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Thaw   /θɔ/   Listen
Thaw

noun
1.
The process whereby heat changes something from a solid to a liquid.  Synonyms: melt, melting, thawing.  "The thawing of a frozen turkey takes several hours"
2.
Warm weather following a freeze; snow and ice melt.  Synonyms: thawing, warming.
3.
A relaxation or slackening of tensions or reserve; becoming less hostile.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Thaw" Quotes from Famous Books



... have had a hard time of it," he said. "Make yourselves at home. I'm not overburdened with grub, but if you'll dig out some of your own rations I'll get it ready while you thaw out." ...
— Isobel • James Oliver Curwood

... parliaments, must have produced very mortifying reflections in the breast of every Briton warmed with the genuine love of his country. He must have perceived that all the bulwarks of the constitution were little better than buttresses of ice, which would infallibly thaw before the heat of ministerial influence, when artfully concentrated; that either a minister's professions of patriotism were insincere; or his credit insufficient to effect any essential alteration in the ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett

... it came of being ill at ease: He hated that He cannot change His cold, Nor cure its ache. 'Hath spied an icy fish That longed to 'scape the rock-stream where she lived, And thaw herself within the lukewarm brine 35 O' the lazy sea her stream thrusts far amid, A crystal spike 'twixt two warm walls of wave; Only, she ever sickened, found repulse At the other kind of water, not her life, (Green-dense and dim-delicious, bred o' the sun) 40 Flounced back from bliss she ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning

... I understand the road is ten feet deep with snow from this to Hamilton. I have had it cut through once, but this third fall makes an attempt impossible. Heaven only knows when the road will be open, nothing but a thaw can do it—it is ...
— A Hundred Years by Post - A Jubilee Retrospect • J. Wilson Hyde

... on the snow, mild but no thaw, fine sledding. It was a good night to come home from prayer ...
— American Missionary - Volume 50, No. 3, March, 1896 • Various

... winter month, gray and gloomy, a mixture of snow and rain, frost and thaw. The trial of Mother Tonsard had required witnesses at Auxerre, and Michaud had given his testimony. Monsieur Rigou had interested himself for the old woman, and employed a lawyer on her behalf who relied in his defence on the ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac

... produced no very visible effects on the general face of nature; for the melting snow was many hours in becoming saturated with its own and water from above. Nor had our travellers, for the greater part of the day, been much incommoded by the rain, or the thaw, that was in silent, but rapid progress around and beneath them; as their vehicle was a covered one, and as the hard-trodden paths of the road were the last to be affected. But, during the last hour, a great change in the face of the landscape had become apparent; and the evidence ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson

... generations. I'm beginning to believe that the Englishman has always been afraid of the future—that's what's keeps him so alert. They say to me: "You have frightful things happen in the United States—your Governor of New York[16], your Thaw case, your corruption, etc., etc.; and yet you seem sure and tell us that your countrymen feel sure of the safety of your government." In the newspaper comments on my Southampton[17] speech the other day, this same feeling cropped up; the American Ambassador assures us that ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick

... getting the city's ancient reservoirs cleared of silt before the next spring thaw brought more water down the underground aqueducts everybody called canals in mistranslation of Schiaparelli's Italian word, though this was proving considerably easier than anticipated. The ancient ...
— Omnilingual • H. Beam Piper

... water, Shall strike that sharp and suddaine cold throughout, As it shall loose all vertue; and those Nimphs, Those treacherous Nimphs pull'd in Earine; Shall stand curl'd up, like Images of Ice; And never thaw! marke, never! a sharpe Justice. Or stay, a better! when the yeares at hottest, And that the Dog-starre fomes, and the streame boiles, And curles, and workes, and swells ready to sparkle; To fling a fellow with a Fever in, To ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg

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

... remembering how you suffer from cold in the winter, and hope you are in a warm, comfortable house, have pleasant books to read, and some pleasant friends to see. One does not want many; only a few bright faces to look in now and then, and help thaw the ice with little rills of genial conversation. I have fewer of these than at Rome,—but still several. * * * * * Horace Sumner, youngest son of father's friend, Mr. Charles P. Sumner, lives near ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli

... there were symptoms of an aesthetical thaw in Connecticut. There had been no such word as play in the dictionary of the New-Englanders. They worked hard on their stony soil, and read hard in their stony books of doctrine. That stimulant to the mind, outside of daily ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various

... turned Lightning down the Rashie-bog road, which would be impassable as soon as the thaw came. In summer Rashie-bog is several fields in which a cart does not sink unless it stands still, but in winter it is a loch with here and there a spring where dead men are said to lie, There are no rushes at its east end, and here the dog-cart drew up near the curlers, a crowd of men dancing, ...
— The Little Minister • J.M. Barrie

