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Nostril   Listen
noun
Nostril  n.  
1.
(Anat.) One of the external openings of the nose, which give passage to the air breathed and to secretions from the nose and eyes; one of the anterior nares. Note: In sperm whales, porpoises, and allied animals, there is only one nostril, which is situated on the top of the head and called a spiracle.
2.
Perception; insight; acuteness. (Obs.) "Methinks a man Of your sagacity and clear nostril should Have made another choice."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Nostril" Quotes from Famous Books



... to the last, and essentially with the same plumage, with this exception, that the feathers over the nostril in this bird are a fine deep red, as well as its breast. It is found in South Australia, and was ...
— Expedition into Central Australia • Charles Sturt

... busied herself with the glass her servant had fetched. She dissolved a portion of the powder in the spoon, then carefully transferred the liquid into the cap of a pearl-and-gold fountain-pen. Inserting the open end of the receptacle into first one, then the other nostril, ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach

... keen, restless, urgent, inexorably questioning. That energetic type, though not often dead or dull on the side of sense, yet is incapable of steeping itself in the manifold delights of eye and ear, of nostril and touch, with the peculiar intensity of passive absorption that seeks nothing further nor deeper than unending continuance of this profound repose of all filled sensation, just as it is incapable of the kindred mood of elevated humility ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley

... I ween that stately steed had parted from his desert home; his haughty crest, his eye of fire, the glory of his snorting nostril, betoken well his conscious pride, and pure nobility of race. His colour was like the sable night shining with a thousand stars, and he pawed the ground with his delicate hoof, like ...
— Alroy - The Prince Of The Captivity • Benjamin Disraeli

... Crucified showed white upon the black cross above. Marco Zoppa lay on his bed with his throat cut from ear to ear. The cut was so resolute that his head stuck out at an angle from his body—almost a right angle; and in some struggle he had got his nostril sliced. That gave him an odd, mesquin expression, lying there with his mouth open and his yawning nostril, as if he wanted to sneeze. The room smelt stale and sour; the thick air gathered in a misty halo round the candle, and a fat shroud of tallow drooped ...
— Earthwork Out Of Tuscany • Maurice Hewlett

... Tintoretto, till we come to Blake, could have imagined yonder Jonah, summoned by the beck of God from the whale's belly. The monstrous fish rolls over in the ocean, blowing portentous vapour from his trump-shaped nostril. The prophet's beard descends upon his naked breast in hoary ringlets to the girdle. He has forgotten the past peril of the deep, although the whale's jaws yawn around him. Between him and the outstretched finger ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds

... needles she crept. The scent of smoke grew strong in nostril and throat; the pale tint became palely reddish. All about her the blackness seemed palpable — seemed to touch her body with its weight; but, ahead, a ruddy glow stained two huge pines. And presently she saw the fire, burning low, but redly ...
— The Flaming Jewel • Robert Chambers

... eye And nostril beautiful disdain, and might And majesty, flash their full lightnings by, Developing in that one ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole

... look of youthfulness first attracted you, and then a candor and openness of expression which made you sure of the qualities within. The features were very good. He had a capital forehead, a firm nose with full wide nostril, eyes wonderfully beaming with intellect and running over with humor and cheerfulness, and a rather prominent mouth strongly marked with sensibility. The head was altogether well formed and symmetrical, and the air and carriage of it were ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster

... eat you up," exclaimed the wolf, who was just about to make a spring at the poor little girl, when a wasp, who had followed her into the cottage, stung the wolf in his nostril, and made him sneeze aloud, which gave the signal to a tom-tit perched on a branch near the open casement, who called out "Tweat—tweat," which warned the green huntsman, who accordingly let fly his arrow, that struck the wolf right through ...
— Bo-Peep Story Books • Anonymous

... pluck backed the Sonora horses at the races. His color was a deep, dark chocolate-brown; a most unusual tint, but Van was proud of its oddity, and his long, lean head, his pretty little pointed ears, his bright, flashing eye and sensitive nostril, one and all spoke of spirit and intelligence. A glance at that horse would tell the veriest greenhorn that speed, bottom, and pluck were all to be found right there; and he had not been in the regiment ...
— Starlight Ranch - and Other Stories of Army Life on the Frontier • Charles King

... This experiment was tried repeatedly with the vowels a, e, i, o, and u, and with consonants prefixed, but invariably with the same result. Upon examination, no deviation from the normal anatomy was found, save in the left anterior nostril. Here a sharp spur of bone projected from the septum into the turbinated tissue. This condition had remained in this singer for four years, according to my previous observation, without causing her any inconvenience. A similar condition was seen by me in the case of Mr. Santley, the famous ...
— The Voice - Its Production, Care and Preservation • Frank E. Miller

... caudal fin. Within, and around the back part, lay the flesh, of a coarse fibrous texture, slightly salmon-coloured. The liver was such as to fill a common pail, and there was a large quantity of red blood. The nostril, top of the eye, and top of the gill-orifice are in line, as represented in the Engraving. The dimensions are ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various

... sky, and flecked with the dendroidal images of the overshadowing trees. The immense bovine heads swayed to and fro, cadenced to the deliberate pace, and more than once a muttered low of distaste and protest rose with the vapor curling upward from lip and nostril into the icy air. On the front seat of the cumbrous, white, canvas-covered vehicle was Medora, her bright hair blowing out from the folds of a red shawl worn hood-wise; she held a cord attached to the horns of one of ...
— Who Crosses Storm Mountain? - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)

... man was slipping from his original place in Paul's mind, like a statue built in clay too soft to support its own weight. He slipped at the chin, at the mouth, at the base of the nostril, at the eyebrow, and yet, in spite of these deflections from the original, he appeared to recover himself with an extraordinary swiftness at moments, and to be again the alert, adventurous creature of the woods and wilds ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray

... hunter turned, and imprisoning Cloud's nostril in his nervous grasp, looked fixedly into that intelligent animal's eyes. Cloud seemed to understand very well—nodded his head—drew a long breath—and stood like a statue. Verty then placed his foot upon Longears, made a gesture with his hand, and ...
— The Last of the Foresters • John Esten Cooke

... the line mid a storm of huzzas, And the wave of retreat checked its course there because The sight of the master compelled it to pause. With foam and with dust the black charger was gray, By the flash of his eye, and his nostril's play He seemed to the ...
— Journeys Through Bookland - Volume Four • Charles H. Sylvester

