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Faintness   Listen
noun
Faintness  n.  
1.
The state of being faint; loss of strength, or of consciousness, and self-control.
2.
Want of vigor or energy.
3.
Feebleness, as of color or light; lack of distinctness; as, faintness of description.
4.
Faint-heartedness; timorousness; dejection. "I will send a faintness into their hearts."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Faintness" Quotes from Famous Books



... family reasons which finally decided him to do so. In any state of the case, it was his duty to explain his position to the severe old ironmonger, his wife's uncle. Nevertheless, as he reached the house he felt that inward faintness which a child feels when taken to a dentist's; but this shrinking of the heart involved the whole of his life, past, present, and to come,—it was not the fugitive pain of a moment. He ...
— Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau • Honore de Balzac

... alone again with the body of her deceased grandmother. As soon as the excitement ceased, she began to feel languid, and she became sensible of her own bodily wants. Food of no sort had passed her lips in more than thirty hours, and her last meal had been a scanty breakfast of dry bread. As the faintness of hunger came over her, Adrienne felt for her purse with the intention of sending Nathalie to a neighboring baker's, when the truth flashed upon her, in its dreadful reality. She had not a liard. Her last sou had furnished the breakfast of ...
— Autobiography of a Pocket-Hankerchief • James Fenimore Cooper

... them from her upper window, and the sight of them walking about in the field had produced an acute physical feeling of nausea and faintness; for her fear lest the field should be built upon and the last seclusion spoilt, had already made one of those deep ruts in the mind along which every thought runs when not actually driven in another direction. And each time Miss Ethel's thoughts passed that way, the rut was bound to become deeper. ...
— The Privet Hedge • J. E. Buckrose

... were evidently good; but it always seemed as if it was into these that I had happened to put not much money, while the bulk of my fortune was entangled in the others. Besides the usual Midsummer faintness that overtakes the stock market, my own specialties were a good deal more than faint. On the 20th of August I took the afternoon train to spend my two weeks' holiday at Lenox; and during much of the journey I gazed at the Wall Street edition of the afternoon paper that I had purchased ...
— Mother • Owen Wister

... this kind of a bath. Stop the bath immediately if any feeling of faintness is experienced. Drink a glass of ...
— Valere Aude - Dare to Be Healthy, Or, The Light of Physical Regeneration • Louis Dechmann

... struggle was almost more than she could endure. She tried to appear calm; time mellowed her grief, and mitigated her torments; but when her husband would take her hand, or mention any thing like love, she would instantly feel a sickness, a faintness at her heart, and wish, involuntarily, that the earth would open ...
— Mary - A Fiction • Mary Wollstonecraft

... not flinch or start when Mr. Fullarton's words caught her ear, but a heavy, chill faintness stole over her, till she felt all her limbs benumbed, and every thing before her eyes grew misty and dim. The numbness passed away almost immediately, but still the figures around her appeared distorted and fantastically exaggerated; they seemed to be tossing and whirling ...
— Sword and Gown - A Novel • George A. Lawrence

... directly conscious than the distance of an object from us. Yet it has long been ascertained, that what is perceived by the eye, is at most nothing more than a variously colored surface; that when we fancy we see distance, all we really see is certain variations of apparent size, and degrees of faintness of color; that our estimate of the object's distance from us is the result partly of a rapid inference from the muscular sensations accompanying the adjustment of the focal distance of the eye to objects unequally remote from us, and partly of a comparison (made with ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill

... this time the apple blossoms were plucked from the branches, more slowly the springtime steps were taken, and before she reached a point in the music where she could stop, Patty was swaying from faintness, ...
— Patty's Butterfly Days • Carolyn Wells

... but as her friend, her defender. She rose at last to demonstrate that she was entirely herself again. "I am ashamed of myself," she said, humbly. "Please don't look so concerned." She turned to Kate. "I assure you it was only a little faintness. You see I didn't sleep very ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland

... infirmities, and bare our sicknesses'; He knew when 'virtue had gone out of Him.' That may mean only that His Divine knowledge was conscious of it; but taking both passages together, is it not possible that His wonderful works were wrought at personal expense—that His human body suffered weakness, faintness, perhaps acute pain, as the natural consequence of doing them? You will understand that I merely throw out the hint. Scripture does not speak decisively; and where God does not decide, it is well ...
— Out in the Forty-Five - Duncan Keith's Vow • Emily Sarah Holt

... made clear by the case of memory, and that is, that self-evidence has degrees: it is not a quality which is simply present or absent, but a quality which may be more or less present, in gradations ranging from absolute certainty down to an almost imperceptible faintness. Truths of perception and some of the principles of logic have the very highest degree of self-evidence; truths of immediate memory have an almost equally high degree. The inductive principle has less self-evidence than some ...
— The Problems of Philosophy • Bertrand Russell

... bundled her father into his threadbare blue army overcoat with the cape. He stood for a moment absently rattling some dimes in his pocket. Then the faintness of their jingle must have appealed to him, for he drew a long breath and walked majestically away. He was a tall stout man in the midst of his forties, with a military goatee and black flowing mustaches, and he wore his campaign hat pinned up at the side ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White

