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Billowing   Listen
adjective
billowing  adj.  
1.
Rising in billows. "Billowing smoke"
2.
Stormy; affected by storms; of weather, used prenominally.. Antonym: calm.
Synonyms: billowy, surging.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Billowing" Quotes from Famous Books



... drink. His thoughts were full of the Princess Helena, who was as lovely as a dream. Is that a white gull he sees flying towards the shore, or is it a sail? No, it is no gull, it is the wonder-ship flying along with billowing sails. Its flags wave, the fiddlers play on the wire rigging, the anchor is thrown out and the crystal plank laid from the ship to the pier. The lovely Helena steps across the plank. She ...
— The Crimson Fairy Book • Various

... converted bomber that was his flying lab, Forster could see the other American observation plane cruising on a parallel course, about half a mile away, and beyond it downwind the fringe of the billowing cloud dome of ...
— Warning from the Stars • Ron Cocking

... it as a wave Of ocean's billowing surge (Where Thrakian storm-winds rave, And floods of darkness from the depths emerge,) Rolls the black sand from out the lowest deep, And shores re-echoing wail, as rough blasts o'er them ...
— Story of Orestes - A Condensation of the Trilogy • Richard G. Moulton

... for the composer had so cunningly scored it that groups of instruments were withdrawn without losing the thread of the musical tale. The tone, spun to a needle fineness, rushed up the fingerboard of the fiddles accompanied by the harp in a billowing glissando and—then on ragged rims of wide thunder a gust of air seemed to melt lights, men, instruments into a darkness that froze the eyeballs. With a scorching whiff of sulphur and violets, a thin, spiral scream, ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker

... into a billowing cloud bank. It was a feeble hope and Tom knew it. His only real chance now was to outrun ...
— Tom Swift and The Visitor from Planet X • Victor Appleton

... other points not a curtain but steady hose-streams of fire. Answering German shells revealed which of the chalky scars on the slope was the British first-line trench, and from this, as steam from a locomotive runs in a flying plume along the crest of a railway cutting, rose a billowing wall of smoke which was harmless, not even asphyxiating, its only purpose being to screen the infantry attack, with a gentle breeze sweeping it on into the mantle over Contalmaison as the wind carries the smoke of a prairie fire. Lookout Mountain was known as the battle ...
— My Second Year of the War • Frederick Palmer

... She nodded smiling towards the standing pair—struck by the fine straight lines of Mary's satin dress, the roundness of her fine figure, the oval of her head and face, and then by the little, vibrating, tempestuous creature beside her, so distinguished, in spite of the billowing flounces and ribbons, so direct and significant, amid all ...
— The Marriage of William Ashe • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... good repute, and if, bending low, you will hear him, you shall know he is sobbing for children that are not. One lonely, distraught, mystified, sorely-beleagured, and still surely-trusting man,—this is the audience. The scene is a tawny desert, once sown to oases of flowers, and billowing grain, and stately palm-tree, and olive-groves, now harvestless, flowerless, palmless. Once a stately palace rose beside a fountain here, and from its open doors ran genial hospitality, to greet the coming guest and the wayfarer ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle

... billowing of the lower, less stiff part of her garments, she sailed to the cloudy mirror over the magazine-filled bookcase and inspected her cap of false curls, with many prods of her large firm hands which flashed with Brazilian diamonds. Though he had heard the word "puffs," he ...
— Our Mr. Wrenn - The Romantic Adventures of a Gentle Man • Sinclair Lewis

... Notwithstanding his excellent health and youthful energy, mind and body alike were somewhat spent. He made short work of preparation, slipped in between the fine cool linen sheets, and laid his brown head upon the soft billowing pillows, impatient neither to think nor feel any more but simply ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet

... itself beside him! If any grisette of the Place Cambrai or the Rue Saint-Jean-de-Beauvais, seeing that face of a youth escaped from college, that page's mien, those long, golden lashes, those blue eyes, that hair billowing in the wind, those rosy cheeks, those fresh lips, those exquisite teeth, had conceived an appetite for that complete aurora, and had tried her beauty on Enjolras, an astounding and terrible glance would have promptly shown her the abyss, and would ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo

... shocks of meeting waves, Death's fountains are playing, Shells like shrieking birds rush over; Crash and din rises higher. A stream of lead raves Over us from the left ... (we safe under cover!) Crash! Reverberation! Crash! Acrid smoke billowing. Flash upon flash. Black smoke drifting. The German line Vanishes in confusion, smoke. Cries, and cry Of our men, 'Gah, yer swine! Ye're for it', die In ...
— Georgian Poetry 1916-17 • Various

... last thing we shipped, and after taking him aboard we were soon out of the harbor of Prairie Flower, and bearing away across the plain to the southwest. In twenty minutes we ware among the billowing sunflowers, standing five or six feet high on other side of the road, which seemed like a narrow crack winding through them. Ollie reached out and gathered a handful of the drooping yellow blossoms. The pony was tied behind carrying her big saddle, and tossing her head about, and showing ...
— The Voyage of the Rattletrap • Hayden Carruth