... animals (monorrhina) arose during the primordial period out of the skull-less animals by the anterior end of the dorsal marrow developing into the brain, and the anterior end of the dorsal skull into the skull. By the division of the single nostril of the members of the last group into two lateral halves, by the formation of a sympathetic nervous system, a jaw skeleton, a swimming bladder and two pairs of legs (breast fins or fore-legs, and ventral fins or hind-legs), arose the primaeval ...
— Was Man Created? • Henry A. Mott

... the young natives had the curiosity to see how I looked when I was asleep; they climbed up into the engine, and advancing very softly to my face, one of them, an officer in the guards, put the sharp end of his half-pike a good way up into my left nostril, which tickled my nose like a straw, and made me sneeze violently; whereupon they stole off unperceived, and it was three weeks before I knew the cause of my awaking so suddenly. We made a long march the remaining part of that day, and rested at night ...
— The Junior Classics, V5 • Edited by William Patten

... Each nostril opens into a short and rather narrow, but high, passage, known as the nasal passage, through which the air pours into the back of the throat, or pharynx, and so down into the windpipe and lungs. Instead of having smooth walls, however, the passage is divided into three ...
— A Handbook of Health • Woods Hutchinson

... coronation pomps, In glory scarce exceed. Great gluts of people Retard the unwieldy show; whilst from the casements And houses' tops, ranks behind ranks close wedged Hang bellying o'er. But tell us, why this waste? Why this ado in earthing up a carcase That's fallen into disgrace, and in the nostril 170 Smells horrible?—Ye undertakers, tell us, 'Midst all the gorgeous figures you exhibit, Why is the principal conceal'd, for which You make this mighty stir?—'Tis wisely done; What would offend the eye in a good picture, The painter casts ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]

... strip of some poor cotton stuff crosses her bosom like a scarf, and leaves exposed too much of the ruins of once daintier beauties. A string of glass beads, black and red alternate, are all her jewels,—save one silver bodkin, all forlorn, in her hair, and a ring of thin gold wire piercing the right nostril, and, with an effect completely deforming, encircling the lips. Her teeth and nails are deeply stained, and the darkness of her eyes ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various

... the hedges of well-kept gardens squatted the brown gardener, making trenches indifferently with a hoe or a toe, and under the municipal lamp-post lounged the bronze policeman—a touch of Arab about mouth and lean nostril—quite unconcerned with a ferocious row between two donkey-men. They were fighting across the body of a Nubian who had chosen to sleep in that place. Presently, one of them stepped back on the sleeper's stomach. The Nubian grunted, elbowed ...
— Letters of Travel (1892-1913) • Rudyard Kipling

... trailers or jaguar- hunters, made up the party, each on a weedy, undersized marsh pony, accustomed to traversing the vast stretches of morass; and we were accompanied by a brown boy, with saddle-bags holding our lunch, who rode a long-horned trotting steer which he managed by a string through its nostril and lip. The two trailers carried each a long, clumsy spear. We had a rather poor pack. Besides our own two dogs, neither of which was used to jaguar-hunting, there were the ranch dogs, which were well-nigh worthless, and then two jaguar hounds borrowed for the occasion from a ranch six or eight ...
— Through the Brazilian Wilderness • Theodore Roosevelt

... to Savoldo, have features which make their attribution to Alvise almost certainly correct. Indeed, the resemblance of Bernardo to the Madonna in the 1480 altarpiece cannot escape the most unscientific observer. There is the same inflated nostril, the peculiarly curved mouth, ...
— The Venetian School of Painting • Evelyn March Phillipps

... we saw it, we felt it as a thrilling; and this speed was not the product of blind insensate agencies, that had no sympathy to give, but was incarnated in the fiery eyeballs of the noblest amongst brutes, in his dilated nostril, spasmodic muscles, and thunder- beating hoofs. The sensibility of the horse, uttering itself in the maniac light of his eye, might be the last vibration of such a movement; the glory of Salamanca might be the first. But the ...
— The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc • Thomas de Quincey

... their rise. Those Nature myths which, according to many, are the basis of all mythology, are likewise the very basis of Shelley's poetry. The lark that is the gossip of heaven, the winds that pluck the grey from the beards of the billows, the clouds that are snorted from the sea's broad nostril, all the elemental spirits of Nature, take from his verse perpetual incarnation and reincarnation, pass in a thousand glorious transmigrations through the radiant ...
— Shelley - An Essay • Francis Thompson

... cotton trousers. A headless, wingless lion of St. Mark still stands upon a gate, and has left the mark of his strong clutch. Of ancient times when Crete was Crete not a trace remains; save perhaps in the full, well-cut nostril and firm tread of that mountaineer, and I suspect that even his sires were ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson

... mouth to water. Accordingly, his nose has lengthened its tip until it reaches the level of his feet, and this nose becomes to him the main organ of grasp and of touch. To drink, its end is inserted in the pool and water is drawn up the nostril. If the animal were to attempt to draw it all the way back into his throat, it would inevitably strangle him by getting into his windpipe. Accordingly, when the nose is well filled with water, the tip of it is inserted in his mouth, and the water ...
— The Meaning of Evolution • Samuel Christian Schmucker

... features were finely moulded. A weather-beaten cheek, mingling with a complexion evidently sallow, gave a rich autumnal hue to his visage: a slight furrow, extending from the outer angle of the nostril around each corner of a narrow and retreating mouth, gave a careless expression of scorn to the countenance when at rest; but, as he smiled, this sinister aspect disappeared, and the soft gleam of benevolence which ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby

... two animals to be divided was abiding, and baited him, in defiance of the authorities, in the market-place; one enthusiastic amateur, tradition relates, actually lying on the ground and seizing the miserable brute by the nostril, more canino, with his own human teeth! This was not to be endured, and a sentence of imprisonment in Reading Gaol gave the coup de grace to the sport. The bequest of Staverton now yields an income of L20, and has for ...
— A Righte Merrie Christmasse - The Story of Christ-Tide • John Ashton

... help glancing at the two giants, expecting to see some involuntary quiver of eye or nostril answer electrically to this frank revelation of their office; but their countenances (impossible to think of as mere faces) remained expressionless as if carved in stone. Lady MacGregor took nothing from Mohammed and the other Kabyle servant ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

... Non-success malprospero. Nook anguleto. Noon tagmezo. Noose ligotubero. Nor nek. Normal normala. North nordo. Northerly norda. Northern norda. Nose nazo. Nosebag mangxujo. Nosegay bukedo. Nostril naztruo. Not ne. Notable fama, grava. Notary notario. Note noti, rimarki. Note (music) noto. Note (letter) letereto. Notebook notlibreto. Note of exclamation signo ekkria. Note of interrogation signo demanda. Nothing nenio. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes

