Free translatorFree translator
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

  Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Lurch   /lərtʃ/   Listen
Lurch

verb
(past & past part. lurched; pres. part. lurching)
1.
Walk as if unable to control one's movements.  Synonyms: careen, keel, reel, stagger, swag.
2.
Move abruptly.  Synonyms: pitch, shift.
3.
Move slowly and unsteadily.
4.
Loiter about, with no apparent aim.  Synonym: prowl.
5.
Defeat by a lurch.  Synonym: skunk.



Related search:



WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |





"Lurch" Quotes from Famous Books



... to say, at least to the successful one. He bent over the dead panther, and examined it with curiosity. Will was loudly lamenting the fact that once again he had found himself left in the lurch. ...
— The Outdoor Chums After Big Game - Or, Perilous Adventures in the Wilderness • Captain Quincy Allen

... a great deal of rain, all through the spring and into the summer. Strawberries, that generally do well in wet weather, did not bless us with their usual abundance. Currants and gooseberries also left us in the lurch—but the Snyder blackberries were loaded with luscious fruit, while raspberries—why the berries of the Golden Queen bent the stalks down with their weight. Prof. Hansen's Sunbeams were covered with berries, ...
— Trees, Fruits and Flowers of Minnesota, 1916 • Various

... you find anything about a savings bank that has failed and left the people in the lurch for their money, you show it to me. Savings banks don't ...
— The Young Engineers in Arizona - Laying Tracks on the Man-killer Quicksand • H. Irving Hancock

... Lord Chetwynde and Hilda. Outside was the driver. Hilda was just pointing out to Lord Chetwynde some peculiar tint in the purple of the distant Apennines when suddenly the carriage gave a lurch, and with a wild bound, the horses started off at full speed down the road. Something had happened. Either the harness had given way or the horses were frightened; at any rate, they were running away at a fearful pace, and the driver, erect on his seat, ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille

... happy, cast Jonah off, and stood for a moment like the Leaning Tower of Pisa. Jonah watched anxiously, expecting him to fall, but all at once, with a forward lurch Dad broke into a run, safe on his feet as a spinning top. Jonah had forgotten Dad's run, famous throughout all ...
— Jonah • Louis Stone

... but it is an open question whether he did so because he was guilty or because he feared an even heavier punishment if he denied it. For Domitian was in a great rage and was boiling over with fury because his witnesses had left him in the lurch. His mind was set upon burying alive Cornelia, the chief of the Vestal Virgins, as he thought to make his age memorable by such an example of severity, and, using his authority as Chief Pontiff, or rather exercising the cruelty of a tyrant and the wanton caprice of a ruler, he ...
— The Letters of the Younger Pliny - Title: The Letters of Pliny the Younger - - Series 1, Volume 1 • Pliny the Younger

... clutching arms. He did stand on his head, more or less, his tow-beard came off and got in his mouth, and his cheek slid along against padding. His nose buried itself in a bag of sand. The car gave a violent lurch, ...
— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells

... Masterton, the single erect, passionate figure of that confused medley of kneeling worshipers, had reached the culminating pitch of his irresistible exhortatory power. Sighs and groans were beginning to respond to his appeals, when the reverend brother was seen to lurch heavily forward and fall to ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte

... it was a long one, and the slack of it was now in the water, so that Dickory had to pull hard upon it before he could grasp enough of it to pass around his body. He had scarcely done this, and had made a knot in it, before a lurch of the brig brought a strain on the rope, and ...
— Kate Bonnet - The Romance of a Pirate's Daughter • Frank R. Stockton

... "you are nice, you are, to have left me in the lurch like this! It was impossible for my carriage to get near, so I've had to come on foot through all those horrid people who have been ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola

... turned to sleet. The sleet froze to the rotting sails, to the ice-logged hull, to the wan yardarms frost-white like ghosts. At every lurch of the sea slush slithered down from the rigging on the shivering seamen. The roar of the breakers told of a shallow sea, yet mist veiled the sky, and they were above waters whose shallows drop to sudden abysmal depths of three thousand fathoms. Sheets of smoking vapor ...
— Vikings of the Pacific - The Adventures of the Explorers who Came from the West, Eastward • Agnes C. Laut

... awakened in the night, every muscle taut and striving, to feel your self straining against the opposing football line that held like a stone-wall—or as firmly as the headboard of your bed? Or voluntarily recall the movement of the boat when you cried inwardly, "It's all up with me!" The perilous lurch of a train, the sudden sinking of an elevator, or the unexpected toppling of a rocking-chair may ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein

... position, for he was the actual owner of the stock of scenery and other appurtenances taken over from the original Academy. He seems to have lent the theatre to Buononcini for some performances of Griselda, and, when the lease came to an end, it was Heidegger who left Handel in the lurch and allowed a ...
— Handel • Edward J. Dent

... some help. He brought along a ninepin, and they fought two against one; the poor ninepin was nearly done for, and he rolled away under the bed and fainted. Then Nobbles slunk off and left him in the lurch. And this morning the young villain thinks he will play me a trick, so he put two marbles in my boots. He must have done that in the early hours before ...
— 'Me and Nobbles' • Amy Le Feuvre