... them—growing vaster with each passing moment. It had changed from a disc to a globe, and now, as the molten silver of its surface seemed swiftly clouding, it turned grey; then they saw its true appearance, a vast field of rolling, billowing clouds! ...
— The Black Star Passes • John W Campbell

... the lantern and hurried away, her head bowed, the cloak billowing about her. He watched the lantern till its gleam was swallowed ...
— Blacksheep! Blacksheep! • Meredith Nicholson

... lofty swaying elm, For the great cedar's benedictory grace; For earth's ten thousand fragrant incenses,— Sweet altar-gifts from leaf and fruit and flower; For every wondrous thing that greens and grows; For wide-spread cornlands,—billowing golden seas; For rippling stream, and white-laced waterfall; For purpling mountains; lakes like silver shields; For white-piled clouds that float against the blue; For tender green of far-off upland slopes; For fringing forests and far-gleaming ...
— Bees in Amber - A Little Book Of Thoughtful Verse • John Oxenham

... Bishop stopped for a moment beside us, his surplice billowing about him like the sails about a tall mast when the wind dies. "At seven," he said, "tomorrow morning at my house. And ...
— Explorers of the Dawn • Mazo de la Roche

... invitation, Packard watched. The motor-car's siren—he had never heard another like it, knew that such a thing would not be tolerated in any of the world's traffic centres—sounded again a long, wailing note which went across the valley in billowing echoes. ...
— Man to Man • Jackson Gregory

... had been waving and raised his field-glass. Concha, as ever, stood a little apart. As the ship grew smaller and the company turned toward the Presidio, she advanced to the edge of the bluff. The wind lifted her loosened mantilla, billowing it out on one side, and as she stood with her hands pressed against her heart, she might, save for her empty arms, have been the eidolon of the Madonna di San Sisto. In her eyes was the same expression of vague arrested ...
— Rezanov • Gertrude Atherton

... clear—the Morning Star. Yama saw her twinkling feet pass him as she drew nearer and nearer to the sea; and as the first pink light began to show behind the pine trees she reached the surf. Flinging her arms high above her head, she plunged in, with her snowy mantle billowing round her. Long, long Yama gazed after her, but ...
— More Tales in the Land of Nursery Rhyme • Ada M. Marzials

... getting there. The crowd around the port looked smaller, or was it simply huddling closer? Then suddenly, a wail of fear and despair went up, and there was a roar of water. The observation room walls had given. I saw the green surge of waves, and a billowing deluge rushed down upon us. I ...
— The Worlds of If • Stanley Grauman Weinbaum

... continued, now singly, now in volley, the maddened populace squeezed toward that narrow entrance through which the avengers had disappeared; but they were halted by the guards and forced to content themselves by greeting every shot with an exultant cry. The streets in all directions were tossing and billowing like the waves of the sea; men capered and flung their arms aloft, shrieking; women and children waved their aprons and kerchiefs, sobbing and spent with excitement. It was a wild and grotesque scene, unspeakably ...
— The Net • Rex Beach

... forced to employ the technical terminology of other arts, but against my judgment. Read Mr. W. F. Apthorp's disheartening dictum in "By the Way." "The entrancing phantasmagoria of picture and incident which we think we see rising from the billowing sea of music is in reality nothing more than an enchanting fata morgana, visible at no other angle than that of our own eye. The true gist of music it never can be; it can never truly translate what is most essential and characteristic in its expression. ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker

... our map shows the distances and directions quite accurately. We must have covered a great many thousand square miles of territory, and yet we had seen nothing in the way of a familiar landmark, when from the heights of a mountain-range we were crossing I descried far in the distance great masses of billowing clouds. ...
— Pellucidar • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... whispered in quick consternation. Almost he expected to see billowing clouds of smoke, the ...
— Two Thousand Miles Below • Charles Willard Diffin

... concertedly, for their weapons; she saw smoke streaks stabbing the heavy atmosphere of the big room; heard the roar and crash of pistols; saw men falling, to land in grotesque positions; saw Shorty, huge and terrible amid the billowing smoke, shoot a man who tried to leap over the bar, so that he fell across it limply, as though sleeping. She observed another man—one of Slade's—dodge behind a card table, rest his pistol for an instant on its top, and shoot at Shorty. She saw Shorty snap a shot at the man, saw ...
— The Trail Horde • Charles Alden Seltzer

... pushing closer toward the house that stood amidst clouds of billowing smoke saw some one rushing frantically about. It was old Philip Adkins himself, and he certainly looked almost crazed with excitement. At first, as was only natural, the boys rested under the belief that it was the possible loss of his house and its contents that made him act so wildly; but ...
— Jack Winters' Gridiron Chums • Mark Overton

... distance of a short quarter of a mile, was the extremity of the gorge, a mere narrow slit between two mighty walls of overhanging sandstone, through which we caught a glimpse of an open, grassy, sun-bathed plain, the long rich grass billowing to the sweep of a fresh breeze, and its wide stretches of level surface darkened here and there with the rich purple shadows of slow-moving clouds, promising a welcome change from the close, suffocating, enervating, ...
— Through Veld and Forest - An African Story • Harry Collingwood

