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Thaw   Listen
verb
thaw  v. i.  (past & past part. thawed; pres. part. thawing)  
1.
To melt, dissolve, or become fluid; to soften; said of that which is frozen; as, the ice thaws.
2.
To become so warm as to melt ice and snow; said in reference to the weather, and used impersonally.
3.
Fig.: To grow gentle or genial. Compare cold (4), a. and hard (6), a.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Thaw" Quotes from Famous Books



... substantial luncheon-basket, and was keenest sympathy to the last. But Mahony was a poor dissembler; and his sudden thaw, as he assisted in the farewell preparations, could, Polly feared, have been read aright ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson

... alchemy that changes the dark evil subsistence of the universe to bright, valuable gold. In her light shoes, and with her black hair loose about her shoulders, she ran out into the rainy yard, fled round the house quickly so that none might see her and spy on them, and plunged down the thaw-wet hillside, crying out with joy, even when she slipped and fell, because her lover's arms would so ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West

... seem?" said the doctor, going closer to the fire to thaw the frozen rime from his beard, which was quite a bush of ice from the chin downward, before taking off his heavy ...
— Steve Young • George Manville Fenn

... noise, while even the smith and the miller were among the number, for the one sharpened the plough-shares, and the other ground the corn; and Bessy rattled his box, and danced so high that he showed his worsted stockings and corduroy breeches; and, very often, if there was a thaw, tucked up his gown-skirts under his waistcoat and shook the bonnet off his head, and disarranged the long ringlets that ought to have concealed his whiskers. For Bessy is to the procession of Plough Monday what the leading figurante is to the ...
— A Righte Merrie Christmasse - The Story of Christ-Tide • John Ashton

... our concern, As we o'er their declensions mourn. Can such dire ruin be repaired? Only if God's strong arm be bared. But we must do a brother's part, And try to thaw the frozen heart; Not by the fire of wrath above, But by the melting ...
— Gleams of Sunshine - Optimistic Poems • Joseph Horatio Chant

... three weeks in the mahntains. We slept rough all together in one room, when there was a room, and when there wasn't we slept in stables. We had nothing but black bread, and that froze in the haversacks, and if we took our boots off we had to thaw them the next morning before we could put them on. If we hadn't had three saucepans we should have died. When we went dahn the hills two of us had to hold every horse by his head and tail to keep them from falling. However, nearly all the horses died, and then we took ...
— The Pretty Lady • Arnold E. Bennett

... passed away the summer and autumn. Winter approached. It was now the latter end of November, and the weather had set in extremely cold. A heavy fall of snow, with a sharp frost, was succeeded by a slight thaw, which made the streets worse to walk in than either a severe frost or completely wet, when one morning Mrs. Smith told me to take an apple-pie to the baker's. I took the pie and went as carefully as I could, that I might not fall, or get ...
— Forgotten Tales of Long Ago • E. V. Lucas

... think that he had not said half enough. Each of the three hearers had a vision of Lilias advancing to meet the new relatives with lifted eyes, and a smile that would melt a heart of stone; each one saw in imagination the sudden thaw on the watching faces, and beheld Lilias installed forthwith as the pride and darling of the household. They smiled at one another in furtive amusement, but discreetly avoided putting their thoughts into words, for Lilias ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... first of March the thaw came, and the snow melted in a day beneath the lavish spring sunshine. It was a week later that Christopher, coming from the woods at midday, saw Tucker sitting on his old bench by the damask rose-bush, in which the sap was just beginning ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow

... the last few days had given place to a thaw. The melting ice in the river was streaked in strange curves, and the bare trees along the straight heights of the Palisades were blurred by a faint bluish mist, out of which white lights and yellow ones ...
— The Happiest Time of Their Lives • Alice Duer Miller

... Nell an' her new husband was mighty well continted with one another, for it was too soon for her to begin to regulate him the way she used with poor Jim Soolivan, so they wor comfortable enough; but this was too good to last, for the thaw kem an', an' you may be sure Jim Soolivan didn't lose a minute's time as soon as the heavy dhrift iv snow was melted enough between him and home to let him pass, for he didn't hear a word iv news from home sinst he lift it, by rason that no one, good nor bad, ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume III. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

... knew whether to pose in the light of a heroine or a culprit as she walked into Mrs. Rawlins' kitchen, but decided to give as guarded an account of the matter as she could. There would be explanations in plenty when she returned to the Parsonage. She was very glad to sit and thaw by the fire and drink hot tea, despite the difficulty of fencing with Mrs. Rawlins' questions, that good dame being consumed with curiosity, and not restrained by any feelings of ...
— The Youngest Girl in the Fifth - A School Story • Angela Brazil

... out of him. The weather grew very bad; there was snow and frost, and then a thaw with a long succession of cheerless days, on which walking was a poor amusement. One evening when Philip had just finished his German lesson with the Herr Professor and was standing for a moment in the drawing-room, talking to Frau Erlin, Anna came ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham

... thought and power which is still among us will soon find its utterance, and justify itself to after ages by showing in harmonious and self-restrained poetry its kinship to the heroic and the beautiful of every age and clime. And till then, till the sunshine and the thaw shall come, and the spring flowers burst into bud and bloom, heralding a new golden year in the world's life, let us even be content with our pea-green and orange fungi; nay, even admire them as not without their own tawdry beauty, their clumsy fitness; for after all, they are products ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley

... of the shop was a desk perched up aloft, just big enough for one person, and with a gaslight over it. Andrew noticed it, and thought of winter, and wondered how anybody could sit there during a January day with the snow on the ground, or during a cold thaw. ...
— Miriam's Schooling and Other Papers - Gideon; Samuel; Saul; Miriam's Schooling; and Michael Trevanion • Mark Rutherford

... to the rescue as interpreter. The Spanish Friar was accustomed to these little embarrassments, and he had a manner of meeting them with a smile. The misunderstanding and the embarrassment seemed to thaw the formality of the reception. The women looked relieved. They were obviously not expected to say anything, and they had no fear now that they would be put to the ordeal of meeting a possibly superior person, one ...
— Waysiders • Seumas O'Kelly

... March weather. There was sunshine and thaw. Anxious Bight was caught over with rotten ice from Ragged Run Harbor to the heads of Afternoon Arm. A rumor of seals on the Arctic drift ice off shore had come in from the Spotted Horses. It inspired instant haste in all the ...
— Harbor Tales Down North - With an Appreciation by Wilfred T. Grenfell, M.D. • Norman Duncan