... walls. Whenever one of the omnibuses lumbered away on its journey, she followed it with her eyes, as a government clerk at Cayenne or Noumea gazes after the steamer about to return to France; she made the trip with it, knew just where it would stop, at what point it would lurch around a corner, grazing ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... cylinders with more menacing aspect, than those which lay quietly behind us, ready to explode—unconscious instruments as they were—and carry any of the party into the next world upon the slightest lurch of ...
— Acadia - or, A Month with the Blue Noses • Frederic S. Cozzens

... you've passed me that 'friend' handbill," raged the selectman. "Advertisin' yourself, be ye? And then leavin' me in the lurch! This is a friendly town, that's what it is. Constables, voters, firemen, and you yourself dump the whole burden of this onto me, and then stand back and growl at me! Well, if this thing is up to me alone and friendless and single-handed, I know what I'm goin' to do!" His tone had the grate ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day

... game well, but that will not winne: the chance thou throwest must accord with thy play. Examine this; play never so surely, play never so probably, unlesse the chance thou castest, lead thee forward to advantage, all hazards are losses, and thy sure play leaves thee in the lurch. The sum of this is set down in Ecclesiastes chap. 9. v. 11. The race is not to the swift, nor the battell to the strong: neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time ...
— Machiavelli, Volume I - The Art of War; and The Prince • Niccolo Machiavelli

... consequently never think of ministers, India directors, and such honest men. Mrs. Clive has been broken open, and Mr. Raftor miscarried, and died of the fright. Lady Browne has lost all her liveries and her temper, and Lady Blandford has cried her eyes out on losing a lurch and almost her wig. In short, as I do not love exaggeration, I do not believe there have been above threescore highway robberies within this week, fifty-seven houses that have been broken open, and two hundred and thirty that are to be stripped on the first ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole

... pie for supper. A few families were very poor, and there I was lucky to get bread and potatoes. In one house I remember the bedstead was very shaky, and in the middle of the night, as I turned over, it began to sway and lurch, and presently all went down in a heap. But I clung to the wreck till morning, and ...
— Our Friend John Burroughs • Clara Barrus

... gutter perfectly insensible. The remainder, who could only drink what was left, became more and more riotous, and a general sack of all purple property was imminent. Mr. Allen was at the "Cross Keys," but George was at home, and as he watched the scene he saw the mob take a kind of lurch and sway along the street which led to Mr. Broad's. He thought he heard Mr. Broad's name, and in an instant he had buttoned-up his coat, taken the heaviest stick he could find, and was off. He had the greatest difficulty in forcing his way, and he did not ...
— The Revolution in Tanner's Lane • Mark Rutherford

... more keen and grave and I could feel his fingers gently around my arm as if he feared my turning faint again. Indeed the room around me seemed unreal, but what had happened in the street was still fearfully clear. It was cut into my mind as if it were still before my eyes, the toppling lurch of the falling body, the silk hat rolling into the gutter, and then that fine terrible gentleman that had sprung out after. The moment had stamped him as clear in my memory as years could have done. I could tell how very tall he was, how ...
— The Other Side of the Door • Lucia Chamberlain

... known it, and the countryside may have undergone since then such changes as bewildered him. Or it may be that fear dulled his wits, and lured him into taking what may have seemed the safer rather than the likelier road. But this I know, that as night was falling my carriage halted with a lurch, and as I put forth my head I was confronted by my trembling intendant, his great fat face gleaming whitely in the gloom above the lawn collar on ...
— Bardelys the Magnificent • Rafael Sabatini

... called out brightly, to an old woman who was sitting outside her cottage door. 'How are you feeling? I must come—— ' but the sentence remained unfinished, for at this point the donkey gave a violent lurch forward, then, putting his head down, commenced to kick just as hard as ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various

... did walk Leweezy to th' church, An fowk wink'd an dropt monny a hint, Aw knew tha'd nooan leav me i'th lurch, For a dowdy like her wi a squint. An Ellen at lives at th' yard end, May simper an innocent look, But aw think shoo'll ha' farther to fend, Befoor shoo's a ...
— Yorkshire Lyrics • John Hartley

... chanced to hear him say his typesetter was bound to leave him in the lurch, and he didn't know where he'd get a man by the first of the month," Bandy-legs ...
— In Camp on the Big Sunflower • Lawrence J. Leslie

... will find my bullet-brands in their foreheads. The horses had started forward at the shots, and as the wheelers fell, the coach gave a lurch which sent the two men from the top to the ground just as ...
— Buffalo Bill's Spy Trailer - The Stranger in Camp • Colonel Prentiss Ingraham

... that afternoon. The painful impression made by this catastrophe was heightened by the knowledge that it might have been prevented. The steamer amidships was filled up to her rail with coal, and the boy was thrown overboard by a sudden lurch while walking upon it. Immediately afterwards, lines were rove along the stanchions, to prevent the same thing happening again. The few feet of deck upon which we could walk were slippery with ice, and we kept below, smoking ...
— Northern Travel - Summer and Winter Pictures of Sweden, Denmark and Lapland • Bayard Taylor

