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Whirl   /wərl/  /hwərl/   Listen
Whirl

verb
(past & past part. whirled; pres. part. whirling)
1.
Turn in a twisting or spinning motion.  Synonyms: swirl, twiddle, twirl.
2.
Cause to spin.  Synonyms: birl, spin, twirl.
3.
Flow in a circular current, of liquids.  Synonyms: eddy, purl, swirl, whirlpool.
4.
Revolve quickly and repeatedly around one's own axis.  Synonyms: gyrate, reel, spin, spin around.
5.
Fly around.  Synonyms: tumble, whirl around.  "Rising smoke whirled in the air"



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"Whirl" Quotes from Famous Books



... mid clouds of scattered rice, through all the wedding whirl A laughing fellow hurries out a certain graceless girl, Unless my hand have lost its strength, unless my eye be dim, I'll lift the shoe, the contract too, and fling the lot ...
— The Vagabond and Other Poems from Punch • R. C. Lehmann

... occur, in more or less perfection, in all young vegetable cells. If such be the case, the wonderful noonday silence of a tropical forest is, after all, due only to the dulness of our hearing; and could our ears catch the murmur of these tiny Maelstroms, as they whirl in the innumerable myriads of living cells which constitute each tree, we should be stunned, as with the roar of a ...
— Lectures and Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley

... you see that two boys and an old man are sitting on the roof of a house about as high as a tool-shed, trying to get their kites up. And you say to yourself that it is lucky that there are no horses, for the quietest beast that ever lifted a hoof would bolt here and charge through the whirl and uproar and the rain of ...
— Peeps at Many Lands: Japan • John Finnemore

... comfortable armchair and into this he sank... A number of very discrepant things were busy in his mind. He had experienced a disconcerting personal attack. There was a whirl of active resentment in ...
— The Secret Places of the Heart • H. G. Wells

... dancer crawls about the fire on all fours with a bear's skin about him. He wears a chain of oak-balls round his neck, and as he shakes his head these rattle like a bear's teeth snapping shut, while all the time he growls savagely. The feather-dancer, with a skirt and cap of eagles' feathers, will whirl on his toes like a top for hours, while the other Indians sing and the master of the dance shakes ...
— Stories of California • Ella M. Sexton

... reflection, warring with his inner knowledge that he had been driven by fear and hatred into a paroxysm of wrath against a man to whom he should have set an example of dignified self-control, produced an exhausting whirl in his thoughts, which were at once quickened and confused by the nervous shock of bodily violence, to which he was quite unused. Unable to sit still, he rose, put on his hat, went out, and drove to the ...
— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw

... one of mine was I was going to know anybody I wanted to. I always thought a lady could, and, besides, I liked any kind of person who was interesting, and the best born ones were often very stupid, which of course was the wrong thing to say. So I had to give her another whirl, and by the time she got her breath it was time to see about supper, and she has never ...
— Kitty Canary • Kate Langley Bosher

... see his girl, going down to the Frying Pan to take her in his arms and whirl her into the land of romance to the rhythm of the waltz. He wanted to shout it out to the chipmunks and the quails. Ever and again he broke out with a line or two of a melody he had heard once from a phonograph. No matter if he did not get the words exactly. He ...
— Mavericks • William MacLeod Raine

... muttered Mr Raydon, beginning to walk up and down the room, while I felt in such a whirl of excitement, as I saw Mrs John's beautiful, motherly eyes fixed lovingly on mine, and felt Mr John snatch my hand and press it, and then give vent to his delight at the clearing up by slapping me heavily on the shoulder, that I could not ...
— To The West • George Manville Fenn

... hardly knowing how far they had gone, to the old cross-road that leads to Owney. It seemed that there the horses' hoofs and carriage wheels rolled up a wonderful dust, which being caught in one of those eddies that whirl the dust up into a column, on the calmest day, enveloped the children for a moment, and passed whirling on towards Lisnavoura, the carriage, as they fancied, driving in the centre of it; but suddenly it subsided, the straws and leaves floated ...
— J.S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 5 • J.S. Le Fanu

... overthrow what is firm, O ye men, and whirl about what is heavy, ye pass through the trees of the earth, through the clefts ...
— Chips From A German Workshop - Volume I - Essays on the Science of Religion • Friedrich Max Mueller

... a whirl of pleasure. For amidst so many beautiful things she was sure she could do Christmas work charmingly; and at any rate it was delightful only to look at them. She tried to get her thoughts a little in order. For Norton, she would make the watch guard; that was one thing fixed. A delicate bronze ...
— The House in Town • Susan Warner

... become art. Even the more careful, the more artistic work leaves one with the impression that these stories have sought a "line," and found an acceptable formula. And when one thinks of the multitudinous situations, impressions, incidents in this fascinating whirl of modern life, incapable perhaps of presentation in a novel because of their very impermanence, admirably adapted to the short story because of their vividness and their deep if narrow significance, the voice of protest must go up against any ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby

... I lay thinking, and thinking, and wishing for I knew not what, and sighing for I knew not what, and looking forwards and backwards till I was all in a whirl. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 108, October, 1866 • Various

