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Narrowing   /nˈɛroʊɪŋ/   Listen
Narrowing

adjective
1.
Becoming gradually narrower.  Synonyms: tapered, tapering.  "Trousers with tapered legs"
2.
(of circumstances) tending to constrict freedom.  Synonyms: constricting, constrictive.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Narrowing" Quotes from Famous Books



... guessed her words stung him now and then, bore them without wincing. While she sat silent, shivering under her furs, darkness crept down. The smoky cloud dropped lower, the horizon closed in as the gray obscurity rolled up to meet them across a rapidly-narrowing strip of snow. Then she could scarcely see the horses, and the muffled drumming of their hoofs was lost in a doleful wail of wind. It also seemed to her that the cold, which was already almost insupportable, suddenly increased, ...
— Winston of the Prairie • Harold Bindloss

... she whispered in return, and then, marvelling at her boldness, blushed. He glanced sharply at her from narrowing eyes. It was not the answer he had ...
— The Tavern Knight • Rafael Sabatini

... was ready Jock whistled for his companion, and on looking out was surprised to find him gone; but from the narrowing walls of the gorge came the sound of his furious barking. Jock whistled again and again, but the dog did not come. Perfectly convinced that something was wrong, he seized his rifle and hurried off, expecting to find that Collie had cornered ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various

... "General hue a dusky greenish-brown, the hairs being ringed brown and yellow; lower parts the same, but lighter; and with a pale buff line; a stripe from the throat to the vent, broadest between the forearms and then narrowing; ears livid red, with a few short hairs; palms and soles dark livid red." Dr. Anderson remarks that the fur is of two kinds of hairs—one fine and wavy at the extremity, banded with black, yellow and black; the second being strong and somewhat bristly, longer ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale

... order at first contemplated, to bring them into any sort of English perfection, and my parents found that they could not afford it; and so all resulted in semi-comfort and rough appearances. This narrowing of means was caused not a little by the want of veracity of a person whom my father had trusted with entire affection and a very considerable loan, about which we none of us ever heard again. A crust becomes more than proverbially dry under ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop

... up. The carriage rolled off; rows of apple-trees followed one upon another, and the road between its two long ditches, full of yellow water, rose, constantly narrowing ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert

... "that we are losing this—all this! And yet we have won it! Mon Dieu, have we not won it? Yet for whom, alas? Maximilian?—Faw, an ungrateful puppet such as that, to have, to take from us, such as—this! Now suppose," her lips formed the unuttered words, while her gray eyes closed to a narrowing cunning, "just suppose that we—that someone—reminds His Majesty how ingratitude falls short of courtesy ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle

... of being recovered by copper plates; and even if it were, narrow sluice plates were a step in the wrong direction. If anything the amalgamating surface should be widened to give the particles of gold a better chance to settle. His argument was that the conditions should be changed; by narrowing the stream and giving it less fall, gold, which was incapable of amalgamation on the wide plates, would be saved. We finally put one in, and it proved so successful that we now have one at the end ...
— Getting Gold • J. C. F. Johnson

... associations or to encumber himself with functions which, however he might believe in them, he felt were duties for other men and not for him. Even the care of his garden, "with its stoopings and fingerings in a few yards of space," he found "narrowing and poisoning," and took to long free walks and saunterings instead, without apology. "Causes" innumerable sought to enlist him as their "worker"—all got his smile and word of sympathy, but none entrapped him into service. The struggle against slavery ...
— Memories and Studies • William James

... between the fantastic stories of the earlier paganism and the clear records of the Christian epoch after the re-Latinisation of England. An outpost beyond these three is the institution of St Frideswides at Oxford. Beyond that point the upper river, gradually narrowing, losing its importance for commerce and as a highway, supported no great monastery, and felt but tardily the economic change wrought by the foundations ...
— The Historic Thames • Hilaire Belloc

... name given to the circle of hunters which, gradually narrowing, hemmed the deer into a small space, where ...
— Claverhouse • Mowbray Morris

... of 193 deg. 30'; and in the strait, or passage, that separates this island from those that lie to the north of it, and whose position before the harbour shelters it from the winds that blow from that quarter. It runs in S. by W., about four miles, and is about a mile broad at the entrance, narrowing toward the head, where its breadth is not above a quarter of a mile, and where ships can lie land-locked, in seven, six, and four fathoms water. Great plenty of good water may be easily got, but not a single stick ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 16 • Robert Kerr

... mistaken in supposing that as the field of vision shrank some strange forms appeared; but I could be certain of none which were essentially different from those revealed by the largest telescopes. My narrowing and intensifying process then began to warn me of another failure: when I had reached the last point at which the image could be held at all, the grain of the steel plate was like great ropes, and it was only after resting my eyes for some time, then suddenly turning ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various

... narrowing down. There was a restlessness about the court; time was getting on and everything pointed one way. After some discussion with the jury, the foreman of it, a stout, pretentious fellow, rose to his feet and whispered a few hurried words ...
— The Riddle of the Frozen Flame • Mary E. Hanshew

