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Shrivel   /ʃrˈɪvəl/   Listen
Shrivel

verb
(past & past part. shriveled or shrivelled; pres. part. shriveling or shrivelling)
1.
Wither, as with a loss of moisture.  Synonyms: shrink, shrivel up, wither.
2.
Decrease in size, range, or extent.  Synonym: shrink.  "My courage shrivelled when I saw the task before me"






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Shrivel" Quotes from Famous Books



... ossified men, women and children have formed about me, staring with unblinking eyes, till I feel as if I was full of peep holes. It is not life, for neither youth nor love nor sorrow has ever passed this way. The tiniest emotion would shrivel if it dared begin to live. Maybe they are better so. But then, they have ...
— The Lady and Sada San - A Sequel to The Lady of the Decoration • Frances Little

... father called him to the window to see the moon, which pleased him very much; but presently he said,—Father, do not pull the string and bring down the moon, for my naughty brother will prick it, and then it will all shrivel up and we shall not ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 19, May, 1859 • Various

... the inner self is prone to shrivel, to fade beneath lack of nutriment; and it may happen that in time the unnatural self will take its place, will ...
— Once Aboard The Lugger • Arthur Stuart-Menteth Hutchinson

... unconsciously, the same rules that guide the wild beasts in the forest. Certain individuals are endowed by nature with temperaments which make them take naturally to a social life and shine there. In it they find their natural element. They develop freely just where others shrivel up and disappear. There is continually going on unseen a "natural selection," the discarding of unfit material, the assimilation of new and congenial elements from outside, with the logical result of a ...
— Worldly Ways and Byways • Eliot Gregory

... you are no longer Olaf. For Christ's sake have pity on me, since I am not fit to meet Him. Give me time to repent. Nay! hear me out! Let not those men drag me away as they threaten to do. I am fallen now, but who knows, I may grow great again; indeed, I think I shall. Then, Olaf, may my soul shrivel everlastingly in hell if I try to harm you or the Egyptian more—Jesus be my witness that I ask no lesser doom upon my head. Keep the men back, Martina, for what I swear to him and the Egyptian I swear to you as well. ...
— The Wanderer's Necklace • H. Rider Haggard

... her but he could not answer her; like all the others, when one looked at her she seemed to shrivel beneath one's eyes and become ...
— The Voyage Out • Virginia Woolf

... history, rarely refreshing at best, few have been more drouthy than those once famous disquisitions, and they shall be left to shrivel into the nothingness of the past, so far as is consistent with the absolute necessities ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... as he fired again, and such was the killing power of the electric bullets that the snake, though an immense one, and one that short of decapitation could have received many injuries without losing power, seemed to shrivel up. ...
— Tom Swift in the Land of Wonders - or, The Underground Search for the Idol of Gold • Victor Appleton

... which nothing mortal can long resist and live. And Thanatos,—to him belongs every created thing, past, present, and to come; beneath his feet all generations lie; and in the hollow of his hand he holds the worlds; though the earth be tenantless, and the heavens sunless, and the planets shrivel in their courses, and the universe be shrouded in an endless night, yet through the eternal desolation Thanatos still will reign, and through the eternal darkness, through the immeasurable solitudes, he alone will wander, and he ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida

... Dead Man's Town, Twenty fathoms under the clean green waters. No more hauling sheets in the rolling treasure fleets, No more stinking rations and dread red slaughters; No galley oars shall bow them nor shrill whips cow them, Frost shall not shrivel them nor the hot sun smite, No more watch to keep, nothing now but sleep— Sleep and take it ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, September 22, 1920 • Various

... stay, Peter," he tried to explain. "It's best for you to stay—with me. For I think they are going a far distance, and will come to a land where you would shrivel up and die. Besides, you could not go in the canoe. So be good, and ...
— The Country Beyond - A Romance of the Wilderness • James Oliver Curwood

... his saddle, saw the first wisps of smoke arise and grow and unwind into long ribbons, reaching deep into the standing crop. Soon tongues of flame appeared and the green tops of the cane began to shrivel and to wave as the steady east wind took effect. From the nearest conflagration a great snapping and crackling of juicy stalks arose. The thin, dry strippings with which the earth was carpeted formed a vast tinder bed, and once the fire was started there was no checking it. Smoke billowed upward ...
— Rainbow's End • Rex Beach

... only the flats along the river-courses are worthy of cultivation; the rest is sand and rock deeply covered with the forest mast, and fertile only while that lasts. And the forest once gone, land and water shrivel, unnourished, leaving a desert amid charred stumps and the white phantoms of dead pines. I was ever averse to the cutting of the forests here, except for selected crops of ripened timber to be replaced by natural growth ere the next crop had ripened; and Sir ...
— The Reckoning • Robert W. Chambers

