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Dense   /dɛns/   Listen
Dense

adjective
1.
Permitting little if any light to pass through because of denseness of matter.  Synonyms: heavy, impenetrable.  "Heavy fog" , "Impenetrable gloom"
2.
Hard to pass through because of dense growth.  Synonym: thick.  "Thick woods"
3.
Having high relative density or specific gravity.
4.
Slow to learn or understand; lacking intellectual acuity.  Synonyms: dim, dull, dumb, obtuse, slow.  "Never met anyone quite so dim" , "Although dull at classical learning, at mathematics he was uncommonly quick" , "Dumb officials make some really dumb decisions" , "He was either normally stupid or being deliberately obtuse" , "Worked with the slow students"



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"Dense" Quotes from Famous Books



... Around him was profound silence; the music in the Vauxhall was over. The park seemed quite empty, though it was not, in reality, later than half-past eleven. It was a quiet, warm, clear night—a real Petersburg night of early June; but in the dense avenue, where he was sitting, it was almost ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... over the country in search of food, usually led by a bull remarkable for strength and fierceness. While feeding, they are often scattered over a great extent of country; but when they move, they form a dense and almost impenetrable column, which, when once in motion, is scarcely to be impeded. Their line of march is seldom interrupted, even by considerable rivers, across which they swim, without fear or hesitation, nearly in the order in which they traverse the plains. The Bisons which ...
— Delineations of the Ox Tribe • George Vasey

... not a forest in our sense of the word, but a place where water sinks and the trees (mostly Mimosas), which elsewhere are widely scattered, form a comparatively dense growth and collect in thickets. These are favourite places ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton

... river which flows by Manilla, several chiefs of a village named Caynta, to proclaim themselves friends of the governor. This said village had about a thousand inhabitants, and was surrounded by very tall and very dense bamboo thickets, and fortified with a wall and a few small culverins. The same river as that of Manilla circles around the village and a branch of it passes through the middle dividing it in two sections. Now ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1803 - Volume III, 1569-1576 • E.H. Blair

... presence came through the wall, is more than I can say, but, all at once, without the young man's knowing how it happened, a veiled figure stood in the centre of the room. It was one thing to be in presence of this mystery in the hall of exhibition, where the warm, dense life of hundreds of other mortals kept up the beholder's courage, and distributed her influence among so many; it was another thing to be quite alone with her, and that, too, with a hostile, or, at least, an unauthorized and unjustifiable purpose. ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... a band of desperadoes, coming up from behind, tripped him up in an instant, and in the twinkling of an eye the Portuguese was straddling an oar, borne aloft by an uproarious multitude, who rushed him along the deck at a railroad gallop. The living mass of arms all round and beneath him was so dense, that every time he inclined one side he was instantly pushed upright, but only to fall over again, to receive another push from the contrary direction. Presently, disengaging his hands from those who held them, the enraged seaman drew from his bosom an iron belaying-pin, and recklessly laid ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville

... the case of friends only serve to draw the bonds of friendship closer, just as the smith makes use of water to increase the heat of his fire. He added, as a well-known fact in surgery, that the callosity which forms over a fractured bone is so dense that the limb will never break again ...
— The Spirit of St. Francis de Sales • Jean Pierre Camus

... in most parts of the country, from the secluded habits of the birds; and now the lads turned their attention to find the nest of a turtle-dove. The part of the wood they were in was very thick and full of underwood, a large proportion of which consisted of hazel stubs so dense that, almost before they were aware of it, Fred and Philip were separated from Harry and Dick; and when they did miss them, and called out, a faint and distant ...
— Hollowdell Grange - Holiday Hours in a Country Home • George Manville Fenn

... flash followed in the farthest corner of the room and a huge puff of smoke. Before I could collect my wits another followed in the opposite corner. The room was filled with a dense smoke. ...
— The Silent Bullet • Arthur B. Reeve

... other words, the growth of her sister's liking for the baron—with an apprehension and sorrow which she tried fruitlessly to conceal. Even her father began to notice that her spirits were not so good as usual, and to suspect the cause of her melancholy. I remember he jested, with all the dense insensibility of a stupid man, about Ida having invariably been jealous, from a child, if Rosamond looked kindly upon anybody except ...
— After Dark • Wilkie Collins

... in its surface, in which pegs or wooden nails are said to have been fitted.[8-3] About ten miles north of this spot is another group of mounds on the left bank of the Rio de San Pablo y San Pedro. Doubtless many others exist unknown in the dense forests. ...
— The Battle and the Ruins of Cintla • Daniel G. Brinton

