Diccionario ingles.comDiccionario ingles.com
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

  Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Tornado   Listen
noun
Tornado  n.  (pl. tornadoes)  A violent whirling wind; specifically (Meteorol.), a tempest distinguished by a rapid whirling and slow progressive motion, usually accompaned with severe thunder, lightning, and torrents of rain, and commonly of short duration and small breadth; a small cyclone.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |





"Tornado" Quotes from Famous Books



... Chilcoot—especially grub. So Steve and I tied him down in the cabin and pulled our freight. We camped that night at the mouth of Indian River, and Steve and I were pretty facetious over having shaken him. Steve was a funny cuss, and I was just sitting up in the blankets and laughing when a tornado hit camp. The way that Spot walked into those dogs and gave them what-for was hair-raising. Now how did he get loose? It's up to you. I haven't any theory. And how did he get across the Klondike River? That's another facer. And anyway, ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Campfire Stories • Various

... fairly in the field, the country entered upon a remarkable canvass. At the beginning of the picturesque and emotional "log cabin canvass of 1840," Mr. Van Buren, with his keen insight into popular movements, had said, in somewhat mixed metaphor, that it would be "either a farce or a tornado." The present canvass gave promise on different grounds of similar alternatives. General Grant had been tried, and with him the country knew what to expect. Mr. Greeley had not been tried, and though the best known man in his own field of journalism, he was ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine

... This tornado, delivered with increasing vehemence and offensiveness, quite overpowered Stephen, who stared at the boy as if he ...
— The Fifth Form at Saint Dominic's - A School Story • Talbot Baines Reed

... wane. They both remained silent and watching the receding figure of the handsome young forester for at least a minute and a half. At last this unheard-of duration of silence between two young ladies who had sworn eternal friendship was broken. It proved to be like the calm which precedes the tornado. ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat

... occasion was the whirlwind of the war. Here was place for no holiday magistrate, no fair-weather sailor; the new pilot was hurried to the helm in a tornado. In four years,—four years of battle-days,—his endurance, his fertility of resources, his magnanimity, were sorely tried and never found wanting. There, by his courage, his justice, his even temper, his fertile counsel, his humanity, he stood a heroic ...
— Our American Holidays: Lincoln's Birthday • Various

... alone, not for consumption, still less for profligate waste. Nature has provided against the absolute destruction of any of her elementary matter, the raw material of her works; the thunderbolt and the tornado, the most convulsive throes of even the volcano and the earthquake, being only phenomena of decomposition and recomposition. But she has left it within the power of man irreparably to derange the combinations of inorganic matter and of organic ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh

... thrash him if he were big enough to thrash you back," Angelica shrieked, waltzing round like a tornado; "and it isn't fair to thrash him and not me, for I am much worse than he is. You know I am, papa! and I shall hate you if Diavolo is thrashed, and teach him how to make your life a burden to you for a month, ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand

... has at intervals felt the violence of the destructive hurricanes which occasionally ravage the West Indies. They often combine the features of a tornado and a cloudburst, and while the furious whirlwind wrecks houses, uproots trees and strips forests bare of leaves, the accompanying severe rains swell the streams to abnormal height and cause extensive inundations. The hurricane season is reckoned as beginning in July and ending in October ...
— Santo Domingo - A Country With A Future • Otto Schoenrich

... red. Can it be that the morn shall fulfil My dream, and refashion our clay As the poet may fashion his rhyme? Hark to that mingled scream Rising from workshop and mill— Hailing some marvelous sight; Mighty breath of the hours, Poured through the trumpets of steam; Awful tornado of time, Blowing us ...
— Dreams and Days: Poems • George Parsons Lathrop

... tornado. The debris of past resolutions was flung high, and swirled and dashed in a wild tumult. There was nothing tangible in his reasoning, nothing plain in his sight. A mist was before his eyes, a fog was over his reason. Only there ...
— The Bondboy • George W. (George Washington) Ogden

... the thunder-bolts in his hand, is duplicated in the Mexican god of thunder, Mixcoatl, who is represented holding a bundle of arrows. "He rode upon a tornado, and scattered the lightnings." (Dorman, ...
— The Antediluvian World • Ignatius Donnelly

... arrived with soldiers and recruits en route for California settlements, and encamped opposite Yuma. After some of these people had been sent forward or back as the plans demanded, Moncada remained at the camp with a few of his soldiers. No one suspected the tornado which was brewing. All the life of the camp, of the missions, and of the Yumas went on with the same apparent smoothness, but it was only a delusion suddenly and horribly dispelled on the fateful 17th of July. Without a sign preliminary to the execution of their wrath, Captain Palma and all his ...
— The Romance of the Colorado River • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh

... a tornado brewing on the Cameroon heights, and kept indoors. While sitting sewing the storm burst. The wind seized the village, lifting fences, canoes, trees, and buildings; lightning played and crackled about the hut; the thunder pealed overhead; and rain fell in floods. Then ...
— Mary Slessor of Calabar: Pioneer Missionary • W. P. Livingstone

... July we got into a deep Bay, four Leagues N.W. from the two small Islands before mentioned. But the Night before, in a violent Tornado, our Bark being unable to beat any longer, bore away, which put us in some pain for fear she was overset, as we had like to have been our selves. We anchored on the South West side of the Bay, in fifteen fathom Water, about ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898—Volume 39 of 55 • Various

... Park mentions that on the 12th of June, in consequence of a very sudden tornado, they were forced to carry their bundles into the huts of the natives, being the first time that the caravan had entered a town since leaving the Gambia. Considering the climate and season, this slight circumstance is ...
— The Journal Of A Mission To The Interior Of Africa, In The Year 1805 • Mungo Park

... had not noticed it till now, when the woods began to thin away on either side, and he stopped before striking out over one of the naked stretches of the plain,—a white waste swept by the blasts that sucked down through a gorge of the mountain, and flattened the snow-drifts as the tornado flattens the waves. Across this expanse ran the road, its stiff lines obliterated here and there, in the slight depressions, and showing dark along the rest ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells

... with which they are always battling. The oak is but a foliated atmospheric crystal deposited from the aerial ocean that holds the future vegetable world in solution. The storm that tears its leaves has paid tribute to its strength, and it breasts the tornado clad in the spoils of a ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 17, March, 1859 • Various

... person who always comes out on top whether he wins or loses," said Fielding, striding up the long room at the moment. "You've not seen him play cricket yet, Miss Moore. He's a positive tornado on the cricket-ground. To-morrow's Saturday, isn't it? ...
— The Obstacle Race • Ethel M. Dell

... Polly Hawks!" he shouts. "Show me the female more entrancin', an' let me drop dead at her feet! Who is lovelier than Polly Hawks, the sweetheart of Flyin' Bison, the onchained tornado of the hills! Feast your gaze on Polly Hawks; her beauty would melt the heart of Nacher! I'm the Purple Blossom of Gingham Mountain; Polly Hawks shall marry an' follow me to my wigwam! Her bed shall be of b'ar-skins; her food ...
— Wolfville Days • Alfred Henry Lewis