... her mother and father with the dread that she would leave the family in the lurch and enter a house of prostitution. She recounted with the utmost detail how the madam of a house in Longworth Street came from time to time to her counter in the perfumery and soap department—and urged her to "stop making a fool of yourself and come get good money for your looks before you ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips

... which had been almost upright just a few seconds before, suddenly lurch over away from us. Then she seemed to stand upright in the water, and the next instant the keel of the vessel caught the keel of the boat in which we were floating, and we were thrown into the water. ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various

... undoubtedly, consent to all our plans. We shall have the Connetable on our side; Monseigneur has just been to see him at Chantilly; but he does not wish to move without an order from his masters. Being the uncle of Monseigneur, he will not leave him in the lurch; and this generous prince does not hesitate to fling himself into danger to force Anne de Montmorency to a decision. All is prepared, and we have cast our eyes on you as the means of communicating to Queen Catherine ...
— Catherine de' Medici • Honore de Balzac

... saw her a wrack, as plainly, ay, as plainly as you may see the stump of that mast; and, I will own it, for it's as natural to love the craft you sail in as it is to love one's self, I will own that my manhood fetched a heavy lee-lurch ...
— The Pilot • J. Fenimore Cooper

... our example. But when the Portuguese had passed our consort and the two French ships, firing as they went along, all of these ships and our own pinnace continued to seawards, leaving us in the laps, (lurch.) We continued our course after the enemy, keeping the weather gage, that we might succour the French admiral who was to leeward of them all; and on coming up with him, all the enemies ships bore down and gave him their broadsides, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VII • Robert Kerr

... dyspeptic here than in Great Britain. One's appetite is keener and more ravenous, and the temptation to bolt one's food greater. The American is not so hearty an eater as the Englishman, but the forces of his body are constantly leaving his stomach in the lurch, and running off into his hands and feet and head. His eyes are bigger than his belly, but an Englishman's belly is a deal bigger than his eyes, and the number of plum puddings and the amount of Welsh rarebit he ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs

... during the whole voyage. They took in and set sail very cleverly in a short time, and would climb out along a boom, reeve a rope through the block, and come back with the rope in their teeth, though at each lurch the performer was dipped in the sea. The sailor and carpenter, though anxious to do their utmost, had a week's severe illness each, and were ...
— A Popular Account of Dr. Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries • David Livingstone

... doubt many of them entertained the views that Brant long afterwards openly expressed to Sir John Johnson. "In the first place," said the great Mohawk, "the Indians were engaged in a war to assist the English—then left in the lurch at the peace, to fight alone until they could make peace for themselves. After repeatedly defeating the armies of the United States, so that they sent Commissioners to endeavor to get peace, the Indians were so advised ...
— The Land of the Miamis • Elmore Barce

... care what the others say. I thought you were suffering—" But at that moment the boat gave a lurch which threw her across the threshold into Monty's arms. They crashed against the wall, and he held her a moment and forgot the storm. When she drew away from him she showed him the open door and freedom. She ...
— Brewster's Millions • George Barr McCutcheon

... behold as soon as the southeaster ceased to whip the Gulf,—the Bluebird and the Blackbird, Jack MacRae's two salmon carriers. They were walking up to Squitty in eight-knot boots. Through his glass Gower watched them lift and fall, lurch and yaw, running with short bursts of speed on the crest of a wave, laboring heavily in the trough, plowing steadily up through uneasy waters to take the salmon that should go to feed the ...
— Poor Man's Rock • Bertrand W. Sinclair

... Peter and racing for the ferry, had, under Peter's advice, formulated in his mind any plan by which he could break down Ruth's resolve to leave both her father and himself in the lurch and go out in the gay world alone, there was one factor which he must have left out of his ...
— Peter - A Novel of Which He is Not the Hero • F. Hopkinson Smith

... grievances or disclose his plans with regard to the struggle of the previous day. That he was brilliantly assisted by the French and German freelances was as surely demonstrated as the fact of his having been left more or less in the lurch by his countrymen when they saw that to get into Mafeking was one thing, but to stay there or get out of it again was quite a different matter. In a few words he told us, in fairly good English, how it had been ...
— South African Memories - Social, Warlike & Sporting From Diaries Written At The Time • Lady Sarah Wilson

... Cock, "that is just my case, for, It's far better to sit on one's own perch, for then one can never be left in the lurch; besides, All cocks crow loudest at home. If I may have your leave, I will come ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various

... before they could persuade Bartja to leave his friends in the lurch, but their entreaties and representations at last took effect, and he went down towards the river to take a boat for Naukratis, Darius and Syloson going at the same time to buy the ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... on the following Sunday Harold Beecham reappeared at Caddagat and remained from three in the afternoon until nine at night. Uncle Julius and Frank Hawden were absent. The weather had taken a sudden backward lurch into winter again, so we had a fire. Harold sat beside it all the time, and interposed yes and no at the proper intervals in grannie's brisk business conversation, but he never addressed one word to me beyond "Good afternoon, Miss Melvyn," on his arrival, and "Good ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin

... ta bottom; I tell ye true! Tha Acltar piece wi' Peter war now naw libel Upon tha church, Which booAth athin an, tower an all, athout Look'd like a well-dressed maid in pride about; Tha walls rejAcic'd wi' texts took vrom tha Bible. Bit vor all that, thAc left en in tha lurch; I bag your pardon. I mean, of Acll tha expense thAc ood'n pAc ...
— The Dialect of the West of England Particularly Somersetshire • James Jennings

