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Zigzag   /zˈɪgzæg/   Listen
Zigzag

verb
(past & past part. zigzagged; pres. part. zigzagging)
1.
Travel along a zigzag path.  Synonym: crank.



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"Zigzag" Quotes from Famous Books



... enemy's disposal; a greater distance than a thousand paces was exceptional. They were always so placed that each of them could be seen by its neighbours on both sides, the line which they followed being a zigzag. ...
— Three Years' War • Christiaan Rudolf de Wet

... zigzag track up the side to the top, fixing in punga steps, so that horses could ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris

... the last slope of the zigzag descent to the shore, when he saw the figures of a man and woman moving slowly through a field of wild oats, not far from the trail. It seemed to his distorted fancy that the man was Cranch. The ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte

... white like big balls of snow. The aster salicifolius has a slender stem much branched above, long and narrow leaves, with violet, violet-purple or rarely white rays, and aster prenanthoides or crooked stem aster, may be told by its zigzag stem, its oblong, saw-toothed leaves and its violet rays. Two other beautiful species found hereabouts are the aster azureus, which blooms from August until after frost, with a slender but stiff and roughish stem, and many bright violet-blue flowers with short rays; and the aster Shortii, or ...
— Some Summer Days in Iowa • Frederick John Lazell

... whatever she said—even when she was most rude to her grandmother—she was never offensive. No one could have helped feeling all the time that she was a little lady.—I thought I would venture a question with her. I stood still at a turn of the zigzag, and looked down into the hollow, still a good way below us, where I could now distinguish the form, on the opposite side of the pond, of a woman seated at the foot of a tree, and stooping ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald

... length, presents itself; to the south the Beacon-terrace, a green road more than two miles long, leads to a high hill, where the Alderman commenced, but never finished, a triangular tower. This road, or rather avenue, has a most charming effect; the trees that bound its sides are planted in a zigzag direction, so as to destroy the appearance of formality, whilst in reality it is a straight road, and you walk at once in a direct line, without losing the time you would if the road were more tortuous. On the south side the view is most fascinating. In a deep hollow not half-a- ...
— Recollections of the late William Beckford - of Fonthill, Wilts and Lansdown, Bath • Henry Venn Lansdown

... rocks, inaccessible to approach except by narrow planking forming a causeway from rock walls across the sea to the branches of a tree. In other places rope ladders formed the only path to the aerial dwellings, or the zigzag trail up the steep face of a rock down which defenders could hurl stones. Howe's Sound, Jervis Canal, Bute Inlet, were passed; {275} and in July Johnstone came back with news he had found a narrow channel out ...
— Vikings of the Pacific - The Adventures of the Explorers who Came from the West, Eastward • Agnes C. Laut

... only twenty-five miles from Epi, I was five days on the way, so zigzag a route did the steamer pursue. But if one is not in a hurry, life on board is quite entertaining. The first day we anchored near the volcano of Lopevi, a lofty peak that rises from a base six kilometres ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser

... horses drank incredible quantities of water, and as our position was not yet very safe, we again resumed our march at a brisk trot. We travelled three or four more miles along the foot of a high ridge, and discovered what seemed to be an Indian trail, leading in a zigzag course up the side of it. This we followed, and soon found ourselves on the summit of the ridge. There we were again gratified at finding spread out before us a perfectly level prairie, extending as far as the eye could reach, without a tree to break ...
— Monsieur Violet • Frederick Marryat

... away from the bulging rim-wall. It was hard, rough work, and risky because it could not be accomplished slowly. Brush and rocks, loose shale and weathered slope, long, dusty inclines of yellow earth, and jumbles of stone—these made bad going for miles of slow, zigzag trail down out of the cedars. Then the trail entered what ...
— Wildfire • Zane Grey

... and his companions rode up to the chief gateway, a grand circular archway, with all the noble though grotesque mouldings, zigzag and cable, dog-tooth and parrot-beak, visages human and diabolic, wherewith the Norman builders loved to surround their doorways. The doors were of solid oak, heavily guarded with iron, and from a little wicket in the midst peered out a cowled ...
— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge

... had attained these groves, through which the wintry sea-wind was now whistling hoarse and shrill, she seemed to pause a moment as if to recollect the way. 'We maun go the precise track,' she said, and continued to go forward, but rather in a zigzag and involved course than according to her former steady and direct line of motion. At length she guided them through the mazes of the wood to a little open glade of about a quarter of an acre, surrounded by trees and bushes, which made a wild and irregular boundary. Even in ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... to follow them through the water. The dogs soon took to the swamp, which lies between the highlands, which was now covered with water, waist deep: here these faithful animals, swimming nearly all the time, followed the zigzag course, the tortuous twistings and windings of these two fugitives, who, it was afterwards discovered, were lost; sometimes scenting the tree wherein they had found a temporary refuge from the mud and water; at other places where the deep ...
— Clotel; or, The President's Daughter • William Wells Brown

... still, all alone on the side of the mountain, with the snowflakes flying round him, he felt a nervous thrill that made him tremble and almost turn backward. Almost, but not quite; for he thought of Katte and the poor little lambs lost—and perhaps dead—through his fault. The path went zigzag and was very steep; the Arolla pines swayed their boughs in his face; stones that lay in his path unseen in the gloom made him stumble. Now and then a large bird of the night flew by with a rushing sound; the air grew so cold that all Martinswand might have been turning to one ...
— Bimbi • Louise de la Ramee

... with equal indifference, the honest miner, the less honest saloon-keeper, and the capitalist, the degree of whose claim to that laudatory adjective was not to be so easily fixed. No one seemed out of place in the crazy, zigzag streets, no sound seemed foreign to this new, conglomerate atmosphere. The fluent profanity of the mule-driver, the shrill laugh of the dance-hall; the prolonged rattle and final roar of the ore-chute, the steady ...
— Peak and Prairie - From a Colorado Sketch-book • Anna Fuller

... station (fare, to the sanctuary and back, eight francs), my friend, Mr. H. F. Jones, and myself ascended to Serralunga, finding the views continually become more and more bewitching as we did so; soon after passing through Serralunga we reached the first chapel, and after another zigzag or two of road found ourselves in the large open court in front of the church. Here there is an inn, where any one who is inclined to do so could very well sleep. The piazza of the sanctuary is some two thousand feet above the sea, and the views are in some respects finer even than ...
— Ex Voto • Samuel Butler

... race to which I belong. In the first place, this world is not very well adapted to raising good men and good women. It is three times better adapted to the cultivation of fish than of people. There is one little narrow belt running zigzag around the world, in which men and women of genius can be raised, and that is all. It is with man as it is with vegetation. In the valley you find the oak and elm tossing their branches defiantly to the storm, and as you advance up the mountain side the hemlock, the pine, the ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll, Volume I • Robert Green Ingersoll