... Carthaginian harbour; and then, leaving population and tram-lines behind, we opened out on to the magnificent road that sweeps round the western horn of Palma Bay. But always at a fixed distance in front of us hovered a billowing halo of amber-coloured dust, which no frenzied strain on our part could bring ...
— The Recipe for Diamonds • Charles John Cutcliffe Wright Hyne

... The fate of their comrades, however, sends a panic into the hearts of the herd. Another falls just when they are so close that we could have sprung on their backs. At that moment they divide, and the next we are standing on a desert island, a sea of billowing backs flowing round on either side in a half-mile current of crazy buffaloes. The herd is fully five minutes in passing us. We watch them as they come, and as the last laggers pant by the mound we look westward ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston

... whizzed them up the zigzag road to La Turbie, while the noon sunshine still gilded Caesar's Trophy. They lunched in the Moorish restaurant, and then sped on along the Upper Corniche, with a white sea of snow mountains billowing away to the right, and a sea of sapphire spreading to ...
— Rosemary in Search of a Father • C. N. Williamson

... once, and failed. Now she realized that it would be but a matter of minutes ere the whole space between the north and the south would be a seething mass of billowing flames. ...
— Tarzan of the Apes • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... above the town, and Lily was laid there, to rest there for ever. There she lies, facing Italy, which she never knew but in dream. The wide country leading to Italy lies below her, the peaks of the rocky coast, the blue sea, the gray-green olives billowing like tides from hill to hill; the white loggias gleaming in the sunlight. His thoughts followed the flight of the blue mountain passes that lead so enticingly to Italy, and as he looked into the distance, dim and faint as the dream that had gone, there rose in his mind an ...
— Mike Fletcher - A Novel • George (George Augustus) Moore

... Milky way, but by misfortune and the inscrutable dispensation of God I was recognized! Talbot turned white, and shouting, 'Save yourselves, it is the Standard-Bearer of Joan of Arc!' drove his spurs home till they met in the middle of his horse's entrails, and fled the field with his billowing multitudes at his back! I could have cursed myself for not putting on a disguise. I saw reproach in the eyes of her Excellency, and was bitterly ashamed. I had caused what seemed an irreparable disaster. Another might have ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc Volume 2 • Mark Twain

... carriages were filled as if they were on the way to a high jubilation, choke full of ladies, with parasols hovering over them like wild birds taking wing, and great clouds of silk, lace gauze, and shiny stuff a-billowing over the sides, till you could but just see the silk cushions they leaned against. Then, again, some were crowded over with gentlemen, mostly in white hats—which delighted me—some with cigars in their mouths—some not—but every one of them just boiling over ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens

... she moved cautiously forward, till she was clear of the bushes, there to sit down upon a billowing cushion of heather which grew conveniently about as close to the edge of the bluff as it was prudent to venture. Abstractedly Anthony followed her and, after a glance about him, took his seat by her side ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates

... off from the brow of the mountain over fifteen miles of billowing green, to where, far across a far stretch of pale blue lay a dim purple line that we knew was Staten Island. Towns and villages lay before us and under us; there were ridges and hills, uplands and lowlands, woods and plains, all massed and mingled in that great silent sea of sunlit ...
— The Best American Humorous Short Stories • Various

... Miss Ann said, but she sought the girl's hand and held it a moment in the folds of her billowing ...
— The Comings of Cousin Ann • Emma Speed Sampson

... of the bluff, her red cape billowing out into a scarlet banner, her hair streaming back from her face, the velvet tam flattened by the force of ...
— The Trumpeter Swan • Temple Bailey

... was Mrs. Warden, wearing her thin but still brown hair in "water-waves" over a pale high forehead. She was sitting on a couch on the broad, rose-shaded porch, surrounded by billowing masses of vari-colored worsted. It was her delight to purchase skein on skein of soft, bright-hued wool, cut it all up into short lengths, tie them together again in contrasting colors, and then crochet ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman

... she sat at the open window, listening to the dreary, monotonous patter of the rain, and to the distant sounds of moving horses and men, the rattle of wheels, the bugle calls, the departure of the allied troops to meet the armies of the great adventurer on the billowing ...
— The Bronze Eagle - A Story of the Hundred Days • Emmuska Orczy, Baroness Orczy

... place, in this soft-cushioned carriage, among these tyrants and blood-suckers? Should she not rather be out there in the billowing mass, among the children ...
— Tales of Two Countries • Alexander Kielland

... wearing grey, with some of her old lace trimming it. It was a tabinet which I must have seen in my childhood. The memory of it was so remote that I felt as if I must have read about it; but I had an exact memory of the way it was made, which was billowing about the feet, and with a very straight bodice. While I looked at them she picked a rose from the wall and fastened it into her ...
— The Story of Bawn • Katharine Tynan