... that Louisiana was indeed a speck in our horizon, which was to burst in a tornado; and the public are un-apprized how near this catastrophe was. Nothing but a frank and friendly developement of causes and effects on our part, and good sense enough in Bonaparte to see that the ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson

... explanation, saying sententiously, "My little wife is mad." The fact is, his two helpmates, one young and one old, are vastly too much for him, as they would be for most men. He moves along in a perpetual family tornado. The mother of the young one, a sort of derwish negress, is a tremendous old intriguer, and stirs up at least one feud a day. Quarrelling is meat ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 1 • James Richardson

... could be a miniature tornado, or a cyclone or whirlwind?" and Tom spoke aloud, a habit of his when he was thinking, and had no one to talk to. "Yet it can hardly be that." he went on. "Guess I'll watch and ...
— Tom Swift and his Wireless Message • Victor Appleton

... evidently descended on this very spot probably within a few days; I say descended, for the whole circumference of the circle devastated did not exceed twenty yards at most. One other tree, yet fixed in the soil, presented an awful example of the might of the tornado. It was a chestnut of the largest size, the trunk near the base being seven or eight feet in circumference; it reclined at what seemed to have been the very focus of the whirlwind; its roots yet clung to earth; but, through the resistance thus offered, the tree had ...
— Impressions of America - During The Years 1833, 1834, and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Tyrone Power

... anything unusual in the tropics," laughed Jack. "I believe you are liable to catch anything at any time here from yellow fever to a tornado. They seem to have ...
— The Hilltop Boys on Lost Island • Cyril Burleigh

... flung a perfect tornado of brine into air, glistening; it ricochetted twice, and plunged into the dunes. A "dud," it failed ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England

... laughed. "It's more like a tornado up yonder. No, we've just got to take it easy till the right moment comes, and then make a dash. It's thirty miles to the nearest stick of timber; and once you get into the Pass, you can't ...
— The Silver Horde • Rex Beach

... a sick crew on board and no medicine, that the young master of the sailing-vessel in the Pacific crosses successfully the Shadow Line that divides youth from manhood. And it is through facing the unleashed fury of the tornado that the old captain of the 'full-powered steam-ship' in Typhoon shows what he has in him, compassion and kindness as well as shrewd knowledge of men, expert seamanship, and indomitable heroism. The whole thing is driven home with a power, an incisiveness, and ...
— Recent Developments in European Thought • Various

... captain. "Well, in a manner of speakin', about twenty things has happened at once. Lads, my spirits and emotions are in a fair Chinese tornado—every which way at once. In the first place, I'm seventy-five dollars poorer than I was last night; in the second, poor old Skipper's been given some kind av poison that's made him so sick I doubt he'll ...
— The Boy Scouts of the Eagle Patrol • Howard Payson

... falling into chaos before him. In half an hour the news of the finding of Manderson's body, with the inevitable rumour that it was suicide, was printing in a dozen newspaper offices; but before a copy reached Wall Street the tornado of the panic was in full fury, and Howard B. Jeffrey and his collaborators were whirled away like ...
— Trent's Last Case - The Woman in Black • E.C. (Edmund Clerihew) Bentley

... came rushing on like the sweep of the tornado, and plunged, as a thunderbolt of war, into the camp of the Austrians. For a few hours the battle blazed as if it were a strife of demons—hell in high carnival. Eighteen thousand Prussians were mowed down by the Austrian batteries, before the fierce ...
— The Empire of Austria; Its Rise and Present Power • John S. C. Abbott

... went the Mermaid. The wind was now blowing with the force of a tornado, and, as the craft had to slant in order to descend, it felt the power of the gale more than if it had scudded before it. But, by skilful use of the directing tube, the professor was able to keep the boat from turning over. As they came further ...
— Five Thousand Miles Underground • Roy Rockwood

... came; then it plunged, a brief downfall, as if a cloud had been ripped and emptied,—a suffocating terror of rain, teeming with more appalling intimations than anything else in the world. But the wind was a blind tornado. The boughs swung over them and swept them; the swamp-water was lifted, and gluts of it slapped in Flor's face. She saw, not far away, a great solitary cypress rearing its head, and bearing aloft a broad eagle's nest, hurriedly seized in the grasp ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various

... breath could have made flame unbearably, and she hid from him behind the light garrulity of Mrs. Cafferty, through which now and again, as through a veil, she saw the spike of his helmet, a wiry bristling moustache, a surge of great shoulders. On these ghostly indications she heaped a tornado of words which swamped the wraith, but she knew he was waiting to catch her alone, and would certainly catch her, and the ...
— Mary, Mary • James Stephens

... and skeletons of wigwams, from which the coverings had been taken. An Indian, when he travels, takes with him his family and his furniture, the matting for his wigwam, his implements for hunting and fishing, his dogs and cats, and finds a home wherever he finds poles for a dwelling. A tornado had recently passed over the Garden Village. The numerous girdled-trees which stood on its little clearing, had been twisted off midway or near the ground by the wind, and the roofs had, in some instances, been lifted ...
— Letters of a Traveller - Notes of Things Seen in Europe and America • William Cullen Bryant

... one of them whether he had read some book that was exciting discussion among educated people at the moment, he would probably look at you blankly and, after remarking that he had never cared for economics or history—as the case might be—inquire whether you preferred a "Blossom" or a "Tornado." Poor vacuous old cocks! They might be having a green and hearty old age, surrounded by a group of the choicest spirits ...
— The "Goldfish" • Arthur Train

... emphatically the Place of Hope.' What, then, was our Professor's possession? We see him, for the present, quite shut-out from Hope; looking not into the golden orient, but vaguely all round into a dim copper firmament, pregnant with earthquake and tornado. ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle

... acting very reasonably up to now. But now he flung himself out the door like a tornado. It echoed behind him. Marjorie did not try to keep him. She sat still for a minute longer, shivering. Then she began to cry. She certainly did not want him for her husband, but equally she did not want him to go ...
— I've Married Marjorie • Margaret Widdemer

... Streams of brightness everlasting, Like ten thousand mountains blazing; And the khamsheens wild and fiercely Sweep in burning flakes along them, And torment the weary traveller Who is slowly wading through them, Thirsting for a cooling river. And 'tis there the wild tornado Riseth in its frame of terror, Wild, and fierce, and unrelenting. To the spreading woods and forests Of the black pine and the myrtle, Of the cedar and the red birch, Of the oak tree and the walnut, Of the tulip and mahogany, All in branchy webwork blended, That the light can hardly enter To remove ...
— A Leaf from the Old Forest • J. D. Cossar