... sat in a high-backed chair before the fire with his heels on the fender. He was engaged in solemnly perusing the leading editorial in the evening paper, when all at once the table at his side gave a sudden lurch, the lamp slid into his lap, setting the paper on fire, and, before the Squire realized his situation, the flames singed his whiskers, and made his ...
— Paul Prescott's Charge • Horatio Alger

... William grew jealous, and so went away; Harry got tired of wooing; And Tom having teased her to fix on the day, Received but a frown for so doing; So, 'mongst all her lovers, quite left in the lurch, She pined every night on her pillow; And meeting one day a pair going to church, Turned away, and died under a willow. Heigho! I am afraid Too many lovers will ...
— Jacob Faithful • Captain Frederick Marryat

... locked them, taking time to do it silently. Then, in a glow of satisfaction with his work, he climbed slowly into the car, settled down luxuriously in the driver's seat, eased off the brake, and with a little lurch of his body forward started the car ...
— Cabin Fever • B. M. Bower

... but overflowed with tenderness for the captain—his son-in-law. There was no way out of it: he must marry Athalie. The captain has long been betrothed to Athalie, to whom a dangerous rival pays daily court—a rich man whom he ought to hate, because he left him in the lurch in the quarrel between the treasury and the war office, and yet the captain is so fond of his old friend that he is capable of forgiving him if he ran away with ...
— Timar's Two Worlds • Mr Jkai

... on your shillings! 'Sblood, a while ago, before he had me in the lurch, who but my cousin Prodigo? You are welcome, my cousin Prodigo. Take my cousin Prodigo's horse. A cup of wine for my cousin Prodigo. Good faith, you shall sit here, good cousin Prodigo. A clean trencher for my cousin Prodigo. Have a special care of my cousin Prodigo's ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various

... Flemish church, And at a Popish altar kneel? O do not leave me in the lurch,— I'll ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton

... just thinking how busy drink and the devil were at that very moment in the cabin of the Hispaniola, when I was surprised by a sudden lurch of the coracle. At the same moment she yawed sharply and seemed to change her course. The speed in the ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester

... announcement, Jane Tebbs gave a little lurch and leant against the wall in speechless horror; and yet in her heart she had been more than half expecting—we will not say hoping for—some tragedy. Then she made a rush to the store-room, where Miss Mitty, invested ...
— The Road to Mandalay - A Tale of Burma • B. M. Croker

... to lurch and heave on its axis. Vivid lights crossed and criss-crossed the atomic heavens. The fissures in the ground appeared now as black canals. The lower part of the circle of boulders disappeared. Off to the right came despairing screams. ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, October, 1930 • Various

... woe! O woe! they are all with cub, and are come here to whelp: new brutes keep sprouting out of the old ones, and the child is always wilder and frightfuller than its dam. My wits are leaving me in the lurch. And then this music into the bargain, this ringing and piping, and laughter athwart it, and funeral hymns enough to make one cry! Look master! look! the walls, the rooms are stretching themselves, and spreading ...
— The Old Man of the Mountain, The Lovecharm and Pietro of Abano - Tales from the German of Tieck • Ludwig Tieck

... But I may not be able to serve him there. It will grieve me to leave the boys in the lurch; they've confided in me a ...
— Blacksheep! Blacksheep! • Meredith Nicholson

... stand watch and watch, keep at night a look-out on the cat-heads, gangways, quarters, and halliards, where they are required to "sing out" their stations every half hour, to be sure that they are awake. Many are the instances of boys falling asleep, and being awakened by a lurch of the ship, singing out at the wrong time, and once a sleepy look-out reported "Light, ho!" and to the officer's "Where away?" was obliged to answer, "It's the ...
— Harper's Young People, November 11, 1879 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... Tramp, and owned by the recognized leader of the sextette, Jack Stormways. It united the good qualities of both the other boats in that it was fast and at the same time steady. While on occasion the cigar-shaped Wireless could leave Jack in the lurch, and the beamy Comfort give more elbow room, taken as a whole the Tramp was the ideal cruiser; and both the other skippers knew it away down in their secret hearts, though always ready to stand up for ...
— Motor Boat Boys Down the Coast - or Through Storm and Stress to Florida • Louis Arundel

... William," said Dolphin, suiting the action to the word; and while the two trusty comrades filled their pockets with gold and bank-notes, Carnac slunk from the room. With a heavy lurch the digger tumbled up against the wall, and then ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace

... lurch, a twist, a sharp descent, and the breathless horses halted on the bank of a stream whose shallow waters were crowded with flatboats, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various

