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Thaw   /θɔ/   Listen
Thaw

noun
1.
The process whereby heat changes something from a solid to a liquid.  Synonyms: melt, melting, thawing.  "The thawing of a frozen turkey takes several hours"
2.
Warm weather following a freeze; snow and ice melt.  Synonyms: thawing, warming.
3.
A relaxation or slackening of tensions or reserve; becoming less hostile.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Thaw" Quotes from Famous Books



... and came safely to Abbotsford amid all the dulness of a great thaw, which has set the rivers a-streaming in full tide. The wind is ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott

... very pleasant. I have thought of you a great deal, remembering how you suffer from cold in the winter, and hope you are in a warm, comfortable house, have pleasant books to read, and some pleasant friends to see. One does not want many; only a few bright faces to look in now and then, and help thaw the ice with little rills of genial conversation. I have fewer of these than at Rome,—but still several. * * * * * Horace Sumner, youngest son of father's friend, Mr. Charles P. Sumner, lives near us, and comes every evening to read a little while ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli

... there is truth in that assertion; but the same might be remarked of all the camps of the period, notably that of D'Aurelle de Paladines in front of Orleans. Moreover, when a week's snow was followed by a fortnight's thaw, matters could scarcely be different. [From first to last (November 12 to January 7) 1942 cases of illness were treated in the five ambulances of the camp. Among them were 264 cases of small-pox. There were a great many instances of bronchitis and kindred affections, but ...
— My Days of Adventure - The Fall of France, 1870-71 • Ernest Alfred Vizetelly

... Here, final preparations were made for the line, which was visited by officers who reported that the trenches were dry and in good condition. It was very frosty weather at this time, but unfortunately before the Battalion moved up a thaw had set in. The relief of the 5th Yorkshire Regiment will never be forgotten by those of the Battalion who took part in it. Following on the methods adopted by the French the relief took place through very long communication trenches, running from Estrees through ...
— The Story of the 6th Battalion, The Durham Light Infantry - France, April 1915-November 1918 • Unknown

... closer, when it, too, leaned to fall. It hung for a moment over the steep slope, and I could not save myself. The frost had not clamped the over-hang to the solid ground. The last fall rains had cut it under; the first spring thaw would have brought it down, had not my weight been thrown ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten

... a thaw, as you know, and there isn't enough ice in Lake Metoka on which to sail the Bird. I guess Tommy'll have to wait until you get back there, Bert. We'll ...
— The Bobbsey Twins in a Great City • Laura Lee Hope

... eyes grown tired with looking far, All at once appeared an island, A stretching-place for sea-legs, A quiet bed for backs grown stiff On rowing-bench on rolling sea. A place to build a red fire And thaw the blood that ...
— Viking Tales • Jennie Hall

... 1795, after a long continued fall of snow, a sudden thaw raised a heavy flood in the Severn, which carried away many bridges—amongst others one at Bewdley, in Worcestershire,— when Telford was called upon to supply a design for a new structure. At the same time, he was ...
— The Life of Thomas Telford by Smiles • Samuel Smiles

... to get your long chatty letter, and to hear that you are thawing towards science. I almost wish you had remained frozen rather longer; but do not thaw too quickly and strongly. No one can work long as you used to do. Be idle; but I am a pretty man to preach, for I cannot be idle, much as I wish it, and am never comfortable except when at work. The word holiday is written in a dead language ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin

... gold. In her light shoes, and with her black hair loose about her shoulders, she ran out into the rainy yard, fled round the house quickly so that none might see her and spy on them, and plunged down the thaw-wet hillside, crying out with joy, even when she slipped and fell, because her lover's arms would so soon be ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West

... winter spiders are seen running about much, fighting with one another and preparing new webs, there will be cold weather within the next nine days, or from that to twelve: when they again hide themselves there will be a thaw. I have no doubt that much of this power of prophesying the weather is due to a perception of certain atmospheric conditions which escape ourselves, but this perception can only have relation to a certain actual and now ...
— Unconscious Memory • Samuel Butler

... hospitable in her welcome. Olivia felt the hospitality; I felt the frigidity. Julia called her "Mrs. Dobree." It was the first time she had been addressed by that name; and her blush and smile were exquisite to me, but they did not thaw Julia in the least. I began to fear that there would be between them that strange, uncomfortable, east-wind coolness, which so often exists between the two ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • Hesba Stretton

... swollen, gingerly to the floor. He drew them up again with a jerk and sat with his teeth chattering hunched on the edge of the bed. Lyaeus burrowed into the blankets and went back to sleep. For a long while Telemachus could not thaw his frozen wits enough to discover what noise had waked him up. Then it came upon him suddenly that huge rhythms were pounding about him, sounds of shaken tambourines and castanettes and beaten dish-pans and roaring voices. ...
— Rosinante to the Road Again • John Dos Passos

