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Tightness   /tˈaɪtnəs/   Listen
Tightness

noun
1.
A state occasioned by scarcity of money and a shortage of credit.  Synonym: stringency.
2.
A tight feeling in some part of the body.  Synonym: constriction.  "She felt an alarming tightness in her chest" , "Emotion caused a constriction of his throat"
3.
The spatial property of being crowded together.  Synonyms: compactness, concentration, denseness, density.
5.
Lack of movement or room for movement.  Synonym: tautness.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Tightness" Quotes from Famous Books



... Independents planted a chapel in Cannon-street. Places of worship like everything else, good or evil, grow in these latter days, and so has Cannon-street chapel. In 1852 its supporters set at naught the laws of Banting, and made the place bigger. It was approaching a state of solemn tightness, and for the consolation of the saints, the ease of the fidgety, and the general blissfulness of the neighbourhood it was expanded. Cannon-street Chapel has neither a bell, nor a steeple, nor an outside clock, and it has never yet said that it was any worse off for their absence. ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus

... on burying yourself in the gulf, the nightmare of suffocation continues that you progressively endured as you advanced along the bowels of the trenches before foundering in here. On all sides you bump and scrape yourself, you are clutched by the tightness of the passage, you are wedged and stuck. I have to change the position of my cartridge pouches by sliding them round the belt and to take my bags in my arms against my chest. At the fourth step the suffocation increases ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse

... of a man about town. That is to say, although he was clever enough and had a sufficient touch of humour, he cultivated a languid stare, and was chary of speech; and although he was a well-built young fellow, he walked with his elbows out and his knees in, as if the tightness of his trousers and his boots made it nigh impossible for him to walk at all. Moreover, his dress was more rigidly correct than ever; and of course he carried the inevitable cane—inevitable as the walking-stick of ...
— The Beautiful Wretch; The Pupil of Aurelius; and The Four Macnicols • William Black

... Gaelic; but what with the long suspense of the waiting, and the scurry and strain of our two spirts of fighting, and more than all, the horror I had of some of my own share in it, the thing was no sooner over than I was glad to stagger to a seat. There was that tightness on my chest that I could hardly breathe; the thought of the two men I had shot sat upon me like a nightmare; and all upon a sudden, and before I had a guess of what was coming, I began to sob and ...
— Kidnapped • Robert Louis Stevenson

... in regard to the tightness of dress, is this. Every person should be dressed so loosely, that, when sitting in the posture used in sewing, reading, or study THE LUNGS can be as fully and as easily inflated, as they are without clothing. Many a woman thinks she dresses loosely, because, when ...
— A Treatise on Domestic Economy - For the Use of Young Ladies at Home and at School • Catherine Esther Beecher

... a stone, or a post, or something in the current, and that in which Cluffe sat came wheeling swiftly round across the stream, and brought the gallant captain so near the bank that, with a sudden jerk, he caught the end of a branch that stretched far over the water, and, spite of the confounded tightness of his toilet, with the energy of sheer terror, climbed a good way; but, reaching a point where the branch forked, he could get no further, though he tugged like a brick. But what was a fat fellow of fifty, laced, and buckled, and buttoned up, like poor Cluffe—with his legs ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu

... good lady was flattered by their wonder. But she knew the world too well to be sure of him yet. She knew that it is difficult, in the human tree, to distinguish between blossom and fruit. Deeds of lovely impulse are the blossom; unvarying, determined Tightness ...
— A Rough Shaking • George MacDonald

... the weather was hot, he wore a suit of thick navy-blue serge that would have served his needs within the Arctic Circle. It clung tightly to his rounded contours; there was a purple line on his red brows that marked the exceeding tightness of the bowler hat he was carrying; and the shining protuberances on his black boots showed that they were tight, too. It was manifestly out of the question that he should be able to walk any distance. Though he had driven in a cab to the shipowner's house, ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy

... hove down. Her spirit-room was now entirely clear, and, on examination, the water was found to be rushing in through two or three holes that happened to be in the ceiling, and which were immediately plugged up. Indeed; it was now very evident that nothing but the tightness of the Fury’s diagonal ceiling had so long kept her afloat, and that any ship not thus fortified within could not possibly have been kept free by ...
— Journal of the Third Voyage for the Discovery of a North-West Passage • William Edward Parry

... slept sitting up or falling over one another. They urinated and defecated with the handcuffs on, all of them hitched together. At various times they complained to their captors that the agony caused by the swelling of their wrists was unbearable—this agony, being the result of over-tightness of the handcuffs, might easily have been relieved by one of the plantons without loss of time or prestige. Their complaints were greeted by commands to keep their mouths shut or they'd get it worse than they had it. ...
— The Enormous Room • Edward Estlin Cummings

... thought of them, although she was vexed with herself when she saw one eye—for in verity that was all—of a potato upon her father's plate. Now she blushed when she heard of the buttons of her frock—which was only done because of tightness, and showed how long she must have worn it; but as to the double thread, she was sure that nothing of that sort ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore

... are told of his kindness in enforcing the claims of the United States, when he was Receiver of the District Land Office, for lands sold on credit, as was the custom in those days. Upon one occasion there had been a time of general tightness in money matters, and many farms in the region northeast of Cincinnati but partly paid for were forfeited to the Government. In the discharge of his official duty General Findlay attended at the place of sale. He learned, soon after his arrival there, ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore

... places of my writings, and through many years of endeavour to define the laws of art, I have insisted on this Tightness in work, and on its connection with virtue of character, in so many partial ways, that the impression left on the reader's mind—if, indeed, it was ever impressed at all—has been confused and uncertain. In beginning the series of my corrected works, ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin

... side, at the other end. Before the days of safety bars, its near side end was usually buckled on to the stirrup leather, which was a faulty arrangement, not only as regards the leather (p. 36), but also because its degree of tightness was a constantly varying quantity which entirely depended on the amount of pressure that the rider put on her stirrup. The presence of a properly tightened balance strap helps to prevent lateral ...
— The Horsewoman - A Practical Guide to Side-Saddle Riding, 2nd. Ed. • Alice M. Hayes

... a plump little beau of forty, at war with his fat and accounting his tight blue tail coat and brass buttons a victory. His tightness made his fatness elastic; he looked wound up for a dance, and could hardly hold on a leg; but the presentation of a creature in a battered hat and soiled garments, carrying a tattered knapsack half slung, lank and with disorderly ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... of the two tail-pockets of his regimental coat; this 'monkey that had seen the world' suddenly appeared before the chiefs and warriors of his tribe; and as he stood before them, straight as a ramrod, in a high state of perspiration, caused by the tightness of his finery, while the cool fresh air of heaven blew over the naked, unrestrained limbs of the spectators, it might, perhaps not unjustly, be said of the costumes, 'Which is the savage?' In return for the presents he had received, and with a desire to impart as much real information ...
— History, Manners, and Customs of the North American Indians • George Mogridge

... the most important in the American Historical Section, for it shows the work of the men who really emancipated American painting from the old hardness and tightness of technique, and from the old sentimentalism. Wall A is given up to the work of the late Winslow Homer, who has been called "the most American of painters." The seashore scenes alone of the things here are representative of this big man at his best. Wall B has a varied ...
— An Art-Lovers guide to the Exposition • Shelden Cheney