... sunshine. Both windows were open, and the fire in the grate was low, for the day was one of those false springs that sometimes blow into New York from the sea in the middle of winter, soft, warm, with a persuasive salty moisture in the air and a relaxing thaw under foot. Thea was flushed and animated, and she seemed as restless as the sooty sparrows that chirped and cheeped distractingly about the windows. She kept looking at the black clock, and then down into ...
— Song of the Lark • Willa Cather

... stacks stand amid the deadened trees. Two months have passed, the workmen are at it again. The stacks are torn down, the bundles scattered, the hemp spread out as once before. There to lie till it shall be dew-retted or rotted; there to suffer freeze and thaw, chill rains, locking frosts and loosening snows—all the action of the elements—until the gums holding together the filaments of the fibre rot out and dissolve, until the bast be separated from the woody portion of the stalk, and the stalk itself be decayed ...
— The Reign of Law - A Tale of the Kentucky Hemp Fields • James Lane Allen

... the reign of Anne still remained unwritten, for him to consume his scanty stock of vigor in the tedious and exhaustive routine of political existence; waiting whole evenings for the vote, and then ... trudging home at three in the morning through the slush of a February thaw." He therefore spared himself as a member of Parliament, and carefully husbanded his powers in order to work upon his book. He gave himself more time for his annual vacation, yet would write when he could on the subjects which engrossed his life. His labors were too ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord

... photographs of the landlady's hideous husband and children enshrined on the mantelshelf; looked at the abomination of desolation surrounding him until his soul sickened and cried out like a child's for something more like home. It was as if a spring thaw had melted his ice-bound heart, and on the crest of a wave it was drifting out into the milder waters of some unknown sea. He could have laid his head in the kind lap of a woman and cried: "Comfort me! Give me companionship ...
— Homespun Tales • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... take the concrete incident. Before that hypocritical thaw early in February, Jethro called upon Amos Cuthbert—not so surly then as he has since become—and talked about buying his wool when it should be duly cut, and permitted Amos to talk about the position of second selectman, for which some person or persons unknown to the jury had nominated him. On ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... and fulfil her daily duties. Years passed on, and still she felt the blank which Harry had left, almost as much as the first day that she heard of his death, but she never spoke of him, and to her sisters it seemed as if he was forgotten. The reserve which had begun to thaw under his influence, again returning, placed her a still greater distance from the younger girls, and unconsciously she became still more of a governess and less of a sister. Little did she know of the 'blissful dreams in secret shared' between Emily, ...
— Scenes and Characters • Charlotte M. Yonge

... crop every fall since their eighth year, not a single failure having been experienced. The ground has never been cultivated. The nuts planted were taken at random from a barrel in a grocery store. During the "silver thaw" of 1907, the most severe cold spell in the history of Oregon, one of the trees was wrenched in two, but the dismembered limb, hanging by a shred, bore a full crop of walnuts the ...
— Walnut Growing in Oregon • Various

... three weeks in this dismal plight. At length, upon a turn of wind, the air about us began to thaw. Our cabin was immediately filled with a dry clattering sound, which I afterwards found to be the crackling of consonants that broke above our heads, and were often mixed with a gentle hissing, which ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall

... Romantic; he had no petty jealousy in matters literary; and, above all, he had, as Scott recognised, but as has not been always recognised since, a really remarkable and then novel command of flowing but fairly strict lyrical measures, the very things needed to thaw the frost of the eighteenth-century couplet. Erskine offered, and Lewis gladly accepted, contributions from Scott, and though Tales of Wonder were much delayed, and did not appear till 1801, the ...
— Sir Walter Scott - Famous Scots Series • George Saintsbury

... and the sun would not set for more than half-an-hour yet; for if Robert had lifted his head and looked up, it would have been at, not through, the skylight. No sky was to be seen. A thick covering of snow lay over the glass. A partial thaw, followed by frost, had fixed it there—a mass of imperfect cells and confused crystals. It was a cold place to sit in, but the boy had some faculty for enduring cold when it was the price to be ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald

... it? Faith, it's not beautiful that Craigin calls it, fer ivery thaw the bottom goes clane out av it till ye can't git round fer mud an' the dump fallin' through ...
— The Doctor - A Tale Of The Rockies • Ralph Connor

... is now a stationary thread of silver, spell-bound by the enchaining frost; and icicles, or, as old-fashioned people call them, aglets, of three or four feet long, ornament the overhanging ledges, prone to fall to the beach—far, far below—when a thaw releases them from their present stations. But the air is so very keen that nothing but the briskness of our walk, and the enlivenment of an occasional spell of snow-balling, in which the seniors are tempted to join the juniors, prevent our stagnating ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 427 - Volume 17, New Series, March 6, 1852 • Various

... losing his wife and not being able to get any golf, he had little appetite these days—was sitting in his drawing-room, moodily polishing the blade of his jigger. Soon wearying of this once congenial task, he laid down the club and went to the front door to see if there was any chance of a thaw. But no. It was freezing. The snow, as he tested it with his shoe, crackled crisply. The sky above was black and full of cold stars. It seemed to Mortimer that the sooner he packed up and went to the South of France, the better. He was just about to close the ...
— The Clicking of Cuthbert • P. G. Wodehouse

... perils. A system was arranged whereby a courier from Fort Snelling and one from Prairie du Chien set out at about the same time, meeting at Wabasha's village where the packs were exchanged and each returned to his own post. On one occasion a spring thaw overtook the carrier from Prairie du Chien, who had proceeded beyond the meeting place because the messenger from the north was late. Suddenly the ice groaned and cracked, and the postman with difficulty found safety on a small island where, ...
— Old Fort Snelling - 1819-1858 • Marcus L. Hansen

... months it is often very cold in these cells, requiring the prisoner to walk up and down the dungeon in his stocking feet to prevent his freezing, and this for a period of ten days, in nearly every instance compels submission. After the dark cells thaw out, during the summer months, they are excessively hot. Sometimes in winter the temperature is below zero, and in summer it often rises to one hundred degrees. They are then veritable furnaces. Generally, after the prisoner undergoes the freezing or baking process for eight or ...
— The Twin Hells • John N. Reynolds