... his Five Gateways. 'And for every human being we should aim at securing, so far as they can be attained, an eye as keen and piercing as that of the eagle; an ear as sensitive to the faintest sound as that of the hare; a nostril as far-scenting as that of the wild deer; a tongue as delicate as that of the butterfly; and a touch as acute as that of the spider. No man ever was so endowed, and no man ever will be; but all men ...
— Bunyan Characters - Third Series - The Holy War • Alexander Whyte

... earrings—only that day he had counted a row of nine in the ear of some wandering juggler. Nose rings too—how pretty they were, nose rings. Rubies too, and most of them real, doubtless. How well they looked in the nostril of a thin, aquiline brown nose. It all went with the country. Barbaric, perhaps, contrasted with other standards, but beautiful—in its way. He would not ...
— Civilization - Tales of the Orient • Ellen Newbold La Motte

... informed by murky visions of the night, brayed out its stertorous tale to the unheeding air. At times a shrill, sharp pipe, screaming with gusts of horror, split my unexpectant ear. With this wrangled fitfully the cracked clarionet of some peevish brother. Ever and anon some vast nostril, punctually thundering, hurled forth the relentless growl of the bassoon,—a very mountain of sound, which crushed all before it, and made the shuddering timbers crack and reel. A pensive flute vainly ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various

... of the unerring bow, The god of life, and poetry, and light, The Sun, in human limbs arrayed, and brow All radiant from his triumph in the fight The shaft has just been shot; the arrow bright With an immortal's vengeance; in his eye And nostril, beautiful disdain, and might And majesty flash their full lightnings by, Developing in that ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch

... fine thing," writes a contemporary, "to see the great man tackle a tramp. Then he scented the battle from afar, bearing down on the enemy with a quivering nostril. If the nomad happened to be a gypsy he was courteously addressed. But were he a mere native tatterdemalion, inclined to be truculent, Borrow's coat was off in a moment, and the challenge to decide there and then who was the better man flung forth. I have never seen such challenges accepted, ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins

... stooped to drink, he started, and thereafter hung above this pellucid mirror staring down at the face that stared up at him with eyes agleam 'neath lowering brows, above whose close-knit gloom a lock of hair gleamed snow-white amid the yellow. Long stayed he thus, to mark the fierce curve of nostril, the square grimness of jaw and chin, and the lips that met in a harsh line, down-trending and relentless. And gazing thus upon his image, ...
— Beltane The Smith • Jeffery Farnol

... surgical operation a new aperture is to be made from the internal corner of the eye into the nostril, and a silver tube introduced, which supplies the defect by admitting the tears to pass again into the nostril. See Melanges de Chirurgie par M. Pouteau; who thinks he has improved ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin

... a singular-looking man, tall, lean, sinewy, with a high, thin nose and a square chin which seemed not in keeping with his calling. His left nostril was indented by a scar which ran across his cheek, and one ear was notched well-nigh as deeply as that of a calf ...
— Heart's Desire • Emerson Hough

... dear fellow, that you don't speak quite so loud. Francis Quodling was the boy who so strongly resembled the Lord Polperro of the lawsuit. Nose with high arch, and something queer about the nostril." ...
— The Town Traveller • George Gissing

... the crags they dashed back up the mountain-side utterly oblivious now to the heat or anything but their determination to discover who or what had uttered the extraordinary cry. The side of the nose—or the nostril so to speak—was formed of a wall of rock fully ...
— The Boy Aviators in Africa • Captain Wilbur Lawton

... to be smothered in bloody mire. Forward, forward, or die. What though the causeway was packed with dead and wounded?—though there was no foothold not slippery?—though the smell of hot blood filled every nostril?—though hands thrice strengthened by despair grappled the feet making stepping blocks of face and breast? The living pressed on leaping, stumbling, staggering; their howl, "Gold—spoils—women—slaves," answered from the smoking hill, "Christ and ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 2 • Lew. Wallace

... was not without a sort of bold natural eloquence, Jacques Ferrard shuddered, at the savage and almost ferocious expression of the face of Cecily, who, with heaving bosom, expanded nostril, haughty mouth, fixed on him her ...
— Mysteries of Paris, V3 • Eugene Sue

... plate, and Laguitte, sticking the knife in the Gruyere, stared at her, grinning the while because he discovered that she had one nostril broader than the other. Rose gravely allowed herself to be looked at, waiting till the ...
— Nana, The Miller's Daughter, Captain Burle, Death of Olivier Becaille • Emile Zola

... are like to the Navaho. As a rule, the Hopi is well built and stalwart, with the unmistakable Indian face, but with less coarse and sensual lips, higher and more intellectual brow, more alert and kindly eye, and stronger chin than the Havasupai. The lobes of the nostril are wide and flexible, showing the wonderful lung power of this ...
— The Grand Canyon of Arizona: How to See It, • George Wharton James

... it was the Emperor alone that we looked at. He came and stood by himself in front of the others. He was very grave, with a real look of solemn exaltation. Here was royalty in all its most impressive trappings, a prince of the fairy-tales, splendidly dressed, dilated of nostril, flashing of eye, the defender of homes, the leader to glory, the object of the nation's worship and belief and prayers since each of its members was a baby, become visible and audible to thousands who had never seen him before, who had worshipped ...
— Christine • Alice Cholmondeley

... part of Jorian's revelation the monk's nostril dilated, and his restless eye showed the suspense he ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade

... went towards the window; there, at a green table spotted like typhus, was sitting a young man with his hair standing up in four tufts on his head, with a long pimply nose, and a long faded uniform. He was writing, thrusting his long nose into the papers. A fly was walking about near his right nostril, and he was continually stretching out his lower lip and blowing under his nose, which gave his face an ...
— Love and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov

... the blower, 'we are prisoners? Before that, you shall dance in the air!' And he held one nostril and blew with the other at the two regiments; they were separated and blown away in the blue sky over the mountains, one this way, and the other that. A sergeant-major cried for mercy, saying he had nine wounds, and was a brave fellow, and did not deserve ...
— The Yellow Fairy Book • Various

... snake, upon the slender second toe of each bare foot; upon each arm she has at least ten heavy silver rings; there are also large silver rings about her ankles; a gold flower is fixed by a little hook in one nostril, and two immense silver circles, shaped like new moons, shimmer in her ears. The smith mutters something to her in his Indian tongue. She rises, and seating herself on the bench beside me, in an attitude of perfect grace, holds out one beautiful brown arm to me that ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn

... Beg,—Diaoul!' He entered the room with all the marks of a man agitated by a towering passion; and there were few upon whose features rage produced a more violent effect. The veins of his forehead swelled when he was in such agitation; his nostril became dilated; his cheek and eye inflamed; and his look that of a demoniac. These appearances of half-suppressed rage were the more frightful, because they were obviously caused by a strong effort to temper with discretion ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott

... sounds and freshness through ear and nostril; but for a time his eyes remained fast closed. Then, at a loud thrilling burst from the lark's cage in the courtyard, both eyes opened, and he lay staring up at the whitewashed ceiling, covered with cracks, and looking like the map of Nowhere in Wonderland. ...
— In Honour's Cause - A Tale of the Days of George the First • George Manville Fenn

... that was not a rat became suddenly motionless, its sharp little nose pointed directly at the oncoming enemy. There came a noise, a tiny popping hiss, like that of a very small drop of water striking hot metal. From the left nostril of the not-rat, a tiny, glasslike needle snapped out at bullet speed. It struck the advancing rat in the center of the pink tongue that was visible in the open mouth. Then the not-rat scuttled backward faster than any real rat ...
— Anything You Can Do ... • Gordon Randall Garrett

... the Hart was lying stretched; His nostril touched a spring beneath a hill, And with the last deep groan his breath had fetched; The waters of ...
— The Children's Garland from the Best Poets • Various

... You don't do her justice!" he cried rudely. "But perhaps no woman can ever understand why a man loves any other woman!" "I am not thinking of why you love my niece," she replied, with a curl of pride in her nostril and a flash of anger in her eyes. "I am thinking of why you will cease to love her, and why you will both be unhappy if you marry her. It is not my duty to analyze your affections; it is my duty to take care of her welfare.""My dear friend," he cried, his face ...
— The Choir Invisible • James Lane Allen

... window.] — Maybe he's stolen off to Belmullet with the boots of Michael James, and you'd have a right so to follow after him, Sara Tansey, and you the one yoked the ass cart and drove ten miles to set your eyes on the man bit the yellow lady's nostril on the ...
— The Playboy of the Western World • J. M. Synge

... personal distinction is of a characteristically civilized type. The ridges of his eyebrows, curving with a ram's-horn twist round the marked projections at the outer corners, his jealously observant eye, his nose, thin, keen, and apprehensive in spite of the pugnacious high bridge and large nostril, his assertive chin, would not be out of place in a Paris salon. In short, the clever, imaginative barbarian has an acute critical faculty which has been thrown into intense activity by the arrival of western civilization in the Balkans; and ...
— Arms and the Man • George Bernard Shaw

... sank rapidly; the silvery light had faded from the bare boughs and the watery twilight was setting in when Wilson at last walked down the hill, descending into cooler and cooler depths of grayish shadow. His nostril, long unused to it, was quick to detect the smell of wood smoke in the air, blended with the odor of moist spring earth and the saltiness that came up the river with the tide. He crossed Charles Street between jangling street cars and shelving lumber ...
— Alexander's Bridge and The Barrel Organ • Willa Cather and Alfred Noyes

... meanwhile, on hillock-side, Bleat to her young—so loudly cried, She heard it not when it replied. Ho, ho!—a feast! I 'gan to croak, Alighting straightway on an oak; Whence gloatingly I eyed aslant The little trembler lie and pant. Leapt nimbly thence upon its head; Down its white nostril bubbled red A gush of blood; ere life had fled, My beak was buried in its eyes, Turned tearfully upon the skies— Strong grew my croak, ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 1 July 1848 • Various

... straight-drawn mouth and eyes prophetic of tragedy, a face in which her genius brooded, downcast, flameless, and dumb. He had got all her features, her long black eyebrows, her large, deep-set eyes, flattened queerly by the level eyebrows, her nose, a trifle too long in the bridge, too wide in the nostril, and her mouth which could look straight enough when her will was dominant. He had got her hair, the darkness and the mass of it. Tanqueray, in his abominable way, had said that Gisborne had put his best work into that, and when Gisborne resented it ...
— The Creators - A Comedy • May Sinclair

... dromedary. Proof. Our adventurers saw the owner of each camel bring his animal to the edge of the pool; but instead of permitting the thirsty creature to step in and drink for itself, its head was held aloft, a wooden funnel was filled, the narrow end inserted into the nostril, and by the respiratory canal the water introduced to the ...
— The Boy Slaves • Mayne Reid

... closing over a full, pale forehead, and her shapely head was balanced upon a fair, round neck. There was an alertness in her erect ear, and open nostril, and pointed brows which indicated keen perception and comprehension; yet even more than this generic quickness, without which she could not have been French, the gentleness ...
— Bohemian Days - Three American Tales • Geo. Alfred Townsend

... can describe the gigantic Being that sat thereon—the grace, the majesty, its transcendent form—and yet I shuddered as I looked, for its superhuman countenance seemed, as it were, to radiate falsehood; every feature was in contradiction—the eye, the mouth, even to the nostril—whilst the expression of the whole was of that unnatural softness which can only be conceived of malignant blandishment. It was the appalling beauty of the King of Hell. The frightful discord vibrated through my whole frame, and I turned for relief ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin

... Lass. She was a collie—daintily fragile of build, sensitive of nostril, furrily tawny of coat. Her ancestry was as flawless as any ...
— Bruce • Albert Payson Terhune

... is on a level with the mouth. The eye is perched upon a mound, instead of being in a hollow; he has no nostril, and oh! Water on the brain! He must have, with all that ...
— Betty Trevor • Mrs. G. de Horne Vaizey

... of the nose-flute was very limited; it had but two or, at the most, three stops. The player with his left hand held the flute to the nostril, at the same time applying a finger of the same hand to keep the other nostril closed. With the fingers of his right hand he ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson

... shag and long, (a-) Round breast, full eye, small head and nostril wide, (b-) High crest, short ears, straight legs and passing strong, (a) Thin mane, thick tail, broad buttock, tender hide: (b) Look, what a horse should have he did not lack, (c) Save a proud rider on ...
— An Introduction to Shakespeare • H. N. MacCracken

... of the lynx and wandered on deeper into the soundless gloom. Several rabbit-tracks she crossed, and here and there the dainty trail of a ptarmigan, or the small, sequential dots of a weasel's foot. But a single glance or passing twitch of her nostril told her these were all old, and she vouchsafed them no attention. It was not till she had gone perhaps a quarter of a mile through the fir-glooms that she came upon a trail ...
— The House in the Water - A Book of Animal Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts

... with the glow of youth and health. An artist might have found fault with it here and there, but to the tutor it seemed completely beautiful. The fine poise of her head upon the dainty neck, the classic cut of mouth and nostril, the large dark liquid eyes, the snowy forehead, the short clustering wind-tossed hair, the frank countenance, the refinement in every gesture—all combined to astonish the good man into admiration. Yet, with all his admiration, he felt a little afraid of ...
— Roger Ingleton, Minor • Talbot Baines Reed