... — N. obliquity, inclination, slope, slant, crookedness &c adj.; slopeness^; leaning &c v.; bevel, tilt; bias, list, twist, swag, cant, lurch; distortion &c 243; bend &c (curve) 245; tower of Pisa. acclivity, rise, ascent, gradient, khudd^, rising ground, hill, bank, declivity, downhill, dip, fall, devexity^; gentle slope, rapid slope, easy ascent, easy descent; shelving beach; talus; monagne Russe [Fr.]; facilis descensus ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... completed in two days, and she and another vessel, that had been detained owing to her pump gear not being ready, were towed out of the harbour in the face of a strong easterly wind and a lowering glass. The portly, ruddy appearance and pronounced lurch or roll of Captain Thomas Arlington left no doubt as to his calling. He spoke with an assumed accent which resembled the amalgamation of several dialects. He was usually called Tom by his intimate friends, but mere acquaintances were not permitted to address him in any such familiar ...
— The Shellback's Progress - In the Nineteenth Century • Walter Runciman

... the love of life was too strong in me to let me face death. I tried to live dishonestly, and I led a wild, rackety, dare-devil kind of a life, amongst men who found they had a skilful tool, and knew how to use me. They did use me to their heart's content, and left me in the lurch when danger came. I was arrested for forgery, tried, found guilty, and transported for life. Don't flinch, girl! don't turn so white! You must have heard something of this whispered and hinted at often enough before to-day. You may as well know the whole truth. I was ...
— Henry Dunbar - A Novel • M. E. Braddon

... cried the lieutenant. "No, sir. What! Do you want to leave me in the lurch?" Then, knowing from old experience the jealous motive which animated the lad who was left out of the commission, the officer clapped the midshipman on one shoulder warmly. "No, no, Roberts; I can't spare you. I want your help, my lad; and besides, ...
— Hunting the Skipper - The Cruise of the "Seafowl" Sloop • George Manville Fenn

... alongside the lugger, rose, balanced skilfully, seized his moment, and stepped safely across her gunwale. A slight lurch caused him to throw his arms out to regain his poise; the line by which he still held the canoe straightened out its length and slipped from his grasp. In an instant the pirogue was gone. A glimmer of lightning showed her driving off sidewise before the wind. But it revealed another sight also. ...
— Bonaventure - A Prose Pastoral of Acadian Louisiana • George Washington Cable

... to be a virgin, explained to him that she preferred coitus in ore vulvae to real intercourse because the latter was over before she had time to obtain the orgasm (or, as she put it, "the big bird has fled from the cage and I am left in the lurch"), while in the other way she was able to experience the orgasm twice before her partner reached the climax. "This reminds me," my correspondent continues, "that a Milanese cocotte once told me that she much liked intercourse with Jews because, on account of the circumcised penis being less ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 3 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... was conscious that David had approached, paused, and was scrutinizing her companion with unusual interest. Seized with a sudden desire to see the two men together, Christie beckoned; and when he obeyed, she introduced him, drew him into the conversation, and then left him in the lurch by falling silent and ...
— Work: A Story of Experience • Louisa May Alcott

... been a secret to me, namely, that the prince had, without the knowledge of his other brothers, received from his sister, the reigning ——- of ————, considerable loans, which she would gladly double if his court left him in the lurch. This sister, who, as you know, is a pious enthusiast, thinks that the large savings which she makes at a very economical court cannot be deposited in better hands than in those of a brother whose wise benevolence she well knows, and ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller

... Cap'n!" he bellowed, "studden sails set an' drawing, tho' obleeged to haul my wind, d'ye see, on account o' this here spar o' mine a-running foul o' the furrers." Having said the which, he advanced again with a heave to port and a lurch to starboard very like a ship in a heavy sea; this peculiarity of gait was explained as he hove into full view, for then Barnabas saw that his left leg was gone from the knee and had been replaced ...
— The Amateur Gentleman • Jeffery Farnol et al

... Mark clamped the manhole cover on. The professor took one last look at the various levers and handles, and then turned the wheel that admitted water to all four tanks. There was a hissing sound as the sea water rushed in, and the Porpoise gave a sudden lurch. ...
— Under the Ocean to the South Pole - The Strange Cruise of the Submarine Wonder • Roy Rockwood

... so abruptly, master," said Segrave, whose eyes shone with an unnatural glitter, and whose cheeks were covered with a hectic flush, "ye cannot leave us all in the lurch." ...
— The Nest of the Sparrowhawk • Baroness Orczy

... bounced, creaked, skidded on the long runners he had fitted to her, and with a lurch came to rest not ten yards from ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England

... and ascertain what has become of our young adventurers and their rugged old companion. We left them sitting on the bow—or rather perched there in positions none too secure in case of a sudden lurch of the ship. ...
— The Boy Aviators' Polar Dash - Or - Facing Death in the Antarctic • Captain Wilbur Lawton

... like a Parson, that no Souls does Lurch, And keeps the true Decorum of the Church; That always preaches by Just Reason's Rule; But for a Hypocrite, a Canting Fool, Who, cramm'd with Malice, takes the Rebels side, And would, for Conscience, palm on us his Pride, Let him, for Stipend, to the Gubbins* sail, ...
— Essays on the Stage • Thomas D'Urfey and Bossuet

... at them with large, black eyes. The door clanged shut behind them; they heard the faint hiss of inrushing air, and the inner door opened; but their enveloping suits remained stretched almost as tightly as ever. They felt the floor lurch beneath their feet, and a little weight was granted them as the space-ship got under way. Stevens waved his arms vigorously at the stranger, pointing backward toward where he supposed their own ...
— Spacehounds of IPC • Edward Elmer Smith