... in arm, or hand in hand, or interchanging bright glances; but she in tears; he gloomy and down-looking. Were these the hearts that had so lately made old Toby's leap up from its faintness? No, no. The Alderman (a blessing on his head!) had Put ...
— A Budget of Christmas Tales by Charles Dickens and Others • Various

... restless night and an instinctive longing for fresh air, she took a long walk in the park before anyone came down the next morning, with only Jock for her companion, and she came to the breakfast table with a freshened look, though with a tremulous faintness in her voice, and she let Janet continue tea maker, scarcely seeming to hear or understand the casual remarks around her; but afterwards she said in a resolute tone, "Robert, I am ready whenever you wish ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge

... position, but not its form, seeming to move downwards and towards the stern of my vessel, as if I were passing it without approaching nearer. By the time that I was satisfied of this, hunger and even faintness warned me that I must not delay preparing my breakfast. When I had finished this meal and fulfilled some necessary tasks, practical and arithmetical, the hand of the chronometer indicated the eighth hour of my third day. I turned again somewhat ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg

... was the stronger because of the awful and hopeless loneliness: with the dead-still weed-covered ocean stretching away to the horizon on the one hand, and on the other only dead ships tangled and crushed together going off in a desolate wilderness that grew fainter—but for its faintness all the more despairing—until it was lost in the dun-gold murky ...
— In the Sargasso Sea - A Novel • Thomas A. Janvier

... "Who drains the cup of another's bitterness shall find it sweet." Quickly he was alone, groping for his path in black darkness and presently coming down a stairway into the moonlit chamber of his inheritance. Then the men of the dark and a feeling of faintness and great surprise and a broad, blue field all about him and woods in the distance, and above the growing light of dawn. His bones were aching with illness and overwork, his feet sore. "I have been asleep," he said, rubbing his eyes, "and all night ...
— Darrel of the Blessed Isles • Irving Bacheller

... look at, which no longer roused any hope in me, as if it might lead to another beginning, or any place in which yet at the last it might be possible to live. As I lay in that horrible giddiness and faintness, I loathed life and this continuance which brought me through one misery after another, and forbade me to die. Oh that death would come,—death, which is silent and still, which makes no movement and hears no sound! ...
— The Little Pilgrim: Further Experiences. - Stories of the Seen and the Unseen. • Margaret O. (Wilson) Oliphant

... 'Excuse the faintness of my acquiescence, Milicent, I would not discourage your hopes for the world, but mine have been so often disappointed, that I am become as cold and doubtful in my expectations as ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte

... recovered from the faintness that had seized her at first sight of the supposed ghost, on being assured by a servant that she had seen Miss Chase in the flesh entering the room of Mr. Ellsworth. As soon as she could command her shaken nerves, she followed Dainty just in time to hear her avowal of her marriage ...
— Dainty's Cruel Rivals - The Fatal Birthday • Mrs. Alex McVeigh Miller

... on his father's shoulder; a strange, dull sound in his head overpowered him; a slight faintness seemed to blow over his face; his eyes were fixed and glassy, and he became unconscious. Mr. Mortimer changed color, and hastily catching the falling boy, he carried him to the sofa. Dr. Wilkinson sent Reginald immediately for some water, ...
— Louis' School Days - A Story for Boys • E. J. May

... flesh and fish, escapes much of that languor and faintness, at particular hours, which others feel. He has usually a clear and quiet head in the morning. He is ready, and willing, and glad to rise in due season; and his morning feelings are apt to last all day. He has none of that faintness between his ...
— Vegetable Diet: As Sanctioned by Medical Men, and by Experience in All Ages • William Andrus Alcott

... and rebellions of her girlhood—betraying itself in her quivering face, and lips. Suddenly, she dropped upon a fallen log beside the path, hiding her face in her hands, struggling again with the sheer faintness of the shock. And Philip, kneeling in the dry leaves beside her, completed his work, with the cruel mercy of the man who kills ...
— The Case of Richard Meynell • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... against the rock. He had lost much blood, and that and the pain of his mangled foot turned him faint and sick for minutes at a time. He clenched his teeth and forced back the deadly faintness, then turned to the woman who stood beside him, her hands clasped before her, her eyes following the declining sun, her lips sometimes set in mournful curves, sometimes murmuring broken and inaudible words of prayer. He called her twice before she answered, ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston

... could he feel through the faintness, the numbness, While linger'd the spirit half-loosed from the clay, Dumb eyes seeking his in their piteous dumbness, Dumb quivering nostrils, too ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon

... upon her, "Ah, that baby had a father to welcome it and fondle it; but my poor babe—" A sensation of faintness came over her; and, holding on by the chairs and tables, she staggered back to the bed ...
— A Romance of the Republic • Lydia Maria Francis Child

... went to the library. He hoped, if he waited and rested for a little while, the uncomfortable sensations might subside and it would be needless to mention them. He did not want any fuss made. We gave him restoratives, and he recovered from the faintness. But he won't be equal, he admits, to coming in to dinner. Colonel Carteret must be hungry—your father begs us to wait no longer, I assured him we would not. Hordle is with him. He should not be alone, I think, while ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet

... you the substance of it," said the man, with a faintness that however had all the distinctness of a whisper, "if you'll just step inside a minute. It's a matter ...
— A First Family of Tasajara • Bret Harte

... distant and as the hunter approached it, he took silently to the trees and still in his nostrils was the faint reptilian odor that spoke of a great creature which he had never yet seen except as a denser shadow among the dense shadows of the night; but the odor was of such a faintness as suggests to the jungle bred the ...
— Tarzan the Terrible • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... it. Would I had never unlocked that door! Would that the key had been lost, or that I had never set foot in this abominable house! Hastily I refastened the door, hung up the rusty key in its niche, and rushed into my own room, where I dropped into a chair with a deadly faintness creeping over me. I looked at my hand, where the clot of blood had fallen. It seemed to have burnt its way into my flesh, for it no longer appeared on the surface, but, where it had been was a round, purple mark, with an outer ring, like the scar of a burn. ...
— Dreams and Dream Stories • Anna (Bonus) Kingsford

... and drew a deep breath, which was followed by something strangely resembling a sigh. I knew it was time to move; and, shaking off a sensation of fast-approaching lethargy, I tried to get rid of the feeling of faintness, and only roused the sharp pain afresh. Still, that spurred me into effort; and as I pressed Sandho's sides lightly, he began to amble gently along, while I raised my eyes to the stars, and endeavoured ...
— Charge! - A Story of Briton and Boer • George Manville Fenn

... advances, which he now knew was the effect of the growing dominance of Mrs. Peyton over him, and remembered only her bright, youthful eyes, and the kisses he had pressed upon her soft fragrant cheek. The faintness he had felt when waiting in the old rose garden, a few hours ago, seemed to steal on him once more, and to lapse into a pleasant drowsiness. He even seemed again to inhale the ...
— Clarence • Bret Harte

... wizard thou weavest spells Over all flowers, and brooks, and dells, Wreathing above every mossy bed, Till with bright dreams it is canopied And through the rose-coloured atmosphere All things more lovely and bright appear, Losing the faintness of earthly things, And shining with heaven's illuminings. Thine are the Naiads and Nymphs which rise From dell and fountain to daze our eyes; Thine are the spirits 'mid leafy trees, Whose voices come to us on the breeze. Thine are the maidens whose trackless feet Bear ...
— Eidolon - The Course of a Soul and Other Poems • Walter R. Cassels

... it all, and the pretty, innocent gaiety of the children seems obscured as by a gathering thunder-cloud; as when the air grows close and still over some scene of rustic merriment, and the blitheness of the revellers sinks into torpor and faintness, not knowing what ails them. One feels that the performers of the dance will be rewarded with kisses and sweetmeats, and that they will draw the poison ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson

... if the lad felt his blood run cold as he listened to the Indian's vaunt, and it is little wonder that his head swam until he was near in reality to the very faintness that he had assumed. ...
— The Fiery Totem - A Tale of Adventure in the Canadian North-West • Argyll Saxby

... devil, or an errant doctor, I was led to partake of that bowl which neither cheers nor inebriates—the castor-oil bowl. Now, when castor-oil goes right, it is one thing; but when it goes wrong, it is another. And it went wrong with me that day. The waves of faintness and nausea succeeded each other for twelve hours, and I do feel a legitimate pride in thinking that I stuck to my work all through and wrote a good deal of Admiral Guinea (which I might just as well not have ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... silent as the grave. The gloom and quietness of the place chilled me somehow. There was a fire burning in the parlour, and my father made me sit down very close to it, and I think the heat increased that faintness which I had felt when I came into ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon

... and saw the two heads turned in opposite directions and both talking at once, then saw the commingling arms feed potatoes into one mouth and coffee into the other at the same time, she had to pause and pull herself out of a faintness that came over her; but after that she held her grip and was able to wait on the table ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... Etta no sign of recognition, but the horror in his once-handsome face, now white and drawn, told of his shock at finding her with me, and fear and recoil weakened him to the point of faintness. In his effort to recover himself, to resist what might be coming, he struggled as one for breath, but from him came no ...
— People Like That • Kate Langley Bosher

... gazed imploringly. Pain and bewilderment, strange, wistful pleading, but all the old love and trust, were there as I threw my arms about his neck and bowed his head upon my breast. I could not bear to meet his eyes. I could not look into them and read there the deadly pain and faintness that were rapidly robbing them of their lustre, but that could not shake their faith in his friend and master. No wonder mine grew sightless as his own through swimming tears. I who had killed him could not ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various

... did to that of our Earth, being on the 17th of December a sixth part of the Sun's diameter, or seven tenths of the distance of the Moon from that luminary. Perihelia occurring beyond the orbit of Mars can seldom be observed by the inhabitants of the Earth, owing to the faintness of the light of distant comets; and among those already calculated the comet of 1729 is the only one which has its perihelion between the orbits of Pallas and Jupiter; it was even observed ...
— COSMOS: A Sketch of the Physical Description of the Universe, Vol. 1 • Alexander von Humboldt