... (OCTAVO), CHAPTER III. (NARWHALE), that is, NOSTRIL WHALE.—Another instance of a curiously named whale, so named I suppose from his peculiar horn being originally mistaken for a peaked nose. The creature is some sixteen feet in length, while its horn averages five feet, though some exceed ten, and even attain to fifteen ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville

... beside me, and showed me the pale and corpse-like face of Fred Hammersley. His eye was bent upon me with an expression of fierce and fiery passion, in which the sadness of long-suffering also mingled. His bloodless lips parted, moved as though speaking, while yet no sound issued; and his nostril, dilating and contracting by turns, seemed to denote some deep and hidden emotion ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2 (of 2) • Charles Lever

... burnt at seas; No noise of late spawn'd tittyries; No closet plot or open vent, That frights men with a Parliament: No new device or late-found trick, To read by th' stars the kingdom's sick; No gin to catch the State, or wring The free-born nostril of the King, We send to you; but here a jolly Verse crown'd with ivy and with holly; That tells of winter's tales and mirth That milk-maids make about the hearth; Of Christmas sports, the wassail-bowl, That toss'd up, after ...
— A Selection From The Lyrical Poems Of Robert Herrick • Robert Herrick

... which has now fallen (displaced by our modern Hurrah), to be merely a sailor's call or hunter's cry. But she shuddered as she heard it close to her ears, and saw, from the flashing eye and dilated nostril, the temper of the man on whom she had thrown herself so utterly. She laid her hand ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley

... him, Lord Lilburne listened; and in that repose, about his face, even about his person, might be read the history of how different a life and character! What native acuteness in the stealthy eye! What hardened resolve in the full nostril and firm lips! What sardonic contempt for all things in the intricate lines about the mouth. What animal enjoyment of all things so despised in that delicate nervous system, which, combined with original vigour of constitution, ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 4 • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... formidable competitor. For the rat was very large and very strong, and brave and bold beyond all the others; so much so that the weasel would even have preferred to have a struggle with the fox (though he was so much bigger), whose nostril he could bite, than to meet the rat in fair and equal combat. Besides, he hated the rat beyond measure, because the rat had helped him out of the drain, which was when his ear was bitten through. He ...
— Wood Magic - A Fable • Richard Jefferies

... Guitry glanced at his companion's profile, for the night was no longer inky black. It was a simple direct young face, not handsome, but full of dignity and kindness; the line of the jaw had a certain sternness, and the wide and delicately molded nostril ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy

... in a canter from their midst. The animal was almost pure white, with small, well-proportioned head, small clean hoofs, long haunches, abundant mane and sweeping tail. Every limb was instinct with speed, while the pricked ear, rolling eye and thin pink nostril denoted intelligence and fire. The rider was arrayed in the full uniform of a rifleman—grass-green coat and trousers, trimmed with black fur, through which ran a golden tape; crimson sash with white powder horn attached; a black turban-shaped hat of medium height, flanked ...
— The Bastonnais - Tale of the American Invasion of Canada in 1775-76 • John Lesperance

... the natural outcome of wrath. It may be our duty, and we may recognise it to be our duty, to make a protest of an unpleasant kind, or to withstand the action of an irritable person; but though we know well enough that he has no power to injure us, the flashing eye, the distended nostril, the rising pallor, the uplifted voice have a disagreeable effect on our nerves, although we know well that no physical disaster will result from it. Mrs. Browning, for instance, though she had high moral courage and tenacity of purpose, could not face ...
— Where No Fear Was - A Book About Fear • Arthur Christopher Benson

... haunted eyes of yours, when the smile dies out and you are off your guard; that is what is hardening those flat, clean bands of muscle in jaw and cheek; that is what those hints of shadow mean beneath the eye, that new and delicate pinch to the nostril, that refining, almost to sharpness, of the nose, that sensitive edging to the lips, and the ...
— The Tracer of Lost Persons • Robert W. Chambers

... his eyes, leaving them the clear, alert expression they ordinarily wore. He was self-possessed, but the effort his self-possession cost him was obvious. There was a something in his face—a dilation of the nostril, a curve of the under lip—which put Mr. Taggett very much on his guard. Mr. Taggett ...
— The Stillwater Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich

... bars a serpent-tail, Flashing like a lightning spire, Seemed to set the cell on fire; Far and wide was heard the clang, Through the whirlwind as they sprang. Many a year the sulphurous fume Stung the nostril in that room. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various

... that; Worth obstinately mute; Barbara and I afraid to ask. There was a little tremor of Cummings' nostril, he couldn't keep the flicker out of his eye, as he ...
— The Million-Dollar Suitcase • Alice MacGowan

... chair beside him lay a foraging-cap and a light sabre. Although his features were small and delicately chiselled, there was great daring and decision in the thin compressed lips, slightly expanded nostril, and keen grey eye; and when he smiled, which was but rarely, certain lines around his mouth gave a cruel, almost a savage expression to his otherwise agreeable physiognomy. A Navarrese by birth, and of a roving and adventurous disposition, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various

... standard of revolt against the ancient canons of Art, and flout it in the faces of the critics, and—fail,—ay, fail, in spite of your great, staring eyes, the tragic weight of your brows, and the fiery swell of your nostril." ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 23, September, 1859 • Various

... or voice. A dark little man he certainly was; pungent and austere. Even to me he seemed a harsh apparition, with his close- shorn, black head, his broad, sallow brow, his thin cheek, his wide and quivering nostril, his thorough glance, and hurried bearing. Irritable he was; one heard that, as he apostrophized with vehemence the awkward squad under his orders. Sometimes he would break out on these raw amateur actresses with a passion of impatience at their falseness of conception, ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte

... were covered with bracelets. At the least of their movements they all set up a tinkling silvery sound, and the little sister-in-law, who might easily be mistaken for an automaton doll, could hardly move under her load of ornaments. The young grandmother, our hostess, had a ring in her left nostril, which reached to the lower part of the chin. Her nose was considerably disfigured by the weight of the gold, and we noticed how unusually handsome she was only when she took it off to enable herself to drink ...
— From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan • Helena Pretrovna Blavatsky

... uppermost; out flashed his knife; down it came, but not in my heart. No! I gave my left arm as a shield; and the blade went through to the hilt, with the blood spurting up like the rain from a whale's nostril! With the weight of the blow the stout fellow came down so that his face touched mine; with my right hand I caught him by the throat, turned him over like a lamb, signor, and faith it was soon all up with him: the boatswain's brother, a fat Dutchman, ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... forth) the smoke, and from the other nostril the fire, and they both are found on the altar, as well the ...
— Hebrew Literature