... Billy started and whirled around. In the rush of incoming passengers, they had been looking for some one smaller, more childish than this tall girl who stood before them. She was not at all pretty. Her brown hair was too straight and lank and light, and her grey eyes had a trick of narrowing themselves to a line; but her expression was frank and open, and she wore her simple grey suit with an air which spoke volumes for her past training. Across her arm hung a bright golf cape with a tag end of grey fur sticking out from ...
— Phebe, Her Profession - A Sequel to Teddy: Her Book • Anna Chapin Ray

... ambition; he shared none of Cardinal Wolsey's belated penitence for that healthy stimulant, as he had shared none of the fruits; his poison was that of the will — the distortion of sight — the warping of mind — the degradation of tissue — the coarsening of taste — the narrowing of sympathy to the emotions of a caged rat. Hay needed no office in order to wield influence. For him, influence lay about the streets, waiting for him to stoop to it; he enjoyed more than enough ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams

... should be understanding of life and understanding of nature instincts and understanding of sex instincts; and a ruthless tearing away of the false values which a Victorian age grafted upon religion, narrowing the mind of woman as to man's needs—and narrowing man's conception of ...
— Three Things • Elinor Glyn

... hear, finally sidled along one side while he was patrolling the other, made her timid way to the stern and stood there clinging to the flagstaff, and became absorbed in the rush of the foaming, boiling waters unrolling a gradually narrowing streak of dazzling white through the blue-green waste of billows, all sparkling in the slanting sunshine. Wheeling in flapping circles overhead, skimming the crested waves, settling down and lazily floating on the heaving flood, so many dots of snow upon the sapphire, the flock of gulls ...
— A Wounded Name • Charles King

... tumor, a disease of the arteries or a general hardened infiltration of the brain. The tumors are small, yellowish, and cheesy in the center. They originate in the "Dura Mater" (covering) and spread to the brain structure proper. The disease of the arteries causes a thickening of these vessels, a narrowing of the blood channel in them, ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter

... sheer drop, and a land slip had cut away the ledge itself a few feet behind the flitter. There was only a steadily narrowing ...
— Star Hunter • Andre Alice Norton

... while they had now wherewith to live; and if it seem to my reader that the horizon of hope was narrowing around them, it does not follow that it must have seemed so to them. For what is the extent of our merely rational horizon at any time? But for faith and imagination it would be a narrow one indeed! Even what we call experience is but a stupid kind of faith. It is ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald

... Layson with a curiosity which was almost calm, as, for a moment quite bewildered, he ran from side to side of their rapidly narrowing space of safety, endeavoring to find a weak spot in the wall of flames through which they might escape, but failing everywhere. For a moment she thought that he had lost his head, and thus proved all too true those tales which she had heard of "foreigners." It was almost as one race gazing at another ...
— In Old Kentucky • Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey

... small and narrow, as compared with those worn by the Roro and Mekeo people; and the women's bands seemed to me to be generally even narrower than those of the men, particularly in front. Men's bands, which I have measured, were about 6 inches wide at one end, narrowing down to about 3 inches at the other; and the widths of women's bands were 4 or 5 inches or less at one end, narrowing down to about 2 inches at the other. But the bands of both men and women, especially ...
— The Mafulu - Mountain People of British New Guinea • Robert W. Williamson

... feared my mere mass might drag her over. I peered about at the surroundings. No tree grew near; no rock had a pinnacle sufficiently safe to depend upon. But I found a plan soon. In the crag behind me was a cleft, narrowing wedge-shape as it descended. I tied the end of the rope round a stone, a good big water-worn stone, rudely girdled with a groove near the middle, which prevented it from slipping; then I dropped it down the fissure till it jammed; after ...
— Miss Cayley's Adventures • Grant Allen

... unequally distributed. Population was most dense near the coast and gradually shaded off toward the interior. The front wave of civilisation may be located by an irregular line passing through central New Hampshire, skirting Lake Champlain, narrowing down to the Mohawk valley, and across north-western New Jersey, whence it turned due west across the mountains in a long arm reaching to Pittsburg. Retreating to the Shenandoah valley, it descended to central Georgia and thence to ...
— The United States of America Part I • Ediwn Erle Sparks

... made of ropes and of thumb-screws. The delicate balance of faith was overthrown and it was put into a condition of unstable equilibrium; the avalanche, started by ever so gentle a push, swept onward until it buried the men who tried to stop it half way. Dogma slowly narrowing down from precedent to precedent had its logical, though unintended, outcome in complete religious autonomy, yes, in infidelity ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith

... from Europe in the late autumn of '93, he expected to go forthwith to the station of his regiment and devote his energies to those ceaseless, engrossing, yet somewhat narrowing duties that keep a man of mature years, capable of much better things, attending roll-calls, drilling two sets of fours addressed by courtesy as "company," grilling on the rifle-range, and consuming hours of valuable time in work allotted in older ...
— A Tame Surrender, A Story of The Chicago Strike • Charles King