... ever farther removed from personal vanity than Aunt Mary. She looked like a little Quakeress. Her silvered hair was parted in the middle and had, in spite of palpable efforts towards tightness and repression, a perceptible ripple in it. Grey was her only concession to colour, and her gowns and bonnets were of a primness which belonged to the past. Repression, or perhaps compression, was her note, for the energy confined within her little body was a thing ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... to pieces, and say they are alike in this, and not alike in that, but because we feel them to be alike altogether, though in different degrees. When, therefore, I say, The color I saw yesterday was a white color, or, The sensation I feel is one of tightness, in both cases the attribute I affirm of the color or of the other sensation is mere resemblance—simple likeness to sensations which I have had before, and which have had those names bestowed upon them. The names of feelings, like other concrete ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill

... should not be allowed to work against the walls of the old aperture, as there is much risk of damage or enlargement and the necessity of a fresh peg, which is to be avoided, if the set of pegs have been doing their duty well and are free from splits. In the fitting of the peg, a degree of tightness into the new wood will be found advantageous; the surface being fresh and softer than that of the old, soon accommodates itself during the insertion and revolution of the peg, whereas the process will have been going on a long time with the ...
— The Repairing & Restoration of Violins - 'The Strad' Library, No. XII. • Horace Petherick

... utter stupefaction. The mayor, though dressed as a bourgeois, always looked like a servant. Each gazed with a bewildered eye at the gendarmes, in whose clutches Gothard was still sobbing, his hands purple and swollen from the tightness of the cord that bound them. Catherine maintained her attitude of artless simplicity, which was quite impenetrable. The corporal, who, according to Corentin, had committed a great blunder in arresting these smaller fry, ...
— An Historical Mystery • Honore de Balzac

... prospects, in the French quarter, of an equivalent for Schlesien;—very fine, unless Diana intervene! Diana or not, French prospects or not, her Hungarian Majesty fastens on Bavaria with uncommon tightness of fist, now that Bavaria is swept clear; well resolved to keep Bavaria for equivalent, till better come. Exacts, by her deputy, Homage from the Population there; strict Oath of Fealty to HER; poor Kaiser protesting his ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIV. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... was a woman of twenty-eight, I should think, though of a type whose age is always doubtful; for she cannot have looked different when she was twenty, and at forty would look no older. She gave me an impression of extraordinary tightness. Her plain face with its narrow lips was tight, her skin was stretched tightly over her bones, her smile was tight, her hair was tight, her clothes were tight, and the white drill she wore had all the effect of black bombazine. I could not imagine why Captain ...
— The Moon and Sixpence • W. Somerset Maugham

... The tightness of the box in which the Dead Man was placed, produced no small inconvenience to that worthy, who during the passage was nearly suffocated; however, he consoled himself with the thought that in a short time he ...
— City Crimes - or Life in New York and Boston • Greenhorn

... was shown into the drawing-room, and Mrs. Hackbutt went to her, with more tightness of lip and rubbing of her hands than was usually observable in her, these being precautions adopted against freedom of speech. She was resolved not to ask ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot

... until he had devised a machine that crumpled the paper around the wire, instead of winding it tightly. This was the finishing touch. For a time these paper-wound cables were soaked in oil, but in 1890 Engineer F. A. Pickernell dared to trust to the tightness of the lead sheathing, and laid a "dry core" cable, the first of the modern type, in one of the streets of Philadelphia. This cable was the event of the year. It was not only cheaper. It was the best-talking cable that had ever been harnessed ...
— The History of the Telephone • Herbert N. Casson

... from under the deck, and in the first place proceeded to search for the water complained of. I found it right aft, as Mrs Vansittart had suggested, and in order to test the tightness of the boat I baled it all out, or at least as much of it as could be got rid of with the baler, leaving no more than perhaps half a tumblerful. Then, wading ashore, I sat down on the sand, with my back against the ...
— The First Mate - The Story of a Strange Cruise • Harry Collingwood

... certain alertness and decision of character. Some hailed from English cities, a few from those of Canada, and some from the bush of Ontario; but there was a similarity between them which the cut and tightness of their store clothing did not altogether account for. They lived well if plainly, and toiled out in the open unusually hard. Their eyes were steady, their bronzed skin was clear, and their laughter ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss

... whose ears had been twice boxed that morning, had heard a whisper of it on her way down to the church, and was confirmed in her fears by observing the few members of the congregation who entered after her. Men and women alike suffered from an unwonted corpulence and tightness of raiment that morning, and each and all seemed to have cast the affliction off as they arose from their knees. It was too late to interfere, so she sat still ...
— I Saw Three Ships and Other Winter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... has lost it, is reminded of that illness, and drags you through the whole of its symptoms, progress, and treatment. Innocently remark that you are not well, or that somebody else is not well, and the same inevitable result ensues. You will learn how our bore felt a tightness about here, sir, for which he couldn't account, accompanied with a constant sensation as if he were being stabbed - or, rather, jobbed - that expresses it more correctly - jobbed - with a blunt knife. Well, sir! ...
— Reprinted Pieces • Charles Dickens

... not even. The hot metal, contracting as it cooled, did not seem to contract uniformly, creating slightly unequal distances between teeth. This resulted in the chain hanging quite loose in some places and in others the tightness prevented adjustment. He contacted Will Russell, foreman of the Russell shop, where the automobile was made, and Russell showed him a device, built by George Warwick, who had made the Warwick bicycle. It was an internal-cut gear, according to Duryea's ...
— The 1893 Duryea Automobile In the Museum of History and Technology • Don H. Berkebile

... dividing themselves into pairs, and taking hold of the slew-ropes in their hands, pulled them up as tight as they could. By this effort they caused the cylinder to turn round till its further revolutions were stopped by the increasing tightness of the hawser, which was wound on the cylinder as fast as the slew-ropes were wound off it. When all the ropes had been drawn equally tight, and the whole party of men had been ranged along the top in an erect posture, with their faces all turned one way, a signal was given by ...
— The Lieutenant and Commander - Being Autobigraphical Sketches of His Own Career, from - Fragments of Voyages and Travels • Basil Hall

... days I was in possession of an excellent horse, and Marmaduke had the like fortune. My tutor examined the steed Sir Massingberd had bought with great attention, and after commenting on the tightness of the curb, declared that he would accompany us on our first ride. After we had left the village, he expressed a wish to change mounts with Marmaduke, and certainly if he had been a horsebreaker he could not have taken more pains with the ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VI. • Various

... just learned that the pitch of sound depends on the rapidity of the vibrations. This depends on the length of cords and their tightness for the shorter and tighter a string is, the higher is the note which its vibration produces. The vocal cords of women are about one-third shorter than those of men, hence the higher pitch of the notes they produce. In children the ...
— A Practical Physiology • Albert F. Blaisdell

... decreased also. In consequence, there is a larger balance to be paid in bullion; the store in the bank or banks keeping the reserve is diminished, and the rate of interest must be raised by them to stay the effiux. And the tightness so produced is often greater than, and always equal to, ...
— Lombard Street: A Description of the Money Market • Walter Bagehot