... penetrated through Anna's haze of fright and faintness. She sat up in the bed, ready to spring to the window if she heard steps on the stairs. When none came, but the voices, lowered now, went on endlessly below, she slipped out of her bed and crept to ...
— Dangerous Days • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... his madness. On his talking quietly to the policemen, and readily paying for the damage he had done, he was allowed to go free. Descending the stair to the street, where the glare of the entrance-lamps fell full upon him, he felt a sudden sensation of faintness, caused by the combination of cold air, excitement, drink, and smoke. Seizing the railings with one hand, he stood for a moment with his ...
— Post Haste • R.M. Ballantyne

... stand convicted of bad taste. Hence they hedge their opinions, like a gambler his bets, and leave an opening to retract, and retreat, and qualify, and neutralise every unguarded expression of delight, until their very praise declines into a faintness ...
— Wolfert's Roost and Miscellanies • Washington Irving

... get into the house, and was based upon Julian's long-ago remark that the doctor could never resist helping any one who was in trouble. Standing on the doorstep, she had histrionically simulated faintness for the special benefit of Lawler, who regarded ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens

... scoundrel took my hand in farewell. He must have had a pin stuck in his glove, for I felt a slight scratch across the palm. At the moment I was too furious to pay any attention to it, but ten minutes after he had gone I began to experience a strange faintness. I feel now fainter . . . and fainter . . . A strange feeling has crept over me . . . I am dying . . . poisoned . . . ...
— The Doctor of Pimlico - Being the Disclosure of a Great Crime • William Le Queux

... cheek. Sure that he was now facing his one possible refuge, he again struggled forward. And as he went, he pictured to himself the whole caribou herd, now half foundered in the drift, labouring toward the same retreat. Once more, crushing back hunger and faintness, he summoned up his spirit, and vowed that if the beasts could fight their way to cover, he could. Then his woodcraft should force the forest to render him something in the way of food that would suffice to keep life in ...
— The Backwoodsmen • Charles G. D. Roberts

... youthful bloom, after which she sent no regret when at last it disappeared, leaving her free to think again of Richard Harrington. It was a terrible blow to her that he was blind, and talk as she might about the faintness of the morning, old Rachel knew the real cause of her distress, and when alone with her, ...
— Darkness and Daylight • Mary J. Holmes

... of faintness was only momentary, and already the bright colour was in her cheeks again and she laughed and said, 'It was not the jump, really, Jane; but I am a horrible gambler, and I put my ...
— Peter and Jane - or The Missing Heir • S. (Sarah) Macnaughtan

... gave a bottle of liquor to his lady, which he willed her to use in any faintness; which she, after his returne from Court, not knowing it was poison, gave him, and ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 233, April 15, 1854 • Various

... knew how that walk passed. She was conscious now and then of a feeling of shame, for letting herself be carried. She felt she ought to walk, but before she could say so the old faintness stole over her again, and she knew that to walk was beyond her power. Now and then she heard the policeman talking in a friendly voice to Dick, who walked close beside them, and Dick's excited bark. She was wondering ...
— Dick and Brownie • Mabel Quiller-Couch

... some measure reassured us by the faintness with which he disparages the senses of the lower animals, Buffon continues, that these senses, whether in man or in animals, may be greatly developed by exercise: which we may suppose that a man of even less humour than Buffon must know ...
— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler

... 18, (being Good-Friday,) I found him at breakfast, in his usual manner upon that day, drinking tea without milk, and eating a cross-bun to prevent faintness; we went to St. Clement's church, as formerly. When we came home from church, he placed himself on one of the stone-seats at his garden-door, and I took the other, and thus in the open air and in a placid frame of mind, he talked away very easily. JOHNSON. 'Were I a ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell

... again, leaving her sick and shivering. It was an excuse for going into the house to find a cloak and for getting the minute's respite necessary to self-control. To regain it—to overcome that throb of her being of which the after effect was a faintness unto death—she was obliged to walk steadily, holding her head high. She was obliged, too, to repent of the tigress impulse with which she had turned on Claude, flinging in his face that for which she had meant to prepare him by degrees. ...
— The Side Of The Angels - A Novel • Basil King

... success; there was nothing to fear from the simple, apprehensive Magsie of this afternoon! The only sensible thing was to stop thinking of it, and to go to sleep. But Rachael felt sick and frightened, experienced sensations of faintness, sensations like hunger. Her eyes seemed painfully open, she could not shut them. Her breath came fitfully. She sighed, turned on her side. She would count one hundred, breathing deep and with closed eyes. "Sixteen, seventeen!" ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris

... wild attempt at a toilet of her hair—in case the wind had ripped the tell-tale strands from beneath her hat. Then with utter faintness in her being, and weakness in her knees, she ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels

... imagine the Crusades Or Caesar's battles. Everything To faintness like those rumours fades— Like ...
— Poems • Edward Thomas

... sight of the monster, she recognized it in a moment, and her instant thought was, "O God! what can I do with these children?" And a faintness, almost a feeling of despair, came over her. Then seeing that all order was at an end, and the children were huddled about her, some crying and all terrified, she pulled herself together, realizing that to ...
— Kristy's Rainy Day Picnic • Olive Thorne Miller