... would not go so very fast," said little Lena, hiding her face against him from the whirl of cabs ...
— Modern Broods • Charlotte Mary Yonge

... you have seen the fine, powdery substance that settles over everything and creeps into the smallest cracks. In some countries where there are strong winds and not much rain there is little vegetation on the surface to hold the soil. Year after year the winds pick up particles of the dusty soil, whirl them high in the air, and do not let them down again until they have been carried many miles. In some far-off land where the winds go down the dust particles settle again to the earth. After a long, long time, enough dust collects to form a thick layer of the richest soil. This is ...
— Conservation Reader • Harold W. Fairbanks

... agone, on the flat white strand, I won my sweet sea-girl: Wrapped in my coat of the snow-white fur, I watched the wild birds settle and stir, The grey gulls gather and whirl. ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde

... its current is called sun current, and here it continues to whirl with all its subordinate currents, planet, ...
— ABC's of Science • Charles Oliver

... narrow squeaks in negotiating corners and miniature sand-banks, and once we bumped into a mule that had strayed on to the road—but whether it will do so again I don't know, for after the bump it disappeared in a whirl of sand, making a noise like a myriad of fiends let loose. But the remainder of the journey was uneventful, and after a long night's rest ...
— How I Filmed the War - A Record of the Extraordinary Experiences of the Man Who - Filmed the Great Somme Battles, etc. • Lieut. Geoffrey H. Malins

... princess get safe over the bridge they will perish,' said they; 'for the king is going to send a carriage to meet them which looks as new as paint. But when they are seated in it a raging wind will rise and whirl the carriage away into the clouds. Then it will fall suddenly to earth, and they will be killed. But anyone who hears and betrays what we have said will be turned to stone up to ...
— The Crimson Fairy Book • Various

... the screen. They saw forty or fifty couples whirling slowly round and round to the irresistible measure; some were stiff and awkward, palpably shy; some with invincible propriety whirled upright and rigid, like toys wound up to whirl; some were abandoned to the measure with madness, with passion, with a corybantic joy. Here and there a girl leaned as if swooning in her lover's arms; her head hung back; her lower lip drooped; her face showed the looseness and blankness of a sensuous stupor. ...
— The Combined Maze • May Sinclair

... their lightning-like passages through the bushes and trees. When four or five of them were found in one place, they would fairly thread the air with green and purple as they described their circles and loops and festoons with a rapidity that fairly made my head whirl. At one place several of them grew very bold, dashing at me or wheeling around my head, coming so close that I could hear the susurrus of their wings as well as the sharp, ...
— Birds of the Rockies • Leander Sylvester Keyser

... bless you in your career without, in your home within," said Kenelm, wringing his friend's hand at the door of the carriage that was to whirl to love and wealth and station the whilom bully of a village, along the iron groove of that contrivance which, though now the tritest of prosaic realities, seemed once too poetical for ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... that Tree, in Autumn's dim decay, Stript by the frequent, chill, and eddying Wind; Where yet some yellow, lonely leaves we find Lingering and trembling on the naked spray, Twenty, perchance, for millions whirl'd away! Emblem, alas! too just, of Humankind! Vain MAN expects longevity, design'd For few indeed; and their protracted day What is it worth that Wisdom does not scorn? The blasts of Sickness, Care, and Grief appal, That laid the Friends in dust, whose natal morn Rose ...
— Original sonnets on various subjects; and odes paraphrased from Horace • Anna Seward

... Many of us jolt off the earth as we ride, others of us are turned over and thrown into strange and absurd positions, and a few of us sit tight and edge along, a little further toward the soft seats. But as we whirl by the stations, returning ever and again to the days that are precious in our lives, to the seasons that give us greatest joy, we measure our gains, on the long journey, in terms of what we love. ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White

... sat at the breakfast table gazing vacantly around me, my mind was in a state of inexpressible misery; there was a whirl in my brain, probably like that which people feel who are rapidly going mad; this increased to such a degree that I felt giddiness coming upon me. To abate this feeling I no longer permitted my eyes ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow

... this person by a vigilant policeman and Roland's dive into a taxicab occurred simultaneously. Roland was blushing all over. His head was in a whirl. He took the evening paper handed in through the window of the cab quite mechanically, and it was only the strong exhortations of the vendor which eventually induced him to pay for it. This he did with a sovereign, ...
— A Man of Means • P. G. Wodehouse and C. H. Bovill

... Butterflies, see C. Collingwood, 'Rambles of a Naturalist,' 1868, p. 183.) has been captured with the tips of its wings broken from a conflict with another male. Mr. Collingwood, in speaking of the frequent battles between the butterflies of Borneo, says, "They whirl round each other with the greatest rapidity, and appear to be incited ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin

... inspecting its surface with these members; then suddenly it flung itself around and flashed over to the outer lock door. Three arms shot out; wiry fingers caught the three spin-locks simultaneously, began to whirl them. ...
— The Winds of Time • James H. Schmitz