... they came to an avenue given up to the poorer class of people; with elevated trains rattling by overhead, and rows of little shops along it. Montague noticed a dense crowd on one of the corners, and asked ...
— The Metropolis • Upton Sinclair

... right angles with the river. The entrance was guarded by a sentinel and gun, and the "king," Imondo, lay right royally on his belly. A fine plantation of bananas divides the settlement, and the background is dense bush, in which they say "Nyare" and deer abound. The Bakele supply sheep and fowls to the Plateau, and their main industry consists in dressing plantain-fibre for ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton

... value of wireless telegraphy in relation to disasters at sea was proved in a remarkable way yesterday morning. While the Channel was enveloped in a dense fog, which had lasted throughout the greater part of the night, the East Goodwin Lightship had a very narrow escape from sinking at her moorings by being run into by the steamship R. F. Matthews, 1,964 tons gross burden, ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - Invention and Discovery • Various

... rock and dense forest, and unpeopled; only wild animals and sea birds sought the shelter it provided from the terrors of the West Wind; but he drove them out in sullen anger, and made on this strip of land his last stand ...
— Legends of Vancouver • E. Pauline Johnson

... Thursdays, long walks, two by two, in Paris, with Bonzig or Dumollard; or else in the Bois to play rounders or prisoners' base in a clearing, or skate on the Mare aux Biches, which was always so hard to find in the dense thicket ... poor Lord Runswick! He found it once ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier

... season—and its foliage, unlike that of the other varieties, is attractive enough in itself to make the plant well worth growing. It is a rich, glossy green, and so freely produced that it furnishes a dense shade. Late in the season, after most other plants are in "the sere and yellow leaf" it is literally covered with great panicles of starry white flowers which have a delightful fragrance. While this variety lacks the rich color of such varieties as Jackmani and others of the hybrid class, it ...
— Amateur Gardencraft - A Book for the Home-Maker and Garden Lover • Eben E. Rexford

... a misconception of yours," rejoined the philosopher. "You are both calculating distances, as you would in the low dense atmosphere of Louisiana. Remember you are now four thousand feet above the level of the sea, and surrounded by one of the purest and most translucent atmospheres in the world. Objects can be seen double the distance that you could see them on the banks of the ...
— The Boy Hunters • Captain Mayne Reid

... last, tired somewhat, the two women sat down on a bench hidden almost entirely by dense cypresses and began to talk of that which weighed on their hearts most,—that is, of Lygia's escape in the evening. Acte was far less at rest than Lygia touching its success. At times it seemed to her even a mad project, which could not succeed. She felt a growing pity for ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz

... vapours drift through space, sustained by exactly the same influences that uphold dense planetary spheres. They are supported in the void by the combined effects of motion and attraction. Their own impetus strives to carry them one way, while the sun's attraction draws them another, and they are thus constrained to move along ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 450 - Volume 18, New Series, August 14, 1852 • Various

... a most beautiful place; it was first a hunting-lodge occupied by Frederick the Great. It is shut out from the world by its high stone walls; and in its dim, dense woods, one might easily imagine he was far indeed from the ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard

... from somewhere there came a horrible din. There was the sound of many voices shouting unintelligible things, when suddenly above the roar one voice shrieked out "Fire!" Then I knew. The room was filled with smoke, dense and choking. ...
— The Campfire Girls Go Motoring • Hildegard G. Frey

... melted under the fierce sun. The level fields, like a waveless ocean, stretch away into the dim, green distance. The hot air quivers above cotton-fields, heavy with bolls and gay with blossoms, which give out a half-sickening fragrance. A languid air rustles low amid the corn, from whose dense growth arises a damp, hot breath. Out in the pasture, work-horses leisurely crop the sunburnt grass, or stand under the trees, lazily switching ...
— Plantation Sketches • Margaret Devereux

... I saw that our screens were not going to hold." The Osnomians' labored breathing became normal as the air-pressure increased to a value only a little below that of the dense atmosphere of their native planet. "I then increased the power of the screens to the extreme limit and opened the zone for a moment to see how the screens would hold with the added power. That instant was enough. In that period a concentrated beam, such as I had no idea could ever be generated, ...
— Skylark Three • Edward Elmer Smith