... Princess continued all the while in Holland, being shut in there during the east winds, by the freezing of the rivers, and by contrary winds after the thaw came. So that she came not to England till all the debates were over.—Swift. Why was she [not] sent for till the matter was agreed? This clearly shews the Prince's original design was to be king, against what ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. X. • Jonathan Swift

... exhilarating. The blood tingled in every part of me. I was sorry when we rounded Pipestem Point, and the huddled tilts of the Lodge, half buried in snow, came into view. But, half an hour later, in Skipper Tommy's tilt, I was glad that the distance had been no greater, for then the twins were helping me thaw out my cheeks and the tip of my nose, which had ...
— Doctor Luke of the Labrador • Norman Duncan

... the old days, was mad enough to build a great palace upon the ice-blocks of the Neva. And when the spring came, and the foundations melted, the house, full of delights and luxury, sank beneath the river. We build upon frozen water, and when the thaw comes, what we build sinks and is lost to sight. Instead of love that twines round the creature and trails, bleeding and bruised, along the ground when the prop is taken away, let us turn our hearts to the warm, close, pure, perfect changeless love of the undying ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren

... A rapid thaw set in, and up through the vanishing whiteness dawned the dark colours of the wintry landscape. For a day or two the soft wet snow lay mixed with water over all the road. After that came mire and dirt. But it was still so far off spring, that nobody cared to be reminded of it yet. ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald

... on. At Eton Slocomb there was a good coach dinner, of which the box, the four front outsides, the one inside, Nicholas, the good-tempered man, and Mr Squeers, partook; while the five little boys were put to thaw by the fire, and regaled with sandwiches. A stage or two further on, the lamps were lighted, and a great to-do occasioned by the taking up, at a roadside inn, of a very fastidious lady with an infinite variety of cloaks and small parcels, who loudly ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens

... an early January thaw that spoiled all outdoor sport for the Lakeview Hall girls. Skating, bobsledding, skiing, and even walking, was taboo for a while, for there was more mud in sight than snow. The girls had to look for entertainment on Saturday ...
— Nan Sherwood at Rose Ranch • Annie Roe Carr

... the flow and ebb Of the inanimate Matter, or to move The nerves that weave the Arachnean web Of Sentient Life—rules all-pervading Love! Ev'n in the Moral World, embrace and meet Emotions—Gladness clasps the extreme of Care; And Sorrow, at the worst, upon the sweet Breast of young Hope, is thaw'd from its despair. Of sister-kin to melancholy Woe, Voluptuous Pleasure comes, and with the birth Of her gay children, (golden Wishes,) lo, Night flies, and sunshine settles on the earth![15] The same great Law of Sympathy is given To Evil as to Good, and if we swell The dark account that life ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various

... occasionally he scouted in the country around, although the traveling was very hard, as the deep snow was covered with a sheet of ice, and he was compelled to break his way. He saw no Indian trails and he concluded that the hunting parties even had taken to their tepees, and would wait until the thaw came. ...
— The Eyes of the Woods - A story of the Ancient Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler

... into the mist and murk of a spring thaw. Wittemore never forgot that night's experience—the prayer, and the walk home again through the fog. The ...
— The Witness • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz

... dismal afternoon in early spring when I lounged disconsolately about the streets of Winnipeg. The prairie metropolis had not then attained its present magnitude, but it was busy and muddy enough; for when the thaw comes the mire of a Western town is indescribable. Also odd showers of wet snow came down, and I shivered under my new skin coat, envying the busy citizens who, with fur caps drawn low down, hurried to and fro. One ...
— Lorimer of the Northwest • Harold Bindloss

... the observation post was sometimes a little vague, especially in frost-and-thaw weather, when parts of the communication trenches slithered down under the ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs

... of 1915 comparative calm reigned over the Austro-Russian theatre of war, so far as actual hostilities were concerned. But it was not altogether the variable climatic conditions of alternate frost and thaw—the latter converting road and valley into impassable quagmires—that caused the lull. It was a short winter pause during which the opposing forces—on one side at least—were preparing and gathering the requisite ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various

... said at breakfast, and it was not until the coach was rattling along the high road, and the last house had been left behind him, that Bob's spirits began to rise. There had been a thaw, a few days before, and the snow had disappeared; but it was now ...
— Held Fast For England - A Tale of the Siege of Gibraltar (1779-83) • G. A. Henty

... know," said Maxwell, with rather more self-possession than she wished him to have, so soon. "I think we're apt to have very cold weather after the January thaw." ...
— The Quality of Mercy • W. D. Howells

... I'm dead," said Mr. 'Possum. "Say I died last week, and you're only waiting for the ground to thaw to bury me. Tell Aspetuck I starved ...
— Hollow Tree Nights and Days • Albert Bigelow Paine

... and ends the same. 'Thinketh, it came of being ill at ease: He hated that He cannot change His cold, Nor cure its ache. 'Hath spied an icy fish That longed to 'scape the rock-stream where she lived, And thaw herself within the lukewarm brine O' the lazy sea her stream thrusts far amid, A crystal spike 'twixt two warm walls of wave; Only, she ever sickened, found repulse At the other kind of water, not her life, (Green-dense and dim-delicious, bred ...
— Robert Browning: How To Know Him • William Lyon Phelps

... Each breath drawn quick and short, in fuller tides Life posting through the veins, each pulse on fire, And the whole body tingling with desire, Pants for those charms, which Virtue might engage, To break his vow, and thaw the frost of Age, Bidding each trembling nerve, each muscle strain, And giving pleasure which is almost pain. 330 Women are kept for nothing but the breed; For pleasure we must have a Ganymede, A fine, fresh Hylas, a delicious boy, ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill

... your brother the most attentive of sons, and giving good promise of making a desirable husband. He will find himself married some of these days before he knows it. You had better be near him. I hope you give attention to Robert. Miss Sallie will thaw some of the ice from his heart. Tell her she must come up here, as I want to see her badly. I do not know what you will do with your chickens, unless you take them to 'Bremo,' and thus bring them here. I suppose Robert ...
— Recollections and Letters of General Robert E. Lee • Captain Robert E. Lee, His Son

... evidence of honest physicians, who, by virtue of their attainments, have a right to demand substantial fees. Even so, newspaper reports of the expense to the State of notorious trials are grossly exaggerated. The entire cost of the first Thaw trial to the County of New York was considerably less than twenty thousand dollars, and the second trial not more than half that amount. To the defence, however, it was a costly matter, as the recent schedules in bankruptcy of the defendant show. Therein it appears that one of his half-dozen ...
— Courts and Criminals • Arthur Train

