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Niche   Listen
noun
Niche  n.  A cavity, hollow, or recess, generally within the thickness of a wall, for a statue, bust, or other erect ornament. Hence, any similar position, literal or figurative. "Images defended from the injuries of the weather by niches of stone wherein they are placed."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Niche" Quotes from Famous Books



... who had made famous this hamlet buried in a niche in the valley that led down to the sea, a poor little peasants' hamlet consisting of ten Norman cottages surrounded by ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant

... myself better than in my formal Sunday clothes. I made gestures, and leaped, as I had seen the dancers do at the fair-theatre. In the midst of this I looked in the glass, and saw by chance the image of a niche which was behind me. On its white ground hung three green cords, each of them twisted up in a way which from the distance I could not clearly discern. I therefore turned round rather hastily, and asked the old man about the niche as well as the cords. ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

... my boy to be? Oft is the question asked of me, And oft I ask it of myself— What corner, niche or post or shelf In the great hall of life would I Select for him to occupy? Statesman or writer, poet, sage Or toiler for a weekly wage, Artist or artisan? Oh, what Is to become his future lot? For him I do not dare to plan; I only hope he'll ...
— When Day is Done • Edgar A. Guest

... down the face of the cliff, for it was as yet some hours before the tide would be full. A glance showed him that the stone of baby Day's tablet yet held firm, cemented in the niche of the soft rock. A glance was enough for an object for which he had little respect, and he sat down with his back to it on one of the smaller rocks of the beach. This was the only place on the shore where the sandstone was hard enough to retain the form of rock, and the rock ended ...
— The Mermaid - A Love Tale • Lily Dougall

... the same letter, "Sweet, dear Mary, nearly a fortnight has passed since I wrote the above. I really believe I will finish my letter to-day, though I do not promise. That magician upstairs is very potent! In the afternoon and evening I sit in the study with him. It is the pleasantest niche in our temple. We watch the sun, together, descending in purple and gold, in every variety of magnificence, over the river. Lately, we go on the river, which is now frozen; my lord to skate, and I to run and slide, during the dolphin death of day. I consider my husband a rare sight, ...
— Two Thousand Miles On An Automobile • Arthur Jerome Eddy

... “Wodehowses,” or hairy wild men, armed with clubs. On the remaining portion of the canopy pier, on the right, is the figure of St. Peter, in a cope, wearing the tiara, a key in his left hand and a crozier in the right, with canopied niche. In another, above, is a figure of St. Maurice, in armour of the 15th century, in his right hand a halbert, and in his left a sword. Corresponding with these, on the left, is a figure of St. George, in similar armour, thrusting his lance into the dragon’s mouth. Above is the figure ...
— Records of Woodhall Spa and Neighbourhood - Historical, Anecdotal, Physiographical, and Archaeological, with Other Matter • J. Conway Walter

... of the giants. The room was panelled with cornices of heavy carved-work, in which flowers and grotesque faces were strangely intermingled; and a row of black-looking portraits stared mournfully at me from the walls. The bed was of rich though faded damask, with a lofty tester, and stood in a niche opposite a bow-window. I had scarcely got into bed when a strain of music seemed to break forth in the air just below the window. I listened, and found it proceeded from a band, which I concluded to be the waits from some neighbouring village. They went round the house, playing ...
— Old Christmas From the Sketch Book of Washington Irving • Washington Irving

... library. Against the wall on one side was a long writing- table, with drawers; surmounted by a small cabinet of polished wood, with folding doors richly studded with brass ornaments, within which Scott kept his most valuable papers. Above the cabinet, in a kind of niche, was a complete corslet of glittering steel, with a closed helmet, and flanked by gauntlets and battle-axes. Around were hung trophies and relics of various kinds: a cimeter of Tippoo Saib; a Highland broadsword from Flodden Field; a pair of Rippon spurs from Bannockburn; ...
— Abbotsford and Newstead Abbey • Washington Irving

... the United States has achieved or been placed in a certain artistic niche. When he is thought of artistically, it is as a happy-go-lucky, singing, shuffling, banjo-picking being or as a more or less pathetic figure. The picture of him is in a log cabin amid fields of cotton or along the levees. Negro ...
— The Book of American Negro Poetry • Edited by James Weldon Johnson

... oldest in this part of Germany. The castle of its former lords has nearly all fallen down, but the massive solidity of the walls which yet stand proves its antiquity. A few years ago a part of the outer walls which was remarked to have a hollow sound was taken down, when there fell from a deep niche built therein, a skeleton clad in a suit of the old ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume V (of X) • Various

... is not only alive but is still a comparatively young man in the height of his powers. A pure and simple biography cannot always determine with any satisfaction its subject's literary standing. Critical studies of classic authors do not usually give any preciseness about the exact niche the subject fills. ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke

... down your monument—or rear it, if ye will, But choose another effigy that lofty niche to fill. None better, say ye? Pause awhile, and I will tell you one, Who never bent the servile knee at altar or ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various