... fix ye, ye drunken, thavin' loafer," and at the same time he began to move upon the enemy in a kind of rhythmic, cryptic circle (some law governing anger and emotion, I presume), the while his hands opened and shut and his eyes looked as though they would be veiled completely by his narrowing lids. At the same time the stranger, apparently seeing his danger, began backing and circling in the same way around Rourke, as well as around the fire, until it looked as though they were performing a war dance. Round and round they went like two Hopi bucks or Zulu ...
— Twelve Men • Theodore Dreiser

... The efforts to teach and elevate him he appreciated still less. As has been said, he loved better to disfurnish the outside of other people's heads than to furnish the inside of his own. What he felt, and keenly, was that the newcomers treated him as an inferior, were day by day narrowing his range, and slowly but surely reducing his condition to that of a subject people. Dull as he was, he saw that one of three fates confronted him: to perish, to migrate, or to lay aside his savage character and mode of life. ...
— History of the United States, Vol. I (of VI) • E. Benjamin Andrews

... note," he snapped. Setting down his pen, he thrust out an unclean paw to snatch the folded sheet from Simonne's hand. He spread it, and read, his bloodless lips compressed, his eyes narrowing to slits. ...
— The Historical Nights Entertainment, Second Series • Rafael Sabatini

... rules and proprieties, which, as I have endeavoured to show, must inevitably have a narrowing influence on Tragedy, has, in France, been applied to Comedy much more advantageously. For this mixed species of composition has, as already seen, an unpoetical side; and some degree of artificial constraint, if not altogether essential to Comedy, is certainly beneficial ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black

... his eyes narrowing. Eyer was making his dislike entirely too plain. Jeter nudged him, but the question had ...
— Lords of the Stratosphere • Arthur J. Burks

... and in all practical matters the concrete links are the only things of importance. The human mind is essentially partial. It can be efficient at all only by picking out what to attend to, and ignoring everything else,—by narrowing its point of view. Otherwise, what little strength it has is dispersed, and it loses its way altogether. Man always wants his curiosity gratified for a particular purpose. If, in the case of the sparrow, ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James

... the trap, dig a hole in the soil to a depth of fifteen inches, (27) circular in shape, with a circumference at the top exactly corresponding to the crown and narrowing towards the bottom. For the rope and wooden clog likewise remove sufficient earth to let them both be lightly buried. That done, place the foot-gin deep enough to be just even with the surface of the soil, (28) and round the circle of the crown the cord-noose. The cord itself ...
— The Sportsman - On Hunting, A Sportsman's Manual, Commonly Called Cynegeticus • Xenophon

... difference is not great,—perhaps fourteen or fifteen inches,—but it caused the architect to correct it, in order to fit his front to the axis of the church, by throwing his entrance six or seven inches to the south, and narrowing to that extent the south door and south lancet. The effect was bad, even then, and went far to ruin the south window; but when, after the fire of 1194, the architect inserted his great rose, filling every inch of ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams

... was nerveless. It made Sally sick to watch her mother and to realise from the vacancy which so soon appeared upon her face that memory and a kind of futile pondering had robbed her brains of activity. With a bitter sense of grudge against life, a tightening of lips already thin, and a narrowing of eyes already discomfitingly merciless, Sally savagely told herself that she had to do everything alone. It was she who must save the situation. The arrogant grasp of this fact made a great impression upon her mind and her character. Henceforward she no longer dreamed about men, but was ...
— Coquette • Frank Swinnerton

... Silas Marner had lived in this solitude, his guineas rising in the iron pot, and his life narrowing and hardening itself more and more into a mere pulsation of desire and satisfaction that had no relation to any other being. His life had reduced itself to the functions of weaving and hoarding, without any contemplation of an end ...
— Silas Marner - The Weaver of Raveloe • George Eliot

... massacre of the Light Brigade encouraged the Russian general to advance again; his columns once more crossed the Woronzoff road, and re-occupied the redoubts in force. The immediate result was the narrowing of the communications between the front and the base. The use of a great length of this Woronzoff road was forbidden, and the British were restricted to the insufficient tracks through Kadikoi. A principal cause this of the difficulties of supply during the dread ...
— The Thin Red Line; and Blue Blood • Arthur Griffiths

... of small objects and bits of wood. The torpedo had hit her forward, but with the headway she still had the vessel drifted on, and the litter of debris came directly underneath Vane. With a sudden narrowing of his eyes, he saw what was left of a girl turning slowly over and over in the still ...
— Mufti • H. C. (Herman Cyril) McNeile

... examinations which were desired. It is a lake of note in this country, under the dominion of the Utahs, who resort to it for fish. Its greatest breadth is about fifteen miles, stretching far to the north, narrowing as it goes, and connecting ...
— The Life and Adventures of Kit Carson, the Nestor of the Rocky Mountains, from Facts Narrated by Himself • De Witt C. Peters

... Corridor of the Game-Board, are still preserved some of the terra-cotta pipes which served as connections to the main drain. They are actually faucet-jointed pipes of quite modern type, each section 2-1/2 feet in length and 6 inches in diameter at the wide end, and narrowing to 4 inches at the smaller end. 'Jamming was carefully prevented by a stop-ridge that ran round the outside of each narrow end a few inches from the mouth, while the inside of the butt, or broader end, was provided with a raised collar ...
— The Sea-Kings of Crete • James Baikie