... smaller children commenced to thaw out and lose their shyness, and talk. How they did talk! Myron said nothing (but that was expected of Myron). When at last Rosanna was tipping up the second thermos bottle to see if there was a drop of tea left, ...
— The Girl Scouts at Home - or Rosanna's Beautiful Day • Katherine Keene Galt

... for feasting when the thaw had set in, for then, as the earth grew soft, the worms would come crawling out to have a stretch, after being asleep beneath the iron-bound earth. As for the rooks, they ate until they could hardly move, and gormandised in a way that ...
— Featherland - How the Birds lived at Greenlawn • George Manville Fenn

... eyes red, his thin lips blue; and spoke out shrewdly in his grating voice. A frosty rime was on his head, and on his eyebrows, and his wiry chin. He carried his own low temperature always about with him; he iced his office in the dog-days; and didn't thaw it ...
— Short Story Writing - A Practical Treatise on the Art of The Short Story • Charles Raymond Barrett

... it that night until their eyes ached it seemed that it was visibly approaching. And that night, too, the weather changed, and the frost that had gripped all Central Europe and France and England softened towards a thaw. ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells

... whether you cannot do better?—whether you cannot devise some expedient whereby the heart of your worthy father may be melted and become as other men's hearts. I don't demand a permanent or even a protracted melting—all I ask is a temporary thaw, just long enough to let me extract a promise from him to let me insure those car barns and power houses. Then he can revert to adamant and be—and welcome, so far as I am concerned. Now, Miss Maitland, have ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble

... sacking, and when I had wrapped it round my shoulders I felt a little warmer; but it was more than a little nippy, I can tell you, and it made me think of the January mornings at Beechleigh, when the old pump used to freeze up and we undertook to thaw it out for Mrs. Puffin before breakfast," said ...
— The Adventurous Seven - Their Hazardous Undertaking • Bessie Marchant

... Sarsar wind, provided only that you regulate the pressure of the air. The sultry and dissolving fluid shall bake into a solid, the petrific fluid shall melt into a liquid. Heat shall freeze, frost shall thaw; and wherefore? Simply because old things are brought together in new modes of combination. And in endless instances beside we see the same Panlike latency of forms and powers, which gives to the external world a capacity of self-transformation, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 348 • Various

... occasion for strong scenes and, at last, for a drawn battle between the old and the new. The new, though not acknowledging itself to be beaten, takes to its heels, and flees in the stormy night through wind and snow. But the snow is moist and heavy; it is beginning to thaw. There is a vague presentiment ...
— Tales of Two Countries • Alexander Kielland

... story is told of a shrewd stratagem resorted to by Nelson, on the passage to the Baltic, to thaw the barrier of frigidity in his superior, which not only was unpleasant to him personally, as well as injurious to the interests of the state, but threatened also to prevent his due share in the planning ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. II. (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan

... Harry Thaw was front-paged on the newspapers and gibbeted in the pulpits as the shocking example of youthful depravity. He seems never to have had a fighting chance to become a man. He seems to have been robbed of his birthright from the cradle. Yet ...
— The University of Hard Knocks • Ralph Parlette

... great inundation having taken place in the north of Italy, owing to an excessive fall of snow in the Alps, followed by a speedy thaw, the river Adige carried off a bridge near Verona, all except the middle part, on which was the house of the toll-gatherer, who thus, with his whole family, remained imprisoned by the waves, and in momentary danger of destruction. They were discovered ...
— The Book of Three Hundred Anecdotes - Historical, Literary, and Humorous—A New Selection • Various

... some hot milk!" declared Uncle Toby. "Here, Aunt Sallie, you look after the Curlytops and their friends while I put the car away, and then I'll come back and we'll have a cozy supper," went on Mr. Bardeen. "I'll put Jack by the fire to thaw him out." ...
— The Curlytops and Their Playmates - or Jolly Times Through the Holidays • Howard R. Garis

... Druid-like device, 190 With leaden pools between or gullies bare, The blocks lie strewn, a bleak Stonehenge of ice; No life, no sound, to break the grim despair, Save sullen plunge, as through the sedges stiff Down crackles riverward some thaw-sapped cliff, 195 Or when the close-wedged fields of ice crunch ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell

... in a mist of dull gray clouds that clung in rings about the street lamps like the damp fog of a typical February thaw, yet it was the last day of October. Such weather was uncanny. It added to the strange feeling of impending calamity which had been hanging over the business world during the summer and had broken at last into the fierce storms of disaster of the past two weeks. Men who usually ...
— The Root of Evil • Thomas Dixon

... day of the January thaw. The snow lay deep upon the housetops, but was rapidly dissolving into millions of water-drops, which sparkled downward through the sunshine with the noise of a summer shower beneath the eaves. Along the street the trodden snow was as hard and ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... too, might turn out to preserve your law and order; but the working army would have the most men and the best men. The war might be bloody but the right would prevail. Men like Tom Scott, Frank Thomson—yes, and William Thaw—who have got rich swindling the stockholders of railroads, so that they cannot pay honest labor living rates, we would hang ...
— A Short History of Pittsburgh • Samuel Harden Church

... streets, wind-washed by night, blow full of strange half-intermittent damps, bearing on wasted walks in shining sight wet snow plashed into gleams under the lamps, like golden oil from some divine machine, in an hour of thaw ...
— This Side of Paradise • F. Scott Fitzgerald

... It was as if in one moment he saw the whole of his life summarised in a single symbol, and understood its vanity and its folly. Ah, there was nothing for him, no wife, no life.... The tears welled up in his eyes; the shock which in its suddenness had frozen his heart, began to thaw, and grief fell like a ...
— A Mere Accident • George Moore

... long—waited to dole out to a frenzied public all available cash and close the doors too late for solvency. But not so with the Bank of Adot. Aaron Logan got his order for receivership before his public went frantic and while cash was yet available. Under court order he was proceeding to thaw out the frozen items of assets, and planned to open the institution to those who would limit their withdrawals to stated amounts. He made progress in these endeavors until he bumped into the stone ...
— David Lannarck, Midget - An Adventure Story • George S. Harney