... me how to clear the boat." Only one of the wire ropes needed to be thrown off; then the boy squeaked shrilly, "Make the painter fast to a belaying-pin for fear a sea lifts the boat over," and then Ferrier was satisfied. His strength was like the strength of madness, and he felt sure that he could whirl the boat over the side himself without the aid of the falls. His evolutions while he was working on the swashing deck were not graceful or dignified, but he was pleased with himself; the fighting spirit of Young ...
— A Dream of the North Sea • James Runciman

... this mental trouble lasts I cannot say. But I afterwards find myself on the Beehive side, opposite the cell in which I cannot hope for either repose or sleep. Sleep, when my brain is in a whirl of excitement? Sleep, when I am near the end of a situation that threatened to be prolonged ...
— Facing the Flag • Jules Verne

... ragged chair upon the hearth close to the fire, with her back towards me. In the moment when I was withdrawing my head to go quietly away, I saw a great flaming light spring up. In the same moment I saw her running at me, shrieking, with a whirl of fire blazing all about her, and soaring at least as many feet above her head as ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens

... cohorts near to rout. Staying the flight, tribune, centurion, From heat of carnage 'neath th' enduring sun Breathe blood, and smell its savour as they shout. With haggard eyes, that count the dead about, Each spearman marks the archers, all undone, Whirl like heaped leaves before Euroclydon. From the brown faces ...
— Miscellany of Poetry - 1919 • Various

... used to wonder sometimes at her boundless energy. She would whirl through the housework, help prepare the meals, do a morning's ironing, run the sewing machine all afternoon, and then often, after supper, challenge Norman to some such thing as a bonfire race, to see which could rake up the greatest pile of autumn leaves in ...
— Mary Ware's Promised Land • Annie Fellows Johnston

... led Our new discoverers to yet mightier laws Enthroned above all worlds. We have not found them, And yet—only the intellectual fool Dreams in his heart that even his brain can tick In isolated measure, a centre of law, Amidst the whirl of universal chaos. For law descends from law. Though all the spheres Through all the abysmal depths of Space were blown Like dust before a colder darker wind Than even Lucretius dreamed, yet if one thought, One gleam of law within the mind of man, Lighten our darkness, there's a law ...
— Watchers of the Sky • Alfred Noyes

... intimation of Borckman's arrival was a cruel and painful clutch on his flank and groin that made him cry out in pain and whirl around. Next, as the mate had seen Skipper do in play, Jerry had his jowls seized in a tooth-clattering shake that was absolutely different from the Skipper's rough love-shake. His head and body were ...
— Jerry of the Islands • Jack London

... played on! Dash it all! Why didn't she quit? It was wonderful music, but he wanted to talk to her. If he hobbled slowly could he get across that lawn? He decided to try. And then, just as he rose and steadied himself by the porch pillar, down the street in a whirl of dust and noisy claxon there came a great blue car and drew up sharp in front of the door, while a lute-like voice shouted gaily: "Laurie, ...
— The City of Fire • Grace Livingston Hill

... of making this discovery had a bitter taste. I did not know what to do. My mind was in a whirl. I had some few letters and papers in my pockets by which I had expected—after a time—to assure the consul of my identity. But it seemed that I wasn't to be given a chance to explain who and what ...
— Swept Out to Sea - Clint Webb Among the Whalers • W. Bertram Foster

... Heavens, shall I ever forget the blank horror that grew upon me when I came to understand that music was a science more barbarous than the mathematics that floored me at school, that the life of a musical student, instead of being a delicious whirl of waltz tunes, was 'one dem'd grind,' that seemed to grind out all the soul of the divine art and leave nothing but horrid technicalities about consecutive fifths and suspensions on the dominant? I dare say most people still think of the musician as a being who ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill

... idea lifts this world up from an unimportant way-station to a platform of stupendous issues, and makes all eternity whirl around this hour. But one trial for which all the preparation must be made in this world, or never made at all. That piles up all the emphases and all the climaxes and all the destinies into life here. No other chance! Oh, how ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage

... Before we had even taken in our grotesque appearance, the horse was galloping, as only a Paris cab horse can gallop, toward our abode in Avenue Henri Martin, past carriages and autos returning from the Bois, while inside the cab we sat, elated by our success and in that whirl of triumphant absorbing joy which only ...
— The Art of Interior Decoration • Grace Wood

... were burst in, and dozens of dark forms leaped into the room. She saw Mr. Mercer rush to the wall and seize his pistols, and then she saw no more. She was seized and thrown over the shoulder of an Indian before she had time to do more than leap to her feet. There was a confused whirl of sounds around her—shrieks, threats, pistol shots, and savage yells—then the sounds swam in her ears, and ...
— On the Pampas • G. A. Henty