... him with a growing feeling of suffocation and tightness about her throat and heart, for the droop of his ...
— Sara, a Princess • Fannie E. Newberry

... He selects from the suspicious herd some fine young three-year old, grazing somewhat apart from the main body, and creeps silently towards it. Suddenly the lasso flies in snaky coils over the head of the beast, and is drawn with strangulating tightness about its neck. At the first plunge, a brother hatero lassoes the animal's hind legs, and it is permitted to rear and kick as frantically as it can, until it drops to the ground exhausted and strangled. The Llanero immediately approaches the prostrate colt, ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 3, No. 16, February, 1859 • Various

... a time, then went on: "No gear-train or chain mechanism can be built of sufficient tightness, since in any mechanism there is some freedom of motion, however slight, and for this purpose the director must have no freedom of motion whatever. We must have a pure torque—and the only possible force answering our requirements is the four hundred sixty-seventh ...
— Skylark Three • Edward Elmer Smith

... elsewhere in the Letters to show that B is not many removes from the scriptura continua of some majuscule hand. In the section included in {Pi}, apart from the general tightness of the writing, which led to the later insertion of strokes between many of the words,[35] we note these special indications of a parent manuscript in majuscules. In 61, 10 me autem], B started to write mea and then corrected it. 64, 19 ...
— A Sixth-Century Fragment of the Letters of Pliny the Younger • Elias Avery Lowe and Edward Kennard Rand

... intensely irritating, and may give rise to laryngitis, bronchitis, and even pneumonia. Nitric acid fumes sometimes produce no serious symptoms for an hour or more, but there may then be coughing, difficulty of breathing, and tightness in the lower part of the throat, followed by capillary bronchitis ...
— Aids to Forensic Medicine and Toxicology • W. G. Aitchison Robertson

... tightness of the joints of a boiler is best tested in the first instance by means of compressed air. Solder on an all-metal cycle valve, "inflate" the boiler to a considerable pressure, and submerge it in a tub of water. The slightest leak will be betrayed by a string of bubbles ...
— Things To Make • Archibald Williams

... stables, which was not true. Proceeding thither with a lantern he found only one prisoner, who, on examination, proved to be the constable. He had attacked the unsavoury potato with his teeth as far as the tightness of his gag allowed, and was now able to make an audible groan, which sounded slushy through the moist vegetable medium. When released, he was speechless with indignation, disappointment, and shame. Ben flashed the lantern on the handkerchief, ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell

... attraction drew him on, and he still advanced, when all suddenly he paused, trembling violently. His nerves began to throb acutely,—the blood in his veins was like fire,—there was a curious strangling tightness in his throat that interrupted and oppressed his breathing,—he stared straight before him with large, luminous, impassioned eyes. What—WHAT was that dazzling something in the air that flashed and whirled and shone ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli

... been so, he would hardly have been tolerated at the chateau, since he was not particularly beautiful, and not especially refined. He was in holy orders, as his tonsured head and clerical costume bore witness—a costume which, from its tightness and simplicity, only served to exaggerate the unusual proportions of his person. Monsieur the Preceptor, had English blood in his veins, and his northern origin betrayed itself in his towering height and corresponding breadth, as well as by his fair hair and light blue eyes. But the most ...
— Frances Kane's Fortune • L. T. Meade

... a florid lace-and-glass-fronted restaurant on Forty-third Street, with a mimeographed breakfast menu up against the window. Her food went down through a throat constricted against it. Her tightness ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst

... book always opens out flat, and stays open. It also shuts up completely, and when closed stays shut. But how many books do we see always bulging open at the sides, or stiffly resisting being opened by too great tightness in the back? If the books you have had bound do not meet all these requirements, it is time ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford

... intelligence saw its cause too clearly for her to resent it as she would have resented one less justified. There was, perhaps, something to be said for Jack, disastrously wrong though he was; and, with all her essential Tightness, there was, perhaps, something to be said against her. She could not break, without further reflection, the threads that ...
— A Fountain Sealed • Anne Douglas Sedgwick

... meditation on the peculiar constitution of the female mind as unfolded to him in his domestic life; and yet he thought Mrs. Glegg's household ways a model for her sex. It struck him as a pitiable irregularity in other women if they did not roll up their table-napkins with the same tightness and emphasis as Mrs. Glegg did, if their pastry had a less leathery consistence, and their damson cheese a less venerable hardness than hers; nay, even the peculiar combination of grocery and druglike odors in Mrs. Glegg's private cupboard ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot

... speak, but there was a dry tightness in his throat which made him doubt his command of utterance. His only response was the dumb clasping of her hand, and to it he clung, unconscious of what the act implied, as a ...
— Dixie Hart • Will N. Harben

... it only sinks about four or six inches in the water, few places are too shallow to float it. The birch bark of which it is made is about a quarter of an inch thick; and the inside is lined with extremely thin flakes of wood, over which a number of light timbers are driven, to give strength and tightness to the machine. In this frail bark, which measures from twelve, fifteen, thirty, to forty feet long, and from two to four feet broad in the middle, a whole Indian family of eight or ten souls will travel hundreds ...
— Hudson Bay • R.M. Ballantyne

... the twilight a slight bending form, coming down, holding by the balusters. Violet was in her arms, clasping her with a trembling, almost convulsive tightness, without speaking. ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge

... remembered. Speaking generally, the muscles are arranged in pairs which have an opposite or antagonistic action—viz.: (1) Those that open and close the glottis; (2) those that regulate the tension, or degree of tightness, ...
— Voice Production in Singing and Speaking - Based on Scientific Principles (Fourth Edition, Revised and Enlarged) • Wesley Mills

... done my best. For the first time in my life I had twisted my front hair into little wire tongs they call crimping-pins; maybe it was their tightness that held my eyes so wide open last night. I was trying with all my strength to shut them, when the sound of a cannon, ever so far off, brought me up in the bed, with my hand clasped and the heart in my bosom trembling ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens

... in youth, such deception is perhaps entirely normal, and in certain suggestible and inflammable types of people it is peculiarly apt to occur. This kind of deception, although far more frequent and conspicuous in matters of love—and more serious because of the tightness of the marriage bond—is liable to occur in any relation of life. For most people, however, and those not the least sane or the least wise, the memory of the exaltation of love, even when the period of that exaltation is over, still remains as, at the least, the memory of ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... two, gradually remove the extra clothing. Be careful about going out the next morning, for the body will be especially susceptible to the cold. In this way it is possible to break up a hard cold at once. If there is any tendency to cough, or any tightness or soreness in the chest, place a mustard plaster directly over the chest, and allow it to remain on until the skin is ...
— Treatise on the Diseases of Women • Lydia E. Pinkham

... settled down again, however, and now holds a good railroad position in the Northwest, where he is living with his family. His was about the quickest case of "loosening up from extreme tightness" that I have ...
— A Ball Player's Career - Being the Personal Experiences and Reminiscensces of Adrian C. Anson • Adrian C. Anson

... well that when he filled the two water-bottles for the use of the sergeant Edgar had taken a long drink, for no one came near him until after dark, and he suffered a good deal from thirst, and from the pain caused by the tightness with which he was bound. He began to think that he had been altogether forgotten, when the door of the outhouse opened and two Arabs came in, and seizing him as if he had been a package dragged him out into the court-yard. Then he received two or three kicks as an intimation that he could ...
— The Dash for Khartoum - A Tale of Nile Expedition • George Alfred Henty