... above, the atmosphere is hazy, cloudy, and frosty, though the thermometer never sinks so low as in the south of Michigan by ten or twelve degrees (8 or 10 degrees below zero, being the lowest yet known), and a winter thaw is unknown here. Hence we never have mud in winter, and but little ...
— Old Mackinaw - The Fortress of the Lakes and its Surroundings • W. P. Strickland

... is the Glacier, its moist surface suggesting that the lake is fed by a slight thaw, while the perpendicular front at the water's edge gives the impression of a berg having recently ...
— Cave Regions of the Ozarks and Black Hills • Luella Agnes Owen

... doleful cloak, and make it look more wretched. The stars, to be sure, coldly watched it when the nights and the smoke were clear enough; and all bad weather stood by it with a rare fidelity. You should alike find rain, hail, frost, and thaw lingering in that dismal enclosure when they had vanished from other places; and as to snow, you should see it there for weeks, long after it had changed from yellow to black, slowly weeping away its grimy life. The place had no other adherents. As to street noises, the ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens

... care it seemed strange the sick girl did not get well; yet such was the case. She wasted like any snow-wreath in thaw; she faded like any flower in drought. Miss Keeldar, on whose thoughts danger or death seldom intruded, had at first entertained no fears at all for her friend; but seeing her change and sink from time to time when she paid her visits, ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte

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

... agitation. Valentine observing it, gave him a quiet, matter-of-fact greeting, and talked of the weather. A thaw had come on, and the snow was melting rapidly. For the moment John seemed unable to answer, but when they got ...
— Fated to Be Free • Jean Ingelow

... night. It is cold and wet, and your fingers are frozen, and the rain drives pitilessly in your face; and then, when you are nearly dead with misery, the coach stops at a well-known inn. A smiling host and buxom hostess greets you; blazing fires thaw you back to life, and good cheer awaits your appetite. No wonder people loved an inn and wished to take their ease therein after the dangers and hardships of the day. Lord Beaconsfield, in his novel Tancred, vividly describes the busy scene at ...
— Vanishing England • P. H. Ditchfield

... taught him that cold Spanish etiquette which arrests all the impulses of the heart. He restrains himself and others by an immovable presence and an icy look; as for me, I confess that I am always waiting for the moment of thaw, but in vain. We were accustomed to other manners from the witty and simple-hearted Henri; and we were at least free to tell ...
— Cinq Mars, Complete • Alfred de Vigny

... still nearly bare; and their trunks and tops stood tall and black against the clear sky; but, when you saw them together, in rows or little clusters, there was a soft yellow-green colour over them, spotted with gleaming buds ready to burst. A soft wind, just warm enough to thaw the frost, worked its way into and through everything and made it all shake and swarm till it was twisted full of restless, growing life. That wind curled through the youngsters' tangled hair and coloured their round cheeks cherry-red. They ran and romped through the dry sand, ...
— The Path of Life • Stijn Streuvels

... conversation, I remarked,—I am, ex officio, as a Professor, a conservative. For I don't know any fruit that clings to its tree so faithfully, not even a "froze-'n'-thaw" winter-apple, as a Professor to the bough of which his chair is made. You can't shake him off, and it is as much as you can do to pull him off. Hence, by a chain of induction I need not unwind, he tends ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... last bit of hay or newspaper—which would not have warmed the house anyhow—the old couple had gone to bed, piling over them everything that could conceivably shut out that penetrating dead cold, getting up just long enough to boil coffee, fry a little bacon and thaw out the bread. They dipped up snow at the door and melted it for water. The bread had run out, and the last scrap of fuel. They tore down the kitchen shelf, chopped it up, and the last piece of it had gone for a flame to make the morning coffee. The little snugly ...
— Land of the Burnt Thigh • Edith Eudora Kohl

... too too solid flesh would melt, Thaw and resolve itself into a dew! Or that the Everlasting had not fixed His canon 'gainst self-slaughter! O God! God! How weary, stale, flat and unprofitable, Seem to me all the uses ...
— Elementary Guide to Literary Criticism • F. V. N. Painter

... hand views give you the city at large. It is a wide stretch of cheap little brick houses, with here and there a noble architectural pile lifting itself out of the midst-government buildings, these. If the thaw is still going on when you come down and go about town, you will wonder at the short-sightedness of the city fathers, when you come to inspect the streets, in that they do not dilute the mud a little more and use ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner

... Sir," Wu Chin-hsiao ventured, "so much snow has fallen this year that it's everywhere out of town four and five feet in depth. The other day, the weather suddenly turned mild, and with the thaw that set in, it became so very hard to make any progress that we wasted several days. Yet albeit we've been a month and two days in accomplishing the journey; it isn't anything excessive. But as I feared lest you, Sir, would be giving way ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin

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

... day at lunch Sir Hugo said to her, "The thaw has gone on like magic, and it's so pleasant out of doors just now—shall we go and see the stables and the other ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot

... feeding places, but was obliged to keep them in the fold. He gave his own goats just sufficient food to keep them alive, but fed the strangers more abundantly in the hope of enticing them to stay with him and of making them his own. When the thaw set in, he led them all out to feed, and the Wild Goats scampered away as fast as they could to the mountains. The Goatherd scolded them for their ingratitude in leaving him, when during the storm he had taken more care of ...
— Aesop's Fables • Aesop

... settlements below, and by midnight about eighty were gathered at the ruined village. Couriers had been sent to rouse the country, and before evening of the next day (the first of March) the force at Deerfield was increased to two hundred and fifty; but a thaw and a warm rain had set in, and as few of the men had snow-shoes, pursuit was out of the question. Even could the agile savages and their allies have been overtaken, the probable consequence would have been the murdering of the captives to prevent ...
— A Half Century of Conflict - Volume I - France and England in North America • Francis Parkman

... on, the floating masses became cemented to one another and the shore. The Karluk was hard and fast within two hundred yards of her Tom Tiddler's ground, just over the promontory. If a thaw came, all should go well. If Lund had been deceived, and the true winter was setting in early, the prospects were far from cheerful, though no one seemed to ...
— A Man to His Mate • J. Allan Dunn

... Rain came, and thaw, followed by drying wind. The roads were in good order for the visitors to the Aristophanic comedy. The fifth day of Christmas was fixed for the performance. The theatre was brilliantly lighted, ...
— Gryll Grange • Thomas Love Peacock

... thaw came. The roads became appalling. There were only three broken-down horses on the estate and not a wisp of hay. The horses had to be fed on rye straw chopped up with an axe and sprinkled with flour. One of the horses was vicious and there was no getting it out of the yard. ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov

... door for his wife, had realized, as he stood on the threshold and a biting wind flung a handful of powdery snow in his face,—the sparkling coldness of the day; and he thought to himself, "this is about the last chance for skating! There'll be a thaw next week." So, when he came back, whistling, to the library, he said: "Are you game for skating? It's cold ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland

... ought, in justice to my family, to be a little more selfish—these mean professionals estimating their rubbish far beyond all reason!—My spirits are damped—and so are we all, for the water-pipes that that rascal Plummer fixed, at the low contract, have burst with this evening's thaw, and were discovered just as the water was coming in; having played, I know not how long, a fountain in the bathroom, tumbling down the stairs like the falls of the Niagara, obliging us to insert tobacco-pipes all over the drawing-room ceiling, to drain the ...
— Christmas Comes but Once A Year - Showing What Mr. Brown Did, Thought, and Intended to Do, - during that Festive Season. • Luke Limner

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

... net-line pointed slightly southwest this morning; but the line attached to a cheese which was only hanging a few fathoms below the ice to thaw faster, seemed to point in the opposite direction. Had we got a southerly current together with the wind now? H'm! in that case something must come of it! Or was it, perhaps, only the tide ...
— Farthest North - Being the Record of a Voyage of Exploration of the Ship 'Fram' 1893-1896 • Fridtjof Nansen

... sudden flash of lightning, and then acre after acre of the cold lava parted into fragments, turned up edgewise like cakes of ice when a great river breaks up, plunged downward, and were swallowed in the crimson caldron. Then the wide expanse of the 'thaw' maintained a ruddy glow for a while, but shortly cooled and became black and level again. During a 'thaw' every dismembered cake was marked by a glittering white border which was superbly shaded inward by aurora borealis rays, which ...
— The Book of the National Parks • Robert Sterling Yard

... frost having come suddenly, and welded Rugen to mainland. "What is to hinder you from starving them into surrender?" signifies Friedrich, hastily: "Besiege me Stralsund!" Which Lehwald did; but should have been quicker about it; or the thaw came too soon, and admitted ships with provision again. Upon which Lehwald resigned, to a General Graf von Dohna; and went home, as grown too old: and Dohna kept them bottled there till the usual Russian Advent (deep in June); by which time, what with limited stockfish diet, ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVIII. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Seven-Years War Rises to a Height.—1757-1759. • Thomas Carlyle

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

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

... more fortunate in this its second cantonment. The winter passed away without any Indian visitors; and the game continued to be plentiful in the neighbourhood. They felled two large trees, and shaped them into canoes, and, as the spring opened, and a thaw of several days melted the ice in the river, they made every preparation for embarking. On the 8th of March they launched forth in their canoes, but soon found that the river had not depth sufficient even for such slender ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman

... proceeded to pour out his soul, stating the miners' grievances and their rights as men. How they were always put off with promises, and defeated in dialectics and the game of wits. As he spoke he felt the assembly gradually thaw, then become liquid, finally it seemed to join the torrent of his eloquence, and sweep on, blotting out ...
— The Underworld - The Story of Robert Sinclair, Miner • James C. Welsh

... people began to term her in the shops, was, in fact, a very different person, and much more important than the widow Torvestad. It was a consciousness of this that first gave Sarah a new interest in life, and tended to thaw some of that frigidity which had begun to settle upon her. When the first and the worst period was over, she buried her hopes and her youth as well as she could, giving herself up to prayer and study, whilst, at the same time, ...
— Skipper Worse • Alexander Lange Kielland