... way of competition, some in drawing and some in colour. And since many thought that they had the first claim, some through interest and others because they held themselves to be most worthy of such a commission, Girolamo was left in the lurch; and considering that he had been wronged, not long afterwards he departed from Bologna. And thus the envy of others raised him to such a height of prosperity as he had never thought of; since, if he had been chosen for the work, it would have impeded the blessings that his good ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 05 ( of 10) Andrea da Fiesole to Lorenzo Lotto • Giorgio Vasari

... buckets; to herd the stiffened animals and place them convenient; to swallow our hot coffee and our pork and beans, and flapjacks when the cooks were in the humor; to hook the teams to the wagons and break corral, and amidst cracking of lashes stretch out into column, then to lurch and groan onward, at snail's pace, through the constantly increasing day until soon we also were wrung and parched by a relentless heat succeeding ...
— Desert Dust • Edwin L. Sabin

... his mouth.... While the train pulled out, she stood on the rear platform, looking, looking. She was very still. All motion, all expression seemed centered in the steady gaze which dwindled away from him, became vague ... featureless ... vanished in a lurch of ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams

... other vultures were appearing. Being desperately anxious to get the thing over one way or another, at the proper moment I took the first of them. Again I covered it dead and pressed. Again as the gun exploded I saw that backward lurch of the bird, and heard the clap of the air upon its wings. Then—oh horror!—this aasvogel turned quietly, and began to mount the ladder of the sky in the same fashion as it had descended. I had missed ...
— Marie - An Episode in The Life of the late Allan Quatermain • H. Rider Haggard

... But really it was a monstrous thing. I was coming to see you, as I've just said, Dean, having forgotten all about this ridiculous procession. I was held up by the crowd just below the shop here. Then suddenly, as the animals were passing, the elephant made a lurch towards me—positively, I'm not exaggerating—seized my ...
— The Cathedral • Hugh Walpole

... the loss of an eye through some operation by which marks of violence had been left upon the surrounding tracts of his rugged countenance. He was a short, thick-set man, with bow-legs like those of a bull-terrier, and walked with a heavy lurch in his gait. William's head was of immense size in proportion to his stature. Indeed, that important joint of his person must have been a division by about two of what artists term heroic proportions, or eight heads to a height,—a standard ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 41, March, 1861 • Various

... no, I can't leave you in the lurch that way, my dear fellow. Besides it would break Agnes all up. We must do something. I think either one of those coats would go perfectly well; but if you're so particular about your personal appearance, there's only one thing left. We must get this ...
— Evening Dress - Farce • W. D. Howells

... moment the Croonah gave a shiver, and Luke looked round hastily. He ran to the rail and looked over with a quick sailor's glance fore and aft. He turned towards Agatha again, but before he could reach her the steamer gave a lurch over to starboard. The deck seemed to rise between them. For a moment Agatha stood above him, then she half ran, half fell, down the short steep incline into his arms. Luke was ready for her, with one foot against the rail— for the deck was at an angle of thirty and more; no ...
— The Grey Lady • Henry Seton Merriman

... face the chance of crossing the Channel, and while, already in the car, they were actually discussing this point, their restraining rope broke, and they were launched unceremoniously into the skies. This occasioned an unexpected lurch to the car, which threw Mr. Glaisher among his instruments, to the immediate destruction ...
— The Dominion of the Air • J. M. Bacon

... I remembered John Wesley's "sulphur and supplication," and so many other cases where ministers had meddled with medicine,—sometimes well and sometimes ill, but, as a general rule, with a tremendous lurch to quackery, owing to their very loose way of admitting evidence,—that I could not help ...
— The Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.)

... topped with snow. The ship rose to it as though she had soared on wings, and for a moment rested poised upon the foaming crest as if she had been a great sea-bird. Before we could draw breath a heavy gust struck her, another roller took her unfairly under the weather bow, she gave a toppling lurch, and filled her decks. Captain Allistoun leaped up, and fell; Archie rolled ...
— The Nigger Of The "Narcissus" - A Tale Of The Forecastle • Joseph Conrad

... minister sympathized with Black's desire, prudence forbade that his method should be adopted. So from log to log, and from hole to hole, Black plunged and stepped with all the care he could be persuaded to exercise, every lurch of the carryall bringing a scream from Maimie in front and a delighted chuckle from Hughie behind. His delight in the adventure was materially increased ...
— The Man From Glengarry - A Tale Of The Ottawa • Ralph Connor

... longer, and, if not supplied, I shall be obliged to abandon the work. I have not money enough to pay my sailors, joiners, carpenters, and other mechanics, from week to week, and they will all leave me in the lurch, if I leave them unpaid. I have no resource but to rely on your Majesty. Otherwise the ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... crazy nor mistaken. Drawn suddenly out of its blurred obscurity by the powerful lenses, there sprang up before Buck's eyes, sharp and clear in every detail, a big gray motor-car that moved slowly but steadily, with many a bump and sidewise lurch, diagonally across ...
— Shoe-Bar Stratton • Joseph Bushnell Ames