... return to Haarlem by way of Bloemendaal, a green valley with shady walks and a good hotel; or extend the drive to Haarlem's watering-place Zaandvoort, which otherwise can be gained by steam-tram, and where, says the author of Through Noord-Holland, "the billowing is strong and strengthening". The same author tells us also that "the ponnies and asses have a separated standing-place, whilst severe stipulations warrant the bathers for trouble of the animals ...
— A Wanderer in Holland • E. V. Lucas

... the hill's shoulder he stopped and pointed his hand. The view from there was almost county-wide, billowing away across heights and depths to a blue ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck

... distance. On the left was a blurred edge of pines, with tops like ungainly tendrils feeling for the sky. On the right was a long bare stretch of hills veiled in the thin smoke of the evening, and between, straight before him, was a wide lane of unknown country, billowing away to where it froze into the vast archipelago that closes with the summit of the world. He experienced now that weird charm which has drawn so many into Arctic wilds and gathered the eyes of millions longingly. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... ground was open and fairly level, the trail cutting across a bend in the stream. Just ahead towered Good Heart Butte, with its glistening, gilded crest throwing a black shadow half-way up the billowing westward slopes. Over at the east across the stream, bold and beautifully rounded, the bluffs went rolling away, knoll after knoll, shoulder after shoulder heavily wooded and fringed at their bases and in the deep ravines, and away over ...
— Under Fire • Charles King

... preparation) promenade like stupid black-and-white peacocks past uninteresting apartment-houses and uninspiring upper Broadway shops, while two blocks away glorious Riverside Drive, with its panorama of Hudson and hills and billowing clouds, its trees and secret walks and the Soldiers and Sailors Monument, is nearly deserted. Together they scorned the glossy well-to-do merchant in his newly ironed top-hat, and were thus drawn together. ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis

... was covered with a home-made rug, displaying a branch of yellow roses, upon which stood a mathematically straight line of purple-breasted robins. The one window was draped in stiff, white lace curtains that fell from the ceiling in a billowing cascade and flowed out into the middle of the room. Here the flood was dammed, very appropriately, by two large, pink-tinted seashells. In one corner stood a high, old-fashioned chest of drawers, covered with a white cloth worked in red ...
— Treasure Valley • Marian Keith

... it go? Well, wouldn't it make you think you were a Lady, sure enough, if you couldn't move without that lace train billowing after you; without being dazzled with diamond-shine; without a truly Lord tagging ...
— In the Bishop's Carriage • Miriam Michelson

... by all; the very colour of the marbles, brown, blond, living colours, and the irregular symmetry, flower-like, of their natural patterning, are all seemingly organic and ready for life. Time has added that, with the polish and dimming alternately of the marbles, the billowing of the pavement, the slanting of the columns, and last, but not least, the tarnishing of the gold and the granulating of the mosaic into an uneven surface: the gold seeming to have become alive ...
— Laurus Nobilis - Chapters on Art and Life • Vernon Lee

... a quick run, a cry, and a rush of tearing hoofs! For Jill, in the twinkling of a star, had let fall the enveloping cloak, standing for one second like some exotic bit of statuary in her black billowing satin trousers and infinitesimal coatee over a silver-spangled frothy vest, her great eyes dancing with glee over the face veil. She had swiftly backed a few yards, and before either man or horse had guessed her intention, with a quick run and ...
— Desert Love • Joan Conquest

... had arrived at the Place du theatre, at the entrance to the Rue Bab Azoum. One by one, enveloped in their billowing garments and drawing their veils about them with savage grace, the Moors dismounted. Tartarin's neighbour was the last to leave and as she rose to go her face was so close to that of our hero that their breaths mingled and he was aware of a bouquet of youth, ...
— Tartarin de Tarascon • Alphonse Daudet

... the shoulders and spun him around to face the sea of fire that was billowing down the slopes from the blazing mountain, that was now a real torch. The fire had passed beyond the stage of the slow burning circle that is so characteristic of wood fires. It was rushing relentlessly forward, and even now it was at the ...
— The Boy Scout Fire Fighters - or Jack Danby's Bravest Deed • Robert Maitland

... swayed and strained at its guy-ropes, the poles creaked and cracked, and in less time than it takes to tell it, the whole flapping structure had gone down with one ballooning heave, flat upon the ground, covering its inmates with billowing canvas. ...
— Strawberry Acres • Grace S. Richmond

... hand upon the lashings of the tops'l and undid them. Then it turned, slid to the deck by I know not what strange process, and, still hooded, still shrouded, still lapped about by its mummy-wrappings, seized a rope's end. In an instant the jib was set and stood on hard and billowing against the night wind. The tops'l followed. Then the figure moved forward and passed behind ...
— A Deal in Wheat - And Other Stories of the New and Old West • Frank Norris

... was quickly finished; they passed into the drawing-room, and took comfortable chairs on either side of the hearth. May had brought cold, clammy weather; a sky of billowing grey and frequent gusts against the window made it pleasant here by this bright fireside. Lashmar stretched his legs, smiled at the gimcracks shelved and niched above the mantelpiece, and began talking. His description ...
— Our Friend the Charlatan • George Gissing

... to the window, to be between the German and the light, and let him see her silhouetted in an attitude of hope awakening. She gazed at the billowing smoke as if the hope of India ...
— Winds of the World • Talbot Mundy