... opened her lips this evening. Why don't you talk, child? Does Marion overwhelm you? I don't wonder. Such a tornado as she has poured out upon us! I never heard the like in my life. It isn't all in the Bible; that is one comfort. Though, dear me! I don't know but the spirit of it is. What do you think about ...
— The Chautauqua Girls At Home • Pansy, AKA Isabella M. Alden

... Connors, Burley Bo, Tornado Blackey, and Touch McCall used more imagination in rechristening themselves. Others, with less fancy, carry the names of their physical peculiarities, such as: Vancouver Slim, Detroit Shorty, Ohio Fatty, Long Jack, Big Jim, ...
— The Road • Jack London

... he said to Nick, a little resentfully. "I who speak to you say that there is four foot on each side of ze bateau. Too much tafia, a little too much excite—" and he made a gesture with his hand expressive of total destruction; "ze tornado, ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... when travelling through the forests of Yucatan, heard his Maya Indian guide exclaim in awe-struck tones, as the roar of a tornado made itself heard in the distance: He catal nohoch yikal nohoch tat, "Here comes the mighty wind of the Great Father." As Dr. Brinton points out, this belief has analogues all over the world, in the notion of the wind-bird, ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain

... moments later I found myself lying in the street, head pointing north—dazed. A bomb crashed through the eaves and tore a hole as big as a small cellar in the street directly before the old castle, bursting with the concussion of a tornado. For a few moments I sat on the street feeling weak in the legs ...
— The Log of a Noncombatant • Horace Green

... discharges numbered five or six a second; in fact, the ear could hardly detect any cessations in the roar. The air was constantly howling as the shells swept through it, while the falling of branches, cut from the trees by the furious missiles, seemed as if a tornado was in the height of its fury: every few minutes, a thunder heard above all other sounds, denoted the explosion of a caisson, sweeping into destruction, with a cataract of fire and iron, men and animals for hundreds ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 6, No. 1, July, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various

... was probably imaginary. The stinging unit was not that sensitive to tobacco, though it was sensitive enough. As the drops splattered it, the pile of leaves erupted with a snuffling hiss like an overloaded teakettle into a tornado ...
— Cat and Mouse • Ralph Williams

... only wanted a pretext for moonlighting and other disgraceful outrages, and the woman was kept in a hell for four years. A man was caught at last and convicted, and one would think that this was a subject for rejoicing for all right-minded men in the county. But what was the result? A perfect tornado of letters was printed, and resolutions and speeches appeared in the public press, condemning this conviction of a moonlighter in Clare ...
— Is Ulster Right? • Anonymous

... both critically. I sustained the chill smilingly, but Fyne stooped at once to release the dog. He was some time about it; then simultaneously with his recovery of upright position the animal passed at one bound from profoundest slumber into most tumultuous activity. Enveloped in the tornado of his inane scurryings and barkings I took Mrs. Fyne's hand extended to me woodenly and bowed over it with deference. She walked down the path without a word; Fyne had preceded her and was waiting by the open gate. They passed out and ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad

... almost from my feet by the swirl of the snow, which literally filled the air, so that it was impossible to see any of the surrounding ranch-buildings or even the fence, less than fifty feet distant. It was like a tornado of pure white dust or very fine sand, icy cold, and stinging ...
— Roosevelt in the Bad Lands • Hermann Hagedorn

... ranks of the unarmed Indians with the suddenness and swiftness of a tornado. From the roof above, the gunners discharged their bullets into the swaying, seething mass. With {84} their wands of office, with their naked hands, with whatever they could seize, the Peruvians defended themselves. They rallied around the person of the Inca, freely offering ...
— South American Fights and Fighters - And Other Tales of Adventure • Cyrus Townsend Brady

... 'LENA,—What a tornado and an idiot you must think me! I cannot explain my extraordinary departure. I suppose I was in such a nervous state that I was obsessed in some mysterious manner and went off like a rocket. I can assure you I feel like a stick this morning. You ...
— The Californians • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton

... before him, With glowing flame he filled its body, A net he prepared to seize Tiamat, Guarded the four corners of the world that nothing of her should escape, On South and North, on East and West He laid the net, his father Anu's gift. He fashioned the evil wind, the south blast, the tornado, The four-and-seven wind, the wind of destruction and woe, Sent forth the seven winds which he had made Tiamat's body to destroy, after him they followed. Then seized the lord the thunderbolt, his mighty weapon, The irresistible chariot, the terrible, ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner

... age-worn and long before relegated to the use of Sunday fishing-parties "down the bay," had for barometer only a broken affair that had been issued to advertise the virtues of a certain baking-powder. It was roiled permanently to the degree marked "Tornado." ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day

... his feet out of the stirrups. A number of brown hands and arms shot forth to help him. Domini turned back into the cabaret. She heard a tornado of voices outside, a horse neighing and trampling, a scuffling of feet, but she did not glance round. In about three minutes Androvsky joined her. He was limping slightly and bending forward more than ever. Behind the counter on which stood the absinthe bottle was a tarnished mirror, ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens

... on the scene and held them at bay. All day she stood there and all night, her girls handing her from time to time a cup of tea through the poles of the enclosure. Next night matters had become quieter, a tornado of rain and wind having eased the situation, but she was soaked, whilst the mats of the Mission House had blown up and the interior had been flooded, so that both the girls and herself needed dry ...
— Mary Slessor of Calabar: Pioneer Missionary • W. P. Livingstone

... the responsibility, the strain of mind and anguish of soul that he gave to this great task, who can measure? "Here was place for no holiday magistrate, no fair weather sailor," as Emerson justly said of him. "The new pilot was hurried to the helm in a tornado. In four years—four years of battle days—his endurance, his fertility of resources, his magnanimity, were sorely tried and never found wanting." "By his courage, his justice, his even temper, his humanity, he stood a heroic ...
— The Boys' Life of Abraham Lincoln • Helen Nicolay

... and I went on arter her like a tornado, now I tell you. But jist as I was reaching out both hands to drag her back from a wave that came roaring along, it broke, and the undertow sucked her ...
— A Noble Woman • Ann S. Stephens

... Avenue, and filed up to the "starting point" to await the report of the Patrol under Lieut. MacRobert, who also had charge of the tape-laying party which included Corporal Chapman. At 9.30 p.m. our artillery suddenly opened on the enemy's salient, and poured down on it such a tornado of steel as the Germans had never experienced before. For twenty minutes our shells flayed the German front line, and under this arch of shrieking explosives the battle party crawled right up to the rim of the bombardment. What wire remained uncut was blown to fragments by ...
— The Seventeenth Highland Light Infantry (Glasgow Chamber of Commerce Battalion) - Record of War Service, 1914-1918 • Various

... conjecture, has been very noisy with us, and productive of little,—the "Wind-dust-ry of all Nations" involving everything in one inane tornado. The very shopkeepers complain that there is no trade. Such a sanhedrim of windy fools from all countries of the Globe were surely never gathered in one city before. But they will go their ways again, they surely will! ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872, Vol II. • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson

... was a message from Gladys. Then began a race the like of which I have never seen before. It was the speed of man matched against the speed of the storm gods. Behind us the storm was breaking; we could see the grey wall of the rain in the distance; the wind was rising to a tornado and the thunder claps seemed to split the earth open. And there we were, scudding along before it, like a tiny craft fleeing from a tidal wave. The Glow-worm bore us onward like a gallant steed, and I compared our headlong flight with the King of ...
— The Campfire Girls Go Motoring • Hildegard G. Frey

... useful invention, and various experiments with the Minie ball were carried on with an energy so unusual as to be startling. It being discovered that the iron cup had various disadvantages, besides being a compound article, a tornado of inventions rushed in upon the Government with every variety of modification. The successful competitor of this countless host was Mr. Pritchett, who, while dispensing with the cup entirely, produced the most satisfactory results with a simple conical bullet imperceptibly saucered ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray

... the breeze, while the sturdy oak, with form and inclination fixed, breasts the tornado. It is easier to incline the early thought rightly, than the biased mind. Children not mistaught, naturally love [20] God; for they are pure-minded, affectionate, and gen- erally brave. Passions, appetites, pride, selfishness, have slight sway ...
— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy

... and goes on. Made me sick. I turned to Suds, and the fool hadn't batted an eye. Never even heard of Donnegan. You know how it is? Half the road never heard of it; part of the roads don't know nothin' else. He's like a jumpin tornado; hits every ten miles and don't bend a blade of grass ...
— Gunman's Reckoning • Max Brand

... the good brig Avon after parting company, as aforesaid, with her consort, the Hyperion; a circumstance that I regret not a little, as it deprives me of my only chance for describing a storm at sea. They only experienced one tornado, and fifteen gales of wind, before joining the other ship. The tornado was no great things after all—the brig ran merrily before it, under a reefed foresail and close-reefed main-topsail. The crew were all on deck during the whole night it lasted, in case of their services being required. But ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames

... dream? Rudy knew nothing of fever, or any other ailment. But, while he judged Babette, he began to examine his own conduct. He had allowed wild thoughts to chase each other in his heart, and a fierce tornado to break loose. Could he confess to Babette, indeed, every thought which in the hour of temptation might have led him to wrong doing? He had lost her ring, and that very loss had won him back to her. Could she expect him to confess? He felt as if his heart would break while ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen

... would line the avenues, of the smiling men and women and children whose home the Magic City would be, and how he was confident they would build it here because, in the land of terrible winds, when people commenced to erect their metropolis, they must put it where no deadly breath of cyclone or tornado could tear at ...
— The Way of the Wind • Zoe Anderson Norris

... St Jago, the largest of the Cape de Verd Islands. The rainy season was already set in, which renders this place very unsafe; a large swell that rolls in from the southward, makes a frightful surf upon the shore, and there is reason every hour to expect a tornado, of which, as it is very violent, and blows directly in, the consequences are likely to be fatal; so that after the 15th of August no ship comes hither till the rainy season is over, which happens in November; for this reason I made all possible haste to ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 12 • Robert Kerr

... them in, my division being the leading one, when an earth-shaking rumble was felt and heard, and suddenly the head-of-column was struck by one of the terrible tornadoes for which this region is famous, and utterly annihilated. The tornado, I believe, passed along the entire length of the road back to the ford, dispersing or destroying our entire army; but of this I cannot be sure, for I was lifted from the earth insensible and blown back to the south side of ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8 - Epigrams, On With the Dance, Negligible Tales • Ambrose Bierce

... excellent order, showed no signs of the tornado which had passed through it, and Jackson Pepper, looking vaguely round, was dimly reminded of those tropical hurricanes he had read about which would strike only the objects in the path, and leave ...
— Many Cargoes • W.W. Jacobs

... unbidden. A blind ungovernable impulse seems to hold sway in the passions of the affections. Love is blind and seems to completely subdue and conquer. It often comes like a clap of thunder from a clear sky, and when it falls it falls flat, leaving only the ruins of a tornado behind. ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols

... sword of the country. Myriads of dependants and partisans, scattered over the land, are ever ready to sing hosannas to him, and to laud to the skies whatever he does. He has swept over the government, during the last eight years, like a tropical tornado. Every department exhibits traces of the ravages of the storm. Take as one example the Bank of the United States. No institution could have been more popular with the people, with Congress, and with State Legislatures. ...
— Henry Clay's Remarks in House and Senate • Henry Clay

... state. The tornado country.... Git to work; here's that bastard wop comin' around ...
— Three Soldiers • John Dos Passos

... and the tornado; all our guns give tongue together, St. Barbara for the gunnery and God defend the right— They are stopped and gapped and battered as we blast away the weather, Building window upon window to our lady of the light; For the light is come on Liberty, her foes are falling, ...
— Miscellany of Poetry - 1919 • Various

... frightens her (and it is a real December tempest), or if that Mrs. Pryor objects to her going out, and I should miss her after all, it will vex me; but, tempest or tornado, hail or ice, she ought to come, and if she has a mind worthy of her eyes and features she will come. She will be here for the chance of seeing me, as I am here for the chance of seeing her. She will want to get a word respecting her confounded ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte

... cabin he noted some sort of an instrument swinging from a hook on a carline. He investigated. It was a makeshift barometer, the advertising gift of a yeast company. The contents of its tube were roiled to the height of the mark which was lettered "Tornado." ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day

... hours was pretty certain, and the circumstance removed all apprehension of any immediate danger from his destroyers. The ruthless warriors of the woods seldom remained long near the spot they had desolated, but passed on, like the tornado, or the tempest. Guert, who was ever prompt when anything was to be done, pointed to a natural hollow in the earth; one of those cavities that are so common in the forest, and which are usually attributed to the upturning of trees ...
— Satanstoe • James Fenimore Cooper

... veia subir desde lejos, me dio una gran voz advirtiendome que no tomara la senda de la tia Casca, si queria llegar sano y salvo a la cumbre. La verdad era que el camino, que equivocadamente habia tornado, se hacia cada vez mas aspero y dificil y que por una parte la sombra que ya arrojaban las altisimas rocas, que parecian suspendidas sobre mi cabeza, y por otro el ruido vertiginoso del agua que corria profunda a mis pies, y de la que comenzaba a elevarse una niebla inquieta y azul, que ...
— Legends, Tales and Poems • Gustavo Adolfo Becquer

... to material forms, As mists to the copious shower As dead calms are to tornado storms That in tropical region lower So are educational fallacies That ignore and decry as naught The value and power that ever lie In ...
— Our Profession and Other Poems • Jared Barhite

... a vault I have had erected upon my grounds. This vault, I assure you, is burglar-proof, weather-proof, cyclone-proof, tornado-proof, bomb-proof. Time will have no effect upon its walls. It could conceivably be thrown free in some great volcanic upheaval but even then the ...
— Mr. Chipfellow's Jackpot • Dick Purcell