... skin, a skin with the faintest tinge of pink, softened by a light velvety down which could be perceived when the sun kissed her cheek. Her eyes were an opaque blue, like those of Dutch porcelain figures. She had a tiny mole on her left nostril and another on the right of her chin. She was tall, well developed, with willowy figure. Her clear voice sounded at times a little too sharp, but her frank, sincere laugh spread joy around her. Often, with a familiar ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant

... pretty English curls waved like strands of fine silk. His small mouth was thin-lipped; his nose, which even in babyhood never had the infantile "snub," but grew straight, thin as his Indian ancestors', yet displayed a half-haughty English nostril; his straight little back—all combined likenesses to his parents. But who could say which blood dominated his tiny person? Only the exquisite soft, pale brown of his satiny skin called loudly and insistently that he was of a race older than the composite English could ever boast; ...
— The Moccasin Maker • E. Pauline Johnson

... in place was in equal disrepute. A battered slouch hat came to the level of the eye-patch in a forbidding sort of tilt. His left eyelid drooped until it was scarcely open at all, and fluttered continually. One nostril of his nose was entirely closed; and his mouth seemed to be twisted out of shape, so that, even when in repose, the lips never entirely met at one corner. And his ears, what she could see of them in the poor light, and on account of the ...
— The White Moll • Frank L. Packard

... twice or thrice. Sometimes he used to put me through the responses of the Mass which he had made me learn by heart; and, as I pattered, he used to smile pensively and nod his head, now and then pushing huge pinches of snuff up each nostril alternately. When he smiled he used to uncover his big discoloured teeth and let his tongue lie upon his lower lip—a habit which had made me feel uneasy in the beginning of our acquaintance before I ...
— Dubliners • James Joyce

... teeth, and stretch the nostril wide, Hold hard the breath, and bend up every spirit To its full height! On, on, you noblest English, Whose blood is fet from fathers of war proof! Fathers, that, like so many Alexanders, Have, in these parts, from morn till even, fought, And ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey

... he again became uneasy. He fancied that right up to the skerry came a whale, which said that he, Eilert, must now make haste; and when he stood on its back he stuck the shaft of an oar down its nostril, to prevent it from shooting beneath the sea again. He perceived that in this way the whale could be steered accordingly as he turned the oar to the right or left; and now they coasted the whole land of Finmark ...
— Weird Tales from Northern Seas • Jonas Lie

... these lizards down to any little point overhanging the sea, where they will sooner allow a person to catch hold of their tails than jump into the water. They do not seem to have any notion of biting; but when much frightened they squirt a drop of fluid from each nostril. I threw one several times as far as I could, into a deep pool left by the retiring tide; but it invariably returned in a direct line to the spot where I stood. It swam near the bottom, with a very graceful and rapid movement, and occasionally ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin

... in the dear light every muscle and feature of man and beast stood but boldly and distinctly. The big black horse was a powerful brute, tall and rangy, with speed and courage showing plainly in contour, nostril and eye; and with head and ears erect he stood motionless, statuesque, heroic. His rider seemed to have been proportioned to fit the horse. Tall, slender of waist, broad of shoulder, straight, he sat loosely in the saddle looking at the scene below ...
— 'Firebrand' Trevison • Charles Alden Seltzer

... Susanna's head up the trail the mountains stood deep purple silhouettes against the cloudlessness of the sky. The wind blew from the heights cool and fragrant, and the little horse set nostril to it as if she anticipated and welcomed ...
— The Spirit of Sweetwater • Hamlin Garland

... make a desperate effort to rally his strength, and the thin, fine nostril flared, ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson

... flew out from the Lion's nostril and went back to his waving grass-blade, while the Lion slunk away into the depths of the forest with his tail between his legs—beaten, ...
— How to Tell Stories to Children - And Some Stories to Tell • Sara Cone Bryant

... mystic lamb, my little blessed palmbranch? This new sun I find in you, pet—in your look, in the sweet odor of your person, in the rustling of your skirt, in the down on your neck which one notices by the lamp-light when you bend over the vicar's mat, in your nostril which expands when my ...
— Monsieur, Madame and Bebe, Complete • Gustave Droz

... The animals go to drink in the evening, as do many other wild beasts, and the quantity which they consume is enormous. They go close to the water's edge, insert the end of the trunk into the liquid, draw it up until the two nostril-tubes are full, turn the end of the trunk into the mouth, and then discharge the contents into the stomach. When satiated, they amuse themselves for a while by blowing water all over their bodies, and then retrace their steps to the forest glades whence ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various

... no fond parent ought to risk his offspring's bones; but a sound, steady-going, well-mannered old hack with never a spark of vice in him! Such was the message that I read in the glassy eye fixed on me. The nostril of faded scarlet seemed for a moment to dilate and quiver. At last, at last, was some one going to ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm

... brigade after brigade, division after division, host after host, rank beyond rank; ever moving, ever passing; marching, marching; tramp, tramp, tramp—thousands after thousands, battery front, arms shouldered, columns solid, shoulder to shoulder, wheel to wheel, charger to charger, nostril ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various

... venison hurled back from a wolf-pursued sleigh to divert the pursuer even temporarily from the main issue. While Flame's Mother paused to consider the particularly flavorous sweetness of that entreaty,—to picture the flashing eye, the pulsing throat, the absurdly crinkled nostril that invariably accompanied all Flame's entreaties, Flame herself ...
— Peace on Earth, Good-will to Dogs • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott

... monsieur,' said he on the stairs, 'a good many persons would be glad to live five-and-forty years longer; but—one moment!' and he laid the first finger of his right hand to his nostril with a cunning look, as much as to say, 'Mark my words!—To last as long as that—as long as that,' said he, 'you must not ...
— La Grande Breteche • Honore de Balzac

... can a glow the soul entrance, When frostbite nips the finger, And blushes quit the countenance To nigh the nostril linger! Warmth were a miracle, in sight And grip ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100., Jan. 31, 1891 • Various

... traffic—there has hung for many years the painted signboard of a veterinary surgeon. Its artist was in the first flourish of youth. Old age had not yet chilled him when he mixed his gaudy colors. The surgeon's name is set up in modest letters, but the horse below flames with color. What a flaring nostril! What an eager eye! How arched the neck! Here is a wrath and speed unknown to the quadrupeds of this present Long Street. Such mild-eyed, accumbent, sharp-ribbed horses as now infest the curb—mere whittlings from ...
— There's Pippins And Cheese To Come • Charles S. Brooks