... up in wretched tents and were perished with cold. Furious snowstorms swept during winter over the dreary country and the temperature fell to-67 deg. And what a toil to get hold of the miserable gold! The ground is always frozen up there. To work in it you must first thaw the soil with fire. By degrees the situation improved and a small town grew up on the goldfield, and in a few years the gold won attained to the value of five ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin

... accumulations thaw or fall in the rolling avalance, or are piled up in shining glaciers. Two of these glaciers lie in the broad, rocky cliffs, between the Schreckhorn and the Wetterhorn, near the little town of Grindelwald. ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen

... the voyagers hoped that a thaw would take place, or that wind would break up the ice. But they were disappointed. This was the first touch of the cold hand of winter, and the last day of ...
— Fast in the Ice - Adventures in the Polar Regions • R.M. Ballantyne

... dictating to all Europe: the churches were ordered to toll their only bell, and the gasconades of the bulletin were uncommonly pompous—but the novelty of the event has now subsided, and the conquest of Holland excites less interest than the thaw. Public spirit is absorbed by private necessities or afflictions; people who cannot procure bread or firing, even though they have money to purchase it, are little gratified by reading that a pair of their Deputies ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady

... answered her mother; "he will speak determinedly and decidedly; but, if he acts not in the very moment of forming the resolution, it is no more to be relied on than an icicle in time of thaw. Do thou apprize me, if thou canst, what the Emperor is at present doing, and take my word I will find means to bring him ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott

... Corcoran, "if the water ain't too high, and the ice don't run too swift in the Fork, it'll be all right. But if there's any such mixture of downpour and thaw as there was along the Creek back there, we may have to jump across a gap. ...
— Aladdin & Co. - A Romance of Yankee Magic • Herbert Quick

... or poultry requires more attention than boiling or stewing; it is very important to baste it frequently, and if the meat has been frozen, it should have time to thaw before cooking. Beef, veal, or mutton, that is roasted in a stove or oven requires more flour dredged on it than when cooked before the fire in a tin kitchen. There should be but little water in the dripping pan, as that steams the ...
— Domestic Cookery, Useful Receipts, and Hints to Young Housekeepers • Elizabeth E. Lea

... her bed with one bound. She peeped over Gyp's shoulder. A thaw the day before had made the girls very anxious, but now a sparkling crust covered the snow and the early sun struck coldly across ...
— Highacres • Jane Abbott

... but the foregoing facts are distilled from this great biographical mass by skilful hands, and, like the succeeding pages, will stand for centuries unshaken by the bombardment of the critic, while succeeding years shall try them with frost and thaw, and the tide of time dash high against their massive front, only ...
— Comic History of the United States • Bill Nye

... said grimly. "Well, come in and thaw out; I hope yuh didn't think yuh wouldn't be welcome yuh knew better. You got ...
— Rowdy of the Cross L • B.M. Sinclair, AKA B.M. Bower

... 1850 the sun shone cloudless but wrought no thaw. Even the landscapes of frost on the window-panes did not melt a flower, and the little trees still keep their silvery boughs arched high above the jeweled avenues. During the afternoon a lean hare limped twice ...
— A Kentucky Cardinal • James Lane Allen

... to his victim, "that we Christians keep our promises, which you don't. That fire is going to thaw out your legs and tongue and hands. Hey! hey! I don't see a dripping-pan to put under your feet; they are so fat the grease may put out the fire. Your house must be badly furnished if it can't give its master all he ...
— The Chouans • Honore de Balzac

... great discomfort. The savages, in order to go over the ice more easily, are accustomed to make a kind of wooden sledge, [167] on which they put their loads, which they easily and swiftly drag along. Some days after there was a thaw, which caused us much trouble and annoyance; for we had to go through pine forests full of brooks, ponds; marshes, and swamps, where many trees had been blown down upon each other. This caused us a thousand troubles and embarrassments, ...
— Voyages of Samuel de Champlain V3 • Samuel de Champlain

... is my protectress!' the boy laughed, 'there is!' He stuck his hands into his breeches pocket and pulled out a big fistful of crowns that he had won over-night at dice, and a long and thin Flemish chain of gold. 'I have enow to last me till the thaw,' he said. 'I came to beg my grandfather's blessing on the first ...
— The Fifth Queen • Ford Madox Ford

... come down the river, so the mills had no work to do, for the logs on hand at the beginning of the cold snap had been sawed into long rough planks, and piled in the lumber-yards, ready to be rafted as soon as the thaw came. The cold, still air was sweet with the fragrance of fresh pine boards, and the ground about the mills was covered with sawdust, so that footsteps fell as silently as though on velvet, instead of ringing sharp against ...
— John Ward, Preacher • Margaret Deland

... true, Nor shall my will rebellious prove. Amid the curls of golden hair That wave those beauteous temples round, Cupid spread craftily the snare With which my captive heart he bound: And from those eyes he caught the ray Which thaw'd the ice that fenced my breast, Chasing all other thoughts away, With brightness suddenly imprest. But now that hair of sunny gleam, Ah me! is ravish'd from my sight; Those beauteous eyes withdraw ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch

... just another classmate. Tiger's open friendliness had been like a spring breeze to Dal who was desperately lonely in this world of strangers; their friendship had grown rapidly, and gradually others in the class had begun to thaw enough at least to be civil when Dal was around. Dal had sensed that this change of heart was largely because of Tiger and not because of him, yet he had welcomed it as a change from the previous intolerable coldness even though it left him feeling vaguely uneasy. ...
— Star Surgeon • Alan Nourse

... by our forest-rangers who help the timber jacks build these roads. You see, while frost holds good the heaviest tree trunks can be readily moved over icy swamp bottoms, but in the spring, when thaw and freshets begin, the bottoms are more like a marsh, or shallow lake, than anything else I know of. Then these corduroy roads are a make-shift for hard ground," explained Polly, while Noddy started to clip-clop over ...
— Polly of Pebbly Pit • Lillian Elizabeth Roy

... Horse before the rivers freeze. But I'm getting back here with the thaw. I allow next year I'm taking no sort of chance. This hole in my neck," he went on, indicating the bandage about his throat, "has taught me a lot I didn't know before. The outfit I get around with next year will be big enough to eat up ...
— The Triumph of John Kars - A Story of the Yukon • Ridgwell Cullum

... of it in the literal acceptation; she believed implicitly in the truth of the encomiums he had bestowed, and thought it reasonable he should be rewarded for the justice he had done to her qualifications, which had hitherto been almost altogether overlooked. In short, her heart began to thaw, and her face to hang out the flag of capitulation; which was no sooner perceived by our hero, than he renewed his attack with redoubled fervour, pronouncing in a most vehement tone, "Light of my eyes, and empress of my soul! behold me prostrate at ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett

... of piling it, but the great quantity of snow we usually have, has always seemed to be an insuperable obstacle. It is an advantage to pile it, and to give it one turning, but, on the other hand, the piles made in cold weather freeze through, and they take a provokingly long time to thaw out in the spring. I never found manure piled out of doors to get too ...
— Talks on Manures • Joseph Harris

... that the Finlay water coming down seemed to be discolored. But at first I supposed it was the natural color of that river. So you think there has been a thaw?" ...
— The Young Alaskans on the Trail • Emerson Hough

... recipient earth. All this, for a while, however, produced no very visible effects on the general face of nature; for the melting snow was many hours in becoming saturated with its own and water from above. Nor had our travellers, for the greater part of the day, been much incommoded by the rain, or the thaw, that was in silent, but rapid progress around and beneath them; as their vehicle was a covered one, and as the hard-trodden paths of the road were the last to be affected. But, during the last hour, a great change in the face of the landscape had become ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson

... was more acknowledged and more widely known from the number of persons who were astonished at beholding it. In a certain year, it happened that such a quantity of snow had fallen from heaven, so great was the extent of the thaw when the sun melted it, that the water covered all the ground, and grew to the dimensions of a lake, which, spreading into the village, inundated all the houses, putting even that of Patrick in the greatest danger. But he, being then only ten ...
— The Purgatory of St. Patrick • Pedro Calderon de la Barca

... him grew A lethargy of sense, a trance, And soon imagination threw Before him her wild game of chance. And now upon the snow in thaw A young man motionless he saw, As one who bivouacs afield, And heard a voice cry—Why! He's killed!— And now he views forgotten foes, Poltroons and men of slanderous tongue, Bevies of treacherous maidens young; ...
— Eugene Oneguine [Onegin] - A Romance of Russian Life in Verse • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin

... rendered the latter useless. Previous experience, too, had taught that, when such weather conditions arose, the immense quantities of snow that fall in these regions not only completely covered barbed-wire entanglements, but as repeated snowstorms thickened the mass day by day, and sleet and thaw, caused by an occasional hour's sunshine, hardened it, made it even possible for the enemy's forces to advance securely on it in spite of, and on the very top of, ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume IV (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)

... had been made. The speech was a success, and the programme provided for the entertainment of the orator and his wife included the hospitality of several private houses. Selma felt that she could afford to hold her head high and not to thaw too readily for the benefit of a society which had failed to appreciate her worth when it had the chance. She was the wife now of one of the leading public men of the nation, and in a position to set fashions, not to ask favors. Nevertheless she chose ...
— Unleavened Bread • Robert Grant

... stacks stand amid the deadened trees. Two months have passed, the workmen are at it again. The stacks are torn down, the bundles scattered, the hemp spread out as once before. There to lie till it shall be dew-retted or rotted; there to suffer freeze and thaw, chill rains, locking frosts and loosening snows—all the action of the elements—until the gums holding together the filaments of the fibre rot out and dissolve, until the bast be separated from the woody portion ...
— The Reign of Law - A Tale of the Kentucky Hemp Fields • James Lane Allen