... an hour or two afterwards a gap of a foot or more may be seen between each. When the floes are pressed together it is difficult and sometimes impossible to force a way through, but when there is release of pressure the sum of many little gaps allows one to take a zigzag path.' ...
— The Voyages of Captain Scott - Retold from 'The Voyage of the "Discovery"' and 'Scott's - Last Expedition' • Charles Turley

... by stroking and dealing lightly with them. But once upon a time in an ignorant moment two other campers and myself followed a lonely railroad track and struck off on a path through the pines in search of a certain trapper on a fur farm. The path went on a broken zigzag avoiding fallen trees and soft hollows, conducting itself on the whole with more patience than firmness. We walked a quarter of a mile, but still we saw no cabin. The line of the railroad had long ...
— There's Pippins And Cheese To Come • Charles S. Brooks

... of keeping up the supply forced their guide to adopt a zigzag mode of progression, and to make his little caravan traverse nearly double the distance that would have been necessary could they have taken a bee-line towards the south. But experience had taught all travellers who journey by the desert, instead of by the great waterway with its vast ...
— In the Mahdi's Grasp • George Manville Fenn

... to reach an object, his hand described a sort of zigzag before it succeeded in reaching what it was in search of, and after a little while this movement annoyed me so that I turned aside my head in order not to ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant

... good deal that night on the face of the waters. Some of them who were working in "areas of comparative calm" submit charts of their tangled courses, all studded with notes along the zigzag—something like this:— ...
— Sea Warfare • Rudyard Kipling

... "the four walls" of a square building or garden, but this is only a conventional way of saying "the four sides." If you were speaking of the actual brickwork, you would say, "I am going to enclose this square garden with a wall." Angles clearly do not affect the question, for we may have a zigzag wall just as well as a straight one, and the Great Wall of China is a good example of a wall with plenty of angles. Now, if you look at Diagrams 1, 2, and 3, you may be puzzled to declare whether there are in each case two or four new walls; but you cannot call them three, as required ...
— Amusements in Mathematics • Henry Ernest Dudeney

... on the prairies. We were both pretty confident we could run sixteen miles in two hours. But we dared not run straight. We knew that if they found we were keeping a line, they would let the dog go their best pace and gallop alongside; so we had to zigzag, sometimes going almost back upon our own track. We did not do this so often as we should have done if we had had ...
— On the Pampas • G. A. Henty

... arms from shoulder to wrist, and the feet and legs up to the knee covered with devices. On the chest and arms the patterns are in the shape of flowers and leaves, while along the leg a succession of zigzag lines are pricked. The Binjhwars are usually cultivators and labourers, while, as already stated, several zamindari and other estates are owned by members of the tribe. Binjhwars also commonly hold the office of Jhankar or priest of the village gods in the Sambalpur District, ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell

... murky morning in November, wind north-east, a poor old woman with a wooden leg was seen struggling against the fitful gusts of the bitter breeze, along a stony zigzag road, full of deep and irregular cart-ruts. Her ragged petticoat was blue, and so was her wretched nose. A stick was in her left hand, which assisted her to dig and hobble her way along; and in her other hand, ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Volume I. No. 8 - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 19, 1850 • Various

... mountain whence they were tormenting us. The artillerymen kept up a fire at us from the cannon, which consisted of light six-pounders, but owing to our movement they could not get the elevation. We slowly scaled the hill zigzag fashion to baffle their aim, until we got so close that the cannon could not possibly touch us, owing to a slight mound on the hill. We were then within a hundred yards of them, and I took their number, and found ...
— The Autobiography of Sergeant William Lawrence - A Hero of the Peninsular and Waterloo Campaigns • William Lawrence

... particulars; but some young men had been using sacred things in a profane and unlawful way, when the occurrence, which was variously explained, took place. The story of the Appearance in the chamber was, I suppose, invented afterwards; but of the injury to the building there could be no question; and the zigzag line, where the mortar is a little thicker than before, ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang

... the east, and spread out, and out, as it sailed in from seaward, and on, and on, until it gradually covered the whole scene from our view, (shipping, and harbour, and town, and camp, and sugar estates,) boiling and rolling in black eddies under our feet. Anon the thunder began to grumble, and the zigzag lightning to fork out from one dark mass into another, while all, where we sat, was bright and smiling under the unclouded noon—day sun. This continued for half an hour, when at length the sombre appearance of the clouds below us brightened into a sea ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott

... are the male and female, being continually to be seen in each other's company. While they search for their food in pools of water along the coast, they nearly always bear each other company, swimming in zigzag, so that every now and then they brush past each other. If one of them is shot, the other flies away only for a short time until it observes that its mate is left behind. It then flies back, swims with evident distress round its dead friend, and pushes it with ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold

... said the miner, with the firmness of a great conviction. "It's full of yeast powders. Why, it's r'arin' and risin' like a buckin' hoss. I'm plumb sea-sick." He laid a zigzag course ...
— The Barrier • Rex Beach

... sounds of approach had been heard. The apartment was dark and still, save for the whipping of the wind at the open casement. While the boys stood there, expecting every instant to hear the voice of one of their chums, rain began to fall, and a sharp zigzag of lightning ...
— Boy Scouts on Motorcycles - With the Flying Squadron • G. Harvey Ralphson

... go nearly a mile around. To give those who were on foot a nearer cut, those steps were placed there. They are the rocks," he continued, "that people believed 'Old Put' went down when he escaped from the British dragoons at Horseneck. He didn't go down the steps at all, but went zigzag from the top to the bottom of the hill, very near them. I stood just here listening to the firing above, when I saw the general rushing down the hill like a madman, as he seemed, for you see it is very steep. As he flew past me on his powerful bay horse, all bespattered with mud, I heard ...
— Harper's Young People, January 6, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... that lasted for many minutes, rolled over her head. The lightning was so vivid that every single vine stem could be seen for a moment as distinctly as in the sunlight at noon-day; and then all was veiled in darkness. It flashed across the lake in winding, zigzag lines, lighting it up on all sides; while the echoes of the thunder grew louder and stronger. On land, the boats were all carefully drawn up on the beach, every living thing sought shelter, and at length the rain poured ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen

... plan, Chamreau was to take a brand from the lodge and, in the black night outside, make a vivid zigzag in the air a few times, when his plot was obviously a success. But he became so deeply interested in giving realism to his own share of the spree that he forgot about everything else, and the rest of the scheme was omitted, so far ...
— The Preacher of Cedar Mountain - A Tale of the Open Country • Ernest Thompson Seton

... any part of the plumage, comes out when the hold of its would-be capturer is upon this alone; and how hard it yields in the dead bird! No doubt there is relaxation in the former case. Nature says to the pursuer, "Hold on," and to the pursued, "Let your tail go." What is the tortuous, zigzag course of those slow-flying moths for but to make it difficult for the birds to snap them up? The skunk is a slow, witless creature, and the fox and lynx love its meat; yet it carries a bloodless weapon that ...
— Birds and Poets • John Burroughs