... afford the audience the music of the reed which he held in his hand. Three damsels, resembling the Graces in the beautiful proportions of their limbs, and the slender clothing which they wore, lurked in different attitudes, each in her own niche, and seemed but to await the first sound of the music, to bound forth from thence and join in the frolic dance. The subject was beautiful, yet somewhat light, to ornament the study of such a sage as ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott

... in his name and bearing his arms, to take the fisherman's ring from the finger of the dead pope, to dress, shave and paint him, to have the corpse embalmed, to lower the coffin after nine days' obsequies into the provisional niche where the last deceased pope has to remain until his successor comes to take his place and consign him to his final tomb; lastly, as he had been obliged to wall up the door of the Conclave and the window of the balcony from which the pontifical election ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... Bunk there was a tiny, three-cornered room overlooking the bay, too small for any purpose whatever, even for a storeroom. This niche had been given up to Queenie as a play-room. In it the child kept her thirteen children; and, in addition, all the accumulated toys of the family which had come down to herself, the youngest Carnegy, were ...
— The Captain's Bunk - A Story for Boys • M. B. Manwell

... brands were dying, Amid their own white ashes lying; But when the lady passed, there came A tongue of light, a fit of flame; And Christabel saw the lady's eye, 160 And nothing else saw she thereby, Save the boss of the shield of Sir Leoline tall, Which hung in a murky old niche in the wall. "O softly tread," said Christabel, "My ...
— Coleridge's Ancient Mariner and Select Poems • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... in the brightness of morning, Cities have wavered and rocked and gone down . . . But the lamps of the altars hang round you, adorning The niche of your neck and ...
— Spectra - A Book of Poetic Experiments • Arthur Ficke

... your knowledge of the world. It is six or seven years since you were thrown on the Continent with a full purse. You have been able to indulge every whim and fancy. You have had enough of wild oats. Fill your niche in Society and Clubdom, if you like. Be a butterfly and an ornament, if you feel no inclination for anything better. But be a gentleman—be honorable. If you ever forget yourself, and bring a shadow of shame upon the unsullied ...
— In Friendship's Guise • Wm. Murray Graydon

... yistiddy," he exclaimed. He got to his feet slowly, whereat Plutina looked toward the entrance cleft, ready if the need came, to fly from him to the more merciful abyss. But Hodges moved toward the back of the cave where he brought out a stone jug from its niche, and returned to the bed of boughs. Seated again, he filled the tin cup full of spirits, and drank it down. With the pipe recharged and burning, he continued to sit in silence, regarding the girl with an unswerving intentness that tortured her. At short intervals, he replenished the cup and quaffed ...
— Heart of the Blue Ridge • Waldron Baily

... its present line, either at the country end or at the city end, is as open as any well-known form of business enterprise can be. The chances of success for a man new to the trade will be better, however, if he can find a niche in the business where he may crowd in and establish himself before the old firms realize what is up. The proposition of buying high grade eggs from producers and selling direct to consumers is a proposition ...
— The Dollar Hen • Milo M. Hastings

... very close together, all three of them, in a niche in a narrow, dark passage, and men went by them carrying heavy chests, and great sacks of leather, and bundles tied up in straw and in handkerchiefs. The men had long hair and the kind of clothes you know were worn when Charles the First was King. And the children ...
— Harding's luck • E. [Edith] Nesbit

... fissures formed its southern wall. The Arabs discerned all this by the light of quiet but more and more frequent lightning flashes. Soon they also discovered in the rocky wall a kind of shallow cave or, rather, a broad niche, in which people could easily be harbored and, in case of a great downpour, could find shelter. The camels also could be comfortably lodged upon a slight elevation close by the niche. The Bedouins and two Sudanese removed from them their burdens and saddles, so that ...
— In Desert and Wilderness • Henryk Sienkiewicz

... the Bernese Alps. One afternoon I took a walk of several miles in a new direction. I left the road and pursued a path used only by pedestrians, which shortened the distance to another village not far off. A little way from this path was erected a small chapel, and in a niche stood an image of Christ, well executed in fine white marble. The work was so superior to the rude designs we find throughout the country that I stopped to examine it. I was amply repaid. In place of the painful-looking Christ on the Cross,—too ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 41, March, 1861 • Various

... covered with the long strands of the slimy fucus that fringed the tide-washed shore. And all the while the two boats made the water glisten, and the blue lights threw up the face of the rock so clearly that, unless he had found some deep, dark, cavernous niche, there was but little chance for an escaping convict to cling ...
— Witness to the Deed • George Manville Fenn

... he rose, took his candle from the niche in which he had placed it, and together we made our way back into the amphitheatre. Then we climbed over the blocks to behind the fall, where, going down upon his knees, Tom held his candle in at arm's-length, and then essayed to creep in at ...
— The Golden Magnet • George Manville Fenn

... executed in various quarters. The fate which awaited the Mussulman negociator was a lamentable one: he was accused of imbecility or treachery; and his head was taken off his shoulders to decorate the niche over the Seraglio gate: he paid dear for his friendly feelings towards the English. So ended the famed expedition to the Hellespont and the Bosphorus. It broke the spell by which the passage of the Dardanelles had for ages been guarded; but beyond this it was little more ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... called the Fuerza del Pilar, and is now the American Moro Province military headquarters and head quartermaster's office and depot. The image of Our Lady in a niche in the north wall is much revered ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman

... had written some verses to illustrate one of the pictures, which was called The Church Porch. A Spanish damsel was hastening to church with a large prayer-book; a youth in a cloak was hidden in a niche watching this young woman. The picture was pretty: but the great genius of Percy Popjoy had deserted him, for he had made the most execrable verses which ever were ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray

... boys took off their boots and socks, and stood them in a niche in the rock, while Hardock passed in through the mouth of the adit; and directly after he had disappeared in the darkness, he re-appeared in the midst of a glow of light produced by a lanthorn he had placed ...
— Sappers and Miners - The Flood beneath the Sea • George Manville Fenn

... early autumn. Such a valley we found within the outer barrier of Minie Kloof. A valley small in its proportions, it is true, but none the less fertile. A dainty brook of crystal clearness gave life to the barren hillsides. The silt of a thousand years of summer torrents had furnished each niche and recess with a mould Goshen-like in its richness. Here, amongst luxuriant groves of almost tropical splendour, nestled the inevitable farmstead,—a white residence which had once possessed some architectural beauty, and an outcrop of barns and subsidiary mansions unpretentious in design, ...
— On the Heels of De Wet • The Intelligence Officer

... mountain niche some three weeks when Alchise and Kut-le left the camp one afternoon, Alchise on a turkey hunt, Kut-le on one of his mysterious trips for supplies. Alchise returned at dusk with a beautiful bird which ...
— The Heart of the Desert - Kut-Le of the Desert • Honore Willsie Morrow

... the flag of another king; that the havoc of my brain, subsiding calmly into the pendulum regularities of metre, was much ado about nothing; and all those pretty fancies were the catalogued property of another. Such a subject, too! intrinsically worthy of a niche in the temple of Fame, besides Hope, Memory, and Imagination, if only one could manage it well enough to be named in the same breath with Campbell, Rogers, and Akenside. Well, it was a mental mortification; for I am full of ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper

... chirped, and soon passed out of sight. About a hundred feet below us were the pointed roofs of the city, the empty courtyards of the old mansions, and the black holes of the smoky chimneys. Leaning in the niche of a battlement, we gazed and listened, and breathed it all in, enjoying the beautiful sunshine and balmy air impregnated with the pungent odour of the ruins. And there, without thinking of anything in particular, without even phrasing inwardly about something, I dreamed of coats of mail ...
— Over Strand and Field • Gustave Flaubert

... along a narrow, tortuous vicoletto, lighted only by a single lamp burning in the niche of a Madonna. The purity and transparency of the air gave a celestial softness and clearness to the very darkness itself; and one could find one's way without difficulty under such a limpid night. But in a little while we began ...
— The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard • Anatole France

... Gentile Urbinate, because the old stone vaulting was too heavy for it, and it was afterwards rebuilt in brick by that bishop. On his departure from Arezzo, Gaddo went to Pisa, where he made, for a niche in the chapel of the Incoronata in the Duomo, the Ascension of Our Lady into Heaven, where Jesus Christ is awaiting her, with a richly appareled throne for her seat. This work was executed so well and so carefully for the time, that it is in an excellent ...
— The Lives of the Painters, Sculptors & Architects, Volume 1 (of 8) • Giorgio Vasari

... was small, but it boasted of a pretty grey tower; and on each side of the door of the church were two works of art, much celebrated in the neighbourhood. On the left side, beneath the window, a large niche was grated in with thick, rusty iron bars. It occupied the whole extent from the portico to the corner of the church, and from the ground to the window; and, within the bars, six monster demons—spirits of the unrepentent ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope

... its entrance was a strong grate, which gave way to the Hebrew's touch upon the spring, though the united strength of a hundred men could not have moved it from its hinge. Taking up a brazen lamp that burnt in a niche within it, the Hebrew paused impatiently till the feeble steps of the old man reached the spot; and then, reclosing the grate, pursued his winding way for a considerable distance, till he stopped suddenly by a part of the rock which seemed in no respect different from the rest: and so artfully contrived ...
— Leila, Complete - The Siege of Granada • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... to say much of Shakespeare's Arthur," says Swinburne. "There are one or two figures in the world of his work of which there are no words that would be fit or good to say. Another of these is Cordelia. The place they have in our lives and thoughts is not one for talk. The niche set apart for them to inhabit in our secret hearts is not penetrable by the lights and noises of common day. There are chapels in the cathedrals of man's highest art, as in that of his inmost life, not made to ...
— Tolstoy on Shakespeare - A Critical Essay on Shakespeare • Leo Tolstoy

... for him to find that the distance was not so deep as he had anticipated, and when he took the light from the niche where he had placed it, and looked earnestly down, he could see the livid, ghastly-looking face of the dead man, for the body had accidentally fallen upon its back, which was a circumstance he had not counted upon, and one which increased the chances greatly of its being seen, ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest

... in sweetest accents; but the tone thereof was weak; so I rose, glad to hear the silence broken, and followed the sound until I reached a closet whose door stood ajar. Then peeping through a chink I considered the place and lo! it was an oratory wherein was a prayer niche[FN311] with two wax candles burning and lamps hanging from the ceiling. In it too was spread a prayer carpet whereupon sat a youth fair to see; and before him on its stand[FN312] was a copy of the Koran, from which he was reading. I marvelled to see him alone alive amongst the people ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton

... darted his wings and wanted to know what we were thinking of anyway to enter his especial territory. And shortly from nowhere appeared two Canada Jays, silent as the wind itself, hoping for a share in our meal. Then the Tenderfoot discovered in a niche some strange, hardy alpine flowers. So we established a connection, through these wondrous brave children of the great mother, with the world ...
— The Mountains • Stewart Edward White

... a crowded thoroughfare, Within a city's confines, where were met All classes and conditions, and surveyed, From a secluded niche or aperture, The various, ever-changing multitude Which passed along in restless turbulence, And, as a human river, ebbed and flowed Within its banks of brick ...
— Mountain idylls, and Other Poems • Alfred Castner King

... about the nests of other birds, he is so wary and secretive that his little home is usually found only by accident. And the Swallow: "He is the bird of return," Michelet prettily says of him. If you will only treat him kindly, says Ruskin, year after year, he comes back to the same niche, and to the same hearth, for his nest. To the same niche! Think of this a little, as if you heard of it for the ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photography [May, 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various

... later we had evening prayers, and afterwards all went up to bed. My bed was placed against the wall, in which there was a niche for the statue of the Virgin Mary. A lamp was always kept burning in the niche, and the oil for it was provided by the children who had been ill and were grateful for their recovery. Two tiny flower-pots were placed at the foot of the little statue. ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt

... and why are rich? Why are slaves and why are lords? Unto this the splendid niche: Those caste damneth in their words. Do not powers of evil reign? Do not flashes' storms make dread? Should not He of Life again Bring the just peace ...
— Thoughts, Moods and Ideals: Crimes of Leisure • W.D. Lighthall

... a lonesome one. Children hate the dark, but being little they fitted into a niche, and so they were used to open and close the trap-doors. A trapper lad from the county of Monmouth, William Richards, aged ...
— Recent Developments in European Thought • Various

... appear on the building itself, and are no doubt accurate. The writer adds that there was no actual edifice on this site before the one now existing was built, but there was a miraculous picture of the Virgin placed in a mural niche, before which the pious herdsmen and devout inhabitants of the valley worshipped under the vault of heaven. {190} A miraculous (or miracle-working) picture was always more or less rare and important; the present site, therefore, seems to have been long one of peculiar sanctity. Possibly ...
— The Humour of Homer and Other Essays • Samuel Butler

... palms were moist on the controls. He looked down to make sure his radio was snug in its pocket on his leg; checked the thigh harness of his emergency rocket, wrapped in its thick belly pad; checked the paired tanks of oxygen behind him, hanging level from his shoulders into their niche in the "cradle." He flipped his helmet closed, locked it, and opened it again. He tossed a sardonic salute at the photograph of a young lady who graced the side of the cockpit. "Wish us luck, sugar." He pressed ...
— Slingshot • Irving W. Lande

... knew then, and she knew better to-day, that she had never loved Pollock, and never indeed could have loved him as a woman loves her husband. But she revered him then, and he would have forever a place in her heart like the niche given to a saint, and she hoped that his prayers for her—for she knew he would intercede for her—would be answered in the highest. Nor could she refrain from the comparison between Pollock and Graham. In some respects they were so like ...
— Graham of Claverhouse • Ian Maclaren

... and paid her for the remainder of the time in advance. The last thing I did was to take my travelling-cap, which hung near the head of my bed. A break in the wallpaper showed that there was a small door here. Pulling the knob which had held my cap, the door was readily opened, and disclosed a small niche in the wall. Leaning against the back of the niche was a small crucifix with a rude figure of Christ, and suspended from the neck of the image by a small cord was a triangular object covered with faded cloth. While I was examining with some interest the hiding-place ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various

... thus he named his foundation. And, though for Oxford men the savour of the name itself has long evaporated through its local connexion, many things show that for the Founder himself it was no empty vocable. In a niche above the gate stands a rudely carved statue of Judas, holding a money-bag in his right hand. Among the original statutes of the College is one by which the Bursar is enjoined to distribute in Passion Week thirty pieces of silver among the needier scholars "for saike ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm

... Friar, "I humbly crave your pardon; and you would readily grant my excuse, did you but know how the sin of laziness has beset me. Saint Dunstan—may he be gracious to us!—stands quiet in his niche, though I should forget my orisons in killing a fat buck—I stay out of my cell sometimes a night, doing I wot not what—Saint Dunstan never complains—a quiet master he is, and a peaceful, as ever was made ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott

... straight-forward building feat, whereas to reconstruct Sansovino's charm and delicacy required peculiar and very unusual gifts. Yet there it is: not what it was, of course, for the softening quality of old age has left it, yet very beautiful, and in a niche within a wonderful restoration of Sansovino's group of the Madonna and Child with S. John. The reliefs outside have been pieced together too, and though here and there a nose has gone, the effect remains admirable. The glory of Venice is the subject ...
— A Wanderer in Venice • E.V. Lucas