... Emerson's contention that art is antagonistic to hurry? The argument neglects the fact that this present complex life is such because it has added one by one these separate interests to those which it has received as an inheritance, each of which in its own narrowing niche having been preserved under the ...
— Pictorial Composition and the Critical Judgment of Pictures • Henry Rankin Poore

... dizzy my brain! That child-love had softened my heart in its deep distress, and widened my soul. This new and mighty passion in whose grasp I was, this irresistible power that had seized and possessed my entire being, wrought my soul in quite a different sort, concentrating and narrowing my horizon till the human life outside the circle of our love seemed far, far away, as though I were gazing through the wrong end of a telescope. I had learned that he who truly loves is indeed born again, becomes a new and a different man. Was it ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton

... this the entire force of the Star Circle was needed. Divided into parties the men rode north, east, south, and west for a distance of about twenty miles. Then they trailed round and round, in a great, narrowing circle that took in that wide radius, and as the cattle were met, in bunches or small herds, they were gathered and driven into a common center until they formed ...
— Injun and Whitey to the Rescue • William S. Hart

... Lungchow, and the Great Tide at Hangchow, the last, the greatest of all, and a living wonder to this day of 'the open door,' while its rivals are lost in myth and oblivion.... The Great Bore charges up the narrowing river at a speed of ten and thirteen miles an hour, with a roar that can be heard for an hour ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa

... he gazed on, then let the parted bushes spring back, and, crossing over to the other side of the fort, surveyed the vaster emptiness of the great gulf. The Isabels stood out heavily upon the narrowing long band of red in the west, which gleamed low between their black shapes, and the Capataz thought of Decoud alone there with the treasure. That man was the only one who cared whether he fell into the hands of the Monterists or not, the Capataz reflected bitterly. ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad

... a short distance on the next day, Aug. 13, a loud roar was heard in the distance, and a course was laid for the river at the nearest point. The river at this point, about one mile above the falls, was 500 yards wide, narrowing to fifty yards a short distance below, where great clouds of spray floating in the air warned the weary travelers that their object had been attained. Quickly they proceeded to the scene, and a magnificent sight burst ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 822 - Volume XXXII, Number 822. Issue Date October 3, 1891 • Various

... between the rivers lies immediately under the fort. Its level surface is partially cultivated, but towards the lower extremity thickly covered with wood. Beyond their junction, the united streams are seen gliding at the base of high cliffs into the narrowing valley below. Forests, and those of the most picturesque character, interspersed with strips of prairie, clothe a great portion ...
— Old Fort Snelling - 1819-1858 • Marcus L. Hansen

... to spew forth of gleeds, The bright dwellings to burn; stood the beam of the burning For a mischief to menfolk; now nothing that quick was The loathly lift-flier would leave there forsooth; The war of the Worm was wide to be seen there, The narrowing foe's hatred anigh and afar, How he, the fight-scather, the folk of the Geats Hated and harm'd; shot he back to the hoard, His dark lordly hall, ere yet was the day's while; The land-dwellers had he in the light low encompass'd 2320 With bale and with ...
— The Tale of Beowulf - Sometime King of the Folk of the Weder Geats • Anonymous

... left in our mind about the outside cattle coming in. It seemed as though every beast on the run must have come in to the Stirling that night for a drink. Every water-hole out-bush is as the axis of a great circle, cattle pads narrowing into it like the spokes of a wheel, from every point of the compass, and along these pads around the Stirling mob after mob of cattle came in in single file, treading carelessly, until each old bull leader, scenting the camp, ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn

... tawny brown, her large dark eyes and his of true Saxon blue, her southern face, oval in shape, cream-colored in tint, and his, square, open, ruddy, Scandinavian,—yes, they would make a splendid pair by their very contrast; and Edgar, narrowing his ambition to his circumstances, was quietly resolved to win the day over Alick Corfield by inducing Leam to cross the Broad with him after she had so manifestly refused her old friend. It was but a small object of ambition, but we must do what we can, thought Edgar; and it is the best ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. XVII, No. 99, March, 1876 • Various

... men opposite looked for an instant into the narrowing gray eyes, noted a certain tightening of the square jaw and the clenching of a pair of very capable fists, and tarried not upon further orders. Sweeping the money into their pockets they quit the compartment, casting venomous back glances toward the young man whose lips could smile ...
— The Promise - A Tale of the Great Northwest • James B. Hendryx

... current continues three hundred and twenty-eight poles to a small rapid on the north side, from which it gradually widens to one thousand four hundred yards, and at the distance of five hundred and forty-eight poles reaches the head of the rapids, narrowing as it approaches them. Here the hills on the north which had withdrawn from the bank closely border the river, which, for the space of three hundred and twenty poles, makes its way over the rocks with a descent of thirty ...
— History of the Expedition under the Command of Captains Lewis and Clark, Vol. I. • Meriwether Lewis and William Clark