... germs of numerous designs developed in almost every department of art; but merely to enumerate them would require a volume. One form of the old classic lamp was that of the nautilus; another, that of Gyphaea incurva; the zigzag mouldings of the Norman Gothic may be found in the carinated oysters of the Greensand; the more delicate frettings of similar form which roughened the pillars of a somewhat later age occur on Conularia and the dorsal spines of Gyracanthus. The old corals, ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller

... all zigzag and winding, the stream carrying them along slowly, for a sharp sea-breeze was dead against them, explaining how it was that the schooner had sailed up ...
— Fitz the Filibuster • George Manville Fenn

... leaders have often practiced the tactics of retreat and zigzag. We know that Soviet and Chinese communism still poses a serious threat to the free world. And in the Middle East recent Soviet moves are hardly compatible with the ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... take—about that there was no mistake—but never two of equal length, and the cart was rolling in a zigzag all the time. What a funny horse it was. It looked as if it was made of odd parts, so bony and misshapen was it. No two parts matched, and its limbs groaned and creaked ...
— Ditte: Girl Alive! • Martin Andersen Nexo

... gave me an instant's advantage, for climbing upon it I leaped to another a few paces farther on, and in this way was able to keep clear of the mush that carpeted the surrounding ground. But the zigzag course that this necessitated was placing such a heavy handicap upon me that my pursuer was steadily ...
— At the Earth's Core • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... for us. This is one of the advantages of the zigzag approach by the Fox River—travellers never take their friends by surprise; and when the whole circle sat down to the hospitable board, we were indeed a ...
— Wau-bun - The Early Day in the Northwest • Juliette Augusta Magill Kinzie

... two bars; while, its eye wide open in its round, golden circle, it beat the air with its front limbs which worked as though they were hands. It reminded him of a toy made with straight slips of wood nailed zigzag one on the other, which by a similar movement regulated the exercise of the little soldiers stuck thereon. Then he thought of his home and next of his mother, and overcome by a great sorrow he again began to weep. His limbs trembled; ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume IV (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant

... some time, and were just giving up the case in despair, when one of the boats put off from the cutter, and pulled directly for the beach, above which we were standing; so we hurried down by a rough zigzag path cut in the cliff, and were ready on the shore to receive her when she pulled in. Who should we see in the boat but Stretcher, whom we fancied all the time held in durance vile by the smugglers. The honest fellow's satisfaction at seeing us was even greater than ...
— Salt Water - The Sea Life and Adventures of Neil D'Arcy the Midshipman • W. H. G. Kingston

... rise of the great Protestant nations, the latter had been growing feebler and feebler for centuries, until it was abolished as an institution by Napoleon. Yet Italy in 1814 still lay helpless and divided at the feet of Rome. The Pope held under his immediate sway a large zigzag-shaped territory running across the centre from sea to sea, and, as spiritual leader of half Europe, he could at any moment summon to his assistance the Catholic chivalry of the world. "The Roman emperor" no longer existed, but "the Austrian emperor" was another title for ...
— The War and Democracy • R.W. Seton-Watson, J. Dover Wilson, Alfred E. Zimmern,

... full speed ahead on a zigzag course. We were in the most deadly submarine infested zone of the ocean. Only yesterday the Susquehanna had been torpedoed in these very waters, and, no doubt, the same evil periscopes were watching us now ...
— The Greater Love • George T. McCarthy

... entertaining, restful, and real talk which is the most roving. You may begin in Portland and end in San Francisco. You may start talking about preserving peaches, and halt on the latest sensation. It is often very amusing to trace the line of such converse: it moves in a zigzag course, and terminates many miles out of the original direction. By this discursiveness I do not mean gossip. Of course talk of that kind has no good part in conversation: it is the slave of ignorance ...
— Hold Up Your Heads, Girls! • Annie H. Ryder

... without once awakening, until the sun stood high in the heavens, and the coach moved very slowly; and when he stuck his head out of the window, he saw, to his utter astonishment, that they were ascending the zigzag road up the Maloja, that was so familiar to him from ...
— Rico And Wiseli - Rico And Stineli, And How Wiseli Was Provided For • Johanna Spyri

... on either side three very long and narrow two-light windows of equal height, with a cinquefoil in the head of the central window and a quatrefoil in the head of the side windows; whilst above is a vesica, set within a bevelled fringe of bay-leaves, arranged zigzag-wise, with their points in contact—the last the subject of a well-known rhapsody by Ruskin. The root of the cathedral history in this case lies in the tower. It stands awkwardly a little out of line in the ...
— Chronicles of Strathearn • Various

... straw-coloured hair reached barely halfway up the spiked wall; and standing on my tiptoes my hands still came far below the grim iron teeth at the top. Yet I continued to measure myself, week by week, against the barrier, until at last the zigzag scratches from my knife began to ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow

... on to Munden, which is TOP of the back,—still backwards from which, there is a kind of proud CURL or overlapping, down to Langensalza in Gotha Country, which greedy Broglio has likewise grasped at! Broglio's friends say he himself knew the faultiness of this zigzag form, but had been overruled. Ferdinand certainly knows it, and ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... wide-open mouths and skinny bodies, that looked like birds visited by famine. He knew where the red columbines blossomed on the face of some tall cliffs, where the stream flowed through a rocky gorge; and how to crawl painfully down a zigzag course from the top to gather these, at the risk of falling seventy ...
— The Rival Campers Ashore - The Mystery of the Mill • Ruel Perley Smith

... there?" cried Nat, pointing toward the outer beacon. "Some look like white Crows, and the others go zigzag like big Barn Swallows. Are there any such things ...
— Citizen Bird • Mabel Osgood Wright and Elliott Coues

... to be our place of refuge in case of danger, sir," observed Ready; "and therefore I have selected this thick part of the wood, as it is not very far from the house, and by cutting the path to it in a zigzag, it will be quite hidden from sight; and we must make the path just wide enough to allow the wheels to pass, and stump up the roots of the trees which we are obliged to cut down, otherwise ...
— Masterman Ready • Captain Marryat

... the precipice, 2000 cubits deep, which is full of rocks and boulders. Thou turnest back in a zigzag, thou bearest thy bow, thou takest the iron in thy left hand. Thou lettest the old men see, if their eyes are good, how, worn out with fatigue, thou supportest thyself with thy hand. Ebed gamal Mohar n'amu ('A camel's slave is the Mohar! they say'); so they say, and thou ...
— Patriarchal Palestine • Archibald Henry Sayce

... next process. To make the round indentations on the handle, one smith held the article on the anvil while the other applied the point of the shank of a file—previously rounded—and struck the file with a hammer. The other figures were made with the sharpened point of a file, pushed forward with a zigzag motion of the hand. When the chasing was done the silver was blanched by the process before referred to, being occasionally taken from the boiling solution of almogen to be rubbed with ashes and sand. For about five hours both of the smiths worked together on this powder-charger; subsequently, for ...
— Navajo Silversmiths • Washington Matthews