... lurch, and looked round. He saw the head above the gunwale, and the clutching hands on it, and ...
— A Sea Queen's Sailing • Charles Whistler

... ain't more than one of them, for if there happens to be," he said to himself, "I ain't likely to get a chance to reload before they come down on me. It was an infernal mean piece of business in that crowd to sneak off that way and leave me in the lurch just when I was ...
— The Wilderness Fugitives • Edward S. Ellis

... of a few moments only, and soon after the waters of the bay subsided into their naturally tranquil state, leaving us high and dry upon the beach. During her progress toward the beach she struck heavily two or three times; the first lurch carried the rifle gun on the forecastle overboard. Had the ship been carried 10 or 15 feet further out, she must inevitably have been forced over on her beam ends, resulting, I fear, in her total destruction, and in the loss of many lives. Providentially ...
— Scientific American, Vol. 17, No. 26 December 28, 1867 • Various

... unable to push off, and asked her to help, so she stood up and, with the other oar, moved to assist him. The shifting of her weight must have loosened the boat, as at that very moment her brother gave a shove and they shot off the mud with a lurch, sending her with great violence into the bottom of the boat and ...
— Adventures in Many Lands • Various

... half had been made safe, but the smoke was suffocatingly thick and the roar of the oncoming fire rose above the shouts of the fighters. Up galloped the water wagon; made a sharp lurch and turn, and a front wheel collapsed with the shock. The wagon went down at one corner and the barrels were dumped ...
— Dennison Grant - A Novel of To-day • Robert Stead

... Dick. I can't live with a person without trying to like them and wanting them to like me. And then, when the ungrateful things are saucy, or leave me in the lurch as they do half the time, it almost breaks my heart. But I'm thankful to say that in these hard times they won't be apt to leave a good place without ...
— Through the Eye of the Needle - A Romance • W. D. Howells

... and as it was quite impossible to make the captain alter his mind, we felt obliged to promise to go with him. We liked him too much to leave him in the lurch, as he never failed us in any extremity; and so the expedition ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume III (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant

... universe unrolled Before me like a scroll and read thereon Chaos and Doom, where helpless planets whirl Dizzily round and round and round and round, Like tops across a table, gathering speed With every spin, to waver on the edge One instant—looking over—and the next To shudder and lurch forward ...
— Renascence and Other Poems • Edna St. Vincent Millay

... time in order to avoid a large hill on the former and the huge drifts which piled from fence to fence. At first Midnight slowed down to a walk, but at length, becoming a little impatient to get home, she broke into a gentle trot. Then, in the twinkling of an eye, the sleigh gave a great lurch, and before a hand could be raised Dan found himself shooting over the parson and falling headlong into the soft yielding snow. Recovering himself as quickly as possible, and brushing the snow from his mouth, ears and eyes, he groped around to ascertain what had happened. Away in the ...
— The Fourth Watch • H. A. Cody

... godly old chaplain left him in a lurch; The sword I forsook for the sake of the church; He risked the soul, and I ventur'd the body,— then I prov'd ...
— Robert Burns - How To Know Him • William Allan Neilson

... to sew the Bayeux tapestry, I suppose—and graduated at the Frivolity Theatre as a masher. In common with the other gilded youth of the day, he worshipped at the gas-lit shrine of Musette, and the goddess, pleased with his incense, left her other admirers in the lurch, and ran off with fortunate Mr. Whyte. So far as this goes there is nothing to show why the murder was committed. Men do not perpetrate crimes for the sake of light o' loves like Musette, unless, indeed, some wretched youth ...
— The Mystery of a Hansom Cab • Fergus Hume

... safe going if we avoided the ruts. But here the moon failed us; and when Carey lit a lantern to help, it showed us that the carriers had no stomach left in them. One, though the froth froze on him, was sweating like a resty colt. The other two, if we slacked hold on their halter-ropes, would lurch together, halt, and slue neck to neck like a couple of timid dowagers hesitating ...
— Corporal Sam and Other Stories • A. T. Quiller-Couch

... shall depart from Mrs. Waldron's principles and join the doctor in his pet scheme of getting him drunk again. 'In vino veritas,' you know. And we ought to be about it, too, for it won't be long before his discharge comes, and, once away, we should be in the lurch." ...
— The Deserter • Charles King

... enough to show that it was all that the other old house was not. It did not sag, or lurch, or do any of those disreputable things. It stood up as straight and was as firm on its foundations as on the day when its last hand-wrought nail had been driven home, a century or so before. No mistaking its period or architecture—it ...
— Dwellers in Arcady - The Story of an Abandoned Farm • Albert Bigelow Paine

... Halliwell has ventured to give any opinion upon the text, except as to a palpable misprint, here and there. Two of these we have already cited. There is one other,—"p. 46, line 10. Iuconstant.—An error for inconstant." Wherever there is a real difficulty, he leaves us in the lurch. For example, in "What you Will," he prints ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 7, May, 1858 • Various

... off his pony, came to the edge of the cliff, and gave the perspiring tout his hand. With a heave and a lurch Joses scrambled to ...
— Boy Woodburn - A Story of the Sussex Downs • Alfred Ollivant