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

... express himself thus in regard to his superiors; but he was really vexed at the idea of the sacrifice of human life that must attend this wantonness of neglect, and imbecility of arrangement. He had, moreover, taken wine enough, not in any way to intoxicate, but sufficient to thaw his habitual caution and reserve. Fearless as his sword, he cared not for his own life; but, although a strict officer, he was ever attentive to the interests of his men, who, in their turn, admired him for his cool, unflinching ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson

... There was a rock scarp in front of them, up part of which they went on their hands and knees. When they reached the summit of this, the slightly more level strip along which they floundered was strewn with shattered rock and gravel that had come down from the heights above with the thaw in the spring; and it was with difficulty that they made a mile an hour. The gold trail is usually long and arduous; but the prospector is content to have it so, for once it is made easier the poor man's day has gone. Then the ...
— The Gold Trail • Harold Bindloss

... little time they were such good friends, he and the boys, that he was down on all-fours playing horses with them, and did some quite new tricks which they thought extremely amusing; he then invited them to come for a drive the next day. After a thaw, there had been an unusually heavy fall of snow; the town was white and the state ...
— The Bridal March; One Day • Bjornstjerne Bjornson

... to thaw out or show any signs of friendship," said Hugh, very much puzzled. He and his companion walked over to the shade of the rock and calmly sat down to await the next move. They now had no fear of harm at the hands of the simple though savage-looking ...
— Nedra • George Barr McCutcheon

... looked considerably puzzled sometimes, and indeed out of her element. But her dignity had no chance with so many young people, and was compelled to thaw visibly; and while growing more friendly with the others, she could not avoid unbending towards me also, notwithstanding I was a neighbour and ...
— Wilfrid Cumbermede • George MacDonald

... The climate was such this year that it froze hard twelve or fourteen hours every day, while from eleven o'clock in 'the morning till nearly four, the sun shone as brightly as possible, and it was too hot about mid-day for walking! Yet in the shade it did not thaw for an instant. This cold weather was all the more sharp because the air was purer and clearer, and the sky continually ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... the morrow and more and more poisoned by hard and bitter thoughts. The days and weeks passed and soon I felt the breath of warmer winds. On the open places the snow began to thaw. In spots the little rivulets of water appeared. Another day I saw a fly or a spider awakened after the hard winter. The spring was coming. I realized that in spring it was impossible to go out from the forest. Every river overflowed its banks; the swamps became impassable; all the runways of the ...
— Beasts, Men and Gods • Ferdinand Ossendowski

... feasting when the thaw had set in, for then, as the earth grew soft, the worms would come crawling out to have a stretch, after being asleep beneath the iron-bound earth. As for the rooks, they ate until they could hardly move, and gormandised in a way that could only be excused in things that could not get their ...
— Featherland - How the Birds lived at Greenlawn • George Manville Fenn

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

... relieved by our savages, but nevertheless I suffered great discomfort. The savages, in order to go over the ice more easily, are accustomed to make a kind of wooden sledge, [167] on which they put their loads, which they easily and swiftly drag along. Some days after there was a thaw, which caused us much trouble and annoyance; for we had to go through pine forests full of brooks, ponds; marshes, and swamps, where many trees had been blown down upon each other. This caused us a thousand troubles and embarrassments, ...
— Voyages of Samuel de Champlain V3 • Samuel de Champlain

... first time since the day of his spectacular introduction to her, Miss Satterly displayed absolutely no interest in the eccentricities of Glory. Slowly it began to dawn upon Weary that she did not intend to thaw that evening. He glanced at her sidelong, and his eyes had a certain gleam that was not there five minutes before. He swung along beside her till they reached the top of the hill, fell behind without a word and ...
— The Lonesome Trail and Other Stories • B. M. Bower

... covered deeply with snow which a sudden thaw and as sudden a freeze had coated with a thick, hard crust. This put a stop to snow-shoeing and delayed the work of clearing the ice off Paradise pond, where there was to be a moonlight carnival on the evening of the ...
— Betty Wales Freshman • Edith K. Dunton

... century, the breath of that magic word, toleration, at last was felt on the shores of Erin. When it was in the mouths of all Europe, when English clergymen had thoroughly imbibed the new doctrine, when even Scotch ministers began to thaw under its genial influence, and become "liberal theologians," how could an Irish magistrate think of hanging a friar, or transporting a priest, or imposing a heavy fine on a Catholic who committed the heinous offence ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud

... her atmosphere—why should she have lost her atmosphere? Why should it sink into craters? Atmosphere is gas, great in volume, small in matter; where would there be room for it? Solidified by the intense cold? Possibly in the night time. But would not the heat of the long day be great enough to thaw it back again? The same trouble attends the alleged disappearance of the water. Swallowed up in the cavernous cracks, it is said. But why are there cracks? Cooling is not always attended by cracking. Water cools ...
— All Around the Moon • Jules Verne