... It was very heavy; I could scarcely lift it. Pausing a moment, and looking forward at its shattered face in utter anguish of despair, I saw again, repeated in a hundred jagged splinters, up and down in zigzag confusion, in demoniac omnipresence, the uncanny eye, the spectral shape, which had so appalled me. The little phantom had arisen, its slim finger was outstretched,—it beckoned, slowly beckoned, growing indistinct, it receded ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various

... center north and south the Cascade mountains in a zigzag course lift their clustered peaks and mountain passes from four to eight thousand feet above the sea, while Mount Olympus and his colleagues higher still poke their inspiring [Page 17] front heavenward. ...
— A Review of the Resources and Industries of the State of Washington, 1909 • Ithamar Howell

... cored and sliced, yet retaining as near as practicable its original shape. Peel, quarter and remove the seeds from four sweet oranges; arrange them in a border around the pineapple. Select four fine bananas, peel and cut into slices lengthwise; arrange these zigzag-fence fashion around the border of the dish. In the V-shaped spaces around the dish put tiny mounds of grapes of mixed colors. When complete, the dish should look very appetizing. To half a pint of clear sugar syrup add half an ounce of good brandy, pour over the fruit ...
— The Whitehouse Cookbook (1887) - The Whole Comprising A Comprehensive Cyclopedia Of Information For - The Home • Mrs. F.L. Gillette

... way. He lives by the water; he goes much in it; and he can swim well. Young ones come out of eggs, which the old ones lay in the sand. Some beasts eat the eggs, or else there would be too many crocodiles. The crocodile can run fast if he runs straight, and those who wish to get out of his way run zigzag, and he takes some time to turn; the poor black men know this, and can get out of his way; but some of them can fight and kill him on the land or in the water. I think the crocodile is mentioned in Scripture. Ask your teacher what Scripture ...
— The Infant System - For Developing the Intellectual and Moral Powers of all Children, - from One to Seven years of Age • Samuel Wilderspin

... ahead, and the wood behind." He named a wood thrice famous in the history of the war. "Our lines are just beyond the cottages, and the German lines just in front of the wood. How far are we from them? Three-quarters of a mile." It was discussed whether we should be taken zigzag through the fields to the entrance of the communication-trench. But the firing was getting hotter, and Captain —— was evidently relieved when we elected to turn back. Shall I always regret that lost opportunity? You did ask ...
— The War on All Fronts: England's Effort - Letters to an American Friend • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... a strip of blue filled in with perpendicular zigzag black lines was used. From these few facts you can understand how unformed and awkward Egyptian pictures seem if we compare them with the existing idea of what is beautiful. There appear to have been certain fixed rules for the use of colors, and certain objects were always painted ...
— A History of Art for Beginners and Students: Painting, Sculpture, Architecture - Painting • Clara Erskine Clement

... equally cut off from the commercial movement. But every year will diminish the charm of this dirty old town to the antiquary. It will be observed that all the old streets are not accidentally crooked, but that they have been carefully laid out on curved or zigzag lines, which turn now in one direction and now in another. The motive was a defensive one in view of street-fighting, which was often so terrible and so prolonged in the Middle Ages. Each curve of a street formed an obstacle to the onward rush of an enemy, and only allowed those burghers who were ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker

... darkness and the zigzag turns of the stairs, Wolf was so familiar with every corner of the old house that he did not even need to grope ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... marrows are very nice stuffed. They should be first peeled very slightly and then cut, long-ways, into three zigzag slices; the pips should be removed and the interior filled with either mushroom forcemeat (see MUSHROOM FORCEMEAT) or sage-and-onion stuffing made with rather an extra quantity of bread-crumbs. The vegetable ...
— Cassell's Vegetarian Cookery - A Manual Of Cheap And Wholesome Diet • A. G. Payne

... stand at eight o'clock, P.M.; wind ahead, and little of it, performing a zigzag march between Eleuthera and Abaco. On deck, the pretty widow lies in an easy chair, surrounded by her countrymen, who discourse about sugar, molasses, chocolate, and other local topics, together with the relative merits of Cuba as compared ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca

... at all with his donkey. The beast scampered zigzag across the road and the others ran into him; he scraped Blucher against carts and the corners of houses; the road was fenced in with high stone walls, and the donkey gave him a polishing first on one side and then on the other, but never once took the middle; he finally ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... sheltered by bowers, where ladies and gentlemen can sit, when the weather is pleasant, and read, or drink their tea or coffee, or explore, with an opera glass, or a spy glass, the scenery around. They can see the towers and castles across the river, and follow the little paths leading in zigzag lines up among the vineyards to the watchtowers, and pavilions, and belvideres, that are built on the pinnacles of the rocks, or on the summits of ...
— Rollo on the Rhine • Jacob Abbott

... of vivacious children, we must sometimes follow them in their zigzag course, and even press them to the end of their own train of thought. They will be content when they have obtained a full hearing; then they will have leisure to discover that what they were in such haste to utter, was not ...
— Practical Education, Volume I • Maria Edgeworth

... instances of such, as in the church of St. Mary, at Leicester, where is a fine Norman triple sedile, divided into graduating seats by double cylindrical piers with sculptured capitals, and the recessed arches they support are enriched on the face with a profusion of the zigzag moulding. In the south wall of the choir of Broadwater Church, Sussex, is a stone bench beneath a large semicircular Norman arch, the face of which is enriched with the chevron or zigzag moulding. In Avington Church, Berkshire, is a stone beneath a plain segmental arch. Norman sedilia ...
— The Principles of Gothic Ecclesiastical Architecture, Elucidated by Question and Answer, 4th ed. • Matthew Holbeche Bloxam

... were curveting back on the wheelers in a way which meant imminent mix up, their legs over traces and behind whiffle-trees. On the right, of us was solid rock up, on the left solid rock down, one hundred feet to the stream, and just ahead was the sharp turn the road made to a higher ledge in its zigzag up the mountain. I had always intended to learn to drive four-in-hand, but this first lesson left me no pleasure in the learning. There were no little triumphs of difficulties mastered, no gentle surprises, no long, smooth, ...
— A Woman Tenderfoot • Grace Gallatin Seton-Thompson

... point in the drunkard's downward career he ceases to have any control over himself, and increases his speed from the usual staggering jog-trot to a brisk zigzag gallop that generally terminates abruptly ...
— Fighting the Flames • R.M. Ballantyne

... present may name the lady of his choice, and if two name the same lady they have a drinking bout to determine which is entitled to claim her. The one who first admits that he can drink no more—usually signified by a hasty and zigzag retreat from the room—is declared the loser. If a guest comes late to the Hospiz he must drink fast so as to catch up with earlier arrivals, unless he has been drinking elsewhere, when he is let off ...
— William of Germany • Stanley Shaw

... the vehicles, the tourists were borne through the principal streets. There are only five or six thousand English in the city, and Hong-Kong is substantially Chinese. At about eleven, the coolies toted the sedans to the top of the peak, where an observatory is located, following a zigzag path. The approach of every vessel of any consequence is signalled from this elevation by flags. The ascent is difficult, it is so steep; and the bearers of the sedans had to stop and rest occasionally. The view is magnificent, and the consul pointed ...
— Four Young Explorers - Sight-Seeing in the Tropics • Oliver Optic