... the symptoms of a common cold in the head, some chilliness, feverishness, restlessness, headache, a feeling of tightness across the chest, violent paroxysms of coughing, sometimes almost threatening suffocation, ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols

... stroke, all that I had drunken must have come upon me. The clearness of vision went from me like a candle that is blown out. I know not what happened after, save that I found myself upon my truckle-bed, with my leathern money-pouch clasped in my hand with surprising tightness, as if I had been mortally afraid that some one would mistake my poor satchel ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett

... the arm of a stout man with globular green eyes set in a fat white face. Some support was necessary, for she was very stout, and so compressed that the upper part of her body hung considerably in advance of her feet, which could only trip in tiny steps, owing to the tightness of the skirt round her ankles. The dress itself consisted of a small piece of shiny yellow satin, adorned here and there indiscriminately with round shields of blue and green beads made to imitate hues of a peacock's breast. On the summit of a frothy castle of hair a purple plume stood erect, ...
— The Voyage Out • Virginia Woolf

... little white tablet, half hidden in the sighing grass, is linked a chain which holds you, at this moment, by your inmost soul. You are not listening to me now; for I have but touched it, and your breast is swelling 'neath its pressure, and the tears start to your eyes at its momentary tightness. You don't carry any such? We all carry them; and were human ears sensitive to other than the grosser sounds of nature, they would hear a strange music sweeping from these mystic chords, as they tremble at the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various

... of the boiler is to be covered with brickwork laid in the best lime, and if the lime be not of the hydraulic kind, it should be mixed with Dutch terrass, to make it impenetrable to water. The top of the boiler should be well plastered with this lime, which will greatly conduce to the tightness of the seams. Openings into the flues must be left in convenient situations to enable the flues to be swept out when required, and these openings may be closed with cast iron doors jointed with clay or mortar, which may be easily removed when ...
— A Catechism of the Steam Engine • John Bourne

... audience roars wi' laughter when I come to that line. I ken fine they're no laughin' at the wee joke sae much as at what they're thinkin' o' me and a' they've heard o' my tightness and closeness. Do they think any Scot wad care for the cost of a stamp? Maybe it would anger an Englishman did a postcard come tae him wi'oot a stamp. It wad but amuse a Scot; he'd no be carin' one way or anither for the bawbee the stamp wad cost. And here's a funny thing tae me. Do they no see ...
— Between You and Me • Sir Harry Lauder

... curious pathological fact, that during the progress of Spermatorrhoea, difficulty of breathing, cough, and tightness of the chest, arising in many constitutions from the seminal disorder, have sometimes been actually mistaken for pulmonary consumption. The cough is often distressing, occasionally attended by an expectoration ...
— Manhood Perfectly Restored • Unknown

... dandy glove, which made my heart ache, and lowered the hind-quarters by bringing over a bit of the sky. Such a dress! white greatcoat, blue satin cravat, hair oiled and curling, hat of the primest curve, gloves scented with eau-de-Cologne, primrose in tint, skin in tightness. In this prime of dandyism, he took up a nasty, oily, dirty hog-tool, and immortalised Copenhagen by touching the sky. I thought after he was gone, "This won't do—a Frenchman touch Copenhagen!" So out I rubbed all he had touched, and modified ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston

... the second story be upright. The recent fashion of a mansard or "French roof" is only making part of the wall of the house look like roof, at equal expense, at the sacrifice of space inside, and above all, of tightness. For, though shingles and even slates will generally keep out the rain, the innumerable cracks between the sides of them can never be made air-tight, and therefore admit heat and cold much more freely than any ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 60, October 1862 • Various

... rings, decked in its chief finery, a blue quilted cloak. The mother came along to hold her cherub in her lap. She was a long, raw-boned woman, immature in face under all her crust of care and tan, evidently distressed in her free waist by the tightness of her calico dress and in her ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various

... curtain, and the veil of egotism is rent, and he shows us the crowd of living men and women, the endless groups, the landscape back-ground, the cloud and the rainbow, and enriches our imaginations and relieves one passion by another, and expands and lightens reflection, and takes away that tightness at the breast which arises from thinking or wishing to think that there is nothing in the world out of a man's self!—In this point of view, the Author of Waverley is one of the greatest teachers of morality ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin

... enough to say to the dressmaker, "Make it perfectly easy and comfortable," and then trust to her judgment that it will be all right. The only test for a girl's clothing, as to tightness, should be, "Can you take a good, full breath, and not feel your clothes?" If so, they are loose enough; if not, let them out, and keep on letting them out till you can. Nor is there the slightest need that this kind of dressing involve "dowdiness," or "slouchiness," a characteristic abhorrent ...
— The Education of American Girls • Anna Callender Brackett

... whether you desire to partake of such and such a dish or whether you don't—of such little matters he (or she) seems unaware. Perhaps it is that the Teutonic mind is so vigorous that it overrides you without being conscious of doing so, or that it is so convinced of its own Tightness; or perhaps it is that the scientific type of mind, depending always on formulae and statistics, necessarily loses a certain finer quality. Anyhow, the fact remains that sociable, kindly, gemuethlich and so forth as the Germans are, there is a lack of delicate touch ...
— The Healing of Nations and the Hidden Sources of Their Strife • Edward Carpenter

... still frequented by yaks, of which we overtook a small party going to Tibet, laden with planks. All the party appeared alike overcome by lassitude, shortness and difficulty of breathing, a sense of weight on the stomach, giddiness and headache, with tightness across the temples. ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker

... for the vessel. Finding it impossible to accomplish the object in this way, I enlarged the wound by degrees sufficiently for the introduction of my fingers in succession, until the whole hand was admitted into the cavity, of which the orifice was still so small as to embrace the wrist with a tightness that prevented any continuous haemorrhage. Being now able to explore the state of matters satisfactorily, I found that there was a large mass of dense fibrinous coagulum firmly impacted into the sciatic notch; and, not without using considerable force, succeeded in disengaging the whole of this ...
— A Manual of the Operations of Surgery - For the Use of Senior Students, House Surgeons, and Junior Practitioners • Joseph Bell

... being lifted and thrown into the bottom of the cart. Four men then climbed up into it and the horse was started. They drove at a quick pace, and Reuben wondered why they were taking him away with them. His head ached terribly, and he suffered much from the tightness of the cords which bound his arms. The men seemed in high good humour, and talked and laughed in low tones; but the noise of the vehicle prevented Reuben hearing what ...
— A Final Reckoning - A Tale of Bush Life in Australia • G. A. Henty

... watched them go from beneath his shaggy, scowling eyebrows, and his thin lips relaxed their usual tightness to curve in ...
— The Monk of Hambleton • Armstrong Livingston

... to remember that he had given her cause for a way. "There's a lot of women as wouldn't exactly regard me as a Merino, or a Southdown, either;" he gulped the coffee to ease the tightness in ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning

... reached him he could scarcely speak; his wheezing chest strained his coat to exceeding tightness, his face was purple, he swung his cane with spasmodic jerks. "Fine day," ...
— Jerome, A Poor Man - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... everybody but Mr Madison Chalkley had left the room; and when the old gentleman, as was his wont on the first day of the month, had gone up to the desk, untied the bundle of uncalled-for letters, the outer ones permanently rounded by the tightness of the cord, and after carefully looking over them, one by one, had made his usual remark about the folly of people who wouldn't stay in a place until their letters could get to them, had tied up the bundle and taken his departure; then Miss Harriet put ...
— The Late Mrs. Null • Frank Richard Stockton

... we were passing through. He suggested that we try our fortune in the little town where the car first meets the Lake. This we did and looked up and down that Main Street. It was quiet and quaint, but something pressed home to us that was not all joy—the tightness of old scar-tissue in the chest.... The countryman came running to us from the still standing car, though this was not his destination, and pointing to a little grey man ...
— Child and Country - A Book of the Younger Generation • Will Levington Comfort

... steady pressure are highly desirable. This doubtless accounts to some extent for the extreme tightness of the wood ...
— The Water Supply of the El Paso and Southwestern Railway from Carrizozo to Santa Rosa, N. Mex. • J. L. Campbell

... of her voice and laughed and shook her head sideways and back. She had just recently put her hair up and it still felt funny and tight and the laugh and the shake eased away the tightness of voice and of hair. She said thoughtfully, "You know, I believe I'm rather like a man in many ways, in points of view. It's through always thinking them better, I daresay. The ideas I've had about them!" and she laughed again. She said slowly, "Though mind you, Keggo, they are ...
— This Freedom • A. S. M. Hutchinson

... aristocracy would fall from the effeminate hands of the supersubtle and cultivated Mr. Balfour into the firm and tight grip of the rugged, uncultured country gentleman who sits remote and neglected close to him. There are the tightness and firmness of a death-trap in the large, strong mouth, a dangerous gleam in the steady eyes, infinite powers of firmness, inflexibility, and of even cruelty in the whole expression, not in the least softened, but rather heightened and exalted by the pretty constant smile—the smile that indicates ...
— Sketches In The House (1893) • T. P. O'Connor

... Tom's fingers were stiff from the lack of circulation of blood. But finally he managed to free himself. When he stood up in the dim storeroom, that was now a prison for all save Koku, he found that he could not walk. He almost toppled over, so weak were his legs from the tightness of the ropes. He sat down and worked his muscles until ...
— Tom Swift and his Aerial Warship - or, The Naval Terror of the Seas • Victor Appleton

... cases its tightness prevents the escape of the sebaceous matter that collects in the sulcus back of the corona, and the resulting irritation on the surface of the glans and the inner mucous fold of the prepuce ends in an inflammatory ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino

... Southerners, abetting or justifying it because it will add slave-territory and 600,000 slaves to their possessions;—surely these do not seem indications of the better state of things you anticipate, except, indeed, as the straining of the chain beyond all endurable tightness significantly suggests the probability of ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble

... a bit when he threw his arms about her and pressed her to his bosom. Perfunctorily and coldly did she yield to his embrace, but whatever ardor was lacking on her part, was compensated for by Mr. Middleton, who clasped her with exceeding tightness and showered kisses upon her pouting lips until she pushed him from her, ...
— The Strange Adventures of Mr. Middleton • Wardon Allan Curtis

... his gloves and hat, feeling an unpleasant tightness in his chest and thorax, and walked out in the road. Aristides trotted along by his side, endeavoring to keep pace with his short legs to the master's strides, when the master stopped suddenly, and Aristides bumped up against him. "Where ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte

... closed vessel of metal in which liquids can be heated above their boiling points under pressure. Etymologically the word indicates a self-closing vessel ([Greek: autos], self, and clavis, key, or clavus, nail), in which the tightness of the joints is maintained by the internal pressure, but this characteristic is frequently wanting in the actual apparatus to which the name is applied. The prototype of the autoclave was the digester of Denis Papin, invented in 1681, which ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various

... about half-past two bells and an excellent time to make a landing, preparations for which were forthwith set in motion. Now, if ever, we had occasion to bless the tightness of the Kawa, for in the confusion below, somewhat ameliorated by the labors of William Henry Thomas, we found most of our duffle in good order, an occasional stethoscope broken or a cork loose, but nothing to amount to much. Our rifles, side-arms, cartridges, ...
— The Cruise of the Kawa • Walter E. Traprock

... with impatience, racked with suspense, a prey to the bitterest feelings. Still no message. Why did he delay? Her heart ached now worse than ever, the choking feeling in her throat returned, and her eyes grew moist. She steadied herself by holding to the door. Her fingers grew white at the tightness of her grasp; eyes and ears were strained in their intent watchfulness ...
— The American Baron • James De Mille

... in his eyes deepened and a tightness gripped his throat. Slowly two great tears fought their way down through the dust on his face, and dropped lingeringly, one after the other ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge

... readily complied. But here a new difficulty occurred; the Moors, accustomed to a loose and easy dress, could not reconcile themselves to the appearance of my nankeen breeches, which they said were not only inelegant, but, on account of their tightness, very indecent; and as this was a visit to ladies, Ali ordered my boy to bring out the loose cloak which I had always worn since my arrival at Benowm, and told me to wrap it close round me. We visited the tents of four different ladies, at every one ...
— Life and Travels of Mungo Park in Central Africa • Mungo Park

... that give this ship the utmost rigidity. In fact, thanks to this cellular arrangement, it has the resistance of a stone block, as if it were completely solid. Its plating can't give way; it's self-adhering and not dependent on the tightness of its rivets; and due to the perfect union of its materials, the solidarity of its construction allows it to defy the ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne

... understood and to be read with profit by brain-workers of all classes, whether in profession, in literature or business. It treats of the cause of headaches, the wakefulness, the illusions or delusions, and feelings of tightness in the head, which so many of our American writers and thinkers experience, and it gives valuable information available by laymen as to the prevention and remedy for this affection, which later on leads to ...
— Fasting Girls - Their Physiology and Pathology • William Alexander Hammond

... First, the river rose and drowned some of his cattle and ruined a good deal of corn that had not been gathered. He worked hard, even desperately, to save what he could and not let the children know. Then Tom himself was taken with a queer feeling in the chest, a feeling of tightness and dull pain and shortness of breath. Martha pleaded with him a long time to consult a doctor in Greenville before he consented ...
— Frank of Freedom Hill • Samuel A. Derieux

... leaped forward, but a tightness in his temples stopped him. The distance was too great. And the Jovian must be somewhere about! Quick surprise was his only chance. His gaze roved up to the steepening cliff behind the village, and he saw ...
— One Purple Hope! • Henry Hasse

... to press closely together, whence also the adjective "costive"), the condition of body when the faeces are unduly retained, or there is difficulty in evacuation, tightness of the bowels (see Digestive Organs; and Therapeutics). It may be due to constitutional peculiarities, sedentary or irregular habits, improper diet, &c. The treatment varies with individual cases, according to ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 7, Slice 2 - "Constantine Pavlovich" to "Convention" • Various

... was to be called upon for some signal service. The bridle was first scrutinised. The great bit—a Mameluke—was carefully examined, lest there might be some flaw or crack in the steel. The head-strap was buckled to its proper tightness, and then the reins were minutely scanned. These were of the hair of wild horses' tails closely and neatly plaited. Leather might snap, there was no fear of breaking ...
— The White Chief - A Legend of Northern Mexico • Mayne Reid