... of that mind varied continually. Sometimes it was tolerably clear, at others sadly wandering, and the least excitement produced faintness and pain at the heart; still her ...
— Gladys, the Reaper • Anne Beale

... was talking with his venerable host, and thanking him for his kind attentions, Emily observed his countenance change, and, before she could reach him, he fell back in his chair. In a few moments he recovered from the sudden faintness that had come over him, but felt so ill, that he perceived himself unable to set out, and, having remained a little while, struggling against the pressure of indisposition, he begged he might be helped up stairs to bed. This request renewed all the terror which Emily had suffered on the preceding ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe

... lifted for a few yards a drowsiness came over him, which alarmed them all excessively. This was specially the case at one spot where a tree stood in the path. Here one of his attendants was called to him, and, on stooping down, he found him unable to speak from faintness. They replaced him in the kitanda, and made the best of their way on the journey. Some distance further on great thirst oppressed him; he asked them if they had any water, but, unfortunately for once, not a drop was to be procured. Hastening on for fear of ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume II (of 2), 1869-1873 • David Livingstone

... of turning to show them the exact spot, indicating it vaguely by the direction of her hand, and still going on her way with the idea of gaining more assistance. When she deemed, in her faintness, that she had carried the alarm far enough, she faced about and dragged herself back again. Before reaching the now dreaded spot she met ...
— A Changed Man and Other Tales • Thomas Hardy

... wakened early, with a faintness in her chest. This was the day on which she must acquit herself well. Breakfast would be Claude's last meal at home. At eleven o'clock his father and Ralph would take him to Frankfort to catch the train. She was longer than usual in dressing. When she got downstairs Claude and Mahailey ...
— One of Ours • Willa Cather

... the blood of the witch they had drawn her power too. And for a time it seemed as if this really were so, for Jeanne's wound was very painful and she seemed no longer a warrior, but a pitiful little girl, overcome with tears and faintness. At last, however, when her steel shirt had been removed, she grasped the arrow with her own hands and drew it from the wound. And after this she rose and insisted on ...
— A Treasury of Heroes and Heroines - A Record of High Endeavour and Strange Adventure from 500 B.C. to 1920 A.D. • Clayton Edwards

... session-house with loaded guns, night about, three at a time. It was in November when my turn came. I never liked to go into the kirkyard after darkening, let-a-be sit through a long winter night with none but the dead around us. I felt a kind of qualm of faintness and downsinking about my heart and stomach, to the dispelling of which I took a thimbleful of spirits, and, tying my red comforter about my neck, I marched briskly ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VI. • Various

... recovered consciousness she found herself breathing an atmosphere of penetrating fragrance, the gentle potency of which had recalled her from her deathlike faintness. The scene around her looked like enchantment. Aylmer had converted those smoky, dingy, sombre rooms, where he had spent his brightest years in recondite pursuits, into a series of beautiful apartments not unfit to be the secluded abode of a lovely woman. ...
— Mosses from an Old Manse and Other Stories • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... faintness, and my heart ached to hear him speak thus to me, his servant. But Emma the queen turned half away from him, her face growing hard and scornful as she heard. Then Eadward set his book down gently, and, looking sadly at his mother, came and stood over against ...
— King Olaf's Kinsman - A Story of the Last Saxon Struggle against the Danes in - the Days of Ironside and Cnut • Charles Whistler

... unspeakable, a faintness full of peril, invaded our whole being. She would have fallen, but that I supported ...
— Pepita Ximenez • Juan Valera

... his sensations grew so entangled that he could never recall them distinctly; he had a dim reminiscence of some breathless impotent rush, of a sudden blindness followed by quick flashes of intolerable light, of a deadly faintness, from which he was roused by sharp pangs—here—there—everywhere; and then all he could remember was, that he was lying on the ground, huddled up and panting hard, while his adversary bent over him with ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... "Senors," said Alvarado, whose faintness was passing from him, "I broke my plighted word to the Viceroy and Don Felipe de Tobar. I love this lady and was false to my charge. Don Alvaro promised me death for punishment, and I crave it. I care not ...
— Sir Henry Morgan, Buccaneer - A Romance of the Spanish Main • Cyrus Townsend Brady

... cholera morbus; symptoms, violent vomiting and purging, faintness, and spasms in the arms and limbs. Unless accompanied with cramp (which is not usual), nature will work its own cure. Give warm drinks if you have them. Do not get frightened, but keep the patient warm, and well protected ...
— How to Camp Out • John M. Gould

... greatly, finding that I was making slower progress than I had calculated on, I pushed forward, still hoping before daybreak to reach some spot where I could conceal myself. At length I could bear the pain no longer, and, overcome with fatigue, a faintness seized me, and I sank ...
— Saved from the Sea - The Loss of the Viper, and her Crew's Saharan Adventures • W.H.G. Kingston