... form a screen between the river and the earth. The narrow valley which it hid from view was known as Da'it from remotest times. Eternal night enfolded that valley in thick darkness, and filled it with dense air such as no living thing could breathe. Towards the east the steep bank rapidly declined, and ceased altogether a little beyond Bakhu, while the river flowed on between low and almost level shores from east to south, and then from south to west. The sun was a disc ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 1 (of 12) • G. Maspero

... of the force seemed to inspire the men with additional confidence, if such were possible, but ere long the dense smoke rendered everything invisible beyond a few yards' distance from the actors in ...
— The Pirate City - An Algerine Tale • R.M. Ballantyne

... Mackenzie's guns began to play upon them. For some short time the Oosbegs, forming part of the Dost's force, stood the fire, but the guns were ably served, and the shrapnel practice told with terrific effect on dense bodies of men, who had nothing to give back ...
— Our Soldiers - Gallant Deeds of the British Army during Victoria's Reign • W.H.G. Kingston

... describe the scene, and we have it from more than one or two witnesses, which presented itself, when the hour of his execution drew nigh. His cries and shrieks were distinctly heard from a considerable distance along the dense multitudes which were assembled to witness his death; thus giving to that dreadful event a character of horror so deep and gloomy, that many persons, finding themselves unable to bear it, withdrew from the crowd, and actually fainted on hearing the almost supernatural tones ...
— Fardorougha, The Miser - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton

... the 4th of May, he was allowed to take his departure from Sackatoo, escorted by one the sultan's officers, with a party of merchants and their slaves. As the country was in a disturbed state, they pushed on night and day through a dense underwood, which tore their clothes and scratched the legs of the riders. Several of the poor natives on foot, who had taken advantage of the escort to pass through this part of the country, overcome with fatigue and thirst, sank down never to rise. One of Clapperton's servants ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston

... his British subjects. I am persuaded that the power of the Crown, which I wish to increase, would be greater when in contact with all its dominions, than if "the rays of regal bounty[622]" were to "shine" upon America through that dense and troubled body, a modern British Parliament. But, enough of this subject; for your angry voice at Ashbourne[623] upon it, still sounds aweful "in my ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 3 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill

... trunks sprang up toward a firmament of somber green, from which descended dense festoons of vines. Through this twilight flitted birds of brilliant plumage and long-haired monkeys. The place had a morose, nefarious beauty, like the forest in the prophecy ...
— Sacrifice • Stephen French Whitman

... be relieved were in their homes. Belgium is so old a country, her population so dense, she is so much like one big workshop, that the Government must keep a complete set of books. Every Belgian is registered and docketed. You know just how he makes his living and where he lives. Upon marriage ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer

... look for a moment into those dense war-clouds. Over this thick hedge bursts a band of American militiamen, their rude farmer-coats stained with blood, while scattering their arms by the way, they flee before that company of red-coat hirelings, who come rushing forward, their solid front of bayonets gleaming in the ...
— Standard Selections • Various

... Gough made his dispositions of battle on the evening of the 9th, according to which, at daybreak on the 10th, the cannonade was to open. A dense mist, however, covered the sphere of intended operations, rendering it impossible to open fire until the sun had penetrated the obscure atmosphere. On the extreme right of the works, close by the river, Major-general ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... their gunners jostle one another. This strange engine of modern warfare creeps on like a monster of the apocalypse, carrying all before it. Aeroplanes hovering over the fronts of the columns direct movements by signalling. The dense, serried mass of infantry offers a splendid target. The losses must have been frightful—exceeding anything recorded in modern war. The German infantry are poor marksmen. They don't know how to shoot. Scarcely ...
— Paris War Days - Diary of an American • Charles Inman Barnard

... and hoped the Cold was not more intense than on the Mountain's Top; and that if this prov'd so, we cou'd breathe and support the Cold with little Difficulty. I answer'd, that it was natural to conclude the Air next the Earth more dense than that above it, as the weightiest ...
— A Voyage to Cacklogallinia - With a Description of the Religion, Policy, Customs and Manners of That Country • Captain Samuel Brunt

... landing, lower down. They were borne along by the same wind; but a mist, arising nearly about the same time as on the preceding day, hid the land from them; and the wind fell as the mist grew more dense. Afterwards, the night coming on increased the confusion in every respect; they therefore cast anchor, lest the ships should either run foul of each other, or be driven on shore. At daybreak the wind, rising in the same quarter, dispelled the ...
— History of Rome, Vol III • Titus Livius