... lonely, she came to listen for his step. She was born to minister to people, and the more securely Zebedee shut her out, the more she was inclined to slip into the place that George had ready for her. And with George the spring was in conspiracy. The thaw came in a night, and the next morning's sun began its work of changing a white country into one of wet and glistening green. Snow lingered and grew dirty in the hollows, and became marked with the tiny feet of sheep, but elsewhere the brilliance of the moor was like a cry. It was spring shouting ...
— Moor Fires • E. H. (Emily Hilda) Young

... great abundance, and as much progress is made in getting them up as could be hoped for, considering that there has been a very heavy fall of snow, and that a thaw has followed it, and the extremely limited means of ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume III (of 3), 1854-1861 • Queen of Great Britain Victoria

... content when enough light got into their workshops to let them see where their looms stood. Wading through beds of snow they did not much mind; but they wondered what would happen to their houses when the thaw came. ...
— Auld Licht Idyls • J.M. Barrie

... chafing torrents after thaw, Urged; and to feed whose movement, spinning sand, The feeble sons of pleasure set their hand; And, in this ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold

... was carried to see the Queen's garden, which scarce deserved that name, being only a piece of ground of about four or five acres, paled in according to the manner of their paling, and had in it a few hedges which, in the latter end of May, upon the thaw, began to appear a little green; but for flowers or fruit-trees there were none, except a few ordinary tulips. This put Whitelocke in mind to inquire if the Queen had a better garden here at Stockholm, where her residence usually was. The Swedes ...
— A Journal of the Swedish Embassy in the Years 1653 and 1654, Vol II. • Bulstrode Whitelocke

... he'll thaw out a little now, when he sees his class of children whom they wouldn't let ...
— Master Olof - A Drama in Five Acts • August Strindberg

... are not very wholesome companions for those who are sensitively organized and predisposed to self-sacrificing love. They keep the heart in a perpetual freeze and thaw, which, like the American northern climate, is so particularly fatal to plants of a delicate habit. They could live through the hot summer and the cold winter, but they cannot endure the three or four months when it freezes one day and melts the next,—when all the buds are started out by ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... will still call her, for simplicity, in spite of her promotion,—had become somewhat afraid of Mrs. Houghton; but now, seeing her husband's courtesy to her guest, understanding from his manner that he liked her society, began to thaw, and to think that she might allow herself to be intimate with the woman. It did not occur to her to be in any degree jealous,—not, at least, as yet. In her innocence she did not think it possible that her husband's heart ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope

... strangers, and Wee Willie Winkie was a very particular child. Once he accepted an acquaintance, he was graciously pleased to thaw. He accepted Brandis, a subaltern of the 195th, on sight. Brandis was having tea at the Colonel's, and Wee Willie Winkie entered strong in the possession of a good-conduct badge won for not chasing the hens round the compound. ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling

... in winter spiders are seen running about much, fighting with one another and preparing new webs, there will be cold weather within the next nine days, or from that to twelve: when they again hide themselves there will be a thaw. I have no doubt that much of this power of prophesying the weather is due to a perception of certain atmospheric conditions which escape ourselves, but this perception can only have relation to a certain actual and now present condition of the weather; and what can ...
— Unconscious Memory • Samuel Butler

... much the influence of her charms was increased by the fame of a severity which cost her nothing, and who could venture to flirt with a succession of admirers in the just confidence that no flame which she might kindle in them would thaw her own ice. [359] Among those who pursued her with an insane desire was a profligate captain in the army named Hill. With Hill was closely bound in a league of debauchery and violence Charles Lord Mohun, a young nobleman whose life was one long revel and ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... come. At first it came dribbling in by rail in trucks, till the thaw set in; and then fast, in a multitude of barges, with a great rush of unbound waters. The gentle master stevedore had his hands very full at last; and the chief mate became worried in his mind as to the proper distribution of the weight ...
— The Mirror of the Sea • Joseph Conrad

... Lord Privy Seal in the Ministry of All the Talents (October, 1806, to March, 1807). During the long exclusion of the Whigs from office (1807-32), when there seemed as little chance of a Whig Administration as of "a thaw in Nova Zembla," Holland, in the House of Lords, supported Catholic Emancipation, advocated the emancipation of slaves, opposed the detention of Napoleon as a prisoner of war, and moved the abolition of capital punishment for minor ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals, Vol. 1 • Lord Byron, Edited by Rowland E. Prothero

... going up to see the parson," exclaimed the deacon, when the morning devotions were over, "and see if I can thaw him out a little. I've heard that there used to be a lot in him in his younger days, but he's sort of frozen all up latterly, and I can see that the young folks are afraid of him and the church too, but that won't do—no, it won't do," repeated ...
— The Busted Ex-Texan and Other Stories • W. H. H. Murray

... me reserved, for it is true that I could barely be civil to him. He argued from that, as I learned afterwards from Donna Giulia, that I was of a ducal family, and in proportion as I froze, so did he thaw. As I receded, so did he advance. He pressed invitations upon me, all of which I could not decline; it was proper that I should offer him some hospitality in return—and I did. He supped with me once or ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett

... hard, and a trifle bitter, but I fancy sunshine would thaw her. There has not been much ...
— Five Little Plays • Alfred Sutro

... 12.—Away we set, and came safely to Abbotsford amid all the dulness of a great thaw, which has set the rivers a-streaming in full tide. The wind is wintry, but ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott

... I find, by Mr. Harte's last letter, that many of my letters to you and him, have been frozen up on their way to Leipsig; the thaw has, I suppose, by this time, set them at liberty to pursue their journey to you, and you will receive a glut of them at once. Hudibras alludes, in ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield

... wares should tary by the way vntill the 15. of February, when the Sunne is of some power, then is it dangerous: for the heate of the Sunne in the day causeth the deepe lakes of Ladega, and specially of Onega to cleaue: and if there should come then a sudden thaw, as oftentimes in that time of the yeere doeth, then doe these lakes open and breake, whereby many men are lost, and both men and horse drowned, although other riuers do remaine frozen ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, • Richard Hakluyt

... the pretty villages had taken on their old look of contentment and thrift, when in the spring of 1784 there came an accumulation of disasters. During a very cold winter great quantities of snow had fallen, and lay piled in huge masses on the mountain sides, until in March a sudden thaw set in. The Susquehanna rose, and overflowed the valley, and great blocks of ice drifted here and there, carrying death and destruction with them. Houses, barns, and fences were swept away, the cattle were drowned, the fruit trees broken down, the stores of food destroyed, and over the ...
— The Critical Period of American History • John Fiske