... utter negligence of money that Crum had such engaging polish. The ballet was on its last legs and night, and the traffic of the Promenade was suffering for the moment. Men and women were crowded in three rows against the barrier. The whirl and dazzle on the stage, the half dark, the mingled tobacco fumes and women's scent, all that curious lure to promiscuity which belongs to Promenades, began to free young Val from his idealism. He looked admiringly in a young woman's face, saw she was not young, and quickly looked away. Shades of ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... shape and size, from the little willow sapling to the full-grown sycamore piled high above the rocks, and the rushing gulf betwixt them, made up a spectacle sufficient to appal the stoutest heart; and Roland gasped for breath, as he beheld the little canoe whirl into the narrow chasm, and then vanish, even before the light was over, as if swallowed ...
— Nick of the Woods • Robert M. Bird

... then, what the deuce! marry, when you marry, with fever and giddiness, and tumult, and the uproar of happiness! Be grave in church, well and good. But, as soon as the mass is finished, sarpejou! you must make a dream whirl around the bride. A marriage should be royal and chimerical; it should promenade its ceremony from the cathedral of Rheims to the pagoda of Chanteloup. I have a horror of a paltry wedding. Ventregoulette! be in Olympus for that one day, at least. Be one of the ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo

... unequal to the intellectual pressure of the conversation. He could understand, in a vague way, that for some unexplained reason things were going well for him, but beyond that his mind was in a whirl. ...
— The Head of Kay's • P. G. Wodehouse

... colour browses along the bargain counter and speedily acquires a rainbow for her own. Each morning she assumes a different phase, and, at the end of the week, one's recollection of her is lost in a kaleidoscopic whirl. ...
— Threads of Grey and Gold • Myrtle Reed

... capital of that state lies aloof from the trunk roads and is reached by a branch railway sixty miles long, which is the private possession of the Maharajah and takes four hours to traverse. For in Chitipur the ancient ways are devoutly followed. Modern ideas of speed and progress may whirl up the big central railroad from Bombay to Ajmere. But they stop at the junction. They do not travel along the Maharajah's private lines to Chitipur, where he, directly descended from an important and most authentic goddess, dispenses life and justice to his subjects without even the ...
— Witness For The Defense • A.E.W. Mason

... drowning. In another of these pictures a man seated upon the ground is being tortured by the breaking of his teeth, while a furious fellow holds a club suspended over him, in act to shatter his thigh-bones. Naked soldiers wrestle in mad conflict, whirl staves above their heads, fling stones, displaying their coarse muscles with a kind of frenzy. Even the classical subjects suffer from extreme dramatic energy of treatment. Ceres, seeking her daughter through the plains of Sicily, ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds

... when winter comes and you cease to be Kathleen West?" questioned Anne, a trifle anxiously. She too had had to decide between publicity and love. "You've lived in a whirl of exciting happenings so long that settling down for good will seem ...
— Grace Harlowe's Golden Summer • Jessie Graham Flower

... swimming through their cool element in close contiguity with each other. 'A feast of reason and a flow of soul' were not the charms by which Clementina Golightly essayed to keep her admirers spell-bound at her feet. To whirl rapidly round a room at the rate of ten miles an hour, with her right hand outstretched in the grasp of her partner's, and to know that she was tightly buoyed up, like a horse by a bearing-rein, by his other hand behind ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope

... of the ship as she rolled, like a living creature in pain, all worked on my overtried fancy and made me almost afraid of my own shadow as I slipped and stumbled along the sloppy deck, my mind being in a complete whirl till I ...
— The Ghost Ship - A Mystery of the Sea • John C. Hutcheson

... Truth, to say: so suggestive and distinct is it at this hour: that, for a moment— actually in passing in—they who will, may have the whole great pile before them, as it used to be, with thousands of eager faces staring down into the arena, and such a whirl of strife, and blood, and dust going on there, as no language can describe. Its solitude, its awful beauty, and its utter desolation, strike upon the stranger the next moment, like a softened sorrow; and never in his life, perhaps, will he be so moved and ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens

... over when the sick man could no longer hold it, and the tug was beginning to whirl about in an erratic manner, when the major rang the bell to stop the engine. The captain was carried down to his room, and put into his berth, where one of the soldiers was detailed to act as ...
— Taken by the Enemy • Oliver Optic

... her certain rewritten parts of Aliris: A Romance of all Time, which would have been ridiculous to any but these two. They saw it through the glamour of youth; for, in spite of her assertions of great age, the girl, too, felt the whirl of that elixir in her veins. You see, he was twenty-one and she was twenty: magic years, more venerable than threescore and ten. She gave him sympathy, which was just what he needed for the sake of his self-confidence and development, ...
— The Claim Jumpers • Stewart Edward White

... might happen, if only that end was ensured. All my thwarted passions had turned to rage. I would have accepted eternal torment that night without a second thought, to be certain of revenge. A hundred possibilities of action, a hundred stormy situations, a whirl of violent schemes, chased one another through my shamed, exasperated mind. The sole prospect I could endure was of some gigantic, inexorably cruel vindication ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells

... Her thoughts were in a whirl. Here was a way by which she could save Tony—put things right for him. But at what a price! She shrank from the risk involved. If Eliot were to hear of it, to learn that she had had supper with Brett on board his yacht—alone, what would ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler

... of wood," as the ancient Friend termed that instrument, and his head leaned on one side, he had had plenty of opportunity to watch the movements of plenty of fair maids in the dance, as well as occasionally to whirl them round in the everlasting waltz himself. Accordingly, Hans had left his heart many times, for a week or ten days or so, behind him, in many a town and dorf of Bohemia and Germany; but it always came after him and overtook him again, ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various

... acknowledged to have been brilliantly successful. True, the much talked of French artiste had not sung the promised ditties, but in the midst of the whirl and excitement of dances, of the inspiring tunes of the string band, the elaborate supper and recherche wines, no one had paid much heed to this change in the programme ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy

... with you in heart and sympathy, rejecting with contempt the antiquated idea that woman is only fit for a plaything or a household drudge. Nor can I see how it is less dignified to go to a public building to deposit a vote than to frequent the concert-room, whirl through the waltz in happy repose on some roue's bosom, or mingle in any public crowd which is, in modern times, quite admissible in polite society. Dethrone the idol and raise the soul to its true ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... the sight of this immense globe hanging over us fill me with dread! Do you think we shall ever reach our world again? It appears to be so near and yet is so far away from us. What veritable atoms we are in the glory of this tumultuous whirl!" ...
— Zarlah the Martian • R. Norman Grisewood

... the formidable, pitiless, restless, fierce angles of the great city waiting in the dark to close about the rotundity of his heart and brain and mould him to the form of its millions of re-shaped victims. A cabby picked him out of the whirl, as Sam himself had often picked a nut from a bed of wind-tossed autumn leaves, and whisked him away to a hotel commensurate to ...
— The Voice of the City • O. Henry

... utmost eagerness of the tariff and of slavery, and the other topics of the day, intensely interesting, and of terrible moment, to her country; but that country Averil had not yet learnt to feel her own, and to her all was one dreary whirl of words, in which she longed to escape to her room, and read her letter. Ella had joined Rosa Willis, and the other children; but Minna, as usual, kept under her sister's wing, and Averil could not bear to shake herself free of the gentle child. The ladies of the boarding-house—some ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge

... where there was a wonderful greenness over everything, and I said to myself that I would be bewitched at last. I would dance and whirl and call till, perhaps, some kind of a creature as wild and wicked and wonderful as I, would come out of the woods and join me. So I forgot about the fresh linen frock, and wreathed myself with wild grape-vine; I cared nothing for my fresh braids and ...
— Painted Windows • Elia W. Peattie

... without injuring them. The balls are sometimes made of iron, and these can be hurled to the greatest distance. The main difficulty in using either lazo or bolas is to ride so well as to be able at full speed, and while suddenly turning about, to whirl them so steadily round the head, as to take aim: on foot any person would soon learn the art. One day, as I was amusing myself by galloping and whirling the balls round my head, by accident the free one struck a bush, and its revolving motion ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin

... shorewards, and sees the banks wheel past. The crowd of bathers is already far beyond hearing yet, frightened and tired, he wastes his remaining strength in fruitless shouts. Now the deceitful eddies, once so soft and friendly, whirl him down in ruthless exultation. He will never reach the shore, good swimmer ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne

... whom she had corresponded for the last five years, was in Moscow, but proved to be quite alien to her when they met. Just then Julie, who by the death of her brothers had become one of the richest heiresses in Moscow, was in the full whirl of society pleasures. She was surrounded by young men who, she fancied, had suddenly learned to appreciate her worth. Julie was at that stage in the life of a society woman when she feels that her last chance of marrying ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy

... world-scenery, mountain-sculpture, canyon-carvings, and plain-sweep, confessed: "I experienced for a moment an indescribable terror of nature, a confusion of mind, a fear to be alone in such a presence. With all its grotesqueness and majesty of form and radiance of color, creation seemed in a whirl." When the reader thinks of grotesqueness, what images come to his mind? A Chinese joss, perhaps; a funny human face on the profile of a rock, but nothing so vast, so awful, so large as this. The word "majesty" suggests a kingly presence, a large ...
— The Grand Canyon of Arizona: How to See It, • George Wharton James

... successful. The people had been accustomed, during several years, to offer resistance to the constituted authorities on the slightest provocation, and to see the constituted authorities yield to that resistance. The whole political world was "without form and void"—an incessant whirl of hostile atoms, which, every moment, formed some new combination. The only man who could fix the agitated elements of society in a stable form was following a wild vision of glory and empire through the Syrian deserts. The time was not yet ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... this shall tempt to rise, Then whirl the wretch from high To bitter Scorn a sacrifice And grinning Infamy. The stings of Falsehood those shall try, And hard Unkindness' alter'd eye, That mocks the tear it forced to flow; And keen Remorse ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various

... climb upward—so that without shifting his horizon, he could yet extend it, and take in a far wider sweep of vision. "I envied every bird," he goes on, "that sat singing on the topmost bough of the great, century-old cherry tree; the weathercock on our barn seemed to me to whirl in a higher region of the air; and to rise from the earth in a balloon was a bliss which I would almost have given my life to enjoy." His desire to ascend soon took the practical form of wishing to climb a mountain. By great economy he saved up fifteen ...
— Four Famous American Writers: Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, • Sherwin Cody