... [5529]"They will be witnesses and trumpeters of their paramours' good parts, bedecking them with verses and commendatory songs, as we do statues with gold, that they may be remembered and admired of all." Ancient men will dote in this kind sometimes as well as the rest; the heat of love will thaw their frozen affections, dissolve the ice of age, and so far enable them, though they be sixty years of age above the girdle, to be scarce thirty beneath. Jovianus Pontanus makes an old fool rhyme, and turn ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior

... River, which comes in here. Half of it is clean and the other half dirty. Saw no more pick-and-shovel work. Everything is run by the big dredges owned by companies, which do the work of hundreds of men. They thaw out the ground now with steam-pipes which they drive down in, and then turn in steam. Then they rip out the ground down twenty feet with the big scoops of the dredges. They just have water enough to float the dredges. Everything is worked ...
— Young Alaskans in the Far North • Emerson Hough

... the spring, he had stayed too long in the woods. The trapping had been good and he had hated to leave while the skins were heaping up. At last a real thaw came and he had to start for Escoumains. He was about sixty miles north of here, he said, and he rushed along with his dogs wallowing in the snow at every step. When he came to the Port Neuf River, he found the ice just ready to go out. As he got in the ...
— Bob Hunt in Canada • George W. Orton

... Pierre and the girl were on their way, leaving Borotte quarrelling with the brothers, and all drinking heavily. The two arrived at Throng's late the next afternoon. There had been a slight thaw during the day, and the air was almost soft, water dripping from the ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

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

... take your child. My dying frost, which no sun's heat can thaw, Closes the powers of all my outward parts: My freezing blood runs back unto my heart, Where it assists death, which it would resist: Only my love a little hinders death, For he beholds her eyes, and cannot smite: Then ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various

... undertaking similar expeditions. But — I must add — they must give themselves the trouble of taking off their foot-gear every evening, and brushing the rime off their stockings; if one does not do this, of course, the rime will thaw in the course of the night, and everything will be soaking wet in the morning. In that case you must not blame the ...
— The South Pole, Volumes 1 and 2 • Roald Amundsen

... must prevent thee, Cimber. 35 These couchings and these lowly courtesies Might fire the blood of ordinary men, And turn pre-ordinance and first decree Into the law of children. Be not fond, To think that Caesar bears such rebel blood 40 That will be thaw'd from the true quality With that which melteth fools, I mean, sweet words, Low-crooked curtsies, and base spaniel-fawning. Thy brother by decree is banished: If thou dost bend and pray and fawn for him, 45 I spurn thee like a cur out of my way. Know, Caesar doth not wrong, nor without ...
— The New Hudson Shakespeare: Julius Caesar • William Shakespeare

... out, Aladdin," he called. "There's going to be a big thaw." He closed the door and went into the next room, and Aladdin could hear him talking to the horse. After a little he ...
— Aladdin O'Brien • Gouverneur Morris

... his office window now, staring out disconsolately over the sloping lawns of the capitol grounds, mottled with thin patches of snow, which had contrived to withstand the recent thaw, and he was telling himself, for the thousandth time, the dispiriting fact that, as a force for good or evil in the destiny of his state, he was no more significant than his stenographer's Remington or his secretary's roll-top desk. With all his ideals, with ...
— The Lieutenant-Governor • Guy Wetmore Carryl

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

... right. We started the right time. Any ordinary year we could have gone right through on the ice. But from the very day we left the landing we were in trouble. When we wasn't broke down we was looking for lost horses. When we wasn't held up by a blizzard we was half drowned in a thaw! ...
— The Huntress • Hulbert Footner

... man in a sleigh, but you couldn't possibly go with him on wheels—on the same road, at the same hour, same man, same everything, except the wheels. You agree to go out next week in a sleigh with Mr. Vancouver; but when the day comes, if it has happened to thaw and there is no snow, and he comes in a buggy, you couldn't possibly go with him, because it would be quite too improper. But I mean to, some day, just to see what they will say. I wish you would come! We would do a lot of ...
— An American Politician • F. Marion Crawford

... eat their supper and leave. Others are sitting in the school-room looking at pictures and talking a very little, but it is rather stiff. The door opens and in walk the Doctor and Agency Clerk. No more stiffness after this. Those would be hard hearts indeed that would not thaw in the presence of these genial countenances. Other white people come. The Captain with his family take supper. He also brings in some of the outsiders who are looking in at the windows, and pays for their suppers. The Issue Clerk is quick to see the day-school children, ...
— American Missionary, August, 1888, (Vol. XLII, No. 8) • Various

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

... pure frae the clud when it 's shaken, And melts into dew ere it fa's on the bracken, Oh sae pure is the heart I hae won to my keepin'! But warm as the sun-blink that thaw'd it to weepin'! ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume IV. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various