... power of raising palaces or private fortresses. The villa was their peculiar habitation, their only resource, and a most agreeable one; because the multitudes of the kingdom being, for a long period, confined to a narrow territory, though ruling the world, rendered the population of the city so dense, as to drive out its higher ranks to the neighboring ...
— The Poetry of Architecture • John Ruskin

... south-east to north and north-west there extends a band of extinct volcanoes, connected probably with the old craters of the Comoro Group, where, in Great Comoro, the subterranean forces are still active. All round the island runs a girdle of dense forest, varying from ten to forty miles in width, and containing fine timber and valuable gums and other vegetable wealth—a paradise for botanists, where rare orchids, the graceful traveller's-tree, the delicate ...
— The Contemporary Review, January 1883 - Vol 43, No. 1 • Various

... because you didn't catch me. Hulda, with her big eyes, again failed to see anything. She is always slow." Hereupon Effi again flew away across the circle toward the pond, probably because she planned to hide at first behind a dense-growing hazelnut hedge over there, and then from that point to take a long roundabout way past the churchyard and the front house and thence back to the wing and the base. Everything was well calculated, but before she was ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various

... a fine evening in autumn, when the rays of departing day began to glimmer in the west, and twilight had just spread her dusky gloom. All was silent, save the low rushing of the Derwent stream, purling its way through dense groves, and winding round the stupendous rock of Matlock's Vale. As I paced along, the grave, sombre hue of evening fell full on the rocks, which rose in magnificent grandeur, and seemed to look with contempt ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 333 - Vol. 12, Issue 333, September 27, 1828 • Various

... day, but the darkness was denser than the darkest night, the sea was a waste of stormy waters, and when at last the flames and the sulphureous smell could no longer be endured, Pliny fell dead, suffocated by the dense vapor. ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta

... brevis is shorter than that of either M. v. velifer or M. v. incautus and gives the impression of being less dense. The dorsal hairs average approximately 4.5 millimeters long in M. v. brevis taken 35 miles north of Blythe, Riverside County, California, in May, eight millimeters in M. v. velifer collected at Las Vigas, Veracruz, in January, and six millimeters in ...
— A New Subspecies of Bat (Myotis velifer) from Southeastern California and Arizona • Terry A. Vaughan

... together We wandered, underneath the young gray dawn, And multitudes of dense white fleecy clouds Were wandering, in thick flocks along the mountains Shepherded by the slow ...
— The Philosophy of Style • Herbert Spencer

... country than is generally supposed, as it contained a large number of cities and villages, and produced fish, oil, wheat, wine, figs, and flax. "It was in Christ's time one of the gardens of the world—well watered, exceedingly fertile, thoroughly cultivated, and covered with a dense population."—Merrill. ...
— A Trip Abroad • Don Carlos Janes

... faster fell the snow; the air was dense; it was, as Alessandro had said, worse than the darkness of night,—this strange opaque whiteness, thick, choking, freezing one's breath. Presently the rough jolting of the wagon showed that they were off the road. The horses stopped; ...
— Ramona • Helen Hunt Jackson

... this sent home with dispatches; but scarcely was she clear of the Straits of Gibraltar than the wind fell, a thick fog came on, and she lay becalmed some twenty leagues off the Spanish coast. So dense was the fog, that no object could be seen a quarter ...
— True Blue • W.H.G. Kingston

... was struggling through the crowd, which was dense here. "It feels nothing. It's in a ...
— Six to Sixteen - A Story for Girls • Juliana Horatia Ewing

... grass. In the centre of it there grew a monstrous and gigantic live-oak, between two of whose roots there glittered a spring. On all sides of the meadow, except on that toward the river, were superimpending cliffs of quartz. Along the base of these was a dense growth of bushes. ...
— IT and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris

... end of D—— Street was especially crowded, and so was the entrance to a certain narrow street leading northwards from it, in which stood the new bare buildings of the Calliope. Outside the theatre itself there was a dense mass of carriages and human beings, only kept in order by the active vigilance of the police, and wavering to and fro with kaleidoscopic rapidity. The line of carriages seemed interminable, and, after those who emerged from them had run the gauntlet of ...
— Miss Bretherton • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... from a height of more than a hundred feet, a foaming cataract, which breaks against sharp rocks; the Madeira, contracted into a deep bed, precipitates this dense mass of water with frightful rapidity; a cloud of mist is eternally suspended above this torrent, whose fall sends its formidable and ...
— The Pearl of Lima - A Story of True Love • Jules Verne