... chance, he darted away, and the chase was resumed. Time and again he was cornered, and the thing repeated, though he was in poor condition, or Buck could not so easily have overtaken him. He would run till Buck's head was even with his flank, when he would whirl around at bay, only to dash away again ...
— The Call of the Wild • Jack London

... smile?" said Lady Thiselton. "Certainly it is not gay here. I feel quite overwhelmed. All these faces—pre-occupied, cheerful, sad, worn, despairing, hopeful, starved, well-fed—suggest such a whirl. I invent a whole biography for each one that catches my eye. I wonder how far I am right—I who am only a woman of the world; which means I know nothing of life outside of my own four walls and a few other four walls that more or less resemble them. But it's all really lovely, ...
— Cleo The Magnificent - The Muse of the Real • Louis Zangwill

... tell you, royalties are languishing to see her, or soon will be. But how can this come to pass, if she is to continue in her present obscurity? Certainly it cannot without some great peripetteia or vertiginous whirl of fortune; which, therefore, you shall now behold taking place in one turn of her next adventure. That shall let in a light, that shall throw back a Claude Lorraine gleam over all the past, able to make Kings, that ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey

... too soon. One should not whirl through such a choice bit of England in the cars; one should rather wish to amble over the way after a sleepy, contemplative old horse, as we used to make rural excursions in New England ere yet railroads were. However, ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... (Dispatch to The London Daily News.)—This week—a week of many significant things—has ended in the wildest whirl of weather imaginable. The rains have been terrific, blinding, tropical in their almost ceaseless roar and fury. Surely only madmen or fiends would fight in such an elemental maelstrom. We may be both, and perhaps ...
— Current History, A Monthly Magazine - The European War, March 1915 • New York Times

... to twist around like the clouds of pink smoke and the whirl of hot air that tossed the hanging boughs of the trees. The crackle and roar of the fire seemed to be going on in my skull. But I managed to throw my head back and my hands out to show they ...
— The Blue Wall - A Story of Strangeness and Struggle • Richard Washburn Child

... commotion Like the surface of the ocean When the wind, its waters lashing, Sends great billows, roaring, dashing O'er the breakers, which for ages Have withstood the storms it wages, See those clouds, so like this ocean, How they whirl in strange commotion. ...
— Gleams of Sunshine - Optimistic Poems • Joseph Horatio Chant

... Station off, and fly away regardless. Everything is flying. The hop-gardens turn gracefully towards me, presenting regular avenues of hops in rapid flight, then whirl away. So do the pools and rushes, haystacks, sheep, clover in full bloom delicious to the sight and smell, corn-sheaves, cherry- orchards, apple-orchards, reapers, gleaners, hedges, gates, fields that taper off into little angular corners, cottages, gardens, now and ...
— Reprinted Pieces • Charles Dickens

... He was a huge man, as you can testify, for you have looked upon his corpse. Not only was his body that of a giant but everything about him was grotesque, gigantic, and terrifying. His voice was like thunder in our little house. There was scarce room for the whirl of his great arms as he talked. His thoughts, his emotions, his passions, all were exaggerated and monstrous. He talked, or rather roared, with such energy that others could but sit and listen, ...
— The Adventure of the Red Circle • Arthur Conan Doyle

... to stay?' said Mr. Audley, feeling that all depended on that, and trying to hide the whirl of anxiety ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge

... distance the whirl of London's traffic raises its mighty voice; nearer still, the passing tramcars thunder along, and the silence of the waiting crowd is made more ...
— London's Underworld • Thomas Holmes

... description of guerrilla war at sea, there are many things which must first be said regarding the organisation and training of what may appropriately be termed the "New Navy," which took the sea to combat the submarine and the mine; also of the novel weapons devised amid the whirl of war for their use, protection and offensive power. Into this brief recital of the events leading to the real thing an endeavour will be made to infuse the life and local colour, which, however, would be more appropriate in a personal ...
— Submarine Warfare of To-day • Charles W. Domville-Fife

... hurricane flight, With an eddying whirl he descends; The air all below him becomes black as night, And the ground where he treads, as if mov'd with affright, Like the surge ...
— Translations of German Poetry in American Magazines 1741-1810 • Edward Ziegler Davis

... of storms and dismemberments, and the deadliest battles and wrecks, and the wildest fury of the elements, and the power of the sea, and the motion of nature, and of the throes of human desires, and dignity and hate and love? It is that something in the soul which says-Rage on, whirl on, I tread master here and everywhere; master of the spasms of the sky and of the shatter of the sea, of ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (First Series) • George W. Foote

... activity which made one's brain whirl, there came to me the most absolute repose in an isolated retreat where I passed another interval of fifteen years after leaving the Emperor. But what a contrast! To those who have lived, like myself, amid the conquests and wonders of the Empire, ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton

... been an exceptional being, Vassily would never have perceived it, for he treated her like a child. But as you are aware, gentlemen, there was nothing specially remarkable in Olga. Vassily tried all he could to work on her imagination, and often in the evening she left his side with such a whirl of new images, phrases and ideas in her head that she could not sleep all night, but lay breathing uneasily and turning her burning cheeks from side to side on the cool pillows, or got up, went to the window and gazed fearfully and eagerly into the dark distance. Vassily ...
— The Jew And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev

... his brain in a whirl of excitement, and hardly knowing what he did, he leaped into the first cab, and urged the man to drive fast, while he sank back into the corner, and ...
— Witness to the Deed • George Manville Fenn

... making me, I thank thee, sire. What thou hast done and doest thou know'st well, And I will help thee:—gently in thy fire I will lie burning; on thy potter's-wheel I will whirl patient, though my brain should reel; Thy grace shall be enough the grief to quell, And growing strength perfect ...
— A Book of Strife in the Form of The Diary of an Old Soul • George MacDonald

... like a witches' brew. And more: there are indications that inner sensations, such as those of digestion, have an overpowering influence on the primitive mind, which has not learned to articulate or distinguish permanent needs. So that to the whirl of outer sensations we must add, to reach some notion of what consciousness may contain before the advent of reason, interruptions and lethargies caused by wholly blind internal feelings; trances such as fall even ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana

... choked turnpikes, and a whirl Of wheels, and roar of voices, and confusion, Here taverns wooing to a pint of "purl," There mails fast ...
— Newton Forster - The Merchant Service • Captain Frederick Marryat

... he said, "for I am little skilled in horses, though born where they abound. The wolves must be hovering above their heads on the bank, and the timorsome creatures are calling on man for help, in the best manner they are able. Uncas"—he spoke in Delaware—"Uncas, drop down in the canoe, and whirl a brand among the pack; or fear may do what the wolves can't get at to perform, and leave us without horses in the morning, when we shall have so ...
— The Last of the Mohicans • James Fenimore Cooper

... he said, taking her by the arm and giving her a whirl, "we've done foun' your mudder's stifficut in de letters whar she put it an' tied 'em wid her weddin' ribbon. ...
— The Cromptons • Mary J. Holmes

... on; it was almost more than he could bear. The touch of her warm breasts, the faint perfume of her clothing, the pressure of her soft, white limbs—these things set every nerve of him a-tremble, they turned a madness loose in him. A blinding whirl of emotion seized him, he was like a leaf swept away in a gale; his words came now in wild sobs, "I ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair

... whirl of thoughts which swept through the mind of Franklin during the interval would be impossible. He saw that a simple act of carelessness had been committed by Caroline; but he was enough of a lawyer ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 1 January 1848 • Various

... at all. Her brain was in a whirl. The events of the afternoon rose up like a spectre and haunted her. She felt she needed a confidante. At the earliest possible moment she sought Chrissie alone, and told her how she had run up into the Observatory and seen Miss ...
— A Patriotic Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil

... following fortnight I find it difficult to write coherently. I found myself in a steady whirl of receptions, luncheons, dinners, teas, and assemblies of rather a pretentious character, at the greater number of which I was obliged to appear as the guest of honour. It began with the reception of Mrs. Floud, at which I may be said to have made my first ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson

... floor were only loosely laid down, and moved up and down under the hopping and gliding of many feet. If a foot happened to stamp a little more than usual, or a couple to fall down with a crash, then clouds of dust would whirl up and obscure the light from the swinging paraffin lamp, round which twelve candles, fixed in a metal disc, were flickering. A stove roared in the corner. The wall behind it had been scorched by the ...
— Absolution • Clara Viebig

... lantern at the stern, the latter perhaps a galaxy of many-colored lights. On a dark night it has the effect of a discharge of Roman candles arrested in mid-career. The other ferry-boats have a comical appearance as they whirl and whiz past us. If in the daytime they are deplorably like pumpkins with a stick thrust through them, at night they remind us of grotesque lanterns made out of those same pumpkins with illuminated ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various

... to the quick by his words. In a whirl of self-accusation she proposed the remedy: Rest for him, travel for herself. She would take a trip to Rome and to Hungary to make her arrangements for the wedding, whilst he might go to a small mountain fortress in the South, where he could exchange for a couple of months with an officer who ...
— Captain Mansana and Mother's Hands • Bjoernstjerne Bjoernson

... of that fatal wind cease not, which, catching me in their whirl, seem to propagate blasting and mildew as ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue

... verse." But the names of Mary Campbell and Robert Burns, which were originally inscribed on the volumes, have been almost obliterated. It has been suggested by Mr. Scott Douglas, the most recent editor who has investigated anew the whole incident, that, "in the whirl of excitement which soon followed that Sunday, Burns forgot his vow to poor Mary, and that she, heart-sore at his neglect, deleted the names from this touching memorial ...
— Robert Burns • Principal Shairp

... The night wind was now sweeping down the lake in a tornado, sighing and laboring in its course as if pregnant with evil—afar off, at one moment, heard in a low whistle, and anon rushing around us like an army of invisible spirits, bearing us along with the whirl of their advance, and yelling a fearful war-cry in our ears. The beacon-light still beckoned us on. My companion, as if rejoicing in the fury of the tempest which roared around us, ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 1 July 1848 • Various