... and never cost them another penny; but to fit him out and place him in the house of Vander Stegen, the merchant, took all the little hoard but one gold crown. They began again. Two years passed, Richart found a niche in commerce for his brother Jacob, and Jacob left Tergou directly after dinner, which was at eleven in the forenoon. At supper that day Elias remembered what had happened the last time; so it was in a low whisper he said, ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade

... rose rapidly to a steep ridge of hill that divided the valley from the coast valleys, and thus protected them with its crown of tall eucalyptus trees from the raw sea winds. Their hillside had been thickly planted to cedars and eucalyptus, and the house looked out from its niche in the hill upon the fertile valley in which Bellevue lies, dotted with rich country estates and fruit orchards. Farther east shimmered the waters of the Bay, and on clear days the blue tops of the Santa Clara mountains melted into the clouds beyond the Bay. Immediately beneath the house ...
— Clark's Field • Robert Herrick

... born of an abiding belief that worth is intrinsic, and that applied common sense, practical knowledge, constancy of effort, and mechanical skill will make a place for the patient striver far more secure than the artificial niche into which some one may thrust him. The masses who are most helpfully reached by the Tuskegee Institute are coming to realize that education in its truest sense is no longer to be regarded as an emotional ...
— Tuskegee & Its People: Their Ideals and Achievements • Various

... hysterically in his arms. Jack had experienced the same feeling for some poor rescued kitten. Fred, with his head full of King Arthur and his knights, mythology, and bits of children's histories, wherein figured heroes and soldiers, elected Jack to the highest niche in his regard. ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas

... of which was lost in the distance, but pursuing the humour of the moment, he called out in a stentorian voice to the naturalist to answer to his name. Dr. Battius had not thought it necessary to push his success beyond the comfortable niche, which accident had so opportunely formed for his protection, and in which he now reposed from his labours, with a pleasing consciousness of security, added to great exultation at the possession of the botanical treasure ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper

... children who adored Laboulaye's "Tales" possessed many another fairy book, so why did this especial volume hold a niche apart in the gallery ...
— Laboulaye's Fairy Book • Various

... nothing. But from the niche that is high in the wall, where is hid that sacred symbol of the Goddess on which few may look, there came a sound as of the rattling rods of the sistrum.[*] And as I listened, awestruck, behold! I saw the outline of the symbol drawn as with fire upon the blackness ...
— Cleopatra • H. Rider Haggard

... From the dark niche under the gray boulder where the violets grow, a Donegal fairy flew to the mountain cabin to bring a birthday wish to Patrick Gallagher. The fairy designed not that great good would come to Paddy, but that great good would come to his people through ...
— What's the Matter with Ireland? • Ruth Russell

... Lovey. On went her shawl again, and once again she faced the night and hurried across the towans to St. Gwithian's Chapel. There in her niche stood Our Lady, quite as though nothing had happened, with the infant Christ in her arms and the tiny lamp ...
— News from the Duchy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... of the Virgin occupied a niche in the Chapel wall, and before it burned the silver lamp of Repentigny which had been hung there two generations before, in memory of the miraculous call of Madelaine de Repentigny and her ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby

... breastwork, rampart, battlement, bulwark, parapet, fortification. Associated Words: mural, murage dado, buttress, coping, intramural, wainscot, alcove, niche, abutment, pointing, fresco, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming

... before the war, and now, comfortably settled in his chosen niche and civilly engineering his way through the world, he grasped at vacation seasons because they offered him a chance to don his boots ...
— The Come Back • Carolyn Wells

... will die instantly. At the end of the third hall, you will find a door which opens into a garden, planted with fine trees loaded with fruit. Walk directly across the garden to a terrace, where you will see a niche before you, and in that niche a lighted lamp. Take the lamp down and put it out. When you have thrown away the wick and poured out the liquor, put it in your waistband and bring it to me. Do not be afraid that the ...
— Fairy Tales Every Child Should Know • Various

... of snow were perched some adelie penguins. The beautiful green and blue tints in the ice-colouring made a picture as unreal as a stage setting. Coming back along the edge of the bight towards the land, we caught and killed one penguin, much to the surprise of another, which ducked into a niche in the ice and, after much squawking, was extracted with a boat-hook and captured. We returned to our original landing, and were fortunate in our time, for no sooner had we cleared the ledge where Ninnis had been hanging in his endeavour ...
— South! • Sir Ernest Shackleton

... limits, how fresh, how engrossing, how resourceful and inventive! Well, he was gone, it seemed—merely gone. Never specially cherished while he tarried with us, he had yet contrived to build himself a particular niche of his own. Sunrise and sunset, and the dinner-bell, and the sudden rainbow, and lessons, and Leotard, and the moon through the nursery windows—they were all part of the great order of things, and the ...
— Dream Days • Kenneth Grahame