... his wits through the pain and billowing weakness beginning to creep through him. "Reds mustn't get to the towers! Worse than the ...
— The Defiant Agents • Andre Alice Norton

... The wood was nearer, and its grey- trunked cedars and pines rose from their beds of golden moss to shake their crests to the stars and stretch their dark-green forest hands right up to the house. The view was wide and sweeping from here: the dark, turbulent river, the marsh beyond, the deep-blue billowing woods fringing the horizon, the heavy lowering ...
— Tales of the Wilderness • Boris Pilniak

... nutmegs, spikenard and ebony, and riches beyond mention. Big junks laded these things, together with musk from Tibet, and bales of silk from all the cities of Mansi[C], and sailed away in and out of the East India Archipelago, with its spice-laden breezes billowing their sails, to Ceylon. There merchants from Malabar and the great trading cities of southern India took aboard their cargoes and sold them in turn to Arab merchants, who in their turn sold them to the Venetians in one or other of the Levantine ports. Europeans who saw Zaiton ...
— Medieval People • Eileen Edna Power

... upright before she had her eyes open. Her head struck stunningly against the bottom of the upper berth. This further confused her thoughts. She leaped from the bed, caught up her slippers, reached for her opened-up bundle. The crash was still billowing through the boat; she now recognized it as a great gong sounding for breakfast. She sat down on the bed and rubbed her head and laughed merrily. "I am a greenhorn!" she said. "Another minute and I'd have had the whole boat laughing ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips

... after nightfall was like taking a voyage to a new planet. It was so wonderful and mysterious, this new, white, moon-lit world. Away in the vast blue dome the stars smiled faintly, outshone by the glory of the big, round moon that rode high above the black tree-tops. The billowing drifts along the road blazed under a veil of diamonds, and the strip of ice on the pond, where Elizabeth and John had swept away the snow for a slide, shone like polished silver. The fields melted away gray and mysterious into the darkness of the woods. Here and there a light twinkled from the ...
— 'Lizbeth of the Dale • Marian Keith

... the zenith and like search-lights moved to and fro across the sky. The clouds became illumined with an interior flame and glowed like diaphanous mists of gold half concealing the vague faces of the beauteous spirits of the dead. Their billowing edges palpitated with a tremor as of quicksilver. Within and through this empyreal web of light marvellous scenes were simultaneously woven. They lasted a moment's space and vanished. The natives, dancing unrestrainedly, saw heavenly mountain ...
— The Eternal Maiden • T. Everett Harre

... not far from the dais, his attention was at length challenged by an upheaving and billowing of purple and black. He looked, and in the same instant what seemed to have been a kind of storm centre resolved itself cloudily into Mrs. Medora Hastings, breathlessly resuming her seat, while Mr. Augustus Frothingham, in indescribably gorgeous apparel elaborately bent to receive—and a member ...
— Romance Island • Zona Gale

... ridiculous Madonna!" They were now making their way out of the crooked footway behind their hotel toward the street leading to the cathedral, and she pointed to the Blessed Virgin over the door of some religious house, her drapery billowing about her feet; her body twisting to show the sculptor's mastery of anatomy, and the halo held on her tossing head with the help of stout gilt rays. In fact, the Virgin's whole figure was gilded, and so was that of the child in her arms. ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... boring mass of assimilatory matter, mere clouds in clothing, niente, nefas, the most inconsiderable of men. There he sits watching until I have done this writing. Then, if he can, he will waylay me. He will come billowing up to me... ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells

... laughed Mr. Wing, as the unique outfit rumbled by. "What on earth do you suppose that is?" They followed the progress of the billowing mother and her husky infant with amused eyes, and at the corner of the street she attempted to turn the barrow, ran into a stone, upset the barrow and spilled the infant on the ground. The infant immediately sprang up, clutching the Gargantuan feeding bottle, and berated ...
— The Camp Fire Girls Do Their Bit - Or, Over the Top with the Winnebagos • Hildegard G. Frey

... Then the billowing surges of silk and velvet swept the small, inquiring face into the background with the accustomed ease and relentlessness of ...
— The Transfiguration of Miss Philura • Florence Morse Kingsley

... an instant to peer out into the gloom along the stony path that ran from his house to an old foot-bridge about fifty feet away. Curling up from the gorge, mist seemed to play among the rotted planks; it rose and fell in great billowing blankets, sometimes ...
— The White Feather Hex • Don Peterson

... long Colt, was looking glumly at the cloud of smoke which was billowing forth from the place where the bomb had dropped. Round and round circled the aeroplane, but presently, as if satisfied with its scrutiny, it made off, and the drone of the engine ...
— The Book of All-Power • Edgar Wallace

... nothing of the antagonistic origins when I opened my window to the sunny morning which smiled at the notion of the overnight tempest, and lighted all the landscape on that side of the hotel. The outlook was over vast plowed lands red as Virginia or New Jersey fields, stretching and billowing away from the yellow Tagus in the foreground to the mountain-walled horizon, with far stretches of forest in the middle distance. What riches of gray roof, of white wall, of glossy green, or embrowning foliage in the city gardens the prospect included, one should have the ...
— Familiar Spanish Travels • W. D. Howells