... she set down the bowl she carried, and the hot liquid splashed up round her wrists. For a moment she hung there, drooping, holding herself up by the strength of her hands upon the table. It was as if she had been seized with faintness. Then she sprang to where the cat crouched beside a chair. She dropped upon her knees and tried to raise it in her arms, but the beast bit and scratched at her feebly, and crept away to a little distance, where it lay struggling and very ...
— Jason • Justus Miles Forman

... faintness and oppression in the sound which made Lady Merrifield think the girl ought not to be left, and before long, sickness came on. Nurse Halfpenny had to be called up, and it was one o'clock before there was a quiet, comfortable ...
— The Two Sides of the Shield • Charlotte M. Yonge

... and deceive Rhetoric: to govern a disorderly and tumultuous rabble Sitting betwixt two stools Sometimes the body first submits to age, sometimes the mind Stupidity and facility natural to the common people The Bible: the wicked and ignorant grow worse by it The faintness that surprises in the exercises of Venus Thucydides: which was the better wrestler To die of old age is a death rare, extraordinary, and singular To make little things appear great was his profession To smell, though well, is to stink Valour will cause a trembling ...
— Widger's Quotations from The Essays of Montaigne • David Widger

... somehow through the cleft, and sat down, shaking, upon the grass of the slope beyond; but, happening to throw myself backwards in the reeling faintness induced by my fright and the pain of my head, my eyes encountered a sight that woke me ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes

... of sympathetic admiration or condolence Glendower might have made was interrupted by one of those sudden and overpowering attacks of faintness which had of late seized the delicate and declining health of his wife. He rose, and leaned over her with a fondness and alarm which curled the ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... a villain as I firmly believed the man whom we knew as Sir Gilbert Carstairs to be was enough to shake every nerve in my body; but to think that she had been in his power for twenty-four hours, alone, defenceless, brought on me a faintness that was almost beyond sustaining. I felt physically and mentally ill—weak. And yet, God knows! there never was so much as a thought of defeat in me. What I felt was that I must get there, and make some effort that would bring the suspense to an end for both of us. I was beginning to ...
— Dead Men's Money • J. S. Fletcher

... near the sphere. But everywhere was a confusing sameness, everywhere the aspiring bushes, the distending fungi, the dwindling snow banks, steadily and inevitably changed. The sun scorched and stung, the faintness of an unaccountable hunger mingled with our infinite perplexity. And even as we stood there, confused and lost amidst unprecedented things, we became aware for the first time of a sound upon the moon other than the air of the growing plants, the faint sighing of the wind, or those ...
— The First Men In The Moon • H. G. Wells

... cold. Arctic explorers have to discard it entirely. The old idea of helping to cure snake bite, hydrophobia, etc, by whiskey was sheer mistake; the patient has actually much less of a chance if so drugged. Only for an immediate and transitory need, such as faintness or shock, is the quickly passing stimulating power of alcohol useful; and even for such purposes other stimulants are more valuable. Reputable physicians have almost wholly ceased to use it. [Footnote: See H. S. Williams, op. cit, p. 4, 124-127; ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake

... reeled in his saddle, but he kept his seat by a great effort. Then he fought back the growing faintness that was ...
— Jack of the Pony Express • Frank V. Webster

... a leather bag which he slung over his shoulder. Before he had crossed the garden his mouth was dry again. He picked two oranges. It was only after shutting the gate after him that he felt a slight faintness. ...
— The Point Of Honor - A Military Tale • Joseph Conrad

... in the early morning was the unpleasant one that my promised visit to Mrs. Le Grande must be made during the day. When I raised my head from the pillow the pain was even more severe than on the previous evening, and a dizzy faintness seized me when I tried to rise. I was so unaccustomed to sickness I had not learned the happy art of accepting patiently its behests; so, after a few more efforts, I succeeded in dressing myself. I went to the window ...
— Medoline Selwyn's Work • Mrs. J. J. Colter

... in his hands, and he said distinctly, "I die like a good Catholic, in faith and obedience to the holy Roman Church." Soon after these last words had been spoken, a paroxysm, followed by faintness, came over him, and he ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... with consequent bustle, and the hasty advance toward the office of men seeking to register their names early, in order to secure a choice of rooms. At last she saw Graydon's tall form and laughing face, and for a second something approaching to faintness caused her to close her eyes. When she opened them again they rested upon ...
— A Young Girl's Wooing • E. P. Roe

... sufficed to exhaust the wonders of Erie, and Miselle gladly took the cars for Buffalo, and on the road thither fell in with a good Samaritan, who solaced her weary faintness with delicate titbits of grouse, shot and roasted upon ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various

... to go," said Dan Anderson, "and I ought to go. I ought to go climb that tree and leave a pink and lavender card of regrets for the lady and her dad. I reckon I will go, too, if I can ever get this faintness out of my legs. But somehow I can't get started. I'd look well, tryin' to climb a tree with my legs this way, wouldn't I? Man, haven't ...
— Heart's Desire • Emerson Hough

... saw a padre, a starved, sad-faced man who, she instinctively felt, was good. She managed to mount her horse and ride up to the house; but, once there, she weakened and Florence had almost to carry her in-doors. She fought off a faintness, only to succumb to it when alone in her room. Still, she did not entirely lose consciousness, and soon recovered to the extent that she did not ...
— The Light of Western Stars • Zane Grey