... dagger was wrought by an artificer of Fez. He was Yarfe, the most insolent, yet valiant, of the Moslem warriors. As he rode slowly along in front of the army, his very steed, prancing with fiery eye and distended nostril, seemed to breathe ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 8 - The Later Renaissance: From Gutenberg To The Reformation • Editor-in-Chief: Rossiter Johnson

... his long thin nose with his thumb and forefinger. It seemed to take him about a minute from bridge to nostril. Then he inhaled a long draught of smoke from his cigarette, closed one eye as if it hurt him, and threw back his head to blow out the smoke again with a slow ...
— The Jervaise Comedy • J. D. Beresford

... had no strong interest in any person or group there. They changed singularly in resting upon the family from Ridgeley. A stare of stupefaction gave place to living fires of angry suspicion and amazement—lurid flame that testified its violence in the reddening of cheeks and brow, in the dilating nostril and quivering lips. Then he passed his hand downward over his features, evidently conscious of their distortion, and striving after a semblance of equanimity, and looked again in stern fixity, not at her from whom he had been parted in the early ...
— At Last • Marion Harland

... see the full, slightly drooping lower lip under the shaggy black moustache. There was solemnity in the thick, rounded salient of the Roman nose, in the slightly bulging eyes, and in the almost imperceptible line that sagged from each nostril down the long curve of the cheeks. This figure, one great thigh crossed on the other, was extraordinarily solid against the smoky background where the clipped black hair made a watery light. His eyes were not looking at anything in particular. Horatio Bysshe ...
— Mr. Waddington of Wyck • May Sinclair

... indelicate as to require them on such an occasion. A short time ago I conversed with an old centurion, who was in service by the side of Vespasian, when Titus, and many officers and soldiers of the army, and many captives, were present, and who saw one Eleazar put a ring to the nostril of a demoniac (as the patient was called) and draw the ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor

... man, into the LIKENESS OF GOD made he him," Gen. v. 1. Those who sat on the north spoke first, saying, "The image of God and the likeness of God are the two lives breathed into man by God, which are the life of the understanding; for it is written, 'Jehovah God breathed into Adam's nostril the soul of LIVES; and man became a living soul,' Gen. ii. 7; into the nostrils denotes into the perception, that the will of good and the understanding of truth, and thereby the soul of lives, was in him; and since life from God was breathed into him, the image ...
— The Delights of Wisdom Pertaining to Conjugial Love • Emanuel Swedenborg

... was lofty and noble, and his tall lithe figure was in strict accordance with British traditions. So were the bold features, which were rather marred by a white scar which stretched from his left nostril to the angle of his jaw. But the jet-black hair and the eyes—the deep, dark, challenging eyes—were those of Seville. A straight sword by his side and a painted long-bow at his shoulder proclaimed him a bowman. A white surcoat ...
— War and the Weird • Forbes Phillips

... Straighten the arms, let there be a free passage through the wind-pipe, and let two persons blow incessantly into the ears through a bamboo tube or reed, rubbing the chest all the time with the hand. Take the blood from a live fowl's comb, and drop it into the throat and nostrils—the left nostril of a woman, the right of a man; also using a cock's comb for a man, a hen's for a woman. Re-animation will be immediately effected. If respiration has been suspended for a long time, there must be plenty of blowing ...
— Chinese Sketches • Herbert A. Giles

... at the noise and nonsense of self-important folly. When the hollow-hearted wretch takes me by the hand, the feeling spoils my dinner: the proud man's wine so offends my palate that it chokes me in the gullet; and the pulvilised, feathered, pert coxcomb is so disgustful in my nostril that ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham

... Kali's thousand names." "The water of a guru's [religious teacher's] feet purifies from all sin." "The man who carries the guru's dust [the dust of the guru's feet] upon his head is emancipated from all sin and is [the god] Siva himself." "By a certain inhalation of the breath through the left nostril, and holding of the breath, with repetition of yam, the V[a]yu Bija or mystical spell of wind or air, the body and its indwelling sinful self are dessicated, the breath being expelled by the right nostril."[122] ...
— New Ideas in India During the Nineteenth Century - A Study of Social, Political, and Religious Developments • John Morrison

... child snuffed a button up its nostril and the mother, in an attempt to remove it, had caused the button to be pushed farther up the channel. Doctors probed for the button without success. The distracted mother happened to think of snuff, and, as there was some at ...
— The Boy Mechanic: Volume 1 - 700 Things For Boys To Do • Popular Mechanics

... but make use instead of a piece of bone, turned in the shape of a little powder- horn. When desirous of indulging in a little titillation, they throw back their heads, and putting the point of the horn to their nostril, empty in the snuff. So little fastidious are these devotees, that they frequently pass on a horn from nose to nose, without the needless formality of cleaning it. The mention of this practice leads Madame Pfeiffer to comment ...
— The Story of Ida Pfeiffer - and Her Travels in Many Lands • Anonymous

... archbishop could not carry himself more erect: his chest projecting; his neck stiff; his head thrown back; his eyes of the ferret kind, red, tender and much uncovered by the eyelid; his nose flat on the bridge, and at the end of the colour and form of a small round gingerbread nut, but with little nostril; his lips thin; his teeth half black half yellow; his ears large; his beard and whiskers sandy; his hair dark, but kept in buckle, and powdered as white as a miller's hat; his complexion sallow, and his countenance and general aspect ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft

... plaid Turkish toweling, and a pair of close-fitting breeches of etiquette tucked into my boot-tops. As I was away from home at the time and could not reach my own steed I was obliged to mount a spirited steed with high, intellectual hips, one white eye and a big red nostril that you could set a Shanghai hen in. This horse, as soon as the pack broke into full cry, climbed over a fence that had wrought-iron briers on it, lit in a corn field, stabbed his hind leg through a sere and yellow pumpkin, which he wore the rest of ...
— Nye and Riley's Wit and Humor (Poems and Yarns) • Bill Nye

... he admire them. The wild horse of these regions is not very large, but it is exceedingly powerful, with prominent eye, sharp nose, distended nostril, small feet, and a delicate leg. Their beautiful manes hung at great length down their arched necks, and their thick tails swept the ground. One magnificent fellow in particular attracted Dick's attention. It was of a rich dark brown colour, ...
— The Dog Crusoe and his Master • R.M. Ballantyne

... a moment, was terrible to look upon. Even in her kindliest moments hers was a severe countenance, in spite of the true Norman curves in mouth and nostril—the laughter-loving curves. Presently, however, the fierceness of her severity melted; she had caught sight of her son. He was passing her, now, with the wine bottles for dinner piled up ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd

... the "Sindhawo" breed, a term which may either imply the place whence they were brought, or the swiftness of their speed.[5] In battle the soldiers rode chargers[6], and a passage in the Mahawanso shows that they managed them by means of a rope passed through the nostril, which served as a bridle.[7] Cosmas Indicopleustes, who considered the number of horses in Ceylon in the 6th century to be a fact of sufficient importance to be recorded, adds that they were imported from Persia, and the merchants bringing them were treated with special ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent

... a more atrocious countenance than that exhibited in this man. A mixed breed, between a Turk sire and all Arab mother, he had the good features and bad qualities of either race—the fine, sharp, high-arched nose and large nostril, the pointed and projecting chin, rather high cheek-bones and prominent brow, overhanging a pair of immense black eyes full of expression of all evil. As he approached he took no notice of us, but studiously looked straight before him with ...
— In the Heart of Africa • Samuel White Baker

... scratches horizontally over his canvas a thin grayish brown, transparent and even, very much the color of light wainscot; the horizontal strokes of the bristles being left so evident, that the whole might be taken for an imitation of wood, were it not for its transparency. On this ground the eye, nostril, and outline of the cheek are given with two or three rude, brown touches, (about three or four minutes' work in all,) though the head is colossal. The background is then laid in with thick, solid, warm white, actually ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin

... was one. The little Methodist mission hard by the foreign colony had such a committee, a remarkable committee in a way, a committee with no fine-spun theories of wholesale reform, a committee with no delicate nostril to be buried in a perfumed handkerchief when pursuing an investigation (as a matter of fact, that committee had no sense of smell at all), a committee of one, namely, John James Parsons, the Methodist missionary, and he worked ...
— The Foreigner • Ralph Connor

... to every one of us. His Gospel will tell upon you, it is telling upon you. If you disbelieve it, you are not the same as if you had never heard it. Never is the box of ointment opened without some savour from it abiding in every nostril to which its odour is wafted. Only the alternative, the awful 'either, or,' is open for each—the 'savour of life unto life, or the savour of death unto death.' To come back to the illustration of the text, Christ is something, and does something to every one of us. He is either the rock on ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren

... from the lip. The round, strong column of the neck well supported the head; my mother compared it with that of the Apollo Belvedere, a bust of which stood in the corner of our sitting-room. The head was deep—a great distance between the base of the ear and the wing of the nostril—and was well filled out behind. Above the blue of the shaven beard the complexion showed clear white and red, announcing a strong heart and good digestion. My father shaved himself daily; I was not permitted to see the operation, but I knew he lathered, and wondered why. He was naturally ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne

... steadily, looking straight before him, with no visible emotion, save a little quiver in the last sentence, a slight dilating of the delicately cut nostril; and then he was silent, until, having recovered the self-restraint that had been failing him, he prevented the words she was trying to form by saying, 'Not in haste, lady. There is time yet before you to bethink ...
— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge

... waters of some saintly well, cool and pure down to the unblemished sand at the bottom. The small lips had a gentle compression which indicated a repressed strength of feeling; while the straight line of the nose, and the flexible, delicate nostril, were perfect as in those sculptured fragments of the antique which the soil of Italy so often gives forth to the day from the sepulchres of the past. The habitual pose of the head and face had the shy uplooking grace of a violet; and yet there was a grave ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 43, May, 1861 • Various

... king, with front uncrowned, Whose hand holds crownets; playmate swart o' the strong; Tenebrous moon that flux and refluence draws Of the high-tided man; skull-hous-ed asp That stings the heel of kings; true Fount of Youth, Where he that dips is deathless; being's drone-pipe; Whose nostril turns to blight the shrivelled stars, And thicks the lusty breathing of the sun; Pontifical Death, that doth the crevasse bridge To the steep and trifid God; one mortal birth That broker is of immortality. Under this dreadful ...
— New Poems • Francis Thompson

... imps in the eyrie have been fed, and their hungry cry will not be heard till the dawn. The mother has there taken up her watchful rest, till in darkness she may glide up to her brood—the sire is somewhere sitting within her view among the rocks—a sentinel whose eye, and ear, and nostril are true, in exquisite fineness of sense, to their trust, and on whom rarely, and as if by a miracle, can steal the adventurous shepherd or huntsman, to wreak vengeance with his rifle on the ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson

... breath Thy golden hair exhales,—that hair which I Have seen flow rippling through Lord Tristram's hands— Has made me hard and rough—a very beast! I live pent up within my castle walls As some old wolf! I sleep all day and ride At night! Ay, ride until my steed comes home With gasping nostril and with bloody flank, And lies as dead when morning comes! My hounds Fall dead along the road! And yet, may be, That long before the earliest cock has crowed I cry aloud upon thy name each day Like one who swelters in his own life's blood! Remember ...
— The German Classics, v. 20 - Masterpieces of German Literature • Various

... heather? However, Mr. Macleay speedily reassured him. He was shown the various processes and stages of the taxidermist's art, the amorphous mass of skin and hair gradually taking shape and substance until it stood forth in all its glory of flaming eye and proud nostril and branching antlers; and he was highly pleased to be told that this head he had got in Strathaivron was a fairly good one, as stags now go in the North. So, all his shopping being done, he set off again for the Station Hotel, ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black

... shoulder. His shaven face was as brown as a hazel-nut, tanned and dried by the weather, with harsh, well-marked features, which were not improved by a long white scar which stretched from the corner of his left nostril to the angle of the jaw. His eyes were bright and searching, with something of menace and of authority in their quick glitter, and his mouth was firm-set and hard, as befitted one who was wont to set his face against danger. A straight sword by his side and a painted ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle

... chalk added life to the floor, which was enriched with a scroll-work of whiting, while the arms of Hookham-cum-Snivery (a nose, rampant, with a hand, couchant, extending a thumb, gules, to the nostril, argent) formed an ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various

... legs and arms and couldn't. Then I wiggled my fingers and toes to see if any bones were broken. They wiggled all right. My right nostril and eye were full of dirt; also my mouth. I spit out the dirt and moved my head until my nose and eye were clear. ...
— A Yankee in the Trenches • R. Derby Holmes

... say, but thinking the Sheridan blood (especially in her veins) might have some sympathy with and find some excuse for him, suggested the temptation that the possession of such wit must always be, more or less, to the abuse of it. "Witty!" exclaimed the indignant beauty, with her lip and nostril quivering, "witty! One may well be witty when one fears neither God nor devil!" I was heartily glad Hook was not there; he was not particular about the truth, and would infallibly, in some shape or other, have translated for her benefit, "Je crains Dieu, cher Abner, ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble



Words linked to "Nostril" :   naris, olfactory organ, anterior naris



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