... or two hundred feet below, and to the right the hills rise hundreds of feet above. The hills, half way to their summits, are covered with corn, wheat, or grass, while further up the forest is as dense as it could well have been a hundred ...
— The Citizen-Soldier - or, Memoirs of a Volunteer • John Beatty

... hours we steamed on thus, at about twelve knots. Towards noon we saw dense smoke all along the horizon ahead, and a heavy, dull, rumbling sound reached us which soon made itself unmistakable as the roar of artillery. We immediately guessed that the squadron preceding us had been attacked by the enemy. Our escort, if I may so term it, drew inshore, ...
— Under the Dragon Flag - My Experiences in the Chino-Japanese War • James Allan

... less than that), but it was not wholly asleep—that is to say, dead—and it was tranquilly content. Mark Twain remembered it as "the white town drowsing in the sunshine of a summer morning,... the great Mississippi, the magnificent Mississippi, rolling its mile-wide tide along;... the dense forest away ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine

... may be returning or groping along the trail," was the thought of the youth, who glided silently forward, his senses on the alert. His misgivings, however, were much less than when watching the two Shawanoes, for with the dense gloom of the forest inclosing him on every hand, he felt that the shelter was not only secure but was of ...
— The Lost Trail - I • Edward S. Ellis

... Dense clouds of black smoke and occasional lurid sheets of flame rose from the try-works, which were situated between the foremast and the main-hatch. The tops of the masts were lost in the curling smoke, and the black waves of the sea gleamed and flashed in the red light ...
— The Red Eric • R.M. Ballantyne

... carry the boat some distance to the northward, when it failed, and the puffs from the land returned. Paul supposed they were quite two miles from the inlet, and, trying the lead, he found ten fathoms of water, a proof that they had also gradually receded from the shore. Still nothing but a dense darkness surrounded them, though there could no longer be the smallest doubt of their being ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper

... by tornado was greater in Terre Haute than in any other place except Omaha. For two weeks before Easter a dense atmosphere hung over the city, which occasional heavy rainfalls did not clear. Then suddenly on Sunday night, about ten o'clock, the lightning flashed and loud peals ...
— The True Story of Our National Calamity of Flood, Fire and Tornado • Logan Marshall

... dense, the cold damp pierced through to their bones. But Madame Jeannin could not bring herself to go. Antoinette saw that Olivier was shivering and ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland

... more satisfactory proof of its presence may be obtained by decomposing the carbonic acid by drawing the wires a short distance apart, and giving a spark of electricity. This immediately separates the oxygen from the carbon which forms a dense black smoke in the tube. By pushing the corks together we may obtain a wafer of charcoal of the same weight as the piece introduced. In this experiment we have changed carbon from its solid form to an invisible gas and back again to a solid, thus fully representing the continual changes of this substance ...
— The Elements of Agriculture - A Book for Young Farmers, with Questions Prepared for the Use of Schools • George E. Waring

... barely showed its old red chimney-tops, above its bowers; the next was empty, with windows vacantly gazing, its paths peopled with great bearded weeds that stood mutely watching and guarding the seldom-opened gate. Then came more lofty grandmotherly elms, a dense hedge of every leaf that pricks, and then Lawford found himself standing at the small canopied gate of the queer old wooden house that the stranger of his talk had in ...
— The Return • Walter de la Mare

... of the frontier are helpless against these people, for the latter are armed with a capital rifle and are also splendid shots, while the Cossacks have only a trumpery smooth bore. The country of the Adjars is very mountainous indeed, and quite impracticable except on foot, being covered with dense forests." ...
— The Life of Gordon, Volume I • Demetrius Charles Boulger

... his good humour seemed to be making some impression, when, either from the determination of the more evil- disposed, or because the inhabitants of Saint Martin's Lane were beginning to pour down hot water, stones, and brickbats on the dense mass of heads below them, a fresh access of fury seized upon the mob. Yells of, "Down with the strangers!" echoed through the narrow streets, drowning Sir Thomas's voice. A lawyer who stood with him was knocked down and much ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte M. Yonge

... on, on the other side of the crater, and close at the foot of the ridge of earth that surrounds it, there was to be seen a column of dense smoke, or rather of vapor, coming up out of ...
— Rollo in Naples • Jacob Abbott

... and on. Two hours of this still-hunting found him on the bank of a shallow gully through which a brook went rippling and babbling over the mossy green stones. The forest was dense here; rugged oaks and tall poplars grew high over the tops of the first growth of white oaks and beeches; the wild grapevines which coiled round the trees like gigantic serpents, spread out in the upper branches and obscured the sun; witch-hopples and laurel bushes grew thickly; ...
— Betty Zane • Zane Grey