... she probably did know that ammonia is good for just that sort of faintness which she must have experienced after taking the powder. Perhaps she thought of sal volatile, I don't know. But most people know that ammonia in some form is good for faintness of this sort, even if they don't know anything about ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds

... a clergyman called me to the scene of blood. When I arrived on the deck of the brig, it exhibited a frightful spectacle. My heart sickened at the extent of the carnage; and I was almost sinking with the faintness it produced, when I was roused by a groan so full of anguish and pain, that for a long time afterwards its echo seemed to reach me. I found that it came from a man lying further forward, on whose face the death-dew was standing, yet I could perceive no wound. ...
— Famous Islands and Memorable Voyages • Anonymous

... she gasped. Her knees grew weak and a faintness assailed her heart, almost to overpowering. "You—you must not—shall not say a word to ...
— Nedra • George Barr McCutcheon

... a long distance to the bottom of the clover-field, and the swift iron followed me remorselessly. At one moment, when a shell burst full in my face, half blinding me, I felt weak to faintness, but still I ran. I had wit enough to avoid the high road, which I knew to be packed with fugitives, and down which, I properly surmised, the enemy would send his steady messengers. Once I fell into a ditch, and the breath was knocked out of ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend

... the story. Julian Orden left his rooms at a quarter to six on Thursday evening. He walked down to St. James's Street and turned into the Park. Just as he passed the side door of Marlborough House he was attacked by a sudden faintness." ...
— The Devil's Paw • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... observed in him all Sappho's famous symptoms, his voice faltered, his face flushed up, his eyes glanced stealthily, a sudden sweat broke out on his skin, the beatings of his heart were irregular and violent, and, unable to support the excess of his passion, he would sink into a state of faintness, prostration, and pallor. ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough

... against so powerful an over-lord as the warlike Archbishop. The scarlet cross of the Crusader on his broad breast seemed to her swimming eyes to blaze with lambent flame in the yellow torchlight. She dared not trust her voice to answer him, fearing its faintness might disown the courage with which she had held her castle for so long, and he, seeing that she struggled to hold control of herself, standing there like a superb Goddess of the Rhine, pretended to notice ...
— The Strong Arm • Robert Barr

... gratify the kindly soul, found that he not only could but did dispose of as hearty a meal of bread and milk, coffee, bacon, and sweet-potatoes, as any he had ever eaten in his life. Not only that, but as his faintness from hunger disappeared his hopefulness returned, and by the time he had finished eating fully half of his troubles had vanished. He was still overwhelmed with grief at the supposed loss of his brave young uncle, but he had already ...
— Raftmates - A Story of the Great River • Kirk Munroe

... to her room. She did not guess the cause of Joe's faintness, but supposed it to be a momentary indisposition, amenable to the effects of eau-de-cologne. She made her lie upon the great cretonne sofa, moistening her forehead, and giving her a bottle ...
— An American Politician • F. Marion Crawford

... ungrateful passenger who had the advantage and was mercilessly pushing him with both arms toward the edge of the boat. Slowly Tom gave way, inch by inch. He was conscious of a racking pain in his shoulder. He tried to raise his right arm; then a feeling of faintness swept over him, he reeled, and, before Madge could move to his help, Tom Curtis ...
— Madge Morton, Captain of the Merry Maid • Amy D. V. Chalmers

... young man tried to utter was strangled in his throat; he threw out his arms and groped with his hands as if to find something to support him in his faintness; ...
— Fantomas • Pierre Souvestre

... treachery on tiptoe, taking its murderous stand in hiding; the whistling passage of bullets through the air; the piercing cry of a man mortally wounded, and that man, perhaps——? Iris shrank from her own horrid thought. A momentary faintness overcame her; she opened the window. As she put her head out to breathe the cool night-air, a man on horseback rode up to the house. Was it Arthur? No: the light-coloured groom's livery that he ...
— Blind Love • Wilkie Collins

... received a bullet-wound in the thigh. Moreover he discovered that his trousers were wet with blood, and that there was a continuous flow of the vital fluid from the wound. This at once accounted to him for some very unusual feelings of faintness which had come over him, and which he had at first attributed to his frequent and ...
— The Buffalo Runners - A Tale of the Red River Plains • R.M. Ballantyne

... experience such another minute! I continued to struggle in desperate hopelessness with single hand, in vain endeavor to wrench loose that awful grip upon my shoulder. Every movement I made was an agony, an inexpressible torture, but the very intensity of pain kept me from faintness, as the maddened beast tore deeper and deeper into the quivering flesh. With knee bent double beneath me I succeeded in turning partially upon one side, lifting the entire weight of the animal as I did so; but no degree of force I could exert would loosen those set jaws. There was no ...
— My Lady of the North • Randall Parrish

... sickness, much more dangerous than the former; as it were to verify the prediction of St Jerome; for he was seized with a quartan ague, which was both malignant and obstinate; insomuch that it cast him into an extreme faintness, and made him as meagre as a skeleton. In the mean time, lean and languishing as he was, he ceased not to crawl to the public places, and excite passengers to repentance. When his voice failed him, his wan and mortified face, ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume XVI. (of 18) - The Life of St. Francis Xavier • John Dryden