... simoon burst over the desert, gathering up and dispersing the sands with indescribable fury. My mouth and nostrils were filled with earthy atoms, and my eyes were filled with irritating particles. The storm grew so dense and awful that it became a tornado, and we were soon enveloped in total darkness. All routes of travel were obliterated, and destruction threatened my command. These sand spouts are frequent, making a clean swathe, burying alike man and beast, and often they blow for weeks. During the approach of one of those death-dealing simoon's ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller

... last it came—I knew not how it came— But a tornado swept this sunny South, And when I woke once more, I stood alone. My senses sickened at the dismal waste, And caring not, now all things bright were dead, That a volcano rolled its burning tide In fiery rivers far athwart the land, I turned my feet to aimless wanderings. ...
— The New Penelope and Other Stories and Poems • Frances Fuller Victor

... from the "bench" to the sandy bottom below, scurrying in wild panic anywhere, everywhere, went warriors, women, and children; for, close on the heels of the vanishing herd came unknown numbers of blue-coated, brave—hearted, tumultuous riders, tearing through camp like a human tornado, turning the scene of the late revel into a turmoil of woe. Vain the few shots aimed in haste and excitement. Vain the rallying cry of a fighting chief. A blow from the butt of Ned Connell's revolver sprawled ...
— To The Front - A Sequel to Cadet Days • Charles King

... I used to dust sometimes when mamma was out sewing. And once I swept, but I did it so hard that auntie wouldn't let me any more. She said 'twas like trying to blow out a match with a tornado." ...
— Cy Whittaker's Place • Joseph C. Lincoln

... the door, and away they rushed, like a small tornado, across the porch, down the walk and ...
— The Story of the Big Front Door • Mary Finley Leonard

... as he entered the jail and found that the jailer could speak French, he broke out in a perfect tornado of enthusiasm. "Je serai charm, de lier connaissance avec un si amiable compagnon," said he, and continued in a strain so swift and unabated that it would have been impossible for an Englishman to have traced ...
— Manuel Pereira • F. C. Adams

... became apparent that the entire forlorn hope would perish before morning if exposed to the cold and storm. W. H. Eddy says the wind increased until it was a perfect tornado. About midnight, Antoine overcome by starvation, fatigue, and the bitter cold, ceased to breathe. Mr. F. W. Graves was dying. There was a point beyond which an iron nerve and a powerful constitution were unable to sustain a man. This point had ...
— History of the Donner Party • C.F. McGlashan

... into Martial's room like a tornado. "I think you must certainly have gone mad, Marquis," he exclaimed. "That is the only valid excuse you ...
— The Honor of the Name • Emile Gaboriau

... feet across space at the dizzy heights of the forest top, and grasp with unerring precision, and without apparent jar, a limb waving wildly in the path of an approaching tornado. ...
— Tarzan of the Apes • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... hasty Letter, addressed to his Mother, is not intrinsically his remarkablest from St. Vincent: but the body of fact delineated in it being so much the greatest, we will quote it in preference. A West-Indian tornado, as John Sterling witnesses it, and with vivid authenticity describes it, may be considered worth ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle

... "GOLDEN or soft radiances" which we saw in him, admirable to Voltaire and to Friedrich, and to an esurient philanthropic world,—it is not those, it is "the STEEL-BRIGHT or stellar kind," that are to become predominant in Friedrich's existence: grim hail-storms, thunders and tornado for an existence to him, instead of the opulent genialities and halcyon weather, anticipated by himself and others! Indisputably enough to us, if not yet to Friedrich, "Reinsberg and Life to the Muses" are done. On a sudden, ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... had expected. She had been prepared for tempestuous, for overwhelming, wrath. The absence of this oddly disconcerted her. Her own tornado of indignation was checked. She answered him ...
— The Odds - And Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell

... distribution as wide as that, would not acceptably, I should say, have so specialized in the rare substance called "marsh paper." There'd have been falls of fence rails, roofs of houses, parts of trees. Nothing is said of the occurrence of a tornado in northern Europe, in January, 1686. There is record only of this one substance having fallen in ...
— The Book of the Damned • Charles Fort

... stood near the river, and while talking with the people within doors, I was suddenly struck with astonishment at a loud rushing roar, succeeded by instant darkness, which for the first moment I took for a tornado about to overwhelm the house, and every thing around, in destruction. The people observing my surprise, coolly said, 'It is only the pigeons,' and on running out, I beheld a flock thirty or forty ...
— Stories about the Instinct of Animals, Their Characters, and Habits • Thomas Bingley

... he knew what intense artillery work meant, but he realised that day that hitherto he had seen and heard nothing. Such a tornado of shells burst around him that it was like hell let loose. Hour after hour the Germans bombarded our trenches, tearing great holes in the ground, and undoing the work of months. It seemed to Tom that ...
— Tommy • Joseph Hocking

... days. But just when all my troubles seemed ended and the rainbow of promise in the sky, a new cloud appeared, black and threatening. In fact it swept down like a tornado. The men decided ...
— The Iron Puddler • James J. Davis

... street organ without a certain pleasure—a pleasure mingled with pain, for its happy lilt comes weighted with the tremendous emotions of those unforgettable days. It is like a butterfly caught in a tornado, a catch of song in the ...
— Pebbles on the Shore • Alpha of the Plough (Alfred George Gardiner)

... the bark of the eighteen-pounders could be faintly distinguished above the dull roar of the eight-inches. The sky-line was lit up with thousands of flashes, large and small, each one showing, for a second, trenches or trees or houses, and during this tornado we knew that the "Willies" must have ...
— Life in a Tank • Richard Haigh

... pressure tightened; there were mutterings of the coming storm, against which the rulers of Venice were planning defense; there was an oppression, like a sense of mental sirocco, in the air—a vague terror of the unknown among the people, gathering like the blighting breath which precedes some fierce tornado—while in the palace of San Marco, the Doge, Marino Grimani, Chief of the Republic in revolt against ...
— A Golden Book of Venice • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull

... a great storm or tornado which had visited the South Coast about six years before, when a large number of ships, sheltering in Torbay, were swept out by a sudden change in the wind and over forty of them were sunk. This happened in the month of January, when drifting snow filled the eyes of the spectators, who were within ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor

... with palsy, Can make their daughters see and talk with ghosts, Or fall into delirium and convulsions; I have the Evil Eye, the Evil Hand; A touch from me and they are weak with pain, A look from me, and they consume and die. The death of cattle and the blight of corn, The shipwreck, the tornado, and the fire,— These are my doings, and they know it not. Thus I work vengeance on mine enemies Who, while they call me slave, are slaves ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

... from the former in an emergency was a serious task in the twelfth century. Moreover, Kyoto was devastated in 1177 by a conflagration which reduced one-third of the city to ashes, and in April of 1180 by a tornado of most destructive force, so that superstitious folk, who abounded in that age, began to speak ominously ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi

... Scotch tune, Dugald Shaw set to work again on the boat. In the face of difficulty or opposition he always grew more brisk and cheerful. I used to wonder whether in the event of a tornado he would not warm into positive geniality. Perhaps it would not have needed a tornado, if I had not begun by suspecting him of conspiring against Aunt Jane's pocket, or if the Triumvirate, inspired by Mr. Tubbs, had not sat in gloomy judgment on his every movement. ...
— Spanish Doubloons • Camilla Kenyon

... run. There is a great hubbub, like the roaring of a tornado, as they sweep under the line, yellow ahead. You swing your hat, and yell as loud as you can. You are ten thousand in. Oh, it is just the jolliest excitement a man ...
— Daughters of the Revolution and Their Times - 1769 - 1776 A Historical Romance • Charles Carleton Coffin

... to close quarters; (42) whether he has taken to the water, or stands at bay against some craggy bank, or does not choose to come out from some thicket (since neither net nor anything else hinders him from bearing down like a tornado on whoever approaches); still, even so, advance they must, come what come may, to the attack. And now for a display of that hardihood which first induced them to indulge a passion not fit for carpet ...
— The Sportsman - On Hunting, A Sportsman's Manual, Commonly Called Cynegeticus • Xenophon

... With that great tornado, the wind took a leap of more points of the compass than I can tell. Barnes, the fisherman, said how many; but I might be quite wrong in repeating it. One thing, at any rate, was within my compass—it ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore

... what was to come, we wise virgins (pardon the simile) huddled in our booby hutches (unfortunately without lamps) and congratulated ourselves on our astuteness. Soon it came, the lightning flashing, the thunder crashing, the rain pouring, and lastly the wind blowing a perfect tornado. The various jerry-built domiciles stood it well for some time, then the hutch behind us was blown down, and we in ours roared with glee; then another went, and finally the wind, not being able to get at us by a frontal attack, took us on the ...
— A Yeoman's Letters - Third Edition • P. T. Ross

... between this and the last water. The weather during our halt had been very warm, the thermometer had tried to go over 100 degrees in the shade, but fell short by one degree. Yesterday was an abominable day; a heated tornado blew from the west from morning until night and continued until this morning, when, without apparent change otherwise, and no clouds, the temperature of the wind entirely altered and we had an exceedingly cool ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles

... towering pine of the plain and the mountain,—from the low murmurings of the quiet rivulet, to the loud thunderings of the headlong cataract,—and from the soft whisperings of the gentle breeze, to the angry roar of the desolating tornado; and, finally, it was here that our first and most enduring lessons of devotion were learned, here that our first and truest conceptions of the grand and beautiful were acquired, and here that the leading tone of our intellectual character, such as it may be, ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson

... a river, I can sail beyond it; a storm, I can rise away above it; a torrent, I can skim it like a bird! I can advance without fatigue, I can halt without need of repose! I can soar above the nascent cities! I can speed onward with the rapidity of a tornado, sometimes at the loftiest heights, sometimes only a hundred feet above the soil, while the map of Africa unrolls itself beneath my gaze in the ...
— Five Weeks in a Balloon • Jules Verne

... pursued Toussaint, "that you encouraged my children, when they, who fear neither the wild bull nor the tornado, looked somewhat fearfully up to the eclipsed moon? Who was it but you who told them, that though that blessed light seemed blotted out from the sky, it was not so; but that behind the black shadow, God's hand was still leading her on, through the heaven, still pouring radiance ...
— The Hour and the Man - An Historical Romance • Harriet Martineau

... to say that I have just read in an evening paper a terrible account of the total destruction by a tornado of the town in Canada which was poor TOM's place of exile. "The loss of life," it is added, "has been great, and several Englishmen are amongst the victims." No names are given. Good gracious! ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, December 12, 1891 • Various

... we are jogging home to England. I resist myself for duty's sake: that I can do. But if the squire were here with his yea and his nay, by heavens! I should be off to the top of the Rhine like a tornado. I submit to circumstances: I cannot, and I will not, be ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... the mother country, it was in a back room of the tavern that the adherents of the crown met to discuss matters. The landlord himself was a amateur loyalist, and when the full cloud was on the eve of breaking he had an early intimation of the coming tornado. The Sons of Liberty had long watched with sullen eyes the secret sessions of the Tories in Master Stavers's tavern, and one morning the patriots quietly began cutting down the post which supported the obnoxious ...
— An Old Town By The Sea • Thomas Bailey Aldrich

... bellowing of cattle, the neighing of horses, the howling of dogs, and the strange notes of distress and fright from other domestic animals, strangely blending with the roar of the flames and the thunder of the tornado, beggars description. ...
— Thrilling Adventures by Land and Sea • James O. Brayman

... sitting in the midst of piles of birds. Dung several inches thick covered the ground. Many trees two feet in diameter were broken off at no great distance from the ground, and the branches of many of the tallest and largest had given way, as if the forest had been swept by a tornado. ...
— The Story of My Boyhood and Youth • John Muir

... as to them and myself, that I early pinned my faith to organized charity as just orderly charity, and I have found good reasons since to confirm me in the choice. If any doubt had lingered in my mind, my experience in helping distribute the relief fund to the tornado sufferers at Woodhaven a dozen years ago would have dispelled it. It does seem as if the chance of getting something for nothing is, on the whole, the greatest temptation one can hold out to frail human nature, whether in the slum, in Wall Street, or ...
— The Making of an American • Jacob A. Riis

... were still engaged in their work of conquest, the Mongols arose, and under the formidable Genghis Khan swept over Southern Asia like a tornado, leaving death and desolation in their track. The conqueror died in 1227,—for death is a foe that vanquishes even the greatest of warriors,—and was succeeded by his son Octoi, as Great Khan of the Mongols ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 8 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris

... Anales de Cuauhtitlan speaks of Mixcoatl as one of the leaders of the ancient Nahuas from their primitive home Chicomoztoc, the land of the Seven Caves. This is what is referred to in the above hymn. In later times Mixcoatl became god of hunting and of the tornado, and his ...
— Rig Veda Americanus - Sacred Songs Of The Ancient Mexicans, With A Gloss In Nahuatl • Various

... be banished in this crushing and summary fashion overwhelmed Phoebe, and that utterly. Her nature, however, was not one nourished from any very deep wells of character. She belonged to a class who suffer bitterly enough under sorrow, but the storm of it while tearing like a tropical tornado over heart and soul, leaves no traces that lapse of time cannot wholly and speedily obliterate. On them it may be said that fortune's sharpest strokes inflict no lasting scars; their dispositions are happily powerless to harbour ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts

... now they're at the Bar they can order what they please," said TANNER. Well the SPEAKER didn't hear him. Later, on eve of final division, he offered another remark in louder tone. SPEAKER thundered down upon him like a tornado, and TANNER quiet for rest ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, April 16, 1892 • Various

... tornado! Look how you have crushed that cluster of heliotrope, rushing over the flower-beds as if there were no walks." He pointed with the end of his whip to a ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans

... right to aver that this calamity so colossal in its proportions and awful in its character is a judgment upon our sister city for its great wickedness. I heard similar declarations when Chicago was swept by its tornado of flame. Neither Chicago nor San Francisco could claim to be pre-eminent in righteousness, but, that Divine Providence should visit the vials of His wrath in an especial manner upon them because of their iniquity, is utterly repugnant both ...
— Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror • Richard Linthicum

... him shout to the Norwegian, perfectly ignorant whether P—— was addressing him with excess of passion, or a tornado of praise; "didn't I tell you, as well as I could, to pull faster? Do you think cat-gut is ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross

... reconnoiter—and then, lowering his head and elevating his tail, put forth all his speed. And such speed! Talk of a deer, the wind, or a steam-engine—their gait is not to be compared with it. Nothing in nature I have ever seen run—except, it may be, a Southern tornado, or a Sixth Ward politician—could hope to distance that pig. He gained on the horse at every pace, and I soon saw that my ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various

... force was arranged in a whirling, swirling, almost cylindrical cone, more or less like an Earthly tornado. The largest vessels were high above the stratosphere; the smallest fighters were hedge-hoppingly close to ground. Each Dilipic unit seemed madly, suicidally determined that nothing would get through that furious wall ...
— The Galaxy Primes • Edward Elmer Smith

... her and gaining mastery. She fairly boiled with rage, she blazed and flamed inwardly with a conflagration of resentment. It was all she could do not to tear down the curtain, spring on Bambilio, wrench his scourge from his hand and lay it on him. She kept still and silent, but she felt her inward tornado of emotion gaining strength. ...
— The Unwilling Vestal • Edward Lucas White

... I say of the Napoleon of Mr. Turner? called (with frightful satire) "The Exile and the Rock Limpet." He stands in the midst of a scarlet tornado looking at least forty feet high. "Ah!" says the mysterious poet from whom Mr. Turner ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook

... is not, after all, a tornado that has swept across the Gardens, and rooted up all these trees, but merely the firm that has taken the contract for the making of the ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100. March 14, 1891. • Various

... leader, he was a picturesque and familiar figure to friend and foe alike, as in his broad cavalier's hat, his gold-bedizened jacket, and high cavalry boots, with his long hair streaming in the wind, he would ride like a tornado, to the accompaniment of "Garry Owen," his favorite battle-air, carrying all before him—a subject worthy the pencil of a Vandyke, the very type of the dashing trooper of romance. But that there was a method in his dash and a practical element ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 6 of 8 • Various

... the little figures, fascinated; they stood for some vast and tremendous force outside, which could not be controlled or even comprehended,—some merciless, annihilating force, like the lightning or the tornado. And he had put himself at the mercy of it; it might do its will with him! "Tr. C. 59 5/8" read the little pasteboard; and he had only six points of safety. If at any time in the day that figure should be changed to read "53 5/8"—then every dollar of Montague's sixty thousand would be gone for ...
— The Metropolis • Upton Sinclair

... died, Anthony Wayne; gentleman, soldier, statesman, patriot. "Mad," "Dandy," "Black Snake," "Tornado." Angry with traitors—Neat-Courageous—Irresistible. None can study his life without feeling the nobleness of his character. Courtly in manners, honorable to a degree, high in aspirations, unselfishly for country, magnanimous in victory, loyal ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 2 of 8 • Various

... torpid pulse in the keen fight with the wind, whose violence was almost equal to that of a tornado, and the familiar faces of the bright stars above me, I felt as a blessed relief. I ran not knowing whither, and when I halted, the square outline of the house was lost in the alder bushes. An uninterrupted plain ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte

... O son of AEolus! All hail to thee, most high Borean lord! The lineal descendant of the Winds art thou. Child of the Cyclone, Cousin to the Hurricane, Tornado's twin, All hail! The zephyrs of the balmy south Do greet thee; The eastern winds, great Boston's pride, In manner osculate caress thy massive cheek; Freeze onto thee, And at thy word throw off congealment And take on a soft caloric mood; And from afar, From Afric's strand, Siroccan greetings ...
— Cobwebs from a Library Corner • John Kendrick Bangs

... cried out angrily, "Keep your hands for pounding on your Bible, don't be sticking them in my face." One day in a game against the Scrub, Cowan had passed everyone except the fullback and was bearing down on him like a tornado, when within a few feet of the fullback the latter jumped aside and said politely, "Pass on, sir, pass on." Cowan played on two winning teams, '85 ...
— Football Days - Memories of the Game and of the Men behind the Ball • William H. Edwards

... the girl he paused a moment and dropped the paper into her lap. It was a rude sketch of their first meeting, the bull coming at him like a tornado. The color came to her face, and when Clayton turned the corner of the ...
— A Mountain Europa • John Fox Jr.

... fascination of the fair but treacherous Egyptian queen. Achilles was a symbolical as well as an historical character. There was one place—with him in the heel—where he was vulnerable, and through that he fell. Socrates was like a tornado when inflamed by anger. Napoleon laid Europe waste and desolated more distant lands, but he was an enormous egotist and morally a ...
— The Ascent of the Soul • Amory H. Bradford

... flash of lightning would stream from the impending cloud downward upon the river; and, in momentary expectation of a regular tornado, on we spurred to reach ...
— Impressions of America - During the years 1833, 1834 and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Tyrone Power

... Ahab said to that tiger-yellow crew of his —these were words best omitted here; for you live under the blessed light of the evangelical land. Only the infidel sharks in the audacious seas may give ear to such words, when, with tornado brow, and eyes of red murder, and foam-glued lips, Ahab leaped after his prey. Meanwhile, all the boats tore on. The repeated specific allusions of Flask to that whale, as he called the fictitious monster which ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville

... decorated with a yak's head and many Buddhist emblems. High above, on a rude gallery, fifty monks were gathered with their musical instruments. As soon as the Kan-po or abbot, Punt-sog-sogman (the most perfect Merit), received us at the gate, the monkish orchestra broke forth in a tornado of sound of a most tremendous and thrilling quality, which was all but overwhelming, as the mountain echoes took up and prolonged the sound of fearful blasts on six-foot silver horns, the bellowing thunder of six-foot drums, the clash of cymbals, and the dissonance of a number of monster gongs. ...
— Among the Tibetans • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs Bishop)

... through canyon and crevasse in its eager haste to reach the centre of the battle of elements. It pounced upon the blinding smoke-cloud and swept it from its path and plunged to the heart of the conflagration with a shriek and roar of cruel delight. One breath, like the breath of a tornado, and its boisterous lungs had sent its mischief broadcast in the flash of an eye. With a howl of delight it tore out the blazing roof of the house, and, lifting it bodily, hurled it like a molten meteor against the dark walls of the adjacent ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum

... in their language, one which their remote ancestors brought with them from the Antilles, which finds its meaning in the ancient tongue of Haiti, and which, under the forms of hurricane, ouragan, orkan, was adopted into European marine languages as the native name of the terrible tornado of the Caribbean Sea.[51-2] Mixcohuatl, the Cloud Serpent, chief divinity of several tribes in ancient Mexico, is to this day the correct term in their language for the tropical whirlwind, and the natives of Panama worshipped the same phenomenon under the name Tuyra.[52-1] To kiss the air was ...
— The Myths of the New World - A Treatise on the Symbolism and Mythology of the Red Race of America • Daniel G. Brinton

... heat of the sun arises from consumption of matter, which may not be true; secondly, that it is not a self replenishing process, as it certainly may be. Some have even surmised that the zodiacal light is an illuminated tornado of stones showering into the sun to feed its tremendous conflagration. The whole scheme is a fine toy, but a very faint terror. Even if it be true, then we are to perish at last from lack of fire, and not, as commonly feared, from ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger

... and how easily human beings accustom themselves to a new condition of things. When sudden illness comes, or sudden sorrow, or a house is burned up, or blown down by a tornado, there are a few hours or days of confusion and bewilderment, and then people gather up their wits and their courage and set to work to repair damages. They clear away ruins, plant, rebuild, very much as ants whose hill has been trodden ...
— What Katy Did Next • Susan Coolidge

... again, the daily tornado would rage with such fury as to defeat its own purpose by prematurely exhausting itself. On these rare occasions we would sit out on the deck, and enjoy the unwonted luxury of ...
— Novel Notes • Jerome K. Jerome

... try to kill me?" cried this unbelievable Margarita, and turning in her seat with the swiftness of a panther she slapped him, a stinging, biting blow, flat across his cheek. A tornado of answering rage whirled him out of himself and seizing her wrists, he bent ...
— Margarita's Soul - The Romantic Recollections of a Man of Fifty • Ingraham Lovell

... for the Michigan Farmer, on the important subject, as a matter of taste, of "ornamental and shade trees." New settlers are bent on denuding their lands of every tree, and a newly opened farm looks as if a tornado had ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft

... serious thing indeed: Nine times in ten 't is but caprice or fashion, Coquetry, or a wish to take the lead, The pride of a mere child with a new sash on, Or wish to make a rival's bosom bleed: But the tenth instance will be a tornado, For there 's no saying what ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron

... through star systems; back, back beyond all stars, back to the blackness of nothing— that awful nothing, whose outside ring vibrated with fearful flames; the fiery cherubim, winged, taking all possible shapes, and unformed living shapes. A human flamed and changed and vanished. The tornado of whirling, flashing, chaotic life swirled and drove through the darkness of chaos of nothing from nothing—and that great, unknown abyss is God! But the life ...
— The Light of Egypt, Volume II • Henry O. Wagner/Belle M. Wagner/Thomas H. Burgoyne

... were examined, and everything made as secure as possible. At the same time Paul surveyed the black sky with secret misgivings, wondering what they would have to do should a tornado sweep down upon them there on the side of the mountains, and ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts on a Tour - The Mystery of Rattlesnake Mountain • George A. Warren

... the boat up beyond, as I thought, the reach of the sea, and started to hunt for food and water. I found enough berries and things to keep me alive, but not enough to stock my boat for another cruise. A week after I landed there was a tornado, and when it cleared off and I had recovered from my fright—for the trees were blown down like rushes, and I thought my last day was come—I found that the boat was washed away. I was mightily disheartened at this, and after much thinking made up my mind that there was nought for it but ...
— By England's Aid • G. A. Henty

... the yards, all of you," shouted McAllister. The men required no second command. A glance at the quickly changing sky and water told them what was approaching. They slid down the rigging, and in silence awaited the bursting of the tornado. The Frenchmen who were on the deck looked pale and anxious, as if they dreaded the consequences of the hurricane. Bambrick and another good hand went to the helm. A part of the fore-staysail was hoisted, just to pay the vessel's head off. We were not kept long in suspense. With a loud hiss ...
— Marmaduke Merry - A Tale of Naval Adventures in Bygone Days • William H. G. Kingston

... interpreted—which usually it is not. The greatest of all the etudes is the "Revolutionary," Op. 10, No. 12. It was written by Chopin in 1831, when he heard the news that Warsaw had been taken by the Russians, and it expresses the tornado of emotion that swept over him when he realized that Poland was about to sink beneath the triple onslaught of Russia, Austria and Germany. This composition which, mind you, goes by the simple name of "study," is one of the most tremendous ...
— The Pianolist - A Guide for Pianola Players • Gustav Kobb

... motionless, the strange noise was audible. It was a deep, hollow roar rapidly increasing in volume and intensity, and resembled the warning of a tornado or cyclone advancing through the forest. The animals, as is the case at such times, were nervous and frightened. They elevated their heads, pricked their ears, snuffed the air and the animal of ...
— A Waif of the Mountains • Edward S. Ellis

... not rejoice to have saved a man, but rather at getting rid of him. If you received news that a tornado had caught your ship and sunk it with every soul on board, what joy it would give you! You are not thinking of the flour-trade with its profits and losses, but that every year in the swamps of La Plata and the river Amazon that fearful specter walks—the ...
— Timar's Two Worlds • Mr Jkai

... tornado, and wanted to make sure his old houseboat didn't get carried away," laughed George, as he watched the other secure both ends of the Comfort with cables, that he tested ...
— Motor Boat Boys Down the Coast - or Through Storm and Stress to Florida • Louis Arundel

... Watts McHurdie's buggy. He had just let Nellie Logan out at the Wards', where she lived. After a "Hello, Watts; getting pretty late for an old man like you," Hendricks answered: "Well, you know John—when he gets a thing in his head he's a regular tornado. There was an immense crowd in town to-day—depositors and all that. And do you know, John went out this afternoon with a paper in his hand, and five hundred dollars he dug out of his safe over in the office, and he got options to lease their land for a year signed up by the owners ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White

... hurricane, or a tornado! Truth will come in her book, and he that reads must expect to see it—Captain Ludlow, you are master of your movements, again; for the inlet is no longer between you and your cruiser. Behind yon hillock is the boat and crew you missed. The latter expect you. And now, gentlemen, ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper

... resounding crash, easily audible above the tornado raging in the garden, followed by the sound of splintering glass. Hush Hall ...
— All In It K(1) Carries On - A Continuation of the First Hundred Thousand • John Hay Beith (AKA: Ian Hay)



Words linked to "Tornado" :   crack, crack cocaine, twister, cyclone, tornado lantern



Copyright © 2024 Diccionario ingles.com