... was feasible to provide a road for his Majesty directly from his barrack to the beach; but that in view of the great height of the cliff it would be necessary to moderate the rapidity of the descent by making the road zigzag. "Make it as you wish," said the Emperor, "only let it be ready for use in three days." The skillful engineer went to work, and in three days and three nights the road was constructed of stone, bound together with iron clamps; and the Emperor, ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton

... difficult task. He could not open the door without first closing the closet door, and vice versa. It was impossible for him anywhere to traverse the room in a straight line. To go from the door to the head of the bed was a zigzag course that he was never quite able to accomplish in the dark without collisions. Having settled the difficulty of the conflicting doors, he had to steer sharply to the right to avoid the kitchen. Next, ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London

... yards, which were not sharp. His aim was to pass the "United States" at a distance, wear—turn round from the wind, toward her—when clear of her broadside, and so come up from astern without being raked. The interested reader may compare this method with that pursued by Hull, who steered down by zigzag courses. The Court Martial censured Carden's decision, which was clearly wrong, for the power of heavy guns over lighter, of the American 24's over the British 18's, was greatest at a distance; therefore, to close rapidly, taking the chances of being raked—if not avoidable ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 1 • Alfred Thayer Mahan

... mountains to get the Division to Dharahiyeh when it should be ordered to take part in the attack on the Jerusalem defences, and while they were waiting at Dilbeih they did much to improve the main road. The famous zigzag on the steep ridge between Dharahiyeh and Dilbeih was in good condition, and you saw German thoroughness in the gradients, in the well-banked bends, and in the masonry walls which held up the road where it had been cut in the side of a ...
— How Jerusalem Was Won - Being the Record of Allenby's Campaign in Palestine • W.T. Massey

... process of reasoning informed her, was necessarily an English young lady. She reserved her questions till they should cease this hopping and heeling down the zigzag of the slippery path-track. When children they had been collectors of beetles and butterflies, and the flying by of a 'royal-mantle,' the purple butterfly grandly fringed, could still remind Carinthia of the event ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... along a line parallel with the course taken by the animal. Presently the rabbit sees the second Indian, and dashes off at a tangent. By this time the third hunter has come up and gives the quarry another turn. After the third or fourth zigzag, the rabbit is surrounded, and the hunters quickly close in upon ...
— My Native Land • James Cox

... principal business houses. It has narrow streets badly paved and drained, and made still more dirty and offensive by the surface drainage of the upper town. Communication with the upper town is effected by means of two elevators, a circular tramway, and steep zigzag roads. The upper town is built on the western slope of a low ridge, the backbone of the peninsula, and rises from the edge of the bluffs to altitudes of 200 to 260 ft. above the sea-level, affording magnificent views of the bay and ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various

... necessary to cross this depression, and by a narrow ledge at the foot of the great cliff gain the other side, where another zigzag ascent brought them onto the rocky slope leading over a quarter of a mile of ...
— A Dog with a Bad Name • Talbot Baines Reed

... they passed became every day more and more rugged, until at length it assumed the character of a wild mountainous district. Sometimes they wound their way in a zigzag manner up the mountain sides, by paths so narrow that they could scarcely find a foot-hold. At other times they descended into narrow valleys where they saw great numbers of wild animals of various kinds, ...
— Martin Rattler • Robert Michael Ballantyne

... through the inner part of the house, and entered, by a circuitous way, the side gate of the park, when she perceived: yellow flowers covering the ground; white willows flanking the slopes; diminutive bridges spanning streams, resembling the Jo Yeh; zigzag pathways (looking as if) they led to the steps of Heaven; limpid springs dripping from among the rocks; flowers hanging from hedges emitting their fragrance, as they were flapped by the winds; red leaves on the tree tops swaying to and fro; ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin

... was nothing but the corner torn from a newspaper, and should be consigned to the waste-basket; yet her eye caught the words in large head-lines as she picked it up idly, "Miss Geraldine Loring's Wedding to Be an Elaborate Affair." There was nothing more readable. The paper was torn in a zigzag line just beneath. Yet that was enough. It ...
— The Girl from Montana • Grace Livingston Hill

... for days past I had idly watched scattered flurries of lemon-yellow and of orange butterflies drift past Kartabo. Down the two great Guiana rivers they came, steadily progressing, yet never hurrying; with zigzag flickering flight they barely cleared the trees and shrubs, and then skimmed the surface, vanishing when ripples caught the light, redoubled by reflection when the water lay quiet and polished. For month after month they passed, sometimes absent for days or weeks, but soon to be counted ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe

... every moment; and every exertion was made for the protection of the immediate front. The stone fence, like those still common in New England, was two or three feet high, with set posts and two rails; in all, about five feet high, the top rail giving a rest for a rifle. A zigzag "stake and rider fence" was put in front, the meadow division-fences being stripped for the purpose. The fresh-mown hay filled the interval between the fences. This line was nearly two hundred ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 5, May, 1884 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various

... day of our voyage, we reached a point where the Gulf of Serocasfe divides, a sharp jutting cape or peninsula parting its waters. We took the northern branch, about fifteen miles in width, and here, rising to the surface and steering a zigzag course from coast to coast, I was enabled to see something of the character of this most extraordinary strait. Its walls at first were no less than 2000 feet in height, so that at all times we were in sight, so to speak, of land. A road had been cut along the sea-level, and here and there ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg

... in this fashion for about a mile or so, changing front continually and facing the Somalis, who pressed us hard every inch of the way; until, coming to an open space on the main road that had been cut in a sort of zigzag through the bush from Malindi up to Uganda, the captain determined to make a stand here and teach our pursuers a lesson, the more particularly as we now had with us ...
— Young Tom Bowling - The Boys of the British Navy • J.C. Hutcheson

... of Dresden, Yates County, New York, seven miles from Penn Yan, where Robert Ingersoll was born, to his niche in the Temple of Fame, was a zigzag journey. But that is Nature's plan—we make head by tacking. And as the years go by, more and more we see the line of Ingersoll's life stretching itself straight. Every change to him meant progress. Success is a question of temperament—it is all a matter of the red corpuscle. Ingersoll was a ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard

... completed, zigzag excavations are made toward the front to cover the passage of men who proceed to dig the second parallel. Meanwhile the batteries have commenced to play, and riflemen have been advanced in trenches at convenient places, whose fire annoys the gunners of the ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... something white from a bureau-drawer, stripped the worn, patched old cotton nightgown from the skeleton-like body, and, handling the invalid with a strong, sure touch, slipped on a soft, woolly outing-flannel wrapper with a curious trimming of zigzag braid down the front. Mrs. Purdon opened her eyes very slightly, but shut them again at her sister's quick command, "You lay still, Em'line, and drink some of this brandy." She obeyed without comment, but after a pause she opened her eyes again ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield

... proceeded, and should have done so if the great streaks of lightning which now and then shot zigzag through the sky had taken the shape of words and bid us all beware. I was not one to be daunted, and knew no other course than that of advance when once a stroke of justice had been planned, and the direction for its fulfilment marked out. I went on, but I began to think, and that ...
— The Old Stone House and Other Stories • Anna Katharine Green

... I know the rest," Saunders said, under his breath. "I congratulate you. I congratulate you with all my heart." He held out his hand, but Mostyn warded it off, his cigar cutting red zigzag ...
— The Desired Woman • Will N. Harben

... of the communication trench, Tom felt his heart grow cold. Still, with set teeth, and a hard look in his eyes, he groped his way along the trench, through Piccadilly, and Haymarket, and Bond Street, and Whitehall (for in this manner do the soldiers name the various parts of the zigzag cuttings through the clay): while all the time he could hear the pep, pep, pep, pep of the machine guns, and ...
— Tommy • Joseph Hocking

... that all the women working on the Giardino land were going home. Aristodemo and his companion ran after some of the girls, and their discordant shouts and laughs could be heard in the distance, mingled with the 'Ave Maria' sung by groups of woman and girls who were mounting the zigzag path towards Nemi, their ...
— Eleanor • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... polishes floors and strips of Indian matting, cool chintz coverings, and furniture of the simplest maple and pine wood —a charming summer retreat, fitted up with unostentatious taste. There was a tiny garden at the back, shut in by a low chalk cliff, a rough zigzag path that goats might have climbed led to the downs, and there was a breach where we could enjoy the sweet ...
— Esther - A Book for Girls • Rosa Nouchette Carey

... Hotel stood for a long time after everything near it had gone, but finally went up in smoke as the rest. You could not look in any direction in the city but what mass after mass of flame stared you in the face. To get about one had to dodge from one street to another, back and forth in zigzag fashion, and half an hour after going through a street, it would be impassable. One after another of the magnificent business blocks went down. The newer buildings seemed to have withstood the shock better than any others, ...
— The San Francisco Calamity • Various

... which she addressed him in little familiar terms, and asked "if they were still fond of each other." Then, after nearly a year's silence, there came a scrappy letter scrawled in her enormous childish zigzag writing, in which she tried to play the lady,—a few affectionate, droll words. And there she left it. She did not forget him, but she had no time ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland

... which was no longer an impassable barrier to the people of the State. Now the train toiled over a stile-like way connecting east and west, and Noonoon and Kangaroo, divided by a mile and the river, nestled immediately at the foot of the zigzag climb. ...
— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin

... time the waters had visibly diminished; the torrent had once more become a river, though a very rapid one, it is true. However, by pursuing a zigzag course, and overcoming it to a certain extent, John hoped to reach the opposite shore. At half-past twelve, they embarked provisions enough for a couple of days. The remainder was left with the wagon and the tent. Mulrady was ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne

... no chance of getting her hands up to her head, she tried to get her head down to them, and was delighted to find that her neck would bend about easily in any direction, like a serpent. She had just succeeded in curving it down into a graceful zigzag, and was going to dive in among the leaves, which she found to be nothing but the tops of the trees under which she had been wandering, when a sharp hiss made her draw back in a hurry: a large pigeon had flown ...
— Alice's Adventures in Wonderland - Illustrated by Arthur Rackham. With a Proem by Austin Dobson • Lewis Carroll

... Quin good-humoredly allowed himself to be conducted in a zigzag course to the imposing doorway of a ...
— Quin • Alice Hegan Rice

... somewhat the shape of Littorina zigzag, the Trochus zigzag of Montague, but is all of one colour externally and ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia] [Volume 2 of 2] • Phillip Parker King

... still Eleanor waits on the verandah, with widely-opened eyes, staring along the zigzag path by which Carol rode away. She remembers he turned back to look at her three times, kissing his hand twice. What can have detained him? Surely he ...
— When the Birds Begin to Sing • Winifred Graham

... reached the open piece of green and were close on the crumbling ruins of St. Peter's chapel without a word having passed between them. The moon struggled out with greater effort, and, to Eve's relief, showed that the zigzag dangers of the path were past, and there was now nothing worse to fear than what might happen on any uneven grassy slope. Moreover, the buzz of voices was near, and, though they could not see the persons speaking, Eve knew by the sound that they could not be very far distant. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 26, July 1880. • Various

... light The gray day darkened into night, A night made hoary with the swarm And whirl-dance of the blinding storm, A zigzag wavering to and fro Crossed and recrossed the winged snow: And ere the early bed-time came The white drift piled the window-frame, And, through the glass, the clothes-line posts Looked in like ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin

... a leisurely circuit of the two sides of the principal square, was now beginning the ascent of the steep zigzag road to the Palace, which stood on the terraced height of the plateau that commanded the city. The party in the coach caught glimpses of its massive but ornate towers with fantastic spires and turrets, and its great arched and columned wings of ...
— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey

... ground? But watch them in their evening flight. It is a revelation. They rise above the houses and shoot across my sky like a charge of canister. I can almost hear them whizz. Down by the cemetery I have seen them dash into view high up in the slit of sky, dive for the trees, dart zigzag like a madly plunging kite, and hurl themselves, as soft ...
— Roof and Meadow • Dallas Lore Sharp

... and children into the outer enclosure of the ancient stronghold, and with them their sheep and goats and the few cattle which remained to them, were employed in building up the entrance permanently with stones, a zigzag secret path upon the river side, that could be stopped in a few minutes, being now their only method of ingress and egress through the thickness of the walls. A certain number of men were also sent out as ...
— Benita, An African Romance • H. Rider Haggard

... and grievances of all kinds; something which, after one horrified look to make sure, led him to dart into the light chamber, spring at a reckless gait down the winding stair, out of the tower, rush to the edge of the bluff, and plunge headlong down the zigzag path worn ...
— The Woman-Haters • Joseph C. Lincoln

... his narrative with a comment: "It's the truth I've verified it a thousand times since that hobo put me onto it. A line running through the center of the heel prints of a man carrying a heavy burden will be a zigzag, while one through the heel prints of the same man without the burden will ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various

... still in the moonlight, slackened speed, half-turned as if in hesitation, then ran on more slowly, with zigzag steps, as if desperately looking for a way out. But he said to me in ...
— Old Man Savarin and Other Stories • Edward William Thomson

... curved line is pleasing because the eye is so hung as best to move in it." Pleasing, yes; but not beautiful. And precisely herein is illustrated the distinction. A life wearied with an undulating uniformity of days will find beauty less in the curve than in the zigzag, because the sight of the broken line brings to the spirit suggestions of change and adventure. A supine temper finds shock, excitement, and a meaning in the vertical. Yet the significance of forms is not determined necessarily by contrasts. A ...
— The Gate of Appreciation - Studies in the Relation of Art to Life • Carleton Noyes