... registry office to seek an engagement. These thoughts passed vaguely through her brain; her head seemed splitting, and she could scarcely stand on her legs when she got out of the train at Westbourne Park. It would be a dreadful thing if she were to fall down in the streets, overcome with faintness, she thought, for then her bag and purse might be stolen from her, or worse still, she might be taken back to the house of her cruel enemy. Clinging to her bag, she walked on as fast as she could seeking for some humble street with rooms to let—some ...
— Fan • Henry Harford

... idea in most of them, are I think overcharged and monotonous, and as to their ultimate drift, as for myself, I can make neither head nor tail of it. Yet some of them, I own, are sweet even to a sense of faintness, luscious as the woodbine, and graceful and luxuriant like it. Here ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt

... ribbon into a glowing hollow. It caught and blazed and illuminated his face. Damaris moved also, groping with her hands for the chair beside the table. Finding it, she sank down, outstretched her arms upon the board, and bowed her head upon them. Through the faintness and the leaden horror that weighed her down she heard Ferne's voice, at first yet monotonous and low, at the last an irrepressible ...
— Sir Mortimer • Mary Johnston

... sentence. His wife exhibited as an object for public compassion in the Times newspaper! On the brink of the dreadful discovery that was advancing on him, his mind reeled back, and a deadly faintness came over him. There was water on a side-table—he drank a deep draught of it—roused himself—seized on the newspaper with both hands, as if it had been a living thing that could feel the desperate resolution ...
— The Queen of Hearts • Wilkie Collins

... the bed, wrapped her little pink garment around her, and stole across the hall to her mother's room. The whole hall was filled with a strange, sweet smell which made her faint, but along with the faintness came such an increase of joy that it was almost ecstasy. She turned the knob of her mother's door, but, before she could open it, it was opened from the other side, and her father's face, haggard and resentful as she had ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... to the old man, loosened his cravat and unfastened the collar of his shirt, striking him in the palms of his hands. But the sudden faintness was but momentary; almost immediately himself again, Phellion gathered his son to his heart, and holding him long in his embrace, he said, in a voice broken by the tears that came to put an end to this shock ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac

... from ours by inconceivable distances, and in that way concealing at first their real nature. The whitish gleam was the mask conferred by the enormity of their remotion. This being so, it might have been supposed that, as was the faintness of these cloudy spots or nebulae, such was the distance. But that did not follow: for in the treasury of nature it turned out that there were other resources for modifying the powers of distance, for muffling and ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey

... from Harwich that the Dutch fleete are all in sight, near 100 sail great and small, they think, coming towards them; where, they think, they shall be able to oppose them; but do cry out of the falling back of the seamen, few standing by them, and those with much faintness. The like they write from Portsmouth, and their letters this post are worth reading. Sir H. Cholmly come to me this day, and tells me the Court is as mad as ever; and that the night the Dutch burned our ships the King did sup with my ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys

... shock of death-like faintness passed away, and she clung to the speaker's voice, as if its sound alone could give her strength to ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... with success. He had been advised to take up surgery, for a great man had noticed his long sensitive fingers, and told him that he had the hands of a born surgeon. He managed to get through the hours in the dissecting-room, standing on his head from time to time as a precaution against faintness; but his heroism gave way before the horrors of the theatre. Soon, with indignation naturally mingled with pleasure at this fulfilment of its own predictions, the family heard that Ted had flung ...
— Audrey Craven • May Sinclair

... she was attacked by a sensation of faintness, and remembering that she had eaten nothing all day, she went into the dining-car, and sat down at one of the little tables. When her luncheon was brought, she ate almost ravenously for a minute. Then her sudden hunger was followed by a ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow

... grateful for the kindness, although she was aware of neither faintness nor thirst. Presently she went upstairs with her friends, and the long, ...
— Polly of Lady Gay Cottage • Emma C. Dowd

... faintness seized her. She grew dizzy and almost fell. A more terrible memory had come behind. The thought was like ravens flapping their black wings on her brain. She felt her temples beating against her hands. They seemed to be sucking the life out of ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine

... search of his party. They had seen some flashes as they began the descent and rode in their direction, believing them to be signals, but soon all was darkness, all silence, but for the sigh of the night wind. Conscious of growing faintness, he suggested firing a shot or two as signals, and McGrath obeyed. Then off to the southeast, far from the point where they had seen the first flashes, the shots were answered and distant yells were heard. McGrath considered ...
— Under Fire • Charles King

... long afterward. For the first half-hour he was troubled by a distressful faintness; and when that passed off, as the air grew clearer, his back and arms commenced to ache unpleasantly. He already had toiled since soon after sunrise; but Weston, too, had done so, and he, at least, seemed impervious to fatigue. So intent was he that every now and then he swung the heavy ...
— The Gold Trail • Harold Bindloss



Words linked to "Faintness" :   blurriness, dimness, timorousness, feeling, weakness, softness, indistinctness



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