... as was so often the alleged reason for the shooting of so many of our English prisoners. The sense of discipline in the Indian troops was such that, no matter how great the temptation to avenge a thousand injuries and the unexampled opportunity offered by a long railway journey through dense bush, they delivered their prisoners safe in Dar-es-Salaam. It is said that nothing would persuade Dorn and his comrade to leave the safe shelter of the railway truck. No, they did not want to go for a walk in the bush, they would stay in ...
— Sketches of the East Africa Campaign • Robert Valentine Dolbey

... came suddenly out of the big cabin they were nearing. They opened the door with difficulty, and forced their way into the reeking, crowded room for the second time that night. Everybody seemed to be talking—nobody listening. Dimly through dense clouds of tobacco-smoke "the prisoner at the Bar" was seen to be—what—no! Yes—shaking hands ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)

... from Antwerp abruptly ended, all trains and boats stopped running, and the city was completely cut off from communication with the outside world, I left in my car for Ghent, where the telegraph was still in operation, to file my dispatches. So dense was the mass of retreating soldiery and fugitive civilians which blocked the approaches to the pontoon-bridge, that it took me four hours to get across the Scheldt, and another four hours, owing to the slow ...
— Fighting in Flanders • E. Alexander Powell

... the spot, the stranger turned with the trail that now began to skirt its edge. This was no easy matter, as the undergrowth was very thick, and the foliage dense to the perilous brink of the precipice. He walked on, however, wondering why Bradley had chosen so circuitous and dangerous a route to his house, which naturally would be some distance back from the canyon. At the end of ten ...
— A Phyllis of the Sierras • Bret Harte

... to Doom the tide was full and round about it, so they retired upon the hillside, sheltering in a little plantation of fir through which they could see the stars, and Doom dense black against them ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro

... thousand feet they suddenly emerged from the fog belt into brilliant sunshine, but the world below was lost to sight, screened by a dense pall of mist. Accordingly, Tom Meeks, who was acting as pilot, set a compass course for Cape Hatteras, the first guide-post along the Atlantic coast, some five hundred miles distant. After an hour's steady ...
— Around the World in Ten Days • Chelsea Curtis Fraser

... shepherd-lads on the hills in Scotland, when the nights are cold, dip their plaids in water, before sitting or lying down in them. The wet swells up the fibres of the plaid, and makes the texture of it perfectly dense and close. It is also of importance that the outer covering should have a certain weight, so as not to be too easily displaced, either by the person fidgeting in his sleep or by the blowing of the wind. In dry weather there is nothing like furs; but in a rainy ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton

... murmured, her stupidity not dense enough to give a promise thus early. A month? A long, long while, an age, in which other things might ...
— Married Life - The True Romance • May Edginton

... the head. George Robards was the envy of us all. For there was no hair among us that was so competent for this exhibition as his—except, perhaps, the yellow locks of Will Bowen and John Robards. My hair was a dense ruck of short curls, and so was my brother Henry's. We tried all kinds of devices to get these crooks straightened out so that they would flirt, but we never succeeded. Sometimes, by soaking our ...
— Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain

... believing it to be none too good for a citizen of the greatest republic on the face of the earth. He said the tickets had been stamped on. I said so should I be if I returned without exchanging them. He was a very dense person, and didn't see my joke at all, but then, it is true, there were thirteen men in line behind me, with the train starting in three minutes, and there is nothing so debilitating to a naturally weak sense of humor as selling tickets behind a grating, so I am not really vexed ...
— Penelope's Progress - Being Such Extracts from the Commonplace Book of Penelope Hamilton As Relate to Her Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin

... again, at times breaking into a smart canter where the road was solid, but for the most part proceeding with irksome slowness through the evil slough. Ahead lay the dense wood they were to traverse before coming to the town. Soon the broad, open prairie would be behind them, they would be plunged into the depths of a forest primeval, wending their way through five miles of solitude to the rim of the vale in which the town was situated. But the forest had no ...
— Viola Gwyn • George Barr McCutcheon

... Venice. The graceful buildings which overhang the Grand Canal are exactly fitted for an oligarchy, sure of its own authority and loved of the people. Feudal despotism, on the contrary, reigns in the heart of Ferrara, where the Este's stronghold, moated, draw-bridged, and portcullised, casting dense shadow over the water that protects the dungeons, still seems to threaten the public square and overawe the ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds

