine own race." Whereat he, accumulating woe on woe, went away ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 1, Hell [The Inferno] • Dante Alighieri

... 6th of May, the First Consul was encamped with his whole army between Casale and Turin on the 26th of the same month. It had rained the whole day; but, as often happens in Italy, toward evening the sky had cleared, changing in a few moments from murky darkness to loveliest azure, and ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas

... state; For he but double make his woes, Who midst the future's shadows goes To meet the ills of murky fate. ...
— Targum • George Borrow

... a world in hyper-space there could be no doubt. But outside the portholes of the little freighter was only the murky grayness ...
— Equation of Doom • Gerald Vance

... leaders of the London "Times," in Jeremy Taylor and the latest Reverend Mr. Orotund, you find a liberal and privileged utterance; but honest John Foster, made of powerful, but ill-composed elements, and replete with an intelligence now gleaming and now murky, could wring statements from his mind only as testimony in cruel ages was obtained from unwilling witnesses, namely, by ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 52, February, 1862 • Various

... War, rose up and spoke,— His blood-shot eyes glared 'round him, and his thundering voice Echoed through the murky vaults of Hell.— "O, mighty Prince, my brothers, Famine and Pestilence, Have slain their thousands and ten thousands,—true; But the greater their victories have been, The more have they wakened in Man's ...
— Fifty years & Other Poems • James Weldon Johnson

... range from twenty-three to forty-five. Some are smoking. Others, with tongue protruding slightly from the corner of the mouth, and head on one side, are slowly and painfully copying the drawing of a pump or a valve-box. Others, again, are in the murky depths of vast arithmetical solutions extracting, with heavy breathings, the cube root from some formidable quantity, and bringing it to the surface exhausted and far from certain as to the ultimate utility of their discoveries. They have come from the far ...
— An Ocean Tramp • William McFee

... all nature, separate From man! There is no whispering of strife Or sorrow here, naught to inform the soul Of man's deep wretchedness and sin. No lust To justify the wretch who binds his soul In the drear darkness of a murky cell, Scraping for gold as beasts do in the earth For carrion, and counting life-time out By ducats; closing house and heart alike To the benignant sunshine. If our hearts Could lave in Lethe's cleansing stream sometimes, Till evil vanished from its memory, And left a virgin tablet for the pen Of ...
— Eidolon - The Course of a Soul and Other Poems • Walter R. Cassels

... 31st, that I left a house in the north where I had been seeing one of the country-house convalescent hospitals, to which Englishwomen and English wealth are giving themselves everywhere without stint, and made my way by train, through a dark and murky afternoon, towards a Midland town. The news of the raid was so far vague. The newspapers of the morning gave no names or details. I was not aware that I was passing through towns where women and children in back streets had been cruelly and wantonly killed the night ...
— The War on All Fronts: England's Effort - Letters to an American Friend • Mrs. Humphry Ward



Words linked to "Murky" :   cloudy, murkiness, murk, mirky, turbid, opaque, muddy



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