... retains Impression of the feeling in his dream; E'en such am I: for all the vision dies, As 't were, away; and yet the sense of sweet, That sprang from it, still trickles in my heart. Thus in the sun-thaw is the snow unseal'd; Thus in the winds on flitting leaves was lost The Sybil's sentence. O eternal beam! (Whose height what reach of mortal thought may soar?) Yield me again some little particle ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri

... severe, and the thaw did not set in quickly. Now, one Sunday, on their way to mass, the farmers noticed a great flight of crows, who were whirling endlessly above the open field, and then, like a shower of black rain, descended in a heap at the same spot, ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant

... and he began crawling along the gutter through the trickling thaw, pressing himself against the wall. They continued along it for some minutes. He seemed to pass through a hundred stages of misery, to pass minute after minute through a hundred degrees of cold, damp, and exhaustion. In a little while he ceased ...
— When the Sleeper Wakes • Herbert George Wells

... many Martian phenomena.[991] Changes of the hues associated respectively with land and water accompanied in lower latitudes, and were thought to be occasioned by floods ensuing upon this rapid antarctic thaw. It is true that scarcity of moisture would account for the scantiness and transitoriness of snowy deposits easily liquefied because thinly spread. But we might expect to see the whole wintry hemisphere, at any rate, frost-bound, since the sun radiates less than half ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke

... danger of thaw before morning, Jem?"—looking anxiously up into the night, as they rested the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various

... broken cartridge-boxes, and the fragments of gun-carriages and waggons; and water was brought up from the stream. Horse-flesh was soon being roasted, and as hunger and thirst were appeased, the buzz of conversation rose round the fires, and the minds as well as the tongues of men seemed to thaw from their torpor. ...
— Through Russian Snows - A Story of Napoleon's Retreat from Moscow • G. A Henty

... circulated by the million and without challenge. Frank Harris is deprived of a publisher for his "Oscar Wilde: His Life and Confession" by threats of immediate prosecution; the newspapers meanwhile dedicate thousands of columns to the filthy amusements of Harry Thaw. George Moore's "Memoirs of My Dead Life" are bowdlerized, James Lane Allen's "A Summer in Arcady" is barred from libraries, and a book by D. H. Lawrence is forbidden publication altogether; at the same time half a dozen cheap magazines devoted to sensational ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken

... last a thaw set in. The ice and snow began to melt. The brooks and rivulets swiftly carried the water to the ...
— After Long Years and Other Stories • Translated from the German by Sophie A. Miller and Agnes M. Dunne

... hospitalities. The company was extremely entertaining. It comprised Mr. Jerome, celebrated in the legal world, and at that time especially celebrated in connection with a sensational case which was exciting the attention of the public from New York to San Francisco. This was the trial of Thaw for the murder of Stanford White, of which dramatic incident Evelyn Nesbit was the heroine. She was, at least in appearance, little more than a schoolgirl. She had lived with Stanford White, however, ...
— Memoirs of Life and Literature • W. H. Mallock

... lie more off from the sun, and so are more cold and senseless; but was a man in a mountain of ice, yet if the Sun of Righteousness will arise upon him, his frozen heart shall feel a thaw; and thus it hath ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... respond to the smile, though the gracious bearing, the loving, sweet face were beginning very slowly to effect a thaw, for some hard little ice lumps in her heart were melting. The immediate effect of this was, however, so strong a desire to cry that, to steel herself against these untimely tears, she became in manner ...
— How It All Came Round • L. T. Meade

... came here yesterday most comfortably in a "drawing-room car," of which (Rule Britannia!) we bought exclusive possession. —— is rather a depressing feather in the eagle's wing, when considered on a Sunday and in a thaw. Its hotel is likewise a dreary institution. But I have an impression that we must be in the wrong one, and buoy myself up with a devout belief in the other, over the way. The awakening to consciousness this morning on a lop-sided bedstead ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields

... usual in the room now, though it was only half-past two o'clock, and the sun would not set for more than half-an-hour yet; for if Robert had lifted his head and looked up, it would have been at, not through, the skylight. No sky was to be seen. A thick covering of snow lay over the glass. A partial thaw, followed by frost, had fixed it there—a mass of imperfect cells and confused crystals. It was a cold place to sit in, but the boy had some faculty for enduring cold when it was the price to be paid for solitude. And besides, when he fell into one of his thinking moods, he forgot, for a season, ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald

... his scanty stock of vigor in the tedious and exhaustive routine of political existence; waiting whole evenings for the vote, and then ... trudging home at three in the morning through the slush of a February thaw." He therefore spared himself as a member of Parliament, and carefully husbanded his powers in order to work upon his book. He gave himself more time for his annual vacation, yet would write when he could on the subjects which engrossed his life. His ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord

... pretend to nothin', dear;" sais I, "I am just a nateral man. There is a time for all things, and a way to do 'em too. If I have to freeze down solid to a thing, why then, ice is the word. If there is a thaw, then fun and snow-ballin' is the ticket. I listen to a preacher, and try to be the better for his argufying, if he has any sense, and will let me; and I listen to the violin, and dance to it, if it's in tune, and played right. I like my pastime, and one day in seven is all the Lord asks. ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton

... her skirt caught on his big spurs they both stooped at once to unfasten it; their heads hit together with such a bump that the ice was broken, although he seemed to think it was her skull. I am sure there ought to be a thaw after all his apologies. After breakfast Mrs. O'Shaughnessy went out to see her friend Cormac O'Toole. He was the only person in town we could hope to get a team from with which to continue our journey. This is a hard country on ...
— Letters of a Woman Homesteader • Elinore Pruitt Stewart

... being yesterday and to-day a great thaw it is not for a man to walk the streets, but took coach and to Mr. Povy's, and there meeting all of us again agreed upon an answer to the Lords by and by, and thence we did come to Exeter House, and there was a witness of most [base] language against Mr. Povy, from my Lord Peterborough, ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys

... it came of being ill at ease: He hated that He cannot change His cold, Nor cure its ache. 'Hath spied an icy fish That longed to 'scape the rock-stream where she lived, And thaw herself within the lukewarm brine 35 O' the lazy sea her stream thrusts far amid, A crystal spike 'twixt two warm walls of wave; Only, she ever sickened, found repulse At the other kind of water, not her life, (Green-dense and dim-delicious, bred o' the sun) 40 Flounced back from bliss she ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning

... in great abundance, and as much progress is made in getting them up as could be hoped for, considering that there has been a very heavy fall of snow, and that a thaw has followed it, and the extremely limited ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume III (of 3), 1854-1861 • Queen of Great Britain Victoria

... hour the steady labour proceeded—plows ran; flat scrapers and wheeled fresnos followed, scooped up the earth, bore it to the banks above; horses tugged and strained; men toiled, pausing only to thaw their feet and hands at fires burning by the ditch or to drain great tin-cups of the scalding coffee that the cooks dipped from cans. And steadily the excavation widened and deepened hour by hour, the slope of the sides becoming apparent, the banks rising higher and the ditch assuming its ...
— The Iron Furrow • George C. Shedd

... sitting in the school-room looking at pictures and talking a very little, but it is rather stiff. The door opens and in walk the Doctor and Agency Clerk. No more stiffness after this. Those would be hard hearts indeed that would not thaw in the presence of these genial countenances. Other white people come. The Captain with his family take supper. He also brings in some of the outsiders who are looking in at the windows, and pays for ...
— American Missionary, August, 1888, (Vol. XLII, No. 8) • Various

... thee one with me, 35 Thetis, bright image of eternity! When thou didst cry, 'Insufferable might! God! Spare me! I sustain not the quick flames, The penetrating presence; all my being, Like him whom the Numidian seps did thaw 40 Into a dew with poison, is dissolved, Sinking through its foundations:' even then Two mighty spirits, mingling, made a third Mightier than either, which, unbodied now, Between us floats, felt, although unbeheld, 45 Waiting the incarnation, which ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley

... luxury of a long, comprehending gaze into the depths of each other's eyes. Katrina returned, and we all talked at once; for five minutes reminiscences and confidences flowed with the freedom of a mountain stream after a thaw. ...
— Many Kingdoms • Elizabeth Jordan

... dreadful night I cannot tell. Morning came at last; the snow had ceased to fall as thickly as before, allowing the light to penetrate through the veil drawn over the earth. Faint as was the light, it gave me a glimpse of hope. I might still reach the wood, and by obtaining a fire thaw my benumbed limbs. My first efforts were directed towards breaking out of my icy prison; but the hole in front of me was so small that it was not till I had made several attempts that I could ...
— Snow Shoes and Canoes - The Early Days of a Fur-Trader in the Hudson Bay Territory • William H. G. Kingston

... woman whom we had seen, in spite of her bitterness. Poor soul! she looked like a person to whom nobody had ever been very kind, and for whom life had no pleasures: its sunshine had never been warm enough to thaw the ice at ...
— Deephaven and Selected Stories & Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett

... once, on his voyage through the Arctic regions, lat. ***, long. ***, the cold was so intense, that for a while whatever was spoken on board the vessel became frost-bound, and remained so, till, after certain days, there came a sudden thaw, which let loose the whole rabblement of sounds and syllables that had been accumulating during the suspense of audible speech; but now fell clattering down like hailstones about the ears of the ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 63, January 11, 1851 • Various

... thought that for her the gates of mercy would never open, and as in deep contrition and self-abasement she thought thus, a ray of brightness penetrated into the dismal abyss—a ray more vivid and glorious than the sunbeams which thaw the snow figures that the children make in their gardens. And this ray, more quickly than the snow-flake that falls upon a child's warm mouth can be melted into a drop of water, caused Inger's petrified figure to evaporate, and a little ...
— The Sand-Hills of Jutland • Hans Christian Andersen