... snow storms, followed by freezing weather after a thaw, and the boys and girls had much fun on the ice, a number of skating races having been arranged ...
— The Bobbsey Twins at Snow Lodge • Laura Lee Hope

... sure enough they came; and out we ran through the snow, for the snow was on the ground, and there was Jan alive and well, but a bit tired. But there wasn't no time for rest; and we had to go on to once. The rain came down, the snow began to thaw, and the roads was so slushy and heavy that it was miserable travelling. The men was angry too at turning away from the French, and they kept asking if the time wasn't never coming to halt: but on ...
— The Drummer's Coat • J. W. Fortescue

... aid; took Miss Grey's limp form, laid it on a lounge, and some set to work to restore her, while others helped Harry to free himself from snow and thaw himself out. ...
— Kristy's Rainy Day Picnic • Olive Thorne Miller

... me in! Trees are bare, but birds begin Twittering to the peeping leaves, On the bough beneath the eaves Wait,—one lilac bud I saw. Icy hillsides feel the thaw; April chased off March to-day; Now I catch ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V2 • Charles H. Sylvester

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

... search the furthest Northern clime Where frosty Hyems with an ycie Mace Strikes dead all living things, Ide find it out, And borrowing fire from those fayre sunny eyne Thaw Winters frost and warme that dead cold clime: But this impose is nothing, honour'd King. Ile to my father and conduct him hither; For whilst my soule is parted from her sight This earth is hell, this day a tedious night. Come, Rodorick, you ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. III • Various

... Starning; but to be thee'd and thou'd by this lady! As he stood there laughing and blushing like a boy she made him drink from the cup to the same wish and in the same terms. When once your frozen soul opens to the thaw all the sluices are away, truly. Prosper went to bed that night very well content with his reception. He saw his schemes ripening fast on such a sunny wall as this. His head was rather full, and ...
— The Forest Lovers • Maurice Hewlett

... cavalry, and heavy artillery, cannot venture on the ice unless it be of great thickness and strength. An army can never trust, for any length of time, to either fords or ice; if it did a freshet or a thaw would place it in a most critical state. Military bridges will, therefore, become its only safe reliance ...
— Elements of Military Art and Science • Henry Wager Halleck

... baron led a life of anxious suspense. He was always going over this interview, always thinking of the piles of wood; and, whenever he rode out, his horse's head was turned to the river, that he might watch the progress of the thaw. ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag

... the first thin white frost after a long thaw. The meet was in front of the Cross-Roads Inn, about a mile out of Drayton Parva. It was neutral ground, where Farmer Ashby could hold his own with Sir Peter any day, and speech was unfettered. Somebody remarked ...
— The Tysons - (Mr. and Mrs. Nevill Tyson) • May Sinclair

... that Davos would be beautiful, but the thaw had successfully dissipated its immaculate loveliness. Half of the snow slopes were already bare, the roads were a sea of mud, and the valley was as dingy as if a careless washerwoman had upset a basket of dirty linen on her way to the laundry. ...
— The Dark Tower • Phyllis Bottome

... lord. He's an aulder man, an' no abune half the size. But fegs! gien he says anither word agen my gran'father, I will gin 's neck a bit thaw" ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald

... of the party in the lower kitchen. He stood at one end of the table, cutting, with his huge knife, the hard-frozen pork into very thin slices, which the rest of the company took, and, before they had time to thaw, cut up into small dice on the little boards Mr. Van Brunt had prepared. As large a fire as the chimney would hold was built up and blazing finely; the room looked as cozy and bright as the one upstairs, and the people as busy and as talkative. They had less to do, however, or they had been more ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Elizabeth Wetherell

... the voyagers hoped that a thaw would take place, or that wind would break up the ice. But they were disappointed. This was the first touch of the cold hand of winter, and the last day of the Hope's ...
— Fast in the Ice - Adventures in the Polar Regions • R.M. Ballantyne

... his body, a terrible relaxing, a thaw, a decay of strength. Without knowing, he had let go his grip, and Gudrun had fallen to her knees. Must he ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence

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

... with which you have to deal. That brick is perfectly harmless, because it is frozen. Dynamite in its frozen state will not explode—a fact well understood by miners and all those who have to work with it, and who, as a rule, generally prefer to blow themselves to pieces trying to thaw the substance before a fire. Will you kindly bring that brick back to me, before it thaws out in the heated atmosphere ...
— The Face And The Mask • Robert Barr

... I had better go to Sue's to thaw out some of my loneliness over this play," I answered him as I looked up with desperation and a smudge on my face. Then I went to my room and left Tolly alone with Peter's poor little heroine. "Say, tell the poet to get the man with the dinner-pail ...
— Over Paradise Ridge - A Romance • Maria Thompson Daviess

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

... preparation. If we want a crop of onions from seed this spring, whatever preparation there is must be done between now and seeding. I should plow or spade up the soil as soon as possible, if there is a thaw out either the last of this or ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 4, January 26, 1884 - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various