... "It will thaw very soon," he said to himself, looking again at the dead man, "and then he will go into ...
— The Honor of the Big Snows • James Oliver Curwood

... past. The "January thaw" has come and gone, leaving a smooth, hard crust, just right for coasting. The heavy storms of February have piled the drifts mountain high over road and fence and wall; and the roaring winds of early March have driven the snow in blinding clouds along the hill-sides, through the forests, ...
— The New England Magazine Volume 1, No. 3, March, 1886 - Bay State Monthly Volume 4, No. 3, March, 1886 • Various

... The saline tracts between the prisms produce a milky or opalescent appearance. The prisms are of fresh water ice, for in freezing the brine is rejected and forced to occupy the interstices of the prisms. Water of good drinking quality can be obtained by allowing sea water ice to thaw partially. The brine, of lower freezing-point, flows away, leaving only fresh water ice behind. In this way blocks of sea-ice exposed to the sun's rays are relieved of their salty constituents, and crumble into ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson

... unequal parts, as if in obedience to the mysterious principle of duplication governing so many Martian phenomena.[991] Changes of the hues associated respectively with land and water accompanied in lower latitudes, and were thought to be occasioned by floods ensuing upon this rapid antarctic thaw. It is true that scarcity of moisture would account for the scantiness and transitoriness of snowy deposits easily liquefied because thinly spread. But we might expect to see the whole wintry hemisphere, at any rate, frost-bound, since the sun radiates less than half ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke

... before the funeral train had reached the top of the altitude. Ralph had walked over the more rugged parts of the pass, and had satisfied himself that there was no danger to be apprehended on this score. The ghyll was swollen by the thaw. The waters fell heavily over the great stones, and sent up clouds of spray, which were quickly dissipated by the wind. Huge hillocks of yellow foam gathered in every sheltered covelet. The roar of the cataract in the ravine silenced the voice of the tempest ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine

... reserved, as if he deemed that sullenness enhanced dignity. I never in the whole course of my acquaintance saw him kithe so unfavourably as he did on that occasion. In the course of the evening, however, he condescended to thaw, and before the party broke up, his austerity began to leaf, and hide its thorns under the influence of a relenting temperament. It was, however, too evident—at least it was so to me—that without intending wrong, or any offence, ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt

... Jean, pressing him back gently. "There is no need of telling what is out there on the lake. Only the Blessed Virgin made me dream last night that you would like to see with your own eyes that the missioner is dead. The thaw will open up the lake in a few days. Then he will go down in the first slush. And"—Jean looked about him cautiously again, and whispered low—"if you see anything about the dead missioner that you do not ...
— The Honor of the Big Snows • James Oliver Curwood

... a beat at the heart, yet it does not circulate freely, and Nature to every man is a double of himself, so that the universe seems also cold in extremities, as though there were too little original life to fill her veins. The poet is not fire on the hearth to thaw this numbness by foreign heat. He rubs and rouses us to activity, drags us to the open air, puts us on a glowing chase, provokes us to race and climb with him till we also are thoroughly alive. No other gift of his is worth much beside ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various

... was but a scud of early autumn on the mountains—the sun came out with bright slanting beams before his setting, there was a soft south wind; and Hob, when he came in, growled out that the thaw had set in, and he should be able to take the maid back in the morning. He sat scowling and silent during supper, and ordered Hal about with sharp sternness, sending him out to attend to the litter of the cattle, before all had finished, and manifestly treated ...
— The Herd Boy and His Hermit • Charlotte M. Yonge

... it soon began to thaw. By noon the little stream in the gulch was a torrent, and before night patches of bare ground began to appear. We decided not to attempt to leave camp that day, but the next morning saw us headed back along the tortuous ...
— The Voyage of the Rattletrap • Hayden Carruth

... dictating to all Europe: the churches were ordered to toll their only bell, and the gasconades of the bulletin were uncommonly pompous—but the novelty of the event has now subsided, and the conquest of Holland excites less interest than the thaw. Public spirit is absorbed by private necessities or afflictions; people who cannot procure bread or firing, even though they have money to purchase it, are little gratified by reading that a pair of their Deputies lodged ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady

... again. They sent us back by motor, so we arrived most comfortably. I gave a dinner to the Hopes, Wyndham, Miss Mary Moore, Ashmead-Bartlett and Margaret. Websters could not come. Later, came on here, and had a chat, the Websters coming too. I read Thaw trial. ...
— Adventures and Letters • Richard Harding Davis

... School boy and girl studied the sky. There was no sign of storm, nor did the conditions seem to threaten a thaw. Saturday morning was cold and clear. The temperature, at noon, was just above freezing point, though not enough so to bring about a ...
— The High School Freshmen - Dick & Co.'s First Year Pranks and Sports • H. Irving Hancock

... sides. Bella, who'd worked in Detroit for seven dollars a day (her figures), a husky good-looking person; Rosie, the prettiest little sixteen-year-old Italian girl; and I. Such conversations! One day they unearthed Harry Thaw and Evelyn Nesbit and redid their past, present, and probable future. We discussed whether Olive Thomas had really committed suicide or died of an overdose of something. How many nights a week could a girl dance and work next day? Minnie was past her dancing ...
— Working With the Working Woman • Cornelia Stratton Parker

... dilapidated constitution of a sensitive valetudinarian. His commentators suppose he produced nothing during his marine hybernations: if the inclement season froze 'the genial current of his soul,' the aspect of the sea did not thaw it. ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 429 - Volume 17, New Series, March 20, 1852 • Various

... be serious. I'm not goin' for that, but I really am goin'. I had a letter from Dad this evenin'. Did you have a good time after I left this afternoon? Did Mrs. Keyton-Wells thaw out?" ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1896 to 1901 • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... all that you have to do, is to keep the apples in a state of total darkness until some days after a complete thaw has come. In America they are frequently frozen as hard as stones; if they thaw in the light, they rot; but if they thaw in darkness, they not only do not rot, but lose very little of their original flavour. This may be new to the English reader; but he may depend ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 335 - Vol. 12, No. 335, October 11, 1828 • Various

... afraid of a banthhee?" jeered Grace. "Now if I thaw that banthhee I'd jutht thtep on her with my heel, tho!" She dug her little heel into the ground to show how she would crush ...
— The Meadow-Brook Girls Under Canvas • Janet Aldridge