... All around me is the mellow grace of sunshine, roses, lilies, heliotropes, carnations, marigolds, nasturtiums, marguerites, and geraniums are a-bloom; and as far as the eye can reach, the green velvet of billowing acres is blended with the passion of wild poppies; the olive, the orange, and the lemon abound; yonder a vineyard lies fast asleep in the glorious noonday; the giant rubber trees in all this remarkable fairy-land are close at hand; and the pepper, the eucalyptus, the live oak, and the palm ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson

... caused considerable perturbation among a small mob of brumbies, or wild horses, consisting of some seven or eight mares and foals, led by a flea-bitten old grey stallion, who snorted angrily as he saw Finn, and minced forward toward the Wolfhound, his long chisel teeth bared, his four-foot tail billowing out behind him like a flag, and his black hoofs (the feet of mountain-bred brumbies are prodigiously hard and punishing in the attack) rising and falling from the dewy earth ...
— Finn The Wolfhound • A. J. Dawson

... yacht club, on its annual cruise, arrived, jockeying in with billowing mountains of snowy canvas spread to catch the last whispers of the breeze. Later arrivals, after the breeze failed, were towed in by the smart motor craft of the fleet. One by one, as the anchors splashed, brass cannons barked salute and were answered by ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day

... the flat and looked up at the windows of her home, marked by the huge golden molar that projected, flashing, from the bay window of the "Parlors." She saw the open windows of the sitting-room, the Nottingham lace curtains stirring and billowing in the draft, and she caught sight of Maria Macapa's towelled head as the Mexican maid-of-all-work went to and fro in the suite, sweeping or carrying away the ashes. Occasionally in the windows of the "Parlors" ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris

... speed, of course, but when he had halted momentarily he had noted that the animal was quivering all over, that it caught its breath shrilly in the brief interval of rest, and now as he rode, bending far over its mane, he saw that the billowing foam on its muzzle was flecked with blood. The animal was not equal to the demands he had ...
— The Range Boss • Charles Alden Seltzer

... and crackled; even the dryest, the deadest, were enfolded in the resistless swirl of green. Tree top ignited tree top; the parks and boulevards were one smother of radiance. From end to end and from side to side of the city, fed by the rains, urged by the south winds, spread billowing and surging the superb ...
— The Pit • Frank Norris

... this important truth for the twentieth time, as she sat by the open schoolroom window, her eyes on the billowing whiteness of the cherry tree which ...
— Just Patty • Jean Webster

... the southeastward, apparently on the island of Timor. It was a beautiful sight, so wonderful that John awoke the sleepers, that they too might enjoy it. Fantastic lights of various colors shot upward from the crater. These shafts lit up billowing clouds of smoke and ashes, which poured out in awe-inspiring volume. Back of it all stood the dark-blue velvet sky, against which the pyrotechnics were embossed in a stunning manner. Man could never have wished to witness ...
— Around the World in Ten Days • Chelsea Curtis Fraser

... stars which crusted a moonless sky, the vast stretches of billowing sand glimmered faintly golden as a phosphorescent sea. And among the dimly gleaming waves of that endless waste the motor tossed, rocking on the rough track like a small ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

... gate and flung past me to the house, this superb young creature, tall, slim, supple, a very Diana in her rage, a woman too if one might judge by the breasts billowing with rising sobs. More slow I followed, quite dashed to earth. All that I had gained by months of service in one moment had been lost. She would think me another of the Volney stamp, and her liking for me would turn ...
— A Daughter of Raasay - A Tale of the '45 • William MacLeod Raine

... settlers. Hummocks would be leveled, washes and arroyos filled, ditches would be made to the company canals, and in place of the thin growth of gray-green desert vegetation with the ragged patches of dun earth would come great fields of luxuriant alfalfa, billowing acres of grain, with miles upon miles of orchards, vineyards and groves. The fierce desert life would give way to the herds and flocks and the home life of the farmer. The railroad would stretch its steel strength into this new world; ...
— The Winning of Barbara Worth • Harold B Wright

... frightened cattle. A spurred heel over a face in that horrible moment when nothing can stay its descent. The shriek of a round-bosomed girl to the smear of wet lips across hers. The superb daring of her lover to kill her. A babe in arms. Two. The black billowing of ...
— The Vertical City • Fannie Hurst

... hungry to desperation, and my spirits were of lead. Suddenly we got out from behind the granite wall, and there she was, standing, where I had seen her so often, beside the little waterfall that she calls the happy one. She was looking straight up at the billowing mist that dipped down the mountain, mammoth saffron rolls of it, plunging so madly from the impetus of the wind that one marvelled how it could be noiseless. Ah, you do not know Judith! That strange, unsophisticated, sometimes awkward woman you ...
— A Mountain Woman and Others • (AKA Elia Wilkinson) Elia W. Peattie