... the siller dew, That hangs upon the hawthorn's blossom, Shines faint beside her e'en sae blue; An' purer is her spotless bosom. Her smile wad thaw a hermit's breast; There 's love an' truth in ilka feature; For her I 'm past baith wark an' rest, The bonny lass o' ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various

... early start, a gaunt trapper had set out from the Settlement on the return journey to his camp beyond the Big Fork. He had been in to the Settlement with a pack of furs, and was now hurrying back as fast as he could, because of the sudden thaw. He was afraid the ice might go out of the river and leave him cut off from his camp,—for his canoe was on the other side. As the pelts were beginning to get poor, he had left his rifle at home, and carried no weapon but his knife. He had grown so accustomed to counting ...
— The Watchers of the Trails - A Book of Animal Life • Charles G. D. Roberts

... other vegetables to be fed to stock become frosted, place them in a cool cellar, cover lightly with straw, and let them remain frozen. If they do not thaw they will ...
— The Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56, No. 2, January 12, 1884 - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various

... for there had lately been a thaw and everything was frozen. We went over fields, crossed by spidery trails of gray fences, where the withered grasses stuck forlornly up through the snow; we lingered for a time in a group of hill pines, great, majestic tree-creatures, friends of ...
— The Golden Road • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... and swing me in! Trees are bare, but birds begin Twittering to the peeping leaves, On the bough beneath the eaves. Wait,—one lilac bud I saw. Icy hillsides feel the thaw. April chased off March to-day; Now I catch a ...
— McGuffey's Fourth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey

... agreeable to the dilapidated constitution of a sensitive valetudinarian. His commentators suppose he produced nothing during his marine hybernations: if the inclement season froze 'the genial current of his soul,' the aspect of the sea did not thaw it. ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 429 - Volume 17, New Series, March 20, 1852 • Various

... awfully sorry, Aunt Sophronia! Why, I didn't mean any harm. It's all so real to me. [She gazes from one to the other, hoping for some sign of a thaw.] Just think... these were the people that I'd loved... that I'd grown up with all my life. I'd fished in their canoes, I'd hunted with them and basked on the beach with them. I'd watched the young men and girls dancing their love-dances ...
— The Naturewoman • Upton Sinclair

... pull out an eye, and bid it go, And t'other should not weep. Oh, Dolabella, How many deaths are in this word, depart! I dare not trust my tongue to tell her so: One look of hers would thaw me into tears, And I should melt, till I were ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume 5 (of 18) - Amboyna; The state of Innocence; Aureng-Zebe; All for Love • John Dryden

... remain for hours groaning and wheezing. Dick watched him with an expression of genuine sorrow on his big face; and it was so clear that he regretted what he had done that for a moment even Mrs. Ede's heart softened towards him. But the thaw was only momentary; she froze again into stone when he remarked that it was a pity that Mr. Ede was ill, for they were going to play Madame Angot on Thursday night, and he would like them all to come. The invitation flattered Ralph's vanity, and, resolved not to be behindhand ...
— A Mummer's Wife • George Moore

... dory turning over, or a gunboat dropping on to you. Then there was a good deal of very genuine excitement to be got out of placer-mining in British Columbia, especially when there was frost in the ranges, and you had to thaw out your giant-powder. Shallow alluvial workings have a way of caving in when you least expect it of them. After all, however, I think I like the ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss

... her full in the face without blenching. She had a sort of delight in facing a wind like that, and her quick young blood kept her from being chilled. The sidewalk was frozen. There was no snow, and the day before there had been a thaw. One could see on this walk, hardened into temporary stability, the footprints of hundreds of the sons and daughters of labor. Read rightly, that sidewalk in the little manufacturing city was a hieroglyphic of toil, and perhaps of toil as tending to the advance ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... suffice this evening to keep us in tolerable warmth; the slightest breeze seeming to pierce through our debilitated frames. The reader will, probably, be desirous to know how we passed our time in such a comfortless situation: the first operation after encamping was to thaw our frozen shoes, if a sufficient fire could be made, and dry ones were put on; each person then wrote his notes of the daily occurrences, and evening prayers were read; as soon as supper was prepared ...
— Narrative of a Journey to the Shores of the Polar Sea, in the years 1819-20-21-22, Volume 2 • John Franklin

... was not broken, but it was cracking in all directions under this unexampled thaw. The two had clearly indicated a mutual suspicion of each other's industrious habits after dinner.... They had never got quite so far as this before: some quarrel had congealed the surface again. But now, with a desperate ...
— Miss Mapp • Edward Frederic Benson

... approach. The consternation of the assembly was indescribable; and, in the first alarm, the deputies prepared for flight. The Emperor alone declared that he would not leave the town, and encouraged the rest by his example. Unfortunately for the Swedes, a thaw came on, which broke up the ice upon the Danube, so that it was no longer passable on foot, while no boats could cross it, on account of the quantities of ice which were swept down by the current. In order to perform something, and to humble the pride ...
— The History of the Thirty Years' War • Friedrich Schiller, Translated by Rev. A. J. W. Morrison, M.A.