... you place your hand in that of a somnambulist who, when awake, can press it only up to a certain average of tightness, you will see that in the somnambulistic state—as it is stupidly termed—his fingers can clutch like a vise screwed up by a blacksmith.'—Well, monsieur, I placed my hand in that of a woman, not asleep, ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac

... would have been a mad fatality, leaving no room for any feeling of acquiescence in the wise ordering of the world. If the story of Joan was to yield a tragedy at all, it was necessary to have recourse to some bold invention which should bring her fate into harmony with the central tightness of things.[124] ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas

... Street can excel the supremely good American tailor—whose clothes however are identical in every particular with those of London, and their right to be called "best" is for greater perfection of workmanship and fit. This last is a dangerous phrase; "fit" means perfect set and line, not plaster tightness. ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post

... still the tightness in the throat and cough continue to be troublesome, give Ipecac in place of Aconite. And when the cough seems to be deep seated use Bryonia instead ...
— An Epitome of Homeopathic Healing Art - Containing the New Discoveries and Improvements to the Present Time • B. L. Hill

... theatre audience. No effect, halfway good, passes me by. So, as I turned back at the garden gate to watch the long grey line winding slowly into the forest, I found that I had the same chill down my back and the same tightness over my eyes and in my throat, which, in the real theatre-goers, announce that ...
— On the Edge of the War Zone - From the Battle of the Marne to the Entrance of the Stars and Stripes • Mildred Aldrich

... torture!" cried Ebbo, leaping from the rock in time to see the disgusting draught held to the lips of the captive, whose hands were twisted back and bound with cruel tightness; for the German boor, once roused from his lazy good- nature, ...
— The Dove in the Eagle's Nest • Charlotte M. Yonge

... have most ridiculous notions concerning its origin. Some say "All the waters here have puna;" others that "where there is snow there is puna;"—and this no doubt is true. The only sensation I experienced was a slight tightness across the head and chest, like that felt on leaving a warm room and running quickly in frosty weather. There was some imagination even in this; for upon finding fossil shells on the highest ridge, I entirely forgot the puna in my delight. Certainly ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin

... face of the spectator crimsoned, the hot flood burned at her ears, a tightness like a physical hand gripped at her throat; but it seemed that her eyes could not leave the figures before her. Not the alien interest of a watcher at the play, but a more intense, a more personal meaning, was in her gaze now. Something ...
— Ben Blair - The Story of a Plainsman • Will Lillibridge

... have always said so," sez he. "You have called it tightness, but I have always known that it wuz pure economy; and now," sez he, "has come the chance of a lifetime, for me to rise up and show myself off before the nation. To git the high, lofty name that I ort to have, and ...
— Samantha at the World's Fair • Marietta Holley

... Man stood ankle deep in the turgid little rivulet, a tightness clutching at his chest, and with his head whirling. At his feet his antagonist lay motionless. He stepped out of the water, putting his foot into a tiny grove of trees that bent and crackled like twigs under his tread. He wondered if he would faint; he knew he must not. Away to ...
— The Girl in the Golden Atom • Raymond King Cummings

... re-read her mother's pages, she felt an unusual tightness in her throat and two tears rose to her eyes. It was dreadful that her little boy should be growing up far away from her, perhaps dressed in clothes she would have hated; and wicked and unnatural that when ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton

... Davenport in a man facially dissimilar. The change in bodily appearance, gait, and so forth, would be as simple to effect as it was necessary. Hitherto he had leaned forward a little, and walked rather loosely. A pair of the strongest shoulder-braces would draw back his shoulders, give him tightness and straightness, increase the apparent width of his frame, alter the swing of his arms, and entail—without effort on his part—a change in his attitude when standing, his gait in walking, his way of placing his ...
— The Mystery of Murray Davenport - A Story of New York at the Present Day • Robert Neilson Stephens

... if he thought there was any possibility of our being saved. As no reply was at first made to this question, we all concluded that the hybrid had been drowned where he lay; but presently, to our great joy, he spoke, although very feebly, saying that he was in great pain, being so cut by the tightness of his lashings across the stomach, that he must either find means of loosening them or perish, as it was impossible that he could endure his misery much longer. This occasioned us great distress, as it was altogether useless to think of aiding him ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... which brushes over the surface of the mucous membrane that lines the nostrils and trachea, and thus, robbing them of their heat, allows the excitability to accumulate. But we feel no fever, no sense of tightness or stuffing, nor any other symptom of catarrh, so long as we continue in the cold. If however we afterwards go into a warm room, and particularly near a fire, we receive by the act of respiration the warm air into those very parts which have been previously exposed to cold, and ...
— Popular Lectures on Zoonomia - Or The Laws of Animal Life, in Health and Disease • Thomas Garnett

... The remarkable tightness and plumpness of limbs and person exhibited by Foreign Affairs cannot have escaped observation. This attractive quality may be acquired by purchasing the material out of which the clothes are to be made, and giving ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various

... young woman getting out of her victoria before a fashionable hairdresser's looked radiant enough. She had not yet lost the waist and shoulder line, though her pink frock fitted her with discreet tightness. She paused a moment to pat and fuss prettily over the two blooming, curly children who were to remain under the care of the nurse, who sat on the back seat, holding ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... cattle to the extent of their devoting the best land for the grazing of their cattle. And they have been found co-operating against a particular rapacious Mahajan. Doubts have been expressed as to the success of co-operation because of the tightness of the Mahajan's hold on the ryots. I do not share the fears. The mightiest Mahajan must, if he represent an evil force, bend before co-operation, conceived as an essentially moral movement. But my limited experience of the Mahajan of Champaran has made me revise ...
— Third class in Indian railways • Mahatma Gandhi

... Kurfurst, he has the privilege to do; nominates (1516) one Tetzel for Chief Salesman, a Priest whose hardness of face, and shiftiness of head and hand, were known to him; and—here is one Hohenzollern that has a place in History! Poor man, it was by accident, and from extreme tightness for money. He was by no means a violent Churchman; he had himself inclinations towards Luther, even of a practical sort, as the thing went on. But there was no ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. III. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Hohenzollerns In Brandenburg—1412-1718 • Thomas Carlyle

... one other, and no more. Make me as compact a little will as can be reconciled with tightness, leaving the whole of the property to "my beloved wife, Henerietty Boffin, sole executrix". Make it as short as you can, using those words; ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens

... for some time, but the rigidity of her attitude, and the tightness with which she pressed her lips together, showed that her mind was deeply occupied. They both sat silent for some few moments, looking down toward the distant lights of the city. At the farther ...
— Soldiers of Fortune • Richard Harding Davis

... devil's dusts that filled the air; cadaverous faces, the muscles of which betrayed habitual suffering, coughs short and dry, or with a frothy expectoration peculiar to the trade. In answer to questions, many complained of a fearful tightness across the chest, of inability to eat or to digest. One said it took him five minutes to get up the factory stairs, and he had to lean against the ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade

... coarse russet garb of the country, and bespoke her to be some farmer's daughter. Her features denoted the last degree of fear and anguish, and she moved her limbs in such a manner as showed that the ligatures by which she was confined produced, by their tightness, the ...
— Edgar Huntley • Charles Brockden Brown

... Hydrops Pectoris; legs and thighs prodigiously anasarcous; a very distressing sense of fulness and tightness across his stomach; urine in small quantity; pulse intermitting; ...
— An Account of the Foxglove and some of its Medical Uses - With Practical Remarks on Dropsy and Other Diseases • William Withering

... an asylum overcrowded with orphans in consequence of the late epidemic." There was still a tightness in Richling's throat, a faint bitterness in his tone, a spark of indignation in his eye. But these the Doctor ignored. He reached out his hand, took the folded paper gently from Richling, crossed his knees, and, resting his elbows on them and ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable

... for the second time, the dance carried them to the end of the room where Pollard and Broderick were, she was so sure of herself that she sent a quick, laughing glance at her uncle. And a little of the tightness about her heart was gone as she saw the look of relief in ...
— Six Feet Four • Jackson Gregory

... materialistic instinct leads them to deny everything which is not as clearly demonstrable by external evidence as a fact in chemistry, geography, or mathematics, will fail to find the hardness, definition, tightness, and, let me add, littleness of outline, in which their souls delight; they will find rather the gloom and gleam of Rembrandt, or the golden twilight of the Venetians, the losing and the finding, and the infinite liberty of shadow; and this they hate, inasmuch ...
— The Fair Haven • Samuel Butler

... time he begins to feel a peculiar corded and tympanic tightness about the epigastrium. A feverish condition of the brain, which sometimes amounts to absolute phantasia, now ensues, marked off into periods of increasing excitement by a heavy sleep, which, after each interval, grows fuller of tremendous dreams, and breaks ...
— The Opium Habit • Horace B. Day

... shoulders in water, who suddenly are submerged by a rolling wave. An invisible hand seemed to have quietly closed round my throat and to be gently pressing the life from me. I was conscious of immense oppression upon my chest, great tightness within my head, a loud singing in my ears, and bright flashes before my eyes. I staggered to the balustrades of the stair. At the same moment, rushing and snorting like a wounded buffalo, Challenger dashed past me, a terrible vision, with red-purple face, engorged eyes, ...
— The Poison Belt • Arthur Conan Doyle

... and take it to the summit of Mount Blanc. As you ascend, the bladder becomes more and more distended; at the top of the mountain it is fully distended, and has evidently to bear a pressure from within. Returning to the sea level you find that the tightness disappears, the bladder finally appearing ...
— Young Folks' Library, Volume XI (of 20) - Wonders of Earth, Sea and Sky • Various

... urn it so fell that the king was required for death as a victim. Then Starkad made a noose of withies and bound the king in it; saying that for a brief instant he should pay the mere semblance of a penalty. But the tightness of the knot acted according to its nature, and cut off his last breath as he hung. And while he was still quivering Starkad rent away with his steel the remnant of his life; thus disclosing his treachery when he ought to have brought aid. I ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")

... formerly, with great difficulty. But, instead of fish, found nothing in them but a vessel of brass, which, by the weight, seemed to be full of something; and he observed that it was shut up with singular tightness, and sealed up with a thick coating of official-looking wax. And the Seal was Green, green as the abounding grass, or the scarce four-leaved shamrock of that amazing Isle of Emeralds, which some deem as much matter of myth as SINDBAD'S Valley ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 104, February 4, 1893 • Various

... spread over me; it was pleasant; I did not care to withdraw my eyes. Presently the tightness in my face relaxed, I moved my ...
— The Maid-At-Arms • Robert W. Chambers

... through the young summer night. There were so many little things to catch the eyes, so many of the little things down near the earth; expressions on faces of the passers, the set of a collar, the quaint foreign tightness of waist of a good bourgeoise who walked arm in arm with her perspiring spouse. The gilding on the statue of Joan of Arc had a pleasant littleness of Philistinism, the arcades of the Rue de Rivoli broke up the grey light pleasantly ...
— The Inheritors • Joseph Conrad

... road. Once, looking at the girl, she thought with a half smile how oddly clean she was. The flannel skirt she arranged so complacently had been washed until the colours had run madly into each other in sheer desperation; her hair was knotted with relentless tightness into a comb such as old women wear. The very cart, patched as it was, had a snug, cosy look; the masses of vegetables, green and crimson and scarlet, were heaped with a certain reference to the glow of colour, ...
— Margret Howth, A Story of To-day • Rebecca Harding Davis

... walked, however, my leg began to be filled with a tightness and throbbing which increased every hour, and presently it began to swell also, till the skin was stretched like drawn parchment. I was taken, too, with a sickness, that racked me violently, and if one ...
— The Lost Continent • C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne

... now," said Prince Michael offhandedly; for he dreaded a too close inquiry into his wife's financial resources in the presence of the Greek. Princess Delgrado was reputedly a rich woman, and her husband had explained his shortness of cash during recent years by the convenient theory of monetary tightness in America, whence, it was well ...
— A Son of the Immortals • Louis Tracy

... years old, and above six feet high, dressed in a gray suit; the coat, from its size, appeared to have been made for him some ten years before. He was remarkably narrow-chested and round-shouldered, owing, perhaps, as much to the tightness of his garment as to the hand of nature. His face was long, and his complexion swarthy relieved, however, by certain freckles, with which the skin was plentifully studded. He had strange wandering eyes, gray, and somewhat unequal in size; ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow

... atmosphere of that pocket rose and clung to her, enveloped her like a nimbus, as she went down. In the pent heat her face seemed cold. She had the appearance of being older. The fine vertical line at the corner of her mouth, which Tisdale had not noticed before, brought a tightness to his throat when he ventured to look at her. How could Weatherbee have been so blind? How could he have missed the finer, spiritual loveliness of this woman? Weatherbee, who himself had been so sensitive; ...
— The Rim of the Desert • Ada Woodruff Anderson

... "tightness" caused him to fall asleep on the box when we started again, but the more seasoned Judge drove ...
— Three Months in the Southern States, April-June 1863 • Arthur J. L. (Lieut.-Col.) Fremantle

... which I was bound. I heard processions, shouts, and lamentations for the dead; but I could see nothing, for I was now too weak to turn on my side. When I had been a week in this confined state, the agony arising from the swelling of my limbs, and from the increased tightness of the ligatures was so great, that I called for death to relieve me from my sufferings; and when I once more found myself raised upon the shoulders of men, I was as impatient for my approaching fate, as I should have been, under other circumstances, for my release. My senses were gradually ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Captain Frederick Marryat

... down a little stiffly (owing to the tightness of the hose), turned a clock-key. After a few rotations, the dog, being set in the right direction, moved ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, January 25th, 1890 • Various

... deposited. I now bored a hole in the end of the keg over the pitcher, and fitted in a plug of soft wood, cut in a tapering or conical shape. This plug I pushed in or pulled out, as might happen, until, after a few experiments, it arrived at that exact degree of tightness, at which the water, oozing from the hole, and falling into the pitcher below, would fill the latter to the brim in the period of sixty minutes. This, of course, was a matter briefly and easily ascertained, by noticing the proportion of the pitcher filled ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... him no answer, but as he had not yet checked her progress, continued to press forward as rapidly as she could. At length, between the hurry she had made, her terror, and the tightness of his embrace, her strength failed her, and she could go ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens

... enchanted fancy upon a possible future. Carley had been told by a Columbia professor that she was a type of the present age—a modern young woman of materialistic mind. Be that as it might, she knew many things seemed loosening from the narrowness and tightness of her character, sloughing away like scales, exposing a new and strange and susceptible softness of fiber. And this blank habit of mind, when she did not think, and now realized that she was not dreaming, seemed to be the ...
— The Call of the Canyon • Zane Grey

... undo me," she bade him, snatching at his hands. But he clutched with the tightness ...
— The Tavern Knight • Rafael Sabatini

... in her brain, making vague the cuckoo's call, blurring even the clear sweet notes of the thrush. A delicious drowsiness crept over her. She gave herself to it with conscious delight. It was so exquisite to feel the grim band that had bound her brow with such cruel tightness relax at last and fall away. Very blissfully she drifted ...
— Charles Rex • Ethel M. Dell

... travelled gave an unexpected lurch, as a corner was turned, nearly precipitating all of us into the darkness beneath, and then continued its downward course with increased speed, until sparks flew from beneath us like flecks of fire from a blacksmith's forge, and in our breasts was a tightness that ...
— The Great White Queen - A Tale of Treasure and Treason • William Le Queux

... appealed to his pity and even played a part with him, dwelling on her woman's weakness of nature, her tremors, deprived of the protection that should be hers? Artifice was foreign to her. Yet what was there, short of implicating Raven, she would not do for the child? But a glance at Tenney's face, the tightness of reserve, the fanatical eyes, closed her lips, and they moved about together dumbly at their common tasks. As she grew paler and the outline of her cheek the purer over the bones beneath, he watched her the more intently, but still furtively. ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown

... cement columns stood as sentinels the entire length of the high, one-storied facade, and on the heavy double doors he found a knocker. Visitors were infrequent there, but at last a surprised barefoot mozo answered the rapping, and in turn brought a short man of burly girth and charro tightness of breeches. This chubby person bowed many times and assured Their Mercies over and over again that here they had their house. Driscoll replied with thanks that in that case he thought that he and the other two Mercies would be taking possession, ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle

... was no longer what it had been. The term "magistrate" meant a man who was more than other men; and, if he was the servant of the community, he was for that very reason the master of every burgess. But the tightness of the rein was now visibly relaxed. Where coteries and canvassing flourish as they did in the Rome of that age, men are chary of forfeiting the reciprocal services of their fellows or the favour of the multitude by stern words and impartial discharge of official duty. If now ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen

... moderate the heat to the skin. After half-an-hour, if the patient feels desirous, renew for another hour; do this each day at bedtime for a week at least. Rub the body all over with warm olive oil when this is taken off; then place a bandage with only a gentle tightness in such a way as just to help the relaxed bowels, but only just so much—not by any means to try and force them into what might be thought proper dimensions. Give a teaspoonful of liquorice mixture (see Constipation) thrice a day before meals in a little ...
— Papers on Health • John Kirk

... as a frightful beam of destruction stabbed relentlessly through the control room, whiffing out of existence the pilot, gunnery, and lookout panels and the men before them. The air rushed into space, and the suits of the three survivors bulged out into drumhead tightness as the pressure in ...
— Triplanetary • Edward Elmer Smith

... and of all sorts of people; and a certain genial Christmas light was upon the dingy city streets. Only when Matilda passed Sarah Staples at her crossing, or some other child such as she, there came a sort of tightness at her heart; and she felt as if something was wrong even ...
— The House in Town • Susan Warner

... to breathe the mornin' breeze that blows against the boat, For there's a swellin' in my heart — a tightness in my throat — We are for'ard when there's trouble! We are for'ard when there's graft! But the men who never battle always seem to travel aft; With their dressin'-cases, aft, With their swell pyjamas, aft — Yes! the idle and the careless, they ...
— In the Days When the World Was Wide and Other Verses • Henry Lawson

... road. Once, looking at the girl, she thought with a half smile how oddly clean she was. The flannel skirt she arranged so complacently had been washed until the colors had run madly into each other in sheer desperation; her hair was knotted with a relentless tightness into a comb such as old women wear. The very cart, patched as it was, had a snug, cozy look; the masses of vegetables, green and crimson and scarlet, were heaped with a certain reference to the glow of color, Margaret noticed, wondering ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 49, November, 1861 • Various

... scrap of paper in his hand. As his nervous fingers took it in, limp and blotted, so his soul took in the mean temptation, lapped it in fancied rights, in dreams of improved existences, drifting and endless as the cloud-seas of color. Clutching it, as if the tightness of his hold would strengthen his sense of possession, he went aimlessly down the street. It was his watch at the mill. He need not go, need never go again, thank God!—shaking off the thought ...
— Life in the Iron-Mills • Rebecca Harding Davis

... confided to his sister Laure. In order to force himself to take exercise, he used to correct his proofs either at the printer's or at her house. Sometimes the weather, to the influence of which he was very susceptible, sometimes his money-tightness, or his fatigue from protracted work would cause him to arrive with lack-lustre eyes, sallow complexion, glum expression and irritable temper. Laure essayed ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton

... good Hedwig, her voice shaken by emotion and the tightness of Herr Sohn-stein's grip about ...
— A Romance Of Tompkins Square - 1891 • Thomas A. Janvier

... upon the national weakness and builds creations that put to shame and ridicule the bound feet of the aristocratic Chinese woman. The corset is a lace and ribbon-decorated armor, made either of steel ribs or whale-bone, which fits the waist and clings to the hips. It is laced up, and the degree of tightness depends upon the will or nerve of the wearer. It compresses the heart and lungs, and wearing it is a most barbarous custom—a telling argument against the assumption of high intelligence on the part of the Americans, who, in this respect, rank with the flat-headed Indians of the northwest ...
— As A Chinaman Saw Us - Passages from his Letters to a Friend at Home • Anonymous

... drew water, and wound it round his body from his loins to his neck: and going in, said to the brethren, "I went out to draw water, and found no rope on the bucket." And they said, "Hold thy peace, brother, lest the abbot know it; till the thing has passed over." But his body was wounded by the tightness and roughness of the rope, because it cut him to the bone, and sank into his flesh till it was hardly seen. But one day, some of the brethren going out, found him giving his food to the poor; and when they returned, said to the abbot, "Whence hast ...
— The Hermits • Charles Kingsley

... no need of the Apache's prodding knife point to start him up the ladder. Though he did not relish having to act as a living shield for the attackers, he was more than willing to go first. Unluckily the tightness of his bonds had so bruised the ligaments of his wrists and ankles and left his limbs so numb that he had to ...
— Bloom of Cactus • Robert Ames Bennet

... The burning tightness round the top of her head, due to fatigue and lack of sleep, seemed somehow to brace her audacity, and to ...
— The Price of Love • Arnold Bennett



Words linked to "Tightness" :   spacing, immovableness, want, spatial arrangement, smallness, deficiency, littleness, lack, tight, looseness, compactness, feeling, pettiness, distribution, stinginess, immovability, miserliness



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