... first laid my hand on the churchyard gate that Mary and me used to swing on, and when I looked up at the old house, with the gable ends just what they used to be (though the front was new painted, and strange names was over the shop-door)—then all my time in the wild country seem to shrivel up somehow, and better than twenty year ago begun to be a'most like yesterday. I'd seen father's name in the churchyard—which was no more than I looked for; but when they told me Mary had never been brought back, when they said she'd died many a year ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins

... sometimes surrounded by an inflammatory ring. By the third day the contents of the vesicle has become thicker and tends to become purulent. On the fourth day desiccation commences, and the vesicles shrivel and shrink in and form small brownish scabs, which fall about the eighth day. Frequently the child will scratch them off with the finger nails before they are entirely desiccated. The vesicles leave small reddish ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Volume IV. (of IV.) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • Grant Hague

... innocent, he would have preferred to justify himself by proving her guilty. "Take your damned face out of this," he said, enveloping her in an intensity of hate before which Laura's delicate personality seemed to shrivel like a scorched leaf. "Take it away before I kill you." He struck her hand from his wrist and dashed himself down on the pillow, his great arms and shoulders writhing above the marble waist like some fierce animal trapped by ...
— Nightfall • Anthony Pryde

... sapling grow I from The clift, Sweet, of your skyward-jetting soul, - Shook by all gusts that sweep it, overcome By all its clouds incumbent: O be true To your soul, dearest, as my life to you! For if that soil grow sterile, then the whole Of me must shrivel, from the topmost shoot Of climbing poesy, and my life, killed through, Dry down and ...
— Poems • Francis Thompson

... not stop to think work and good cheer will put these creatures to flight. Sing your song, laugh your laugh, and make work, if none is at hand. Then only will these poor miserable prowlers shrivel up and ...
— Hold Up Your Heads, Girls! • Annie H. Ryder

... the Negro has been changed into the cry of Emancipation for the sake of the White Man. Before this cry, before the inevitable and mighty demand of the free white labor of the future on the territories of the South, all protestations against 'meddling' with emancipation shrivel up into trifles and become contemptible. The prayer of the ant petitioning against the removal of a mountain, where a nation was to found its capital, was not more verily frivolous and inconsiderable than are these timid ones of 'let it alone!' And why let it alone? The Emancipation-for-the-sake-of-the-white-man ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various

... roots of his being: then he would abandon himself to a fit of enthusiastic confidence: and over his secret soul his idealism would cast the glowing light of a flashing poetry. Then, suddenly, he would fall back: he would shrivel up into sulky silence: and Christophe would find him ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland

... well enough for some time," she said honestly. "But every time I mention it to her she seems to shrivel up, so you'd best go in of your own accord, and I'll know ...
— The Beggar Man • Ruby Mildred Ayres

... making fresh and soft The banks whereby they glide to Arno's stream, Stand ever in my view; and not in vain; For more the pictur'd semblance dries me up, Much more than the disease, which makes the flesh Desert these shrivel'd cheeks. So from the place, Where I transgress'd, stern justice urging me, Takes means to quicken more my lab'ring sighs. There is Romena, where I falsified The metal with the Baptist's form imprest, For which on earth I left my body burnt. But if I here might see the sorrowing ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante

... animal man, which is never wholly extinguished, which merely lurks unsuspected under centuries of cultural veneer to rise lustily when slowly acquired moralities shrivel in the crucible of passion, now began to actuate Hollister with a strange cunning, a ferocity of anticipation. He would repossess himself of this fair-haired woman. And she should have no voice in the matter. Very ...
— The Hidden Places • Bertrand W. Sinclair

... ears; his cloven tail rose stiffly behind him, springing from his loins like a fork. He also assumed a human form, or retained the animal head only upon a man's shoulders. He was felt to be cruel and treacherous, always ready to shrivel up the harvest with his burning breath, and to smother Egypt beneath a shroud of shifting sand. The contrast between this evil being and the beneficent couple, Osiris and Isis, was striking. Nevertheless, the theologians of the Delta soon assigned a common origin to these rival divinities of Nile ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 1 (of 12) • G. Maspero

... spasmodic, because when she had visions—hideous visions! of Maurice and the "other woman,"—then, her aspirations to regain his love, which had been born in that agony of recognized complicity in his faithlessness, would shrivel up in the vehement flame of jealousy. To Maurice, it was a time of endurance; of vague thoughts of Edith, but of no mental disloyalty to his wife. Its only brightness lay in those rare visits to Medfield, when Jacky looked at him like a worshiping puppy, and asked forty thousand ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland

... English seas were then blue. They are certainly marked so in a very fine cerulean tint on Dr. Hull's map of Triassic Britain.) Slowly, like most other inland seas, this early British Caspian began to lose weight and to shrivel away to ever smaller dimensions. In Devonshire, where it appears to have first dried up, we get no salt, but only red marl, with here and there a cubical cast, filling a hole once occupied by rock-salt, ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen

... the bayonet plants, already overshadowed by the newer ones above, were beginning to wilt and shrivel so that we could thrust our way in among the thickening stems without serious injury. A stab in the face or arm we did not heed. At the heart of the thicket I stopped, and ...
— The First Men In The Moon • H. G. Wells

... at an end. The display was over. Abruptly Caterham seemed to contract, to shrivel up into a yellow-faced, fagged-out, middle-sized, middle-aged man. He stepped forward, as if he were stepping out of a picture, and with a complete assumption of that, friendliness that lies behind all the public conflicts of our race, he held ...
— The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth • H.G. Wells

... formerly so eminently conduced to the maintenance of piety, the cultivation of intellect, and the exercise of benevolence, no longer exist. Solitary and selfish from position, men of naturally generous temper and good disposition, feel their hearts contract and shrivel within them. Surrounded by a sordid and selfish crew, they find no objects for sympathy, no inducements for the increase or the preservation of knowledge, no animating impulse to lead them forward in a good cause. Struggling for a time in the net which is around them, ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor

... little, old woman, one of those women who, after a robust middle age, seem gradually to shrivel to the figure of what they were in their youth, but with no charm of girlish lines remaining. Her face was wrinkled like a russet apple in February, and it had the colorings of that grateful fruit. She sat on the stone slab which served for a back ...
— Sheila of Big Wreck Cove - A Story of Cape Cod • James A. Cooper

... pleasures of next Sunday, one has a vision of what perhaps may be our own lot. For the Dutch are very near us in kin, and once were nigh as great as we have been. Are we, in our day of decadence, to shrivel thus? "There but for the grace of God goes England"—is that a ...
— A Wanderer in Holland • E. V. Lucas

... countryside, where green woods and rich meadows slope down to the river's bank. Here the flowers come early in the springtime, and scent the air through the summer; and here, too, winter is tardy in making its appearance, as if loth to shrivel the shining leaf, or to cause the gaily-painted flower to wither ...
— The Birthright • Joseph Hocking

... to me and cut me off with the rest of them, there would have been one less poor old withered thing in the world. Here have I been a wretched cripple on your hands all the summer, and surely if the Lord had had any need for me He would not have broken my stalk and left me to shrivel ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant

... 'after sunrise to-morrow I should not be able to help you until another year had run its course. I will make you a potion, and before sunrise you must swim ashore with it, seat yourself on the beach and drink it; then your tail will divide and shrivel up to what men call beautiful legs. But it hurts; it is as if a sharp sword were running through you. All who see you will say that you are the most beautiful child of man they have ever seen. You will keep your gliding gait, no dancer will rival you, but every step you take ...
— Stories from Hans Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen

... thus happy, for herself she felt very lonely. Being listless with sun-weariness, and heavy with a sense of impending fate, she felt a great yearning for his sympathy, his fellow-suffering. Instead of receiving this, she had to play to his buoyant happiness, so as not to shrivel one petal of his flower, or spoil one minute of his ...
— The Trespasser • D.H. Lawrence

... half asleep. There is, you must know, in that region a species of very juicy mushrooms which live only a few days and then shrivel up and emit an insufferable odor. Brandes thought he smelt some of these unpleasant neighbors; he looked around him several times, but did not feel like getting up; meanwhile his dog leaped about, scratched at the trunk of ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various

... summer wore away and the dripping autumn came, and with each week, each day almost, Josiah seemed to shrivel. ...
— Beyond The Rocks - A Love Story • Elinor Glyn

... snaffle 365 With side-bars never a brute can baffle; Or a lock that's a puzzle of wards within wards; Or, if your colt's forefoot inclines to curve inwards, Horseshoes they hammer which turn on a swivel And won't allow the hoof to shrivel. 370 Then they cast bells like the shell of the winkle That keep a stout heart in the ram with their tinkle; But the sand—they pinch and pound it like otters; Commend me the gypsy glass-makers and potters! Glasses they'll blow you, ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning

... of Cruta demands that you shall not go back. You shall not go back! You shall be slain, even where your father was slain, but you shall not creep back to your hole to die! Your bones shall whiten and shrivel upon the rocks. Your blood shall be an honoured stain upon my floor. Monks of Cruta! there he stands! He who alone can resist your just possession of the broad lands and abbey of De Vaux. The despoiled Church cries to you to strike. The end ...
— A Monk of Cruta • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... mountain towers,— Lose courage, and despair. He will never be gainsaid,— Pitiless, will not be stayed; His hot tyranny Burns up every other tie. Therefore comes an hour from Jove Which his ruthless will defies, And the dogs of Fate unties. Shiver the palaces of glass; Shrivel the rainbow-colored walls, Where in bright Art each god and sibyl dwelt Secure as in the zodiac's belt; And the galleries and halls, Wherein every siren sung, Like a meteor pass. For this fortune wanted root In the core of God's abysm,— Was ...
— Poems - Household Edition • Ralph Waldo Emerson

... this experimenting. For the salt in his blood turns to solid hard grains, and the dissolved food in the blood turns to dustlike particles. His blood flows through him, a muddy stream of sterile water. The cells of his body get no food, and even before they miss the food, most of the cells shrivel to drops of muddy water. ...
— Common Science • Carleton W. Washburne

... Sunday, it will be not only a crime but a blunder if you do not make time on Saturday or Monday." I only say, "if you do not eat enough to keep you alive, you will die; and if you do not feed on the Word of God, your soul will shrivel away." ...
— Stray Thoughts for Girls • Lucy H. M. Soulsby

... himself, and to do so would be a sin. Man, in his present crude state, holds somewhat the same attitude toward reason that an Apache Indian holds toward a camera—the Indian thinks that to have his picture taken means that he will shrivel up and blow away in a month. And Stanley relates that a watch with its constant ticking sent the bravest of Congo chiefs into a cold sweat of agonizing fear; on discovering which, the explorer had but to draw his Waterbury and threaten to turn the whole bunch into crocodiles, ...
— Love, Life & Work • Elbert Hubbard

... heart, was killed in Macedonia, the Duke still came to the little upper room for his communion of remembrance. Hour after hour he would sit looking from the great window out over the wide green valley, mourning bitterly, and feeling his heart shrivel up within him, his body grow crabbed and cold, and ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... "cynical," or "ironical," or "quizzical," it gives no impression of what it is. It is a mixture of all four, and yet laughing, and—and—tender, and insouciant, and gay. He is himself, and there could never be any one like him. One feels as if all common things must vanish and shrivel up before his ...
— The Reflections of Ambrosine - A Novel • Elinor Glyn

... little graveyard of Hattie Bertch's dead hopes, dead loves, and dead ecstasies, more than one headstone had long since begun to sag and the wreaths of bleeding heart to shrivel. ...
— The Vertical City • Fannie Hurst

... saint, to whom he owes much more Than ever child to parent owed before, In life's first season, when the fever's flame Shrunk to deformity his shrivel'd frame, And turn'd each fairer image in his brain To blank confusion and her crazy train, 'Twas thine, with constant love, through lingering years, To bathe thy idiot orphan with thy tears; Day after day, and night succeeding night, To turn incessant to ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary

... devouring blight, The Smut's dark poison, and the Mildew white; Deep-rooted Mould, and Ergot's horn uncouth, And break the Canker's desolating tooth. 515 First in one point the festering wound confin'd Mines unperceived beneath the shrivel'd rin'd; Then climbs the branches with increasing strength, Spreads as they spread, and lengthens with their length; —Thus the slight wound ingraved on glass unneal'd 520 Runs in white lines along the lucid field; Crack ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin

... that verged upon madness, Jonathan resolved to distract his mind at all costs, and knowing that he was passionately fond of music, he engaged a box for him at the Opera. But Raphael was afraid above all things, of falling in love. Under the illimitable desire of passion the magic skin would shrivel up in an hour. So he used a strange, distorting opera-glass which made the loveliest ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol. I • Various

... poor joint of meat, before it has been half baked I have seen it start from the bone, and shrivel up scarcely ...
— The Cook's Oracle; and Housekeeper's Manual • William Kitchiner

... the young fellows that she was fond of. She had a noble air, and something great in her mien, but such a noisome infectious breath, as threw all the servants that dressed her into consumptions; if she smelt to the freshest nosegay, it would shrivel and wither as it had been blighted: she used to come home in her cups, and break the china, and the looking-glasses; and was of such an irregular temper, and so entirely given up to her passion, that you might argue as well with the ...
— The History of John Bull • John Arbuthnot