... dreaming of this so sudden thaw, and wanting the balm of love to apply to his sores, resolved to make a second encounter. So coming again to his Felice, said, "Fair Lady, I have been arraigned long ago, and now am come to receive my just sentence from the Tribunal of Love. It is life, or death, fair Felice ...
— Traditional Nursery Songs of England - With Pictures by Eminent Modern Artists • Various

... thought me reserved, for it is true that I could barely be civil to him. He argued from that, as I learned afterwards from Donna Giulia, that I was of a ducal family, and in proportion as I froze, so did he thaw. As I receded, so did he advance. He pressed invitations upon me, all of which I could not decline; it was proper that I should offer him some hospitality in return—and I did. He supped with me once or twice in my lodgings, lost money to me at cards and so had some grounds for ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett

... I freeze, and nothing dwells In me but snow and icicles. For pity's sake, give your advice, To melt this snow and thaw this ice. I'll drink down flames; but if so be Nothing but love can supple me, I'll rather keep this frost and snow Than to be thaw'd ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick

... while we The effect did feel, but scarce the manner see. 130 Frosts that constrain the ground, and birth deny To flowers that in its womb expecting lie, Do seldom their usurping power withdraw, But raging floods pursue their hasty thaw. Our thaw was mild, the cold not chased away, But lost in kindly heat of lengthen'd day. Heaven would no bargain for its blessings drive, But what we could not pay for, freely give. The Prince of peace would like himself confer A ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol I - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden

... artillery through the mud swiftly enough to make it tell at the right time, and both Prussians and Russians drew slowly off. Soult was to have repeated the turning manoeuver as carried out before Jena, but the marching was so difficult, owing to a thaw, that he could not accomplish ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane

... winter, where there is only a moderate covering of snow, are far less fatal to clover plants than exposure to the sweep of the cold winds. Even where the thermometer is not so low as in the areas just referred to, such winds are particularly damaging to the plants when they blow fiercely just after a thaw which has removed a previous covering of snow. In some instances, one cold wave under the conditions named has proved fatal to promising crops of clover ...
— Clovers and How to Grow Them • Thomas Shaw

... poised scornfully, seemed to hover on the gathering gloom—seemed to grow and fade and grow again, like the grin of the Cheshire cat—pathetically, reproachfully even; and the charms of the baker's wife slipped from my memory like snow-wreaths in thaw. After all, Sabina was nowise to blame: why should the child be punished? To-morrow I would give them the slip, and stroll round by her garden promiscuous-like, at a time when the farmer was safe in the rick-yard. ...
— The Golden Age • Kenneth Grahame

... come over her,—a feeling that she was one of the great human family after all, and the icy mountain of reserve began to thaw just a little. Her purchases made, she concluded to take another road home. This route lay past a church. It was lighted, though early, and a few real worshipers had met to pray ...
— The King's Daughter and Other Stories for Girls • Various

... which bound it, being composed for the most part of schist, mica slate, and talcose slate, large masses become detached in winter—split off by the freezing of the water behind them—when they descend, on the coming of thaw, in terrible avalanches of stone and mud. Sometimes the masses are such as to dam up the river and form temporary lakes, until the accumulation of force behind bursts the barrier, and a furious flood rushes down the valley. ...
— The Huguenots in France • Samuel Smiles

... December, generally, they experience their first thawing. Those which a month ago were sour, crabbed, and quite unpalatable to the civilized taste, such at least as were frozen while sound, let a warmer sun come to thaw them, for they are extremely sensitive to its rays, are found to be filled with a rich, sweet cider, better than any bottled cider that I know of, and with which I am better acquainted than with wine. All apples are good in this state, and ...
— Excursions • Henry D. Thoreau

... said it was never lucky when Christmas came without a wolf-hunt: but that year it was like to be so; for, as I have said, the snow kept falling at intervals, with days of fog and thaw between, till the night before the vigil. In my youth, the Lithuanians kept Christmas after the fashion of old northern times. It began with great devotion, and ended in greater feasting. The eve was considered particularly sacred: many traditional ceremonies and strange ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal, No. 421, New Series, Jan. 24, 1852 • Various

... counting on you for next Friday. A young American author studying England—I suppose like that Count Something-or-other in Pickwick Papers—is coming to dinner. I understand he drinks very little, so I am relying on you to thaw him. ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter

... January Mrs. Snow and Captain Eri were together in the sick room. The rest of the household was absent on various errands; Captain Perez paying a visit to the life-saver's sister and Elsie staying after school to go over some examination papers. There was snow on the ground, and a "Jinooary thaw" was causing the eaves to drip, and the puddles in the road to grow larger. The door of the big stove was open, and the coals within showed red-hot. Captain Baxter was ...
— Cap'n Eri • Joseph Crosby Lincoln