... the modern tendency to narrow the scope of redemption. Partial salvation is offered as a substitute for the salvation of the entire man. This tendency is a natural result of narrowing the import of the incarnation. It runs counter to orthodox Christology and the derivate doctrines. A divine economy is traceable in God's dealings with men; there is nothing purposeless, nothing otiose in God's dispensation. The Church's invariable answer to the Apollinarians was ...
— Monophysitism Past and Present - A Study in Christology • A. A. Luce

... they carry shields, and their usual arms on land are the campilan, a kind of short two-handed sword, wide at the tip and narrowing down to the hilt, the barong for close combat, the straight kris for thrusting and cutting, and the waved, serpent-like kris for thrusting only. They are dexterous in the use of arms, and can most skilfully decapitate ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman

... except Hence Sturgill on the wagon-tongue, who stopped whittling, and merely looked at the big man with narrowing eyes. ...
— Christmas Eve on Lonesome and Other Stories • John Fox, Jr.

... and if we would know what that means, we must look at the Europe of the tenth or even the fourteenth century, look at the theoretic maps of the Middle Ages, look at the legends and the pseudo-science of a civilisation which was shut up within itself and condemned for so long to fight in a narrowing circle against incessant attacks from without and the barbarism which this state of things kept alive within. Then perhaps we shall take things a little less for granted, and perhaps also we shall begin to think that if this great advance, the greatest ...
— Prince Henry the Navigator, the Hero of Portugal and of Modern Discovery, 1394-1460 A.D. • C. Raymond Beazley

... hutches, once inhabited by the skipper and his mate. Here there were great findings in the way of rubbish. Old clothes, old boots, an old top-hat of that extraordinary pattern you may see in the streets of Pernambuco, immensely tall, and narrowing towards the brim. A telescope without a lens, a volume of Hoyt, a nautical almanac, a great bolt of striped flannel shirting, a box of fish hooks. And in one corner—glorious find!—a coil of what seemed to be ten yards or so of ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole

... space between them, because they fill with ink, which afterwards dries and produces a thicker layer of black sediment than those elsewhere. The variations of pressure upon the pen can be easily noticed by the alternate widening and narrowing of the band between these two furrows. The tracing appears knotty and uneven when made by an untrained hand, while it appears uniformly thin, and generally tremulous or in zigzags when made by ...
— Disputed Handwriting • Jerome B. Lavay

... of this cattle trail, though it marked the passage of many hundred thousand cattle which preceded our Circle Dots, and was destined to afford an outlet to several millions more to follow. The trail proper consisted of many scores of irregular cow paths, united into one broad passageway, narrowing and widening as conditions permitted, yet ever leading northward. After a few years of continued use, it became as well defined as the ...
— The Log of a Cowboy - A Narrative of the Old Trail Days • Andy Adams

... of sportsmen, who, by surrounding a great space, and gradually narrowing, brought immense quantities of deer together, which usually made desperate efforts to breach through ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott

... the narrowing cleft of the valley, where natural galleries in the rock of Mercury led to the places where the copper cables were anchored, and farther, into the unexplored ...
— A World is Born • Leigh Douglass Brackett

... upper windows of either side. What had at first been a mere greatly elongated oval, with a species of rapidly diminishing tail at each extremity, had now become an arc spanning no inconsiderable part of the space above me, narrowing rapidly as it extended downwards and sternwards. Presently it came in view through the upper lens, but did not obscure in the least the image of the stars which were then visible in the metacompass. I very ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg

... the final judgments thereof, the exaggerated import previously given to those functions pre-supposed an equal necessity in this subdivision of the management of the corporation. This proved to be incorrect. It was found that after a careful framing and narrowing of the matter in dispute by the Issues department, and a thorough and careful sifting of facts by the Expert and Investigation departments, the dispute gradually, if not wholly, disappeared. Men of the highest character and calibre being employed at large salaries as heads of these departments, ...
— The Man in Court • Frederic DeWitt Wells

... strength. The criticism of both clergy and laity in this matter is widespread and very often justifiable. We could willingly endorse what Cardinal Newman wrote to a friend: "Instead of aiming at being a world-wide power, we are shrinking into ourselves, narrowing the lines of communion, trembling at freedom of thought, and using the language of dismay and despair at the prospect before us, instead of the high spirit of the warrior going out conquering and to conquer."—(Life, by Ward ...
— Catholic Problems in Western Canada • George Thomas Daly

... ago, and as I am one of its members, it gives occupation for another day or two days of a week. I hope it will be able to do much good; at all events it will be abundantly supplied with cases. This life is very narrowing,—we talk nothing but negro, we think nothing but negro; and yet it develops a man at almost every point. From house-carpenter to Chief Justice is a long way. And in one who uses the opportunity ...
— Letters from Port Royal - Written at the Time of the Civil War (1862-1868) • Various