... up-town street the human tide flowed fast and as if thaw had set in, releasing it from the bondage of winter. Girls in light wraps and without hats loitered in the white flare of drugstore lights. Here and there a brown stoop bloomed with a boarder or two. In front of Seligman's ...
— Every Soul Hath Its Song • Fannie Hurst

... more thing," the alien was saying. Her voice had gained a wonderful fluency amid the general thaw. "I didn't dare to ask before, but if we thought of me then—I have always hoped he left some message for ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various

... very little over forty. You are barely in the prime of life, you are strong, you have the one thing which society today counts almost divine—great, immeasurable wealth! Can't you find someone to thaw the snows?" ...
— The Malefactor • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... Upton Sinclair's "Metropolis," or the fashionable intelligence of the popular New York Sunday editions, and one finds a good deal of confirmatory evidence in many incidental aspects of the smart American life of Paris and the Riviera. The evidence in the notorious Thaw trial, after one has discounted its theatrical elements, was still a very convincing demonstration of a rotten and extravagant, because aimless and functionless, class of rich people. But one has to be careful in this matter if one is to do justice to the facts. If a thing ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells

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

... dictionary. Meanwhile a fog came on, such a fog, such a fog, that it was more like a million pillows than a fog. And suddenly everything disappears and the great genius is crossing the frozen Volga in a thaw. Two and a half pages are filled with the crossing, and yet he falls through the ice. The genius is drowning—you imagine he was drowned? Not a bit of it; this was simply in order that when he was drowning and ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... a cold snake, and the sun will not thaw me." He struck himself fiercely on the breast and stared at her. "Look at me, humped and hideous. How could this rugged hull prove an ...
— The Proud Prince • Justin Huntly McCarthy

... a thaw and the coasting was spoiled. There were puddles of water all about, and one day coming home from school Freddie slipped and fell right into a puddle which ...
— The Bobbsey Twins at Home • Laura Lee Hope

... when the Bunch were having one of their best parties, Babbitt drove them to the skating-rink which had been laid out on the Chaloosa River. After a thaw the streets had frozen in smooth ice. Down those wide endless streets the wind rattled between the rows of wooden houses, and the whole Bellevue district seemed a frontier town. Even with skid chains on all ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis

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

... youthful strength, and that it would therefore be the challenge of the strong to the weak, saved him from the sin, and he schooled himself to the endurance of middle aged arrogance. For the learning of the lesson he had practice enough: they rode every day, and Griffith did not thaw; but the one thundering gallop he had every morning along the sands with Kelpie, whom * no ordinary day's work was enough to save from the heart burning ferment of repressed activity, was both preparation and amends ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald

... food, cooking, doing the work of the cabin, taking walks filled up the days completely, and then there came a thaw, a rain and a freeze. The young folks spent much time on the river then, skating and ice boating, and having good ...
— The Outdoor Girls in a Winter Camp - Glorious Days on Skates and Ice Boats • Laura Lee Hope

... frost: but on emerging from it, the whole scene was completely changed; the air was clear, the sun shining brightly, no hoar-frost and only a few patches of fast melting snow, everything in fact betokening a thaw of some days' duration. Another thing I know about this tunnel which makes me regard it with veneration as a boundary line in countries, namely, that on every high ground after this tunnel on clear days Mont ...
— Samuel Butler's Cambridge Pieces • Samuel Butler

... when they unsaddled, with the powdery snow beaten into the very fabric of their clothing, and Ford suggested that they go first to the bunk-house to thaw out. "I'd sure hate to pack all this snow into Mrs. Kate's parlor," he added whimsically. "She's the kind of housekeeper that grabs the broom the minute you're gone, to sweep your tracks off the carpet. Awful ...
— The Uphill Climb • B. M. Bower

... are trained for hunting the buffalo. Their dogs are large and powerful, and four of them will draw a sleigh with one man over the snow at the rate of six miles an hour. Herds of cattle, as well as horses and hogs, are left out during the whole winter, it being necessary only—should a thaw come on, succeeded by a frost—to supply them with food; otherwise, unable to break through the coating of ice thus formed, ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston

... figure of a man, they thought, as Dan led him to the fire to thaw himself out. He was scarcely more than five and a half feet in height, with tiny hands and feet almost out of proportion even to his diminutive size. He was an old man, they would have said, though his movements were quick and ...
— The Inn at the Red Oak • Latta Griswold

... they had first met. It was in the Winter time. She was skating in Central Park. A thaw had set in and the ice was dangerous. Suddenly there was an ominous crack, and the crowd scurried out of harm's way, all but one child, a little nine year old girl who, in her eagerness to escape, stumbled and fell. The next instant she was ...
— The Mask - A Story of Love and Adventure • Arthur Hornblow