... mere infant, her brother was holding her on his knee before the great old-fashioned fireplace heaped with burning logs. A sudden noise startled him, and the crowing, restless baby gave an unexpected lurch, and slipped, face downward, into the glowing embers. It was a full minute before the horror-stricken boy could extricate the little creature from the cruel flame that had already done its fatal work. The baby escaped with her life, but was disfigured ...
— A Village Stradivarius • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... a favorable opportunity, Hal gave himself a lurch forward and tumbled out into the snow. But as he did so one of the rear wheels of the coach struck him on the side of the head, and the blow ...
— The Missing Tin Box - or, The Stolen Railroad Bonds • Arthur M. Winfield

... to be nice and friendly to them. I like to be a brother to a girl and to go sailing with her, and fishing, and not have her bother me about her feet getting a little bit wet, and not scream bloody murder when the boat gives a lurch. That's the kind of girl ...
— The Tides of Barnegat • F. Hopkinson Smith

... the Bailie, nervously, as the figure came with a heavy lurch on the pavement. "The faintness may pass off. Take care of your feet," and the Bailie shouldered his double to the ticket-office and propped it against the wall while he went to take ...
— Young Barbarians • Ian Maclaren

... control, now, was rolling furiously, neighing and snapping. The man clung to the reins, keeping his distance, but as the animal gained his feet with a lurch, his finger slipped and he, too, rolled over and over down the little slope to the gravelled path. Stanchon was after the horse before the attendant had picked himself up and was calling ...
— The Strange Cases of Dr. Stanchon • Josephine Daskam Bacon

... dangerous thing to move along from one part of the deck to the other, as this loose accumulation of material, at each successive lurch, would be tossed first one way and then the other. This was one thing that kept the villains at bay, but it prevented us as well as themselves ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: The Tribesmen • Roger Finlay

... suddenly with such force that the stern of it broke through a weak place in the bank, and before the captain could turn off his battery the mules had dashed around the other side of the toll-collector's cabin, and then, making a lurch to the left, they fell over the bank themselves, the line scraping the cabin, the collector, three children and a colored man over with them. By the time the line was cut and the sufferers rescued the mules were drowned and all the water in the canal had gone out through the break. It cost Captain ...
— Elbow-Room - A Novel Without a Plot • Charles Heber Clark (AKA Max Adeler)

... Ole Boy done gone an' turned hisself loose? I hearn the racket, an' I sez to the ole woman, sez I: 'I'll fling the saddle on the gray mar' an' canter to town an' see what in the dingnation the matter is. An' ef the worl's about to fetch a lurch, I'll git me another dram an' die happy,' sez I. Whar's Jack Walthall? He can tell his Uncle ...
— Free Joe and Other Georgian Sketches • Joel Chandler Harris

... above the railing, the top of which was now across the lower end of his abdomen. Gradually he worked his body over, going backward, until there was sufficient excess of weight on the outer side of the rail; and then, with a quick lurch, he raised his head and shoulders and swung into a horizontal position on top of the rail. Of course, he would have fallen to the floor below had it not been for the line which he held in his teeth. ...
— The Ape, the Idiot & Other People • W. C. Morrow

... wheat to feed, or high explosives to slaughter, his fellows. He no longer relies on plants and animals for dyes and perfumes. In short, a chemical discovery may at any moment devastate an immemorial industry and leave both capital and labor in the lurch. The day may not be far distant when, should the chemist learn to control the incredible interatomic energy, the steam engine will seem as complete ...
— The Mind in the Making - The Relation of Intelligence to Social Reform • James Harvey Robinson

... slackened. She stood quite still, staring out to where the Sunderbunds lay hidden under mist; then she put one bare foot upon the lower rail, and swinging herself up, sat sideways, leaning far over; in such a position that the slightest lurch of the ship would have sent her headlong into ...
— Leonie of the Jungle • Joan Conquest

... moments he came running back to her. "That's the way it always is with me! Him first! But after this it's you—and I was leaving you here in the lurch. But I don't know what to do!" He looked at her, then at the broken jumper; he gazed to the north and he stared to the south; in that emergency, his emotions stressed by what she had told him, he was ...
— Joan of Arc of the North Woods • Holman Day

... on them. But there are great chasms in his facts, and consequently in his reasoning, These he fills up by suppositions, which may be as reasonably denied as granted. A sceptical reader, therefore, like myself, is left in the lurch. I acknowledge, however, he makes more use of fact, than any other writer on a theory of the earth. But I give one answer to all these theorists. That is as follows. They all suppose the earth a created existence. They must suppose a creator then; and that he possessed power and wisdom ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson

... friend, be easy. I will not leave you in the lurch. I am not going to marry my man and woman out of hand. An obstacle, of which I suppose you have never heard,—an obstacle entirely new, fresh, and unhackneyed, will arise; so, I pray you, let patience ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various



Words linked to "Lurch" :   mill about, motion, gait, in the lurch, footle, card game, mill around, get the better of, defeat, tarry, loiter, overcome, linger, tilt, lallygag, sway, move, loaf, skunk, licking, shift, locomote, go, lurk, movement, ship, lollygag, swag, cards, travel, walk, motility, mess about, hang around, lounge, rock, stagger



Copyright © 2024 Free Translator.org