... faces are, no two descriptions, as drawn by his genius, could repeat many of the selfsame characterizing words. Each of his vocables thus became like each of the seven thousand constituents of a locomotive, which fits the one niche it was ordained to fill, but everywhere else is out of place, and even dislocated. The more numerous his ethical differentiations, the more ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XXVI., December, 1880. • Various

... still, when on the rack And past all due forbearance tried, The ancient fierce desire comes back, I seem to boil inside; And then I take a hefty sack, I place my head within, and thus Loose off, in some secluded niche, A deep, whole-hearted, grateful, rich, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 156, April 9, 1919 • Various

... solid ef you don't staht solid," she heard the old coachman say. She glided to the chimney-breast, searching it swiftly with her eyes and now with her hands. Soilure and scars had kept the secret of the hidden niche all these months, and neither stain, scar, nor any sign left by Hilary or Flora betrayed it now. Surely this was the very panel Flora had named. Yet dumbly, rigidly it denied the truth, for Hilary, having reaped its spoil, had, to baffle his jailors, cunningly ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable

... his story:—As soon as Sa'd and Sa'di had departed, I went on rope-twisting until night came and when doffing my dress to go to bed the bit of lead which Sa'd had given me fell out of my pocket; so I picked it up and set it carelessly in a small niche in the wall.[FN278] Now that very night so it happened that a fisherman, one of my neighbours, stood in need of a small coin[FN279] wherewith to buy some twine for mending his drag-net, as he was wont to do during the dark hours, in order that he might catch the fish ere dawn of day and selling ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton

... long as it was, ended at last. The intense burning sunlight faded, and the cool, grateful shadows came. The three stirred in the niche, and Robert felt a little relief. But his throat and mouth were still dry and hard, and they pained him whenever he talked. Yet they forced themselves to eat a scant supper, although the food increased their thirst, but they knew that without it their strength would decrease, and they expected ...
— The Lords of the Wild - A Story of the Old New York Border • Joseph A. Altsheler

... could come to the house of mourning to collect materials to be rolled as sweet morsels under the slanderous tongues, that already wag so industriously concerning 'Solitude' and its solitary mistress. Verily, I occupy a lofty niche in your estimation, and it would doubtless be pardonably prudent in you to reconsider, and bid Elbert take me home with all possible dispatch, before ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson

... happy girl in those days. Her position in that household was slightly anomalous, and at first it had been a little difficult to find the right niche for her. As the niece of Dyson, who had summoned her thither to act in the capacity of lady's maid, her place would by rights have been the servants' hall and kitchen; but then, as Kate had seen at once, it would scarce be right for Cuthbert ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green

... of his face on a linen, with which he gratified the faith of the royal stranger who had invoked his healing power, and offered the strong city of Edessa to protect him against the malice of the Jews. The ignorance of the primitive church is explained by the long imprisonment of the image in a niche of the wall, from whence, after an oblivion of five hundred years, it was released by some prudent bishop, and seasonably presented to the devotion of the times. Its first and most glorious exploit was the deliverance of the city from the arms of Chosroes Nushirvan; ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon

... contrast with the glare outside, but as soon as this first impression was overcome, it appeared moderately lighted. It was a chamber about fourteen feet long and ten feet wide, and its walls were whitewashed with burnt gypsum. Deer-hides and a mat plaited of yucca-leaves lay rolled up in one corner. A niche contained a small earthen bowl, painted white with black symbolic figures. A doorway to the right led into another compartment which seemed darker than the first. As soon as the boys entered the room, a woman appeared in this side doorway. She was small, slender, ...
— The Delight Makers • Adolf Bandelier

... building was laid on July 29, 1337, the old brick piers, according to Villani, being removed, and pillars of stone set up in their stead.[94] In 1339 the Guild of Silk won leave from the Commune to build in each of these stone piers a niche, which later should hold a statue; while above the loggia was built a great storehouse for corn, as well as an official residence for the officers of ...
— Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa • Edward Hutton

... of our arrival at Ypres I visited the Cloth Square a short distance away, and reviewed the ruins of the fine Gothic building known as Cloth Hall. This building was one of the glories of Flanders. In every niche over its hundreds of pointed windows there was a full-sized statue of some noted Count of Flanders and his wife. But the place was one great ruin, the inside having been blown out, and now it is turned into ...
— The Red Watch - With the First Canadian Division in Flanders • J. A. Currie

... dusty, tiresome ride; and Dicky, who had been as good all day as any saint ever carved in marble and set in a niche, grew rather warm, cross, and hungry, although he had been consuming ginger-snaps and apricots since early morning. After asking plaintively for the fiftieth time how long it would be before dinner, he finally succumbed to his weariness, ...
— A Summer in a Canyon: A California Story • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... it is! Merely a niche which looks as if it had been scooped out of the solid stone and furnished with a narrow shelf. How will it be possible for her to make herself very small, ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various

... above the assembly, in a niche formed by the removal of an immense stone, appeared Crispus, the acquaintance of Vinicius, with a face as it were half delirious, pale, stern, and fanatical. All eyes were turned to him, as though waiting for words of consolation and hope. After he had blessed the assembly, he ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz

... niche. The floor was dry and covered with leaves, some pieces of wood lay in a corner, on a natural shelf was the dressed body of a wild turkey, and near the entrance was a heap of ashes and dead coals showing ...
— The Riflemen of the Ohio - A Story of the Early Days along "The Beautiful River" • Joseph A. Altsheler

... Highness is within this garden,' he said. He spoke to the porter through the little niche at the wicket. A company of the City soldiers, their wands beating like flails, cleared for a moment the space in front ...
— The Fifth Queen • Ford Madox Ford

... meant; it must be what he meant," he mused; and returning the book to its niche in the alcove he sat down to put his face in his hands and sum up ...
— The Grafters • Francis Lynde

... later, from her lofty niche, she saw six Moorish horsemen riding along the white road to the embattled gate. After them came two men and a woman, all splendidly mounted, also dressed as Moors, and then six other horsemen. They passed the gate which was opened ...
— Fair Margaret • H. Rider Haggard

... his clothes during the two minutes he was left to himself in the reekind dark of the schooner's fo'castle. It was more than a change—it was a revolution. What he made up his mind to do—precisely what mental attitude he decided to adopt, just what new niche he elected wherein to set his feet, it is difficult to say. Only by results could the change be guessed at. He went down the forward hatch at the toe of Kitchell's boot—silk-hatted, melton-overcoated, ...
— Moran of the Lady Letty • Frank Norris

... unfooted region of the imagination, for plot and character. It was not Whitehall Garden, but the Garden of Eden and the celestial spaces, that lured Milton. It is the Ode on a Grecian Urn, The Eve of St. Agnes, and the noble fragment of Hyperion that have given Keats his spacious niche in the gallery of England's poets. Shelley's two masterpieces, Prometheus Unbound and The Cenci, belong respectively to Greece and Italy. Browning's The Ring and the Book is Italian; Tennyson wandered to the land of myth for the Idylls of the King, and Matthew Arnold's Sohrab ...
— Ponkapog Papers • Thomas Bailey Aldrich

... niche, with the mountains above him, and the glory of the evening sun shone around his silvered hair. At a distance could be seen the Great Stone Pace, ...
— A Child's Story Garden • Compiled by Elizabeth Heber

... around the room, at the most impassive aspect of the place, as at a place she never expected to leave; the darkening windows, the fast-shut door, the child leaning on the desk, watching them with sharp, incurious eyes—this would be her niche for ever. She would be left for ever with the crusts and the dregs. And Kerr's figure in the twilight seemed each time it moved to be on the point of vanishing into the grayness. He moved continually up and down the narrow spaces between the tables. He troubled the dry repose of the ...
— The Coast of Chance • Esther Chamberlain

... was carried by the old bishop who was to accompany the Santo Nino on its travels. To ensure the safety of so valuable a thing, the wooden box was put into a metal casket, which in turn was fastened securely. Then the ship sailed for Italy, and the little niche in the wall of the cathedral which had been the Santo Nino's shrine was boarded up, and the natives came to the church but seldom, so bitter were they that the Holy Child had ...
— A Woman's Journey through the Philippines - On a Cable Ship that Linked Together the Strange Lands Seen En Route • Florence Kimball Russel

... head round, and finding how he was situated and that I had been awake for some time, he scolded me for wasting so much valuable time, and while he took hold of and insinuated my pleasure-giver into the appropriate niche with which it was in such close contact, he vowed that he was much disposed to punish me by not ...
— Laura Middleton; Her Brother and her Lover • Anonymous

... terrible crucible through which the cruel hand of fate promises to pass us, dispel the idea of self gratulation. Life for us in the conflict ahead is all stern and serious. Wounds and scars will for generations yet to come be the decorations for our leaders in thought and action; there is no niche in the edifice consecrated to our present and coming heroes for fulsome, windy flatteries airing their importance to the galleries. Hearts true and stout charged with big emotions to raise and elevate their suffering kind to a ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various

... are of limestone carved with reliefs representing the important processes of daily life,—sowing, reaping, cattle-herding, hunting, pot-making, weaving,—all those actions which furnish the daily supplies. The dead man is represented overseeing all this. Finally, near the offering niche, he is represented seated, usually with his wife at a table bearing loaves of the traditional ta bread. Beside him are represented heaps of provisions—meat, cakes, vegetables, wine and beer. A list of objects is never missing, marked ...
— The Egyptian Conception of Immortality • George Andrew Reisner

... many creeping plants, that made a tapestry for the naked rock, by hanging their festoons from all its rugged angles. At a small elevation above the ground, set in a rich framework of verdure, there appeared a niche, spacious enough to admit a human figure, with freedom for such gestures as spontaneously accompany earnest thought and genuine emotion. Into this natural pulpit Ernest ascended, and threw a look of familiar kindness around upon his audience. They stood, or sat, or reclined upon the ...
— Junior Classics, V6 • Various