... Wyoming the Rockies go rolling and billowing far out to the east, and the entire stretch of country, from what are called the "Black Hills of Wyoming," in contradistinction to the Black Hills of Dakota, far east as the junction of the forks of the Platte, is ...
— Starlight Ranch - and Other Stories of Army Life on the Frontier • Charles King

... youth—sinewy, clean-formed, and graceful, though slender to gauntness; and it was only on nearer contact that one marvelled to see the soul die out of him, as a face set in the shadow of leafage resolves itself into some accident of twisted branches as one approaches the billowing tree that ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes

... when the gas-cloud ignited. The billowing flames were blue. They writhed in tortured convulsions through the air. Endless explosions merged into one ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science February 1930 • Various

... Mrs. Morton on the telephone and asked her to talk to him on the wireless. A moment later their invisible messages were speeding back and forth over the miles of billowing pine tops that intervened between the two little forest homes, and no listener in on the department telephone system could either know that they were talking or tell what they said. Charley was overjoyed when Mrs. Morton told ...
— The Young Wireless Operator—As a Fire Patrol - The Story of a Young Wireless Amateur Who Made Good as a Fire Patrol • Lewis E. Theiss

... for the crater!" gasped Blythe; and horror spurred us on, and we scrambled and slipped and clawed the billowing sides of the furrow until we gained the heaving ...
— Police!!! • Robert W. Chambers

... friendly faces. There was much waving of hats and many shouts of farewell from the little group on the shore, but Rezanov saw only the figure of a tall graceful girl with the soft folds of a mantilla billowing about her head and shoulders and heard only the murmur of love from the rosy lips. 'Two years,' he whispered back to her, as the ship passed out through the Gulf of the Farallones and became but a speck ...
— The Lure of San Francisco - A Romance Amid Old Landmarks • Elizabeth Gray Potter and Mabel Thayer Gray

... left the tunnel, then he would give up the key of the situation, and be swiftly surrounded. If he did not, the roasting flame and the masses of billowing smoke would render the inner cave untenable. Yet, before the bundle of reeds had rolled down to the mass below, the question had been ...
— Jack Haydon's Quest • John Finnemore

... beauty Of the maid with the golden curls, And her patched, uncoloured robes of common cloth. And with a change of mood I charge the elegant ladies Three times the value of the articles chosen, And thus tear from their flowery bodies Pieces of their billowing silk To deck the less fervid beauty ...
— Song Book of Quong Lee of Limehouse • Thomas Burke

... appetence, this freshet of desire (Milk from the wild breasts of the wilful Day!), Down Piccadilly dance and murmur and gleam In genial wave on wave and gyre on gyre? Why does that nymph unparalleled splash and churn The wealth of her enchanted urn Till, over-billowing all between Her cheerful margents, grey and living green, It floats and wanders, glittering and fleeing, An estuary of the joy of being? Why should the lovely leafage of the Park Touch to an ecstasy the act of seeing? ...
— Poems by William Ernest Henley • William Ernest Henley

... the secret. He knew only that he was at Sidi-bel-Abbes—Sidi-bel-Abbes. How he had got there, and what he was doing, he could not tell. It ought to be a town, but it was not. There were no houses nor buildings of any kind in this strange Sidi-bel-Abbes. He could see only waves of yellow sand, billowing and moving all around him like sea waves; and it was sea as well as desert. Suddenly one of the waves rolled away, to show a small white tent, almost like a covered boat. A voice was calling to him from it, and he struggled to get near, falling and ...
— A Soldier of the Legion • C. N. Williamson

... sang All round with laurel, issued in a court Compact of lucid marbles, bossed with lengths Of classic frieze, with ample awnings gay Betwixt the pillars, and with great urns of flowers. The Muses and the Graces, grouped in threes, Enringed a billowing fountain in the midst; And here and there on lattice edges lay Or book or lute; but hastily we past, And up a flight of stairs into ...
— The Princess • Alfred Lord Tennyson

... me whence this laughter, Whence this audible big-smiling, With its labial extension, With its maxillar distortion And its diaphragmic rhythmus Like the billowing of an ocean, Like the shaking of a carpet, I should answer, I should tell you: From the great deeps of the spirit, From the unplummeted abysmus Of the soul this laughter welleth As the fountain, the gug-guggle, ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce

... chaps used to count seconds in racing were handling her. She was moving, the smoke pouring thicker and thicker from her funnel, and the screw began to churn hard. Then her sharp bowsprit turned around a little, till it was aimed at that cleft between the rocks. She gathered speed and struck the billowing seas outside and turned a bit. Then the big sails began to rise, as did the jibs, and I saw a man run out to the end of the bowsprit as a thick white rope ran up to the fore topmast head and broke out into a fleecy white cloud of silk. Then, under the great balloon ...
— Sweetapple Cove • George van Schaick

... immediately around the muzzle of the gun, and could not be heard from other points. He invited close watch of the atmosphere a hundred yards before the gun at the next shot. Not only could the projectile be seen plainly in the beginning of its flight, but the waves of billowing air, rushing back to fill the void left by the discharge and bounding and rebounding in a tempestuous sea of gas, could be distinctly observed. This airy commotion caused the sound heard for more than ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol 1, Issue 4, January 23, 1915 • Various