... on the pursuing tide. As the level of the passage rose, so, too, did the waters rise until it soon became apparent to me, who brought up the rear, that they were gaining rapidly upon us. I could understand the reason for this, as with the narrowing expanse of Omean as the waters rose toward the apex of its dome, the rapidity of its rise would increase in inverse ratio to the ever-lessening ...
— The Gods of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... were the white-crowned sparrows, which pursued the narrowing valleys until they were merged into the snowy gorges that rive the sides of the towering twin peaks. In the arctic gulches the scrubby copses came to an end, and therefore the white-crowns ascended no higher, for they are, in ...
— Birds of the Rockies • Leander Sylvester Keyser

... road—good, that is to say, for riding or marching, as no roads in Kashmir are adapted for wheeled traffic excepting the main artery from Baramula to Srinagar, and the greater portion of the route from Srinagar to Gulmarg. This road we followed up a gradually narrowing valley, and over a brawling little river, until at Kralpura the Gilgit road begins the steep ascent to the Tragbal by a series of wide zigzags up the face of a mountain. The pass which we should have had to ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne

... a very sad November afternoon, when the Northern day was narrowing in; and the Ouse, which is usually of a ginger-color, was nearly as dark as a nutmeg; and the bridge, and the staith, and the houses, and the people, resembled one another in tint and tone; while between the Minster and ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore

... their longing to take their fill of the beauty outspread before them. Perhaps it was by contrast with the monotony of the forest that the scene below them seemed to them all to be the most beautiful that had ever gladdened the eyes of men. Imagine a valley about five miles in length, narrowing at each end, and opening out about the centre to a width of two miles, the sides of grass sloping up to a buttress of rock, and rippling along the whole length into folds, with little valleys in between—narrow at the summit, ...
— In Search of the Okapi - A Story of Adventure in Central Africa • Ernest Glanville

... instances, might or might not be taken, according to the will of the sovereign. The form of declaration was also strongly objected to in the committee; and several amendments were carried to meet the views of the objectors, though not narrowing the principles of the bill; and it finally passed by a large majority. The amendments made simply consisted in this, that the man assuming a public office in a Christian community should declare that he was a Christian, or, at least, that he was not an infidel. ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... Central Europe. They united the Belgian island to the region of the Vosges and the Black Forest, while they also filled to a great extent the channel between Belgium and the Bohemian island. Thus the land slowly gained upon the Triassic ocean, shutting it within ever-narrowing limits, and preparing the large inland seas so characteristic of the later Secondary times. The character of the organic world still retained a general resemblance to that of the Carboniferous epoch. Among Radiates, the Corals were more nearly allied to those of the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various

... listened, but could hear nothing. He thought then he would light his candle and go down, but concluded it wiser to descend without a light, and listen under cloak of the darkness. If he could but save Miss Tempest from a fright! He crept out of bed, and went first to the window—a small one in the narrowing of the gable-wall of his attic room: the night was warm, and, loving the night air, he had it open. Hearkening there for a moment, he thought he heard a slight movement below. Very softly he put out his head, and looked down. There was no moon, ...
— A Rough Shaking • George MacDonald

... hairs in the woman's eyelashes. In England women of the leisure class showed during the years of the sports craze a tendency to an unfeminine length of limb, often attaining or surpassing the male average. But Nature avenged herself by narrowing the pelvis and weakening the reproductive organs. Free trade drove the old sturdy yeoman into the towns and diminished the stature and muscular power of their descendants, but ten months of trench life and Nature laughed at ...
— The Living Present • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton

... A clear trail led up a dusty, gravelly slope, upon which scant greasewood and cactus appeared. Half an hour's climbing brought Slone to where he could see that he was entering a vast valley, sloping up and narrowing to a notch in the dark cliffs, above which towered the great red wall and about that the slopes of cedar ...
— Wildfire • Zane Grey

... or mist, shrieks his fierce joy to air "Ne'er stir'd by stormy pulse." "The eagle mine," I said: "O I would ride "His wings like Ganymede, nor ever care "To drop upon the stormy earth again,— "But circle star-ward, narrowing my gyres, "To some great planet of eternal peace.". "Nay," said my wise, young love, "the eagle falls "Back to his cliff, swift as a thunder-bolt; "For there his mate and naked eaglets dwell, "And there he rends the dove, and joys in all "The fierce delights of his tempestuous home. "And tho' ...
— Old Spookses' Pass • Isabella Valancy Crawford

... Forth bridge (fig. 23). The original design was for a stiffened suspension bridge, but after the fall of the Tay bridge in 1879 this was abandoned. The bridge, which was begun in 1882 and completed in 1889, is at the only narrowing of the Forth in a distance of 50 m., at a point where the channel, about a mile in width, is divided by the island of Inchgarvie. The length of the cantilever bridge is 5330 ft., made up thus: central tower on Inchgarvie ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various

... she said. The swift bank of vapor had blotted out the low-lying shores entirely. We sailed now in a narrowing circle of mist. I saw thin points of moisture on the port lights. And now I began ...
— The Lady and the Pirate - Being the Plain Tale of a Diligent Pirate and a Fair Captive • Emerson Hough