... appearing plain before us. We had no difficulty in following it up the lesser heights, around the base. It wound on over rock and bog, among the heather and broom with which the mountain is covered, sometimes running up a steep acclivity and then winding zigzag round a rocky ascent. The rains two days before had made the bogs damp and muddy; but, with this exception, we had ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors - Vol. II Great Britain And Ireland, Part Two • Francis W. Halsey

... Ben had taken his station, he saw, in the moonlight, Mr. Mudge coming up the road, on his way home. Judging from his zigzag course, he was ...
— Paul Prescott's Charge • Horatio Alger

... will, the actions will be harmonious, however unlike they seem. These varieties are lost sight of when seen at a little distance, at a little height of thought. One tendency unites them all. The voyage of the best ship is a zigzag line of a hundred tacks. This is only microscopic criticism. See the line from a sufficient distance, and it straightens itself to the average tendency. Your genuine action will explain itself and will explain your other genuine actions. Your conformity explains nothing. Act singly, and what ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)

... in the hillside seventy-five or a hundred feet below, where appear five or six square, grated doors, leading, apparently, to a row of subterranean ammunition-vaults. Underneath the escarpment is a zigzag flight of steps, screened at exposed points by what seem to be comparatively recent walls, or curtains of masonry, much lighter in color than the walls of the castle itself. Still lower down, at the base of the bluff, ...
— Campaigning in Cuba • George Kennan

... of Helena. He strode along, singing to himself, and spinning his towel rhythmically. A small path led him across a field and down a zigzag in front of the cliffs. Some nooks, sheltered from the wind, were warm with sunshine, scented of honeysuckle and of thyme. He took a sprig of woodbine that was coloured of cream and butter. The grass ...
— The Trespasser • D.H. Lawrence

... or water vases, will suffice to show any one who has examined the older pottery of this region, specimens and fragments of which are found among the ruins, that a marked change has taken place in their ideas of beauty. Although the rigid, angular, zigzag, and geometric figures are yet found in their decorations, they have largely given way to carved lines, rounded figures, and attempts to represent ...
— Illustrated Catalogue Of The Collections Obtained From The Indians Of New Mexico And Arizona In 1879 • James Stevenson

... Gone was the zigzag line that the boys knew by heart from having faced and fought against it for weeks. The mine had ...
— Army Boys in the French Trenches • Homer Randall

... hand, as shown in Fig. 1. Then by moving the tracing point round and round an imaginary figure and allowing the hatchet to go where it pleases, it will be seen that the hatchet moves to and fro along zigzag lines, and travels sideways—the side travel being nearly proportional to the area of the figure described by the tracing point. If the tracing point be too tightly grasped, the hatchet will not move freely, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 1082, September 26, 1896 • Various

... of one row of miserable huts, sunk beneath the side of the road, the mud walls crooked in every direction; some of them opening in wide cracks, or zigzag fissures, from top to bottom, as if there had just been an earthquake—all the roofs sunk in various places—thatch off, or overgrown with grass—no chimneys, the smoke making its way through a hole in the roof, or rising in clouds from the top of the open door—dunghills before ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. 6 • Maria Edgeworth

... perpendicular detached mass of rock, half round which rushed a mountain torrent, the approach being a very steep zigzag with now ruinous defences, a very steep and difficult ascent. It is true from a low entranced cave at the foot a secret stair led up from the garden, of which I shall have more to say in relating some incidents of the Count's earlier ...
— The Romance of Lust - A classic Victorian erotic novel • Anonymous

... had glimpses of some one coming slowly down the zigzag path. Presently, at one of the turnings half-way up the hill, appeared Mowbray Langdon. "What is he doing here," thought I, scarcely able to believe my eyes. "Here of all places!" And then I forgot the strangeness ...
— The Deluge • David Graham Phillips

... forward toward the foot of the cliff. The pithecanthropus was the first to reach it and the ape-man saw him spring upward for a handhold on the lowest peg above him. Now Tarzan saw other pegs roughly paralleling each other in zigzag rows up the cliff face. He sprang and caught one of these, pulled himself upward by one hand until he could reach a second with his other hand; and when he had ascended far enough to use his feet, discovered that he could make ...
— Tarzan the Terrible • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... as a rug of Kermanshah. No other city in the two Americas, not excepting Quebec or Rio de Janeiro, so overwhelms the beholder with its vistas—with its luminous enchantments. At night the lights of the city zigzag in patterns of distracting loveliness, and Market street reaches from the foot of the mountain to the Embarcadero like the tail of some flaming comet athwart ...
— Fascinating San Francisco • Fred Brandt and Andrew Y. Wood

... demand us. What endless undulations in the various declivities and ascents,—here a slant, there a zigzag! With what majestic disdain yon roof rises up to the left! Doubtless a palace of Genii, or Gin (which last is the proper Arabic word for those builders of halls out of nothing, employed by Aladdin). Seeing only the roof of that palace boldly breaking ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... question of excess occurs in sickness as well as in health, and all the more because its determination is so difficult and the evil effects so indisputable. The dividing line in medicine, even between use and abuse, is so zigzag and invisible that common mortals, in groping for it, generally stumble beyond it, and the delicate perception of medical art too often ...
— Alcohol: A Dangerous and Unnecessary Medicine, How and Why - What Medical Writers Say • Martha M. Allen

... longer be oppressed with humility. But on the second I determined for a rousing Latin thing, such as men shouted round camp fires in the year 888 or thereabouts; so, the imagination fairly set going and taking wood-cock's flight, snipe-fashion, zigzag and devil-may-care- for-the-rules, this ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc

... nest!" commented Winona, as leaving the car at the bottom of the hill they climbed on foot up the zigzag pathway to the keep. "It must have been a regular robber-baron's ...
— The Luckiest Girl in the School • Angela Brazil

... creek to the gorge—where we came down from the top of the table land; ascended it, which they all did well except one horse, which refused to go up, and caused me to lose more than an hour with him; we had to take all the things off him and carry them to the top on our backs. We had to zigzag him backwards and forwards, and got him to the top after a deal of trouble. Crossing on the top we met with a large fire about two miles broad. The wind not being strong, nor the grass very long, we got through it well, but my weak eyes suffered much from the smoke coming from ...
— Explorations in Australia, The Journals of John McDouall Stuart • John McDouall Stuart

... was marked at every stride by enemy dead and wounded, and when Wetherby overtook them he found them bayoneting and bombing their way along a zigzag trench, and Harry Hawke in the act of scoring "2/12th R.R." on the shield of a captured machine-gun with the point ...
— With Haig on the Somme • D. H. Parry

... corner of a street intersection to a point midway of the block—or square, to give it its local name—then go slanting back again to the right-hand corner of the next street crossing, so that his path was in the pattern of one acutely slanted zigzag after another. He was keeping, as well as he could, within the circles of radiance thrown out by the municipal arc lights as he made for his house, there in his bedchamber to fortify himself about, like one beset and besieged, with the ample and protecting rays of all the methods ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb

... Announces to the world his own and theirs, He teaches those to read whom schools dismissed, And colleges, untaught; sells accents, tone, And emphasis in score, and gives to prayer The adagio and andante it demands. He grinds divinity of other days Down into modern use; transforms old print To zigzag manuscript, and cheats the eyes Of gallery critics by a thousand arts.— Are there who purchase of the Doctor's ware? Oh name it not in Gath!—it cannot be, That grave and learned Clerks should need such ...
— The Task and Other Poems • William Cowper

... it conduces to thought. The clear trickles of water are drawn slantwise across the window panes, and one watches, absently, the curious behaviour of the drops. They hang bulging and pendulous, in one spot for some seconds. Then, as they swell, suddenly they break loose and zigzag swiftly down the pane, following the slippery pathway that previous drops have made. It is like a little puzzle game where you manoeuvre a weighted capsule among pegs toward a narrow opening. "Pigs in clover," they sometimes call it, but who knows why? The conduct of raindrops on a smoking-car ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley

... embroidery, so as to leave all the silk and crewel on the surface, and only a single thread of the ground is taken up; but in place of lying in long lines, from end to end of the material, they are of even length, and are taken in a pattern, such as a waved line or zigzag; so that when finished the ground presents the appearance of a ...
— Handbook of Embroidery • L. Higgin

... almost as bright as midday. Each nestling village was distinct, even to the tiniest window; each tree and shrub on the wall-like mountain, and even the grim forts, were softened in that sweet radiance. The little paths which zigzag up the hills to the forts above look like great white snakes turning and twisting up ...
— The Land of the Black Mountain - The Adventures of Two Englishmen in Montenegro • Reginald Wyon

... Wampus turned into a smooth, hard wagon road that ran in zigzag fashion near the railroad grade. The car bowled along right merrily for some twenty miles, when the driver turned to the right and skimmed along a high plateau. It was green and seemed fertile, but scarcely ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces and Uncle John • Edith Van Dyne

... while hard by other women, squatting on their haunches, offer oranges, pineapples, figs, and bananas for sale. How these Mexican markets swarm with people and glow with color, backed by moss-grown walls and ruined archways! Long burro trains block the roadway, and others are seen winding down the zigzag paths of the overhanging declivities. Close at hand within these low adobe hovels, pulque is being retailed at a penny a tumbler. It is the lager-beer of the country. Poverty, great poverty, stares us in the face. No people could be more miserably housed, living and sleeping as ...
— Aztec Land • Maturin M. Ballou

... and of walls, gaping like the shattered skulls of a civilization which was no more. To the nostrils of the man and woman up floated an acrid, pitchy smell. And birds, dislodged from sleep, began to zigzag about, aimlessly, with frightened cries. One even dashed against the building, close at hand; and fell, a ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England

... the lines of fighting to be rather wavy, one must go to the front really to appreciate the irregular zigzag, snakelike line that it really is. The particular bit of trenches we visited cover a front of twelve miles, but so irregular is the line, so intricate and vast the system of intrenchments, that they measure 200 miles on that particular ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various

... current, owing to this surging movement, makes the poles alternately positive and negative. To express this more clearly, supposing we take a line (A, Fig. 112), which is called the zero line, or line of no electricity. The current may be represented by the zigzag line (B). The lines (B) above zero (A) may be designated as positive, and those below the line as negative. The polarity reverses at the line A, goes up to D, which is the maximum intensity or voltage above zero, and, when the current falls ...
— Electricity for Boys • J. S. Zerbe

... grows level and must soon Descend, I bade him climb into the car; On which the mule went slower still and slower. This creature who, upon occasions, shows Taste very like her master's, left the highway And took a grass-grown wheel-track that led down Zigzag athwart the broad curved banks of lawn Coating a valley between rounded hills Which faced the sea abruptly in huge crags. Each slope grew steeper till I left my seat And led the mule; for now Hipparchus' snore Tuned with the crooning waves heard from below. We passed two narrow ...
— Georgian Poetry 1911-12 • Various

... indication, and surely it is to be credited with being distinctly diagnostic in those diseases of which it has itself established the 'curve.'" By the thermometric "curve" of a disease is understood the general visual impression made by the graphic chart of a temperature record—the course of a zigzag line connecting the points indicated by the various ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIV • John Lord

... Chapultepec rises 150 feet, and is crowned by the great castle. The northern side was inaccessible; the eastern and southern sides nearly so, and the southwestern and western could be scaled. A zigzag road on the southern side was swept by a battery at an angle. The crest was strongly fortified; ditches and strong walls and a redoubt were constructed at various points. The garrison numbered 2,000, and thirteen long guns were mounted. A select party under Captain Joseph Hooker ...
— A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year - Volume Two (of Three) • Edwin Emerson

... sat on the piazza in front of the house, talking over the events of the morning, their attention was attracted by a combat that was going on between one of Frank's pet kingbirds and a red-headed woodpecker. The latter was flying zigzag through the air, and the kingbird was pecking him most unmercifully. At length the woodpecker took refuge in a tree that stood on the bank of the creek, and then seemed perfectly at his ease. He always kept on the opposite ...
— Frank, the Young Naturalist • Harry Castlemon

... the river and the three-hundred-foot abrupt hills on the far side. Had they been able to make out the tops of these hills, they would have seen a few poplar trees. A steep brown road that started from the end of a ferry and mounted zigzag into the fog, was the beginning of a trail that at once passed into a desolate wilderness. They were within sight of the endless untraveled land that reached, unbroken by civilization, to ...
— On the Edge of the Arctic - An Aeroplane in Snowland • Harry Lincoln Sayler

... passed the Barnard house the Pembroke woman partly drew rein again; the old horse meandered in a zigzag curve, with his head lopping. "That's where Charlotte Barnard lives," she said. Suddenly she lowered her voice. "There she is now, out in the ...
— Pembroke - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... the way up the steep, zigzag trail to the top of the mesa. Madeline saw a beautiful flat surface of short grass, level as a floor. She uttered a little cry ...
— The Light of Western Stars • Zane Grey

... Juanita paused on the threshold for a moment. Then she went into the room and scribbled a hurried note—not innocent of blots—which she addressed to Marcos. She left it on the writing-table and carrying her cloak over her arm she hurried down a zigzag path concealed in a thicket of scrub-oak to the ...
— The Velvet Glove • Henry Seton Merriman

... early eighties; the old appetite that had lain dormant for a quarter of a century, but was still in his blood, waiting only a suggestion of the open spaces, a whiff from dry grass on the wind-swept plains, the zigzag of a wagon-trail streaking afar into the horizon, to set it tingling again. The thought of homesteading revived rich old memories—memories from which the kindly years had balmed the soreness and the privation and the hardship, and left only the joy and the courage and the comradeship and the ...
— The Homesteaders - A Novel of the Canadian West • Robert J. C. Stead



Words linked to "Zigzag" :   travel, zig-zag, turn, crooked, angularity, angular shape, go, move, zig, locomote



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