... the normal buttresses. They somewhat resemble those of the Kings, but there are various differences. No. 2 from the south is flanked by pilasters with ram's-horn capitals, barbarous forms of Ionic connected by three sets of triglyphs: the pavement is of slabs; there is an inner niche, and one of the corners has apparently been used as an oven. On a higher plane lies a sunken tomb, with a deep drop and foot-holes by way of ladder; outside it the rocky platform is hollowed, apparently for graves. The other three facades bear the crenelle ornaments; the two to the north show ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton

... Political Economy, Williams College: I have never seen anything at all equal to it for the niche it was intended ...
— The Beginner's American History • D. H. Montgomery

... quadrivittatus-like chipmunks that were less well adapted to live there. The Colorado River probably served as a barrier that kept the E. umbrinus-like chipmunks and E. quadrivittatus-like chipmunks separated up to this time. Invasion of the new forest-niche by E. umbrinus-like chipmunks may have taken place through the Uinta Mountains of northeastern Utah, after the glaciers disappeared from these mountains, since the Colorado River probably prevented any ...
— Taxonomy of the Chipmunks, Eutamias quadrivittatus and Eutamias umbrinus • John A. White

... or adze, box, brush, cage, chaise, cross, ditch, face, gas, glass, hedge, horse, lash, lens, niche, ...
— Higher Lessons in English • Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg

... when I remembered how Mr. Barrymore had called Milan Cathedral the most highly ornamented building in the world. Nowhere else, he said, existed a church so smothered with carving. Every point, every niche has its statue. There, in the model, one could find each one. Through magnifying glasses the little carved faces (hardly larger, some of them, than a pin's head) looked at one with the same expression as the original, and not a mistake had been made in a fold of drapery. Each ...
— My Friend the Chauffeur • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

... many insipid beauties made wives of, that could not have struck the particular fancy of any man that had any fancy at all. These I call furniture wives; as men buy furniture pictures, because they suit this or that niche ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various

... he lifted, from a niche in the wall, a small box of smooth, shining metal, and lifted ...
— The God in the Box • Sewell Peaslee Wright

... she had never been even after a day at the department store during the Christmas rush, she found a deep niche between two rough rocks on the beach, over which the tide was now gently rising, and sank into it. The rocks and the sand between them gave out coolness; the sun shone on her head and shoulders, but ...
— IT and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris

... could find a successor for your vacated niche," said Cicely lightly; "one thing I'm determined on though, he shan't be a musician. It's so unsatisfactory to have to share a grand passion with a grand piano. He shall be a delightful young barbarian who would think Saint Saens was a Derby ...
— When William Came • Saki

... refuge from the autumn storm—that grill. The dark old wood framed light and color, sketches and a line of paintings. Mac's sculptured ragamuffin looked wistfully down from his niche near the open rafters upon a Round Table institutionally fraternal. He seemed always seeking warmth and food. Kenny's old peasant in wrinkled apple-faced cheer smiled broadly from the wall, listening to the click of billiard balls with his painted ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple

... the porch, sitting on a stone seat under a Gothic niche, a child was sleeping—a child covered by a robe of white linen, and whose feet were bare, notwithstanding the cold. He was not a beggar, for his robe was new and nice, and near him on the ground were seen, lying in a cloth, ...
— Ten Tales • Francois Coppee

... their nests? He has found a thing of art among the unkempt and the disorderly; he has found a thing of life and love amid the cold and the insensate. Yet all so artless and natural! Every shred and straw of it serves a purpose; it fairly warms and vivifies the little niche in which it is placed. What a ...
— Under the Maples • John Burroughs

... open in his heart to these brethren far across the sea, whom he never met. He would like them to know that he thought lovingly of them, and to be lovingly thought of by them. So he begs a little corner in Paul's letter, and gets it; and there, in his little niche, like some statue of a forgotten saint, scarce seen amidst the glories of a great cathedral, 'Quartus a brother' stands ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren

... have said more than once in these rambling memoir's, I was not disposed to take a false view of my own social position. I belonged, at most, to the class of small proprietors, as they existed in the last century, and filled a very useful and respectable niche between the yeoman and gentleman, considering the last strictly in reference to the upper class of that day. Now, it struck me that Emily Merton, with her English notions, might very well draw the distinctions ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper

... magnificence of height, letting the sky like blue enamel through the foiled spaces of their crowns of open work; the walls and gates of its countless churches wardered by saintly groups of solemn statuary, clasped about by wandering stems of sculptured leafage, and crowned by fretted niche and fairy pediment—meshed like gossamer with inextricable tracery: many a quaint monument of past times standing to tell its far-off tale in the place from which it has since perished—in the midst of the throng and murmur of those shadowy streets—all grim with ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin

... back to my own room, where, without speaking a word, he closed and locked the door upon me as before. To my surprise, I found my luggage which I had left at the inn placed ready for me—and on a small dresser set in a niche of the wall which I had not noticed before, there was a plate of fruit and dry bread, with a glass of cold water. On going to look at this little refection, which was simply yet daintily set out, I saw that the dresser was really a small lift, evidently connected with the domestic ...
— The Life Everlasting: A Reality of Romance • Marie Corelli



Words linked to "Niche" :   environmental science, bionomics, alcove, apse, condition, bay, station, status, ecology, fireplace, ecological niche, incurvature, incurvation



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