... yet never bitter; humble, yet never abject; with a depth and vehemence of affection "passing the love of woman," yet without a taint of sentimentality; self-restrained and dignified, without ever narrowing into artificial coldness; altogether rivalling the sonnets of Shakespeare; and all knit together into one spiritual unity by the proem at the opening of the volume—in our eyes, the noblest English Christian poem which several centuries ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley

... about 50 miles, by the wide and fertile plain of Clermont, watered by the Allier and its numerous branches descending from the volcanic mountains, and is about 25 miles in width from east to west in the parallel of Clermont, but gradually narrowing in a southerly direction, till at Brioude it becomes an ordinary mountain ravine. The eastern margin of the plain is formed by another granitic ridge expanding into a plateau towards the south, and joining in with that already described; but towards ...
— Volcanoes: Past and Present • Edward Hull

... and six pieces of field artillery. Von Mackensen resumed the offensive on May 24, by advancing due east of Jaroslav, capturing Drohojow, Ostrov, Vysocko, Makovisko and Vietlin all in one day. Radymno was occupied by the Austro-Hungarians under General Arz von Straussenburg, still further narrowing the circle and compelling the Russians to fall beyond the San. On the twenty-fifth the Austrians followed them over, captured the bridgehead of Zagrody, the village of Nienovice and the Heights of Horodysko, while Von Mackensen's troops farther north captured Height 241. South of the village ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various

... England. Clearly he had been a fool;—an infatuated fool! He stabbed himself with the epithet: and a vivid memory of his uncle's stock cynicisms turned the knife in the wound. All the prejudices and tenets of his youth rushed back upon him now: an avenging host, mocking at his discomfiture; narrowing his judgment; blinding him to ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver

... chosen was a very beautiful one—a sloping hillside gradually narrowing into a strip six or seven hundred yards wide and running between two of the most picturesque lakes the ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls - Volume VIII, No 25: May 21, 1887 • Various

... horned, and scaly head pushed up. I could see the shining scales on its thick side and the ribbed horn on the back of the neck. Beneath it the water stirred and heaved. With dead glazed eyes it stared upon the world, then slowly, as though it were drawn from below, it sank. The water rippled in narrowing ...
— The Secret City • Hugh Walpole

... the paper currency, and he moved this amendment:—"That in the present critical and alarming state of the country, when trade and manufactures were reduced to such difficulties by the withdrawing of, and narrowing the circulation, without a proportionate reduction of taxation, by which the means of all but those who lived upon the taxes were reduced one-half in value, the greatest distress existed; that these were aggravated by the baleful system called free-trade, by ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... made such destructive inroads into the manner of the later prose writers. In this period the writers as a rule are not public men, but belong to what we should call the literary class. They wrote not for the public but for the select circle of educated men whose ranks were gradually narrowing their limits to the great injury of literature. If we ask which of the two sections of this period marks the most strictly national development, the answer must be—the Ciceronian; for while the advancement of any literature is more accurately tested by its prose writers ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell

... gives a special personality to Medinet-Abu. The shield-shaped battlements; the courtyards, with their brutal columns, narrowing as they recede towards the mountains; the heavy gateways, with superimposed chambers; the towers; quadrangular bastion to protect, inclined basement to resist the attacks of sappers and cause projectiles to rebound—all these things contribute to ...
— The Spell of Egypt • Robert Hichens

... of supply and consumption will certainly enable the interchange of goods between Chile and America to increase without narrowing the horizons of our commerce with friendly markets, which today bring us capital, raw ...
— Latin America and the United States - Addresses by Elihu Root • Elihu Root

... the star, or the collision of the star with a star-cloudlet, or nebula, traversing space in one direction while the star swept onwards in another. A planet could not very well come into final conflict with its sun at one fell swoop. It would gradually draw nearer and nearer, not by the narrowing of its path, but by the change of the path's shape. The path would, in fact, become more and more eccentric; until, at length, at its point of nearest approach, the planet would graze its primary, exciting an intense heat where ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor

... The experiment of return to the social world had failed. The resolutions which had induced the experiment were finally renounced. Five years nearer to death, and the last hope that had flitted across the narrowing passage to the grave, fallen like a faithless torch from his own hand, and trodden out ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... disintegration of religious superstition, and the substitution in its stead of spiritual ideals closer to the facts of life, is one of these. All that was good in Puritanism has been retained by the modern spirit, while its narrowing and numbing features, its anti-human, self-mortifying, provincial side have passed or are passing in the regenerating sunlight of what one might call a spiritual paganism, which conceives of natural forces and natural laws as inherently pure and mysteriously sacred. Thus the way of ...
— Vanishing Roads and Other Essays • Richard Le Gallienne

... Sudden Death." What I had beheld from my seat upon the mail,—the scenical strife of action and passion, of anguish and fear, as I had there witnessed them moving in ghostly silence; this duel between life and death narrowing itself to a point of such exquisite evanescence as the collision neared,—all these elements of the scene blended, under the law of association, with the previous and permanent features of distinction investing ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey

... reddish-yellow, brick red, 2 to 5 inches broad, fleshy, bell-shaped or almost conical, then convex, dry, smooth, marked with reddish specks, darker toward the centre, flesh white, turning red and narrowing toward the margin. Stem 3 to 6 inches long, 1/2 inch thick, solid, firm, slightly tapering toward the apex, very bulbous at base, same color as cap, stuffed with brown pith inside. There are two or three reddish oblique ...
— Among the Mushrooms - A Guide For Beginners • Ellen M. Dallas and Caroline A. Burgin

... you must raise, and introduce a bead upon each plain loop, with a thread, and again raise. Where you had previously raised, you must narrow with the bead you have upon the silk. In this manner proceed raising and narrowing alternately, until you have twelve rows as before. You then reverse, and again work as in the first ...
— The Ladies' Work-Table Book • Anonymous

... my thoughts, and full of fear was the silence; And, when he turned to speak at last, I trembled to hear him, Feeling he now must speak of his love, and his life and its secret,— Now that the narrowing chances had left but that cruel conclusion, Else the life-long ache of a love and a trouble unuttered. Better, my feebleness pleaded, the dreariest doubt that had vexed me, Than my life left nothing, not even a doubt to console it; But, ...
— Poems • William D. Howells

... relationship between children in youth, such as childish favoritism, "platonic friendships," "chumming," in school or home, etc. We have in these facts—and there is a very great variety of them—an exaggeration of the social or imitative tendency, a narrowing down of the personal sensibility to a peculiar line of well-formed influences. It has never been studied by writers either on the genesis of social emotion or on the practice of education. To be sure, teachers have been alive to the pros and cons of allowing children and students ...
— The Story of the Mind • James Mark Baldwin

... circumstances:—1st. When lymph becomes effused within the canal upon the surface of the lining mucous membrane, and contracts adhesions across the canal. 2ndly. When lymph is effused external to the lining membrane, and projects this inwards, thereby narrowing the diameter of the canal. 3rdly. When the outer and inner walls of a part of the urethra are involved in the effused organizable matter, and on contracting towards each other, encroach at the same time upon the area of the canal. This latter state presents the form, which is known as ...
— Surgical Anatomy • Joseph Maclise

... thicket. So quickly did it pass that he scarcely saw it; nevertheless, a burning desire to capture and possess the beautiful strange creature filled his breast. He instantly ordered his attendants to form a ring round the thicket, and so encircle the hind; then, gradually narrowing the circle, he pressed forward till he could distinctly see the white hind panting in the midst. Nearer and nearer he advanced, till just as he thought to lay hold of the beautiful strange creature, it gave one mighty ...
— Childhood's Favorites and Fairy Stories - The Young Folks Treasury, Volume 1 • Various

... nothing more than an instrument of sound, a wind instrument like a trumpet, or a clanging instrument like a cymbal." That is the apostolic warning to the successful professional man,—the warning against the narrowing, self-contented result which sometimes taints even great attainments and professional distinction. Covet the best. Be satisfied with nothing less than the highest professional work of doctor, politician, or teacher. But beware of the imprisoning effect which ...
— Mornings in the College Chapel - Short Addresses to Young Men on Personal Religion • Francis Greenwood Peabody

... latitude if I join you. It is narrowing down a little too much when a creed contains but two articles, like yours, and both ...
— From Boyhood to Manhood • William M. Thayer

... His eyes had discovered Mr. Caryll. It was the first time he had run against him since that day, over a week ago, at Stretton House, and at sight of him now all Rotherby's spleen was moved. He stood and stared, his dark eyes narrowing, his cheeks flushing slightly under their tan. Wharton, who had approached him, observing his sudden halt, his sudden look of concentration, asked him shortly ...
— The Lion's Skin • Rafael Sabatini

... narrowing—not unpleasantly, but to express a faint disapproval) Drove me crazy ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald

... he followed up the crevasse, which showed no sign of narrowing. The snow was thick, the bitter wind increasing, and a plunge into icy water might prove disastrous. It was obvious that he must extricate his companion as soon as possible, but the means of accomplishing it was not ...
— The Long Portage • Harold Bindloss

... second doorway opened upon a small coal-cellar, through the ceiling of which, in the right-hand corner, poured a circular ray of light. The ray travelled down a moraine of broken coal, so broad at the base that it covered the whole cellar floor, but narrowing upwards and towards the manhole through ...
— True Tilda • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... never reaches maturity; the lunatic, who, becoming diseased, loses the mental and moral characteristics of maturity; and the criminal, who is coming more and more to be looked upon as partaking of the character of the idiot and the lunatic. I venture to think, then, that the real issue is narrowing itself down to this: that the opponents of women's emancipation really regard all women either as perpetually immature (to whom they will accord more or less protection, privilege, or even adoration, just as they ...
— The First Essay on the Political Rights of Women • Jean-Antoine-Nicolas de Caritat Condorcet



Words linked to "Narrowing" :   constrictive, shape, configuration, taper, narrow, constricting, bottleneck, change of shape, tapering, coarctation, form, decrease, decrement, chokepoint, conformation, contour, constriction, widening



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