... through the hall, and we were still staring at each other when Mr. Tibbets, with a bran-new muffler round his neck, and a peculiarly comfortable greatcoat,—best double Saxony, equally new,—dashed into the room, bringing with him a very considerable quantity of cold air, which he hastened to thaw, first in my father's arms, next in my mother's. He then made a rush at the Captain, who ensconced himself behind the dumb-waiter with a "Hem! Mr.—sir—Jack—sir—hem, hem!" Failing there, Mr. Tibbets rubbed off the remaining frost upon his double Saxony against your humble servant, ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... All day long no longer In mountain-home, since Helga Had name of wife of Raven; Nought foresaw thy father, Hardener white of fight-thaw, What my words should come to. —The ...
— The Story Of Gunnlaug The Worm-Tongue And Raven The Skald - 1875 • Anonymous

... the first fine afternoon to walk over to Brail. It was more than three miles by the road, but she was a famous walker. The lanes were still impassable on account of the thaw; February had set in with unusual mildness: the snow had melted, the little lake at Woodcote was no longer a sheet of blue ice, and Eiderdown and Snowflake were dabbling joyously with their yellow bills in the water and their ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey

... beautiful and illegant, though his own was in such brutheen.* Even his barn to wrack; and he was obliged to thrash his oats in the open air when ther would be a frost, and he used to lose one-third of it; and if there came a thaw, 'twould ...
— The Ned M'Keown Stories - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton

... open sea about the North Pole vanishes into thin air. Look at this ice here, where a portion of the original hummock still remains bare—it is yellow and rotten, not with the rottenness which precedes a thaw, but with extreme age. See, it crumbles at a kick or a blow, but the fragments do not melt; it is years—possibly ages—since this ice was water. And look at the edges of the blocks; they are rounded and worn away by the constant abrading action of the wind, the snow, the hail, ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood

... across the half-mile-wide Neva, with its stately bridges and the famous fortress of Peter and Paul on the far side, is very impressive. But its winter climate seemed detestable, cold and tempestuous, accompanied by intervals of thaw which converted even the most important streets into unspeakable slush, while the drip from the roofs was moistening and unpleasant. It has to be confessed that the exhibition of extravagance apparent on all hands in the capital of an empire large portions of which were in the hands of a foreign ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell

... the ice begins to thaw, new mines or deposits of fossil ivory—a perfect treasure of mammoths' tusks—are discovered in the marsh-lands of Eastern Siberia. There are no mammoths now—unless we call elephants by that name; yet their remains have been found upon both continents. In the year 1799, the perfect ...
— Reading Made Easy for Foreigners - Third Reader • John L. Huelshof

... of 1795, after a long continued fall of snow, a sudden thaw raised a heavy flood in the Severn, which carried away many bridges—amongst others one at Bewdley, in Worcestershire,— when Telford was called upon to supply a design for a new structure. At the same time, he was required to furnish a plan ...
— The Life of Thomas Telford by Smiles • Samuel Smiles

... one of the marvels of medicine. It can clear up the most terrific eruption with scarcely a scar, and transform a bed-ridden patient into a seemingly healthy man or woman, able to work, in the course of a few weeks or months. Symptoms often vanish before it like snow in a thaw. This naturally makes a decided impression, and often an unfavorable one, on the patient. It is only too easy to think that a disease which vanishes under the magic influence of a few pills is a trifle, ...
— The Third Great Plague - A Discussion of Syphilis for Everyday People • John H. Stokes

... disagreement, not long ago, about the sole possession of a servant-maid. Since then there has been a coolness. Curiously enough, the hideous frost that raged at the moment (the thermometer stood at twenty-five degrees in the henhouse) seemed to thaw Fitz-Jones. And ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Feb. 19, 1919 • Various

... The farmer did not thaw out in the least because of this prompt agreement with him, but sipped his whisky gloomily, as if it were ...
— In the Midst of Alarms • Robert Barr

... how to compliment without flattering; her cordiality warmed like wine, and her ready wit, repartee, and ability to thaw all social ice and lead conversation along any line, were accomplishments which perhaps have never been equaled. The women who "entertain" often only depress; they are so glowing that everybody else feels himself punk. ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 2 of 14 - Little Journeys To the Homes of Famous Women • Elbert Hubbard

... a Sunday afternoon, after days of rain and penetrating January thaw, when sun and air combined to cheat the earth with an illusion of spring. The buds and the mould breathed of April, and gay crowds flocked to the Park, to make the most of winter's temporary repulse. Just when things were at their gayest, with children's voices clamoring everywhere like starlings, ...
— Kings in Exile • Sir Charles George Douglas Roberts

... him, and vanity was satisfied: the easier, therefore, to stop. Would you like to make the woman unhappy, Tommy? You know you would not; you have somewhere about you one of the softest hearts in the world. Then desist; be satisfied that you did thaw her once, and grateful that she so quickly froze again. "I am; indeed I am," he responds. "No one could have himself better in hand for the time being than I, and if a competition in morals were now going on, I should certainly take the medal. But I cannot speak for myself an hour ...
— Tommy and Grizel • J.M. Barrie



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



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