... tail) to the bold, the truant, the cheeky, or the imprudent; while his unnatural spouse, well satisfied with her own part in having merely brought the helpless eggs into this world of sorrow, goes off on her own account in the giddy whirl of society, forgetful of the sacred claims of her wriggling offspring upon a ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen

... the lightnin' bit At his iron shoes each step he run, Then plung'd in the yearth—we rode in flame, Fur the flashes roll'd inter only one, Same es the bellers made one big roar; Yet thro' the whirl of din an' flame I sung an' shouted, an' call'd the steer I sidl'd agin ...
— Old Spookses' Pass • Isabella Valancy Crawford

... these awful words ringing in his ears, Tannhaeuser has retraced his weary steps. He has had enough of earth, and thinks only of returning to the embraces of Venus. In response to his cries Venus appears, in the midst of a wild whirl of nymphs and sirens. In vain Wolfram urges and appeals; Tannhaeuser will not yield his purpose. He breaks from his friend, and is rushing to meet the extended arms of the goddess, when Wolfram adjures him once more by the sainted memory of Elisabeth. At the sound of that sinless name Venus ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild

... of the charms of the place; contrast between the shade and quietude of the pine-woods, and the whirl and movement of modern life and luxury in its most splendid and ...
— Bournemouth, Poole & Christchurch • Sidney Heath

... exclaimed, and as he spoke there was a queer sucking sound, and Ken felt the boat whirl away in the direction ...
— On Land And Sea At The Dardanelles • Thomas Charles Bridges

... he ejaculated. "How you have lied to me about the grubbiness of your work! If this is your daily grind, I don't mind having a whirl at the ...
— Jewel Weed • Alice Ames Winter

... She whirl'd a javelin at me, and methought I woke; when, slowly at the foot o' the bed The mist-like curtains parted, and upon me Did learned Faustus look! He shook his head With grave reproof, but more of sympathy, As though his past humanity came o'er him— Then went away with a low, gushing sigh, ...
— The Works of Christopher Marlowe, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Christopher Marlowe

... the room whirl, and then, as my Aunt Gainor sat down, I fell on my knees and buried my face in her lap. I felt her dear old hands on my head, and at last would have ...
— Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker • S. Weir Mitchell

... these mountains ope their watery stores, Floods quit their caves and seek the distant shores; Wilcl thro disparting plains their waves expand, And lave the banks where future towns must stand. Whirl'd from the monstrous Andes' bursting sides, Maragnon leads his congregating tides; A thousand Alps for him dissolve their snow, A thousand Rhones obedient bend below, From different zones their ways converging wind, Sweep beds of ore, and leave their gold behind, In headlong cataracts indignant ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow

... rover's life—the joy, the thrill, the whirl! Let me feel thee again, old sea! let me leap into thy saddle once more. I am sick of these terra firma toils and cares; sick of the dust and reek of towns. Let me hear the clatter of hailstones on icebergs, and not the dull tramp of these plodders, plodding ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville

... Rose again from where it seem'd to fail, Storm'd in orbs of song, a growing gale; Till thronging in and in, to where they waited, As 'twere a hundred-throated nightingale, The strong tempestuous treble throbbed and palpitated; Ran into its giddiest whirl of sound, Caught the sparkles, and in circles, Purple gauzes, golden hazes, liquid mazes, Flung the torrent rainbow round. TENNYSON, The ...
— The Principles of English Versification • Paull Franklin Baum

... they probably occur, in more or less perfection, in all young vegetable cells. If such be the case, the wonderful noonday silence of a tropical forest is, after all, due only to the dulness of our hearing; and could our ears catch the murmur of these tiny Maelstroms, [96] as they whirl in the innumerable myriads of living cells which constitute each tree, we should be stunned, as with the roar of a ...
— Autobiography and Selected Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley

... husband, you may imagine the rest. When the dance then on foot was ended, he asked my hand. I could not refuse it if I would, but I would not if I could. He was irresistible. We danced and danced until the earth seemed to reel around us. I could perceive, however, even in the whirl of tumultuous delight which forced me onward, that we neared the water's edge in every successive figure. We stood at length on the verge of the stream. The current caught my dress, the villagers shrieked aloud, and rushed to rescue me from ...
— Folk-lore and Legends: German • Anonymous

... distress'd Return and late, all his companions lost, Indebted for a ship to foreign aid, And let affliction meet him at his door. He spake, and Ocean's sov'reign heard his pray'r. Then lifting from the shore a stone of size Far more enormous, o'er his head he whirl'd The rock, and his immeasurable force Exerting all, dismiss'd it. Close behind 640 The ship, nor distant from the rudder's head, Down came the mass. The ocean at the plunge Of such a weight, high on its refluent ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer



Words linked to "Whirl" :   go around, course, endeavor, birling, pirouette, attempt, run, whirling, circumvolve, effort, revolve, fling, try, rotate, feed, give it a whirl, logrolling, endeavour, motion, rotation, spin, flow, move, rotary motion, movement, round shape



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