... overhanging cliffs here, terraced there, or receding in steep slopes broken by many side-gulches. The highest point of the wall is twenty-seven hundred feet, but the peaks a little distance off are a thousand feet higher. Yellow pines, nut pines, firs and cedars stand in dense forests on the Uintah Mountains, and clinging to moving rocks they have come down the walls to the water's edge between Flaming Gorge and Echo Park. The red sandstones are lichened over, delicate mosses grow in the moist places and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, October, 1880 • Various

... amid the vapor dim,— A mystery; of shadows a procession grim, Nearing a blackening sky, unto its rim. Frightful, since boundless, solitude behold Where only Nemesis wove, mute and cold, A net all snowy with its soft meshes dense, A shroud of magnitude for host immense; Till every one felt as if left alone In a wide wilderness where no light shone, To die, with pity none, and none to see That from this mournful realm none should get free. ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo

... and clear, a little petulant perhaps, but still very sweet. She is quite small—a little girl—and clad in deep mourning. There is something pathetic about the dense black surrounding such a radiant face, and such a childish figure. Her eyes are fixed on the professor, and there is evident anxiety in their hazel depths; her soft lips are parted; she seems hesitating ...
— A Little Rebel - A Novel • Margaret Wolfe Hungerford

... state of the case, the road to longevity was plain; nothing more being required, says his lordship, but to repair the waste committed by the internal spirit, by making the substance of it more thick and dense, by a regular course of opiates on one side, and by refrigerating the heat of it on the other, by three grains and a half of salt-petre every ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne

... sheets of stagnant water overlying a treacherous bottom of semi-fluid mud, which rose above the surface here and there in moist, sweltering banks, mottled over with occasional patches of unhealthy vegetation. Great purple and yellow fungi had broken out in a dense eruption, as though Nature were afflicted with a foul disease, which manifested itself by this crop of ...
— The Mystery of Cloomber • Arthur Conan Doyle

... the Esk in its richest garb, one must wait for a spell of fine autumn weather, when a prolonged ramble can be made along the riverside and up on the moorland heights above. For the dense woodlands, which are often merely pretty in midsummer, become astonishingly lovely as the foliage draping the steep hillsides takes on its gorgeous colours, and the gills and becks on the moors send down a plentiful supply of water to fill the dales with ...
— Yorkshire—Coast & Moorland Scenes • Gordon Home

... which are eternally speaking about 'Persian honesty,' 'Persian courage,' 'Persian loyalty,' 'Persian love of fair play,' &c., as if the Persians enjoyed a clear monopoly of these universal virtues. What is more, they speak thus in blind good faith—with a dense gravity of conviction that ...
— Cobwebs From an Empty Skull • Ambrose Bierce (AKA: Dod Grile)

... scarcely understood. How could any one, without being seconded by accomplices, throw a bundle of this weight and volume in the midst of a crowd such as was always present at the supper of the King, so dense that it could with difficulty be passed through? How, in spite of a circle of accomplices, could a movement of the arms necessary for such a throw escape all eyes? The Duc de Gesvres was in waiting. ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon

... Indeed I was surprised to learn that we were quite at the edge of the rough Western frontier, for in but one night's journey we were to reach the American mountains to visit some people who inhabited a camp in their dense wilds. ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson

... passage closed upon him, and he found himself in such dense darkness that there was not a single glimmer of light through the whole space. The ground as he advanced was even, and for the first few steps he could walk upright, so that it did not seem inconvenient. Suddenly, however, he came to a gradual declivity, and after a ...
— Eastern Tales by Many Story Tellers • Various

... that it is impossible for us to comprehend the full duration of the slow process which constructed the burial shrouds of these creatures of long ago. We try to picture the earth and its inhabitants as they were when lizards were the highest forms of animals, and we wonder how life was lived in the dense forests of the coal age. Science can never learn all about the ancient history of the earth and of the organisms of bygone times; yet it has been able to accomplish much through its endeavors to reconstruct the past, ...
— The Doctrine of Evolution - Its Basis and Its Scope • Henry Edward Crampton

... isolation; and inhaling at the same time long and deep draughts of the delicious moorland air, unmistakably impregnated now with breaths of ozone. My eyes wandering to the horizon, I detected, on the very margin of the moorland, a dense clump of trees, which I instantly associated with the spinney in my old friend Mr. Porter's story, and, determining that the renowned spinney should be my goal, I at once aimed for it, vigorously striking out along the path which ...
— Scottish Ghost Stories • Elliott O'Donnell