... never lucky when Christmas came without a wolf-hunt; but that year it was like to be so; for, as I have said, the snow kept falling at intervals, with days of fog and thaw between, till the night before the vigil. In my youth, the Lithuanians kept Christmas, after the fashion of old northern times. It began with great devotion, and ended in greater feasting. The eve was considered particularly sacred: many traditional ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various

... was an old Woman, as I've heard say, The frost froze her water-pipes fast one day; The frost froze her water-pipes fast at first, Till a thaw came at last, and the water-pipes burst. By came the Company, greedy of gain, And it cut her water all off at the main, It cut her water off sharp, if you please, Though it wasn't her fault that the pipes began to freeze. It wasn't her fault that the water-pipes burst. So ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100. February 14, 1891. • Various

... approach of the expedition. This upset all French plans, since the leaders had hoped to fall upon the Mohawk villages and to destroy them before the tribesmen could either make preparations for defense or withdraw southward. Foiled in this plan, and afraid that an early thaw might make their route of return impossible, the French gave up their project and started home again. They had not managed to reach, much less to destroy, the villages ...
— Crusaders of New France - A Chronicle of the Fleur-de-Lis in the Wilderness - Chronicles of America, Volume 4 • William Bennett Munro

... well as by fulminating against insurrections that only existed in their own guilty imaginations, filled the minds of the people with false alarms, and taught every man to distrust if not to hate his neighbour. There was no more chance of Reform under the existing regime than of 'a thaw in Zembla,' to borrow a famous simile. Cobbett was right in his assertion that the measures and manners of George IV.'s reign did more to shake the long-settled ideas of the people in favour of monarchical government ...
— Lord John Russell • Stuart J. Reid

... of these incidents that is characteristic of a January thaw in the latitude of New England is the appearance of the muskrat. The fox is never in his cell in winter, except he is driven there by the hound, or by soft or wet weather, and the bluebird does not sing in the brakes ...
— The Writings of John Burroughs • John Burroughs

... now coming on, and the snow was fast thawing from the mountains, while the river flats were almost clear where drifts had not formed. With the thaw the Rangitata came down in great volume, a sea of yellow foaming water a quarter of a ...
— Five Years in New Zealand - 1859 to 1864 • Robert B. Booth

... is so. It was cold, and there was no room. But that is past. Now my heart is like the snowfall in the spring, when the sun has come back. There is a great thaw and a bending, a sound of running waters, and a budding and sprouting of green things. And there is drumming of partridges, and songs of robins, and great music, for the winter is broken, Passuk, and I have learned the love ...
— The God of His Fathers • Jack London

... puzzled look almost developed into a smile. He gathered himself together and hobbled out to a nearby German saloon. Next day came the first sign of surrender. He accepted a commission to take a census of the house. This at last helped to thaw him out, but it ...
— From the Bottom Up - The Life Story of Alexander Irvine • Alexander Irvine

... of the movement of glaciers is but ill understood, even by the most accomplished geologists. It is supposed that the under surface of these great icy masses is detached from the ground by the thaw which continually takes place there, caused by the radiating heat of the earth. Water is also an agent in loosening their hold; for it is well-known that currents of water—sometimes large streams,—run under the glaciers. The icy ...
— The Plant Hunters - Adventures Among the Himalaya Mountains • Mayne Reid

... prevailed on every side, and were made still more oppressive by a chill fog that heralded an approaching thaw. Martial stumbled and slipped at almost every step upon ...
— The Honor of the Name • Emile Gaboriau

... for some days, and at that early time of the season a thaw might any hour begin. This made the two lads eager to push on; but "too much haste is bad speed," and they almost knocked up their horse before half the day's journey was over. The evening was drawing on, and they were still a long way from Roland's shanty. Tony ...
— Taking Tales - Instructive and Entertaining Reading • W.H.G. Kingston

... to have a surface space equal to that which they would have had to clean had they lived up to the old rule. The department in its turn removes the accumulations piled up by their sweepers, unless a providential thaw gets ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis

... falling, and he was going down—down—down with it. He saw the trees on the summit of Old Windy disappear. He caught one glimpse of the neighboring ridges. Then he was blinded and enveloped in this cruel whiteness. He had a wild idea that he had been delivered to it forever; even in the first thaw it would curl up into a wreath of vapor, and rise from the mountain's side, and take him soaring with it—whither? How they would search these bleak wintry fastnesses for him,—while he was gone sailing with the mist! What ...
— The Young Mountaineers - Short Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock

... jardin a poux, grenier a puces, sac a vin, mousquetaire de Piquepuce, aumonier du cheval de bronze, poulet dinde de la Rapee," etc., until they were too hoarse to continue. In 1784, the winter began by heavy frosts, which were followed by a sudden thaw which flooded the city. "Paris has become a sewer; communication has been absolutely interrupted between the inhabitants, and for several days past there have been on foot only those who were compelled to it by necessity, by their occupation, or by their duty. Arms and legs broken, and many ...
— Paris from the Earliest Period to the Present Day; Volume 1 • William Walton

... manifold, multitudinous, myriad, countless, innumerable. Meaning, significance, signification, import, purport. Meet, encounter, collide, confront, converge. Meeting, assembly, assemblage, congregation, convention, conference, concourse, gathering, mustering. Melt, thaw, fuse, dissolve, liquefy. Memory, remembrance, recollection, reminiscence, retrospection. Misrepresent, misinterpret, falsify, distort, warp. Mix, compound, amalgamate, weld, combine, blend, concoct. Model, pattern, prototype, criterion, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor

... and there was zest enough in that, in view of the probability of the dory turning over, or a gunboat dropping on to you. Then there was a good deal of very genuine excitement to be got out of placer-mining in British Columbia, especially when there was frost in the ranges, and you had to thaw out your giant-powder. Shallow alluvial workings have a way of caving in when you least expect it of them. After all, however, I think I like the ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss

... numbed that they were unable to feel the brushes they held; in fact, presently, as Philpot was taking a dip of colour, the brush fell from his hand into the pot; and then, finding that he was unable to move his fingers, he put his hand into his trousers pocket to thaw, and began to walk about, stamping his feet upon the ground. His example was quickly followed by Owen, Easton and Harlow, and they all went round the corner to the sheltered side of the house where Slyme was working, and began walking ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell

... cold there was no question. The ground, which had been white with snow for many days, was now a mixture of black and white, under the influence of a thaw; while a bitterly cold wind, which made everybody shiver, rose now and then to a wild whirl, slammed the doors, and groaned through the wood-work. A fragment of cloud, rather less dim and gloomy than the rest of the heavy ...
— Clare Avery - A Story of the Spanish Armada • Emily Sarah Holt

... for the polar conditions, when going round for snipes I constantly saw these in miniature. The planing action of ice was shown in the ditches, where bridges of ice had been formed; these slipping, with a partial thaw, smoothed the grasses and mars of teazles in the higher part of the slope, and then lower down, as the pressure increased, cut away the earth, exposing the roots of grasses, and sometimes the stores of acorns ...
— The Life of the Fields • Richard Jefferies

... am counting on you for next Friday. A young American author studying England—I suppose like that Count Something-or-other in Pickwick Papers—is coming to dinner. I understand he drinks very little, so I am relying on you to thaw him. ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter

... the voice, and he began crawling along the gutter through the trickling thaw, pressing himself against the wall. They continued along it for some minutes. He seemed to pass through a hundred stages of misery, to pass minute after minute through a hundred degrees of cold, damp, and exhaustion. In a little while he ceased to feel his ...
— When the Sleeper Wakes • Herbert George Wells

... know that it is one, for it's nothing but a glare; of deep and angry crimson, where the sun and wind together; set a brand upon the clouds for being guilty of such weather; and the widest open country is a long dull streak of black; and there's hoar-frost on the finger-post, and thaw upon the track; and the ice it isn't water, and the water isn't free; and you couldn't say that anything is what it ought to be; but he's coming, ...
— The Cricket on the Hearth • Charles Dickens

... four apples apiece, and Mr. Boyd put all his in his pockets, with a slight feeling of Christmas warmth beginning to thaw his heart. ...
— St. Nicholas, Vol. 5, No. 2, December, 1877 • Various

... mountain heights, And roams the forests; every wondrous spot Burns with her step, yet man regards it not. She whispers round, her words are in the air, But lost, unheard, they linger freezing there,[2] Without one breath of soul, divinely strong, One ray of mind to thaw ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al

... A thaw had set in, it was muddy and cold, the ice on the river broke, and the roads became impassable. For days neither provisions for the men nor fodder for the horses had been issued. As no transports could arrive, ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy

... Black was driving from a feast in Hadeland, and it so happened that his road lay over the lake called Rand. It was in spring, and there was a great thaw. They drove across the bight called Rykinsvik, where in winter there had been a pond broken in the ice for cattle to drink at, and where the dung had fallen upon the ice the thaw had eaten it into holes. Now as the king drove over it the ice broke, ...
— Heimskringla - The Chronicle of the Kings of Norway • Snorri Sturluson

... their crops often perished from moisture. On the Hampshire Hills many hundred lambs died in a night. Sometimes the season never afforded a chance to use the sickle: in the morning the crop was laden with hoar frost, at noon it was drenched with the thaw, and in the evening covered with dews; and thus rotted on the ground. The agent, however, did not despair, and the company anticipated a dividend in 1834, ...
— The History of Tasmania, Volume I (of 2) • John West

... with heavy boards laid on top to keep it from blowing away. If trees are received for planting after the ground has frozen, all that is necessary is to build a log fire on the side where they are to be heeled in. This will thaw out the soil enough so that a trench can be made to ...
— Growing Nuts in the North • Carl Weschcke

... "but I guess we are all right this time. It snows pretty fast, and the air doesn't feel like a thaw ...
— Frank, the Young Naturalist • Harry Castlemon

... and dear divorce 'Twixt natural son and sire! thou bright defiler Of Hymen's purest bed! thou valiant Mars! Thou ever young, fresh, lov'd, and delicate wooer, Whose blush doth thaw the consecrated snow That lies on Dian's lap! thou visible god, That solder'st close impossibilities, And mak'st them kiss! that speak'st with every tongue, To every purpose! O thou touch of hearts! Think, thy slave man rebels; and by thy virtue Set them into confounding odds, that beasts ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson

... When the thaw set in, I put a couple of bricks down and put a box-lid on top, so that I could stand in a dry place. We had two picks and two shovels in that cellar in case anything happened overnight. I have been up against it. Whenever ...
— Your Boys • Gipsy Smith

... us the stove, and when we left, some time later, it was presented to one of our doctor friends out in a British hospital, where I'm sure it is doing its best to thaw the Balkan chill out of ...
— Appreciations of Richard Harding Davis • Various

... for one's new parts. Alas! your hair—it was so beautiful, it has lost half its curl, and grown thin. Very rude in me to say so, but I always speak the truth, and my heart warms to see you, so all its thoughts thaw out." ...
— Godolphin, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... was unusually deep in the woods that winter, and toward spring there came a sudden, prolonged, and heavy thaw. The ice broke rapidly and every loosened brook became a torrent. Past the door of the camp, which was set in a valley, the Gornish River went boiling and roaring like a mill-race, all-forgetful ...
— Earth's Enigmas - A Volume of Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts

... little children of the emaciated Puritan burst into the shop, followed by their mother, carrying a child in her arms. She had a sad look, upon traces of a past fairness, vaguely like a snow landscape in the thaw. Palmet stooped to toss shillings with her young ones, that he might avoid the woman's ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... in from the country near Fort Winnebago with a load of wheat agreed to haul us and our formidable load of stuff to a little town called Kingston for thirty dollars. On that hundred-mile journey, just after the spring thaw, the roads over the prairies were heavy and miry, causing no end of lamentation, for we often got stuck in the mud, and the poor farmer sadly declared that never, never again would he be tempted to try to haul ...
— The Story of My Boyhood and Youth • John Muir

... on the conditions that require the airing. For instance a thaw in the winter, or a rainy spell. Again in the summer a long rainy spell. In these cases I open up the box, maybe leave it ...
— Northern Nut Growers Report of the Proceedings at the Twenty-First Annual Meeting • Northern Nut Growers Association



Words linked to "Thaw" :   dissolve, physical change, melt, dethaw, atmospheric condition, melting, relaxation, loosening, warming, conditions, phase transition, weather condition, weather, thawing, heating, de-ice, phase change, defrost, deice, liquify, liquefy, slackening, deliquesce, state change



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