... billowing along in the witch-patterned silk and clicking on prodigiously high heels and Esther with her head haughtily up, led the way, and Jeff, following them, sat down as soon as they had given him leave by doing it, and looked about the ...
— The Prisoner • Alice Brown

... outside the rest of his things. But likewise there must have been drawbacks. Suppose, now, the marquis were caught out in blowy weather and the wind worked in under his tucks and the ratlines pulled loose and, all full-rigged and helpless, bellying and billowing and flapping and jibing, he went scudding against his will before the gale. Could he hope to tack and go about before he blew clear over into the next county? ...
— One Third Off • Irvin S. Cobb

... twenty-seven converts, the seventh ten showed more than twenty-seven thousand. The preparation may be as slow as the solemn gathering of the thunder-clouds, as they noiselessly steal into their places, and slowly upheave their grey billowing crests; the final success may be as swift as the lightning which flashes in an instant from one side of the heavens to the other. It takes long years to hew the tunnel, to 'make the crooked straight, and the rough places plain,' and then ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren

... along the Republican bottom we shall find ranches springing up under the auspices of our road; immense grain-fields yellowing toward harvest; great herds of domestic cattle grazing haunch-deep through the boundless swales of billowing wild grass; with all the other indications of a prosperous farming settlement, which, keeping pace with the progress of the road, shall eventually become one of the richest agricultural communities in the world, and continuous for over two hundred miles. Here and there we pass a lateral excavation ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various

... no glimpse of the sea; but Robert turned the car, and driving between two gigantic hotels, ran down to a beach with sands of gleaming gold, and a background of wind-blown dunes billowing away as far as the eye could reach. The very wildness of this background gave a bizarre sort of charm to the fantastic buildings which made up the ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson

... in the neighborhood of what now is Albany, it became evident that the Pacific was not to be found in northern New York. He turned, therefore, and drifted slowly downward with the steady current, while the matchless lines of the American autumn glowed every day more sumptuously from the far-billowing woods. What sunrises and what sunsets dyed the waters with liquid splendor: what moons, let us hope, turned the glories of day into the spiritual mysteries of fairyland! Hudson was not born for repose; his fate was to sail unrestingly till he died; ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne

... the next heave. I felt sure I could have lifted the weight of the stone if it were free, but struggle as I would, I could not loosen it from its wedged position. The purple poison had risen to my waist by this time, and in my violent efforts I had stirred it into billowing waves which occasionally surged almost to my nostrils. I had breathed a little which made me faint and giddy. I feared lest I should stagger and fall into it. Once my head below the surface, and I was most surely and ...
— Pharaoh's Broker - Being the Very Remarkable Experiences in Another World of Isidor Werner • Ellsworth Douglass

... en brosse, his bronzed face twisted into a grimace of fiery contempt, throwing, with his big and muscular arms, rug after rug to the anxious young peasants who filed before him. They all gazed at his legs in the billowing red trousers; some like children regarding a Jack-in-the-box which had just sprung up into view, others like ignorant, but superstitious, people who had unexpectedly come upon a shrine by the wayside. One or two seemed disposed ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens

... lay down and slept. Longstreet, his knees gathered in his arms, his back to a tree, sat staring thoughtfully across the billowing country before them; Howard smoked a cigarette, stood a moment looking curiously down at the weary figure of the girl, and then strode off to the next shade for ...
— The Desert Valley • Jackson Gregory

... seemed tumbling around them, while sights of terror met the eyes of the awakened multitude and sounds of horror came to their ears. The roar of destruction filled the air as the solid crust of the earth lifted and fell and the rocks rose and sank in billowing waves like those ...
— The San Francisco Calamity • Various

... hurried to see. And what a sight it was! The clouds lay below us and a starlit sky above. At our feet the mountain fell away like a cliff, but it fell rather to a glacier than a sea—a glacier infinite as the ocean, yawning in crevasses, billowing in ridges; a glacier not of ice, but of vapour, changing form as one watched, opening here, closing there, rising, falling, shifting, while far away, at the uttermost verge, appeared a crimson crescent, then a red oval, then a yellow globe, swimming up above the ...
— Appearances - Being Notes of Travel • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson

... from the coming day, Travelling unseen to the East away. In his cloudy robes that lay shadowing wide, I stretched myself motionless by his side; And his eyes with their calm, unimpassioned power, Soothing my heart like an evening shower, Led in a spectral, far-billowing train, The hours of the ...
— A Hidden Life and Other Poems • George MacDonald

... abstract freezes our hearts; and we pray best in some pillared niche consecrated and set apart, I recall a day in Umbria, when the wonderful light of sunset fell on ilex and olive, on mountain snows, on valleys billowing between vine-mantled hills, on creamy marble walls, on columned campaniles; and standing there, I seemed verily to absorb, to become saturated as it were, with the reigning essence of beauty. I walked on, a few steps, lifted a worn, ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson



Words linked to "Billowing" :   billowy, stormy, surging



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