... 4 feet wide. On this further back border are placed the largest trees only, having the most head room—the smallest pots standing on the front. The appearance of the house, when seen by the writer on the 7th of April, 1860, was truly magnificent, being one dense mass of bloom, (except some of the early kinds, on which the fruit was already set,) resembling a green-house of Azaleas in full flower. Peaches, apricots, nectarines, plums and figs are embraced in the assortment, ...
— Woodward's Graperies and Horticultural Buildings • George E. Woodward

... writer was once climbing the Cima di Jazzi, one of the mountains in the chain of Monte Rosa. When nearly at the top, they entered a dense fog. Presently, the guides faced right about, and grounded their axes on the frozen snow-slope. The brother—seeing the slope still beyond, and not knowing it was merely the cornice, overhanging a precipice ...
— The Wonders of Prayer - A Record of Well Authenticated and Wonderful Answers to Prayer • Various

... of many waterfalls, he saw—Great Heavens above!—the dancing of white forms ... or was it only mist the sunshine painted against Pelion?... "Methought, among the lawns together, we wandered underneath the young grey dawn. And multitudes of dense white fleecy clouds shepherded by the slow, ...
— Four Weird Tales • Algernon Blackwood

... though Jeanie looked as if she would have preferred to accompany him to the music-room. It was little cooler on the terrace than in the house. The heat brooded over all, dense, ...
— The Bars of Iron • Ethel May Dell

... developed, though still lean in the flanks as a wolf-hound. The stern expression about his mouth was more decided and unvarying than ever—an effect which was increased by the heavy mustache that, dense as a Cuirassier's of the Old Guard, fell over his lip in a black cascade. It was the face of one of those stone Crusaders who look up at us from their couches in the Round ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence

... for all to huddle closely together in a circle, lie down on a blanket with their heads outward, and be covered with a second blanket. Mr. Eddy arranged his companions, spread the blanket over them, and creeping under the coverlid, completed the circle. The wind swept the drifting snow in dense clouds over their heads. The chilling air, already white with falling snowflakes, became dense with the drifting masses. In a little while the devoted band were completely hidden from wind, or storm, or piercing cold, by a deep covering of ...
— History of the Donner Party • C.F. McGlashan

... utmost haste proceeded toward the city. Eudora, fearful of being overtaken, implored Geta to seek refuge behind the pillars of Poseidon's temple. Carefully concealing themselves in the dense shadow, they remained without speaking, and almost without breathing, until their pursuers had passed by. The moment these were out of hearing, they quitted their hiding-place, and walked swiftly along the Piraeus. Intense ...
— Philothea - A Grecian Romance • Lydia Maria Child

... town with no sentimental associations. Schiller, to be sure, once lived there, but he had a bad time of it, in spite of the slippers and things with which Dora and Minna Stock tried to mollify his existence. The smoke which hangs over the Leipsic chimney-tops is dense, prosaic smoke, which refuses to fashion itself into fairy forms or airy castles in obedience to romantic fancy. Mr. Leonard Grover actually swore (in Latin, of course, for he was too well-mannered to swear in English), that it was the most irritating and pestiferous ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 10 • Various

... and say that one of the most ready means of increasing the crop-producing power of the soil is by adding fertilizers to grass land. The large number of plants per acre enables the plants to utilize the fertilizer to the highest degree, and plowing under the resulting dense sod is one of the most effective methods of enriching ...
— The Young Farmer: Some Things He Should Know • Thomas Forsyth Hunt

... In the dense darkness of my bedroom, I lay still and considered. I was alone, or rather, should have been alone in the old house I had bought the day before. The agent assured me that it had been unoccupied for years. Who, then, ...
— The Thing from the Lake • Eleanor M. Ingram

... farmhouse. There he saw a sentinel, who was placed on guard over a pile of apples. He soon convinced himself that this man was indifferent to his movements, and, watching his opportunity, when the man's back was turned, he slipped beyond the orchard, into a dense swamp, covered with a thick undergrowth of saplings and bushes. Here there was a huge prostrate log twenty feet in length, curtained with a dense tangle of ...
— American Prisoners of the Revolution • Danske Dandridge

... wore away, something else came in view. Masses of brownish seaweed, supported by small, berry-like bladders, began drifting by. Far apart at first, they began getting more and more dense, till at last, with a thrill, he realized that they were drawing into that strange area known as ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science January 1931 • Various



Words linked to "Dense" :   stupid, density



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