... hurted critter an' works with it. Dicey says thet half the time she's afeerd to step around her cook-stove less'n she'll step on some critter thet's crawled back to life where he's put it under the stove to hatch or thaw out, which she bein' bare-feeted, ...
— Sonny, A Christmas Guest • Ruth McEnery Stuart

... Western parts of Asia and Europe. It is therefore possible that the Tartars, at different Periods, might have been driven on that Coast, and people the Country. Some Tartars hunting upon the Ice, on a sudden Thaw, might be carried on the Ice to America, from ...
— An Enquiry into the Truth of the Tradition, Concerning the - Discovery of America, by Prince Madog ab Owen Gwynedd, about the Year, 1170 • John Williams

... pends, however, was a task not to be attempted; and the Auld Lichts, at least, rested content when enough light got into their workshops to let them see where their looms stood. Wading through beds of snow they did not much mind; but they wondered what would happen to their houses when the thaw came. ...
— Auld Licht Idyls • J.M. Barrie

... tenth of February, 1814, for the first time in many days, the sun shone brightly. Nevertheless there was little change in the temperature; the thaw still prevailed. The sun's heat was not great enough to dry the roads, nor was the weather sufficiently cold to freeze them. As the Emperor wrote to his brother, with scarcely any exaggeration, there was still six feet of ...
— The Eagle of the Empire - A Story of Waterloo • Cyrus Townsend Brady

... sloppy, snowy day, our "January thaw," Mr. H. says. I took the two children out on the sled upon the ice and pushed at the handle-bars until I was reeking with perspiration, afterwards giving Jennie her lesson ...
— A Woman who went to Alaska • May Kellogg Sullivan

... he failed to hide the attempt even from her, and she broke down under it. Had he simply walked into the room with her as he would have done on any other occasion, and then remarked that the frost was keen or the thaw disagreeable, it would have been better for her. But when he told her that he hoped she would often make herself at home in that house, and looked, as he said it, as though he were asking her to take a place among the goddesses of Olympus, she was troubled as to her answer. "Oh, my Lord Duke," ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope

... been out in one of the barns most of the morning engaged in some mysterious task which she had been reserving until the weather became milder—there had been a decided thaw, setting in the day before—and Nora intended to be ...
— The Land of Promise • D. Torbett

... storms, are ripped and torn like hills of clay. The frosted scale of the granite, the desperate root of the cedar, the poised nest of the eagle, the clutch of the crannied vine, the split and start of the mountainside, are all as one before the June thaw. At its height Little Crawling Stone, with a head of forty feet, is a choking flood of rock. Mountains, torn and bleeding, vomit bowlders of thirty, sixty, a hundred tons like pebbles upon the valley. Even there they find no permanent resting-place. Each succeeding year sees them torn ...
— Whispering Smith • Frank H. Spearman

... why waxed thy faith so faint, Thy spirit so slack and slaw? Thy courage kept good till the flame waxed wud, Then thy might begun to thaw; Had ye kissed him with thy christened lip, Ye had wan him frae 'mang us a'. Now bless the fire, the elfin fire, That made thee faint and fa'; Now bless the fire, the elfin fire, The longer it burns it blazes ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends - Scotland • Anonymous

... cold, ice and snow, the city was steeped in a mournful, quivering thaw. From the far-spreading, leaden-hued heavens a thick mist fell like a mourning shroud. All the eastern portion of the city, the abodes of misery and toil, seemed submerged beneath ruddy steam, amid which the panting of ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola

... pour out his soul, stating the miners' grievances and their rights as men. How they were always put off with promises, and defeated in dialectics and the game of wits. As he spoke he felt the assembly gradually thaw, then become liquid, finally it seemed to join the torrent of his eloquence, and sweep on, blotting out ...
— The Underworld - The Story of Robert Sinclair, Miner • James C. Welsh

... felt when I got off the car and found my legs cramped—to come to the rescue as interpreter. The Spanish Friar was accustomed to these little embarrassments, and he had a manner of meeting them with a smile. The misunderstanding and the embarrassment seemed to thaw the formality of the reception. The women looked relieved. They were obviously not expected to say anything, and they had no fear now that they would be put to the ordeal of meeting a possibly superior person, one who might patronise them, ...
— Waysiders • Seumas O'Kelly

... club upon the upper lake in the Bois de Boulogne had been announced for this particular day. This fete had been already frequently postponed on account of the weather. It had become a joke among Parisians to receive an invitation for a date which was invariably followed by a period of thaw, turning the lake into ice ...
— A Royal Prisoner • Pierre Souvestre



Words linked to "Thaw" :   atmospheric condition, relaxation, weather condition, weather, defrost, physical change, unfreeze, slackening, liquify, loosening, melting, phase change, melt, liquefy, heating, conditions, deliquesce, phase transition, deice, unthaw, dissolve, de-ice, flux, state change



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