... haste, no specious distractions, no clamour of wheel and heartless voices, to blind the soul, to pervert its pure desires, to deaden its fears, to deafen its ears to the sweeter calls—to shut it in, to shrivel it: to sicken it in every part. Rock and waste of sea and the high sweep of the sky—winds and rain and sunlight and flying clouds—great hills, mysterious distances, flaming sunsets, the still, vast darkness of night! These are the mighty works of the Lord, ...
— Doctor Luke of the Labrador • Norman Duncan

... better, and he grew well, and became a greater hunter than before. One day he made a very fine net, and his wife said "This is a cloth, it is better than our cloth (bark cloth) because when the rain gets to it, it does not shrivel. Make me a cloth like this and then I will beat it with the mallet and wear it." And the man tried to do this thing, but he could not get it a good shape and he said, "Yet the spider gets a shape in his cloth. I will go and ask him again this thing." And he went to the spider, ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley

... grunted the woman, who seemed literally to curl and shrivel up beneath her anger. "Don't be angry with me, Miss Stella, because I can't bear it. I only said it because it was true. I will ...
— Allan's Wife • H. Rider Haggard

... usefulness would be at an end. He would have to step aside and let the great currents sweep on without him. In that event these fifty-two years would pile upon his head, full measure; for the only thing that kept him vigorous was action, interest. Without some great incentive he would shrivel up and ...
— The Drums Of Jeopardy • Harold MacGrath

... been favorable to dry-farming. The more enterprising of the settlers had some grain and planted potatoes upon freshly broken soil, and these were growing apace. They did not know about these scorching August winds, that might shrivel crops in a day. They did not realize that early frosts might kill what the hot winds spared. They became enthusiastic over dry-farming, and their resentment toward the Happy family increased as their enthusiasm waxed ...
— The Flying U's Last Stand • B. M. Bower

... in my life, and I have drawn it with a luxurious artistic emotion. I remember once saying of a friend that his work was light and trivial, because he had never descended into hell. Now that I have myself set foot there, I feel art and love, and life itself, shrivel in the relentless chill—for it is icy cold and drearily bright in hell, not dark and fiery, as poets have sung! I feel that I could wrestle better with the loss of health, of wealth, of love, for there would be something to ...
— The Altar Fire • Arthur Christopher Benson

... Perhaps cultivation might be extended; a good deal of ground that seemed fitted for spade or plough was overrun with a useless but beautiful shrub called the silk-tree. Its pod, which, when just ripe, has a blush that might rival that on the cheek of a maiden, was beginning to wither and shrivel in the sun, and opening to scatter flakes of a silky substance finer than the thistle's beard, leaving bare the myriad seeds arranged ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 462 - Volume 18, New Series, November 6, 1852 • Various

... this order of men and women, wearing such a uniform as you wear, and with faces strengthened by discipline and touched with devotion, is the Utopian reality; but that for them, the whole fabric of these fair appearances would crumble and tarnish, shrink and shrivel, until at last, back I should be amidst the grime and disorders of the life of earth. Tell me about these samurai, who remind me of Plato's guardians, who look like Knights Templars, who bear a name that recalls the swordsmen of Japan ... and ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells

... I am always at hand. Babies only cry when their wants are not understood, and I am constantly on the lookout for his. Oh! my sweet, my heart has opened up so wide, while you allow yours to shrink and shrivel at the bidding of society! I look for your coming with all a hermit's longing. I want so much to know what you think of l'Estorade, just as you no doubt are curious for my opinion ...
— Letters of Two Brides • Honore de Balzac

... the use of it all? Do I really desire emancipation? Let suffering come to our house; let the best in me shrivel up and become black; but let this infatuation not leave me—such seems to be ...
— The Home and the World • Rabindranath Tagore

... buildings? And why? Does it derive peculiar sustenance from the lime of the masonry? I think not, for it grows in lands where lime is rare, and in the shadow of log-huts. It seeks shelter from the wind for its frail stalks and leaves, that shrivel wondrously when the plant is set in ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas

... interrupted, holding her at arm's-length, and looking in her face imploringly. "The worst of all! The worst of all! Strike me old, Meg! Wither me and shrivel me, and free me from the dreadful thoughts that tempt ...
— A Budget of Christmas Tales by Charles Dickens and Others • Various

... breath, and kick till you are out of shoes, and never win the game. There must be some to keep others off you, and some to prolong for you the ball's rebound.... Do not, however, be ambitious of an early fame: such is apt to shrivel and to drop under the tree." The poetical dictum, "Whom the gods love, die young," has worked untold mischief, having created a morbid dislike to a fine physique, on the theory that great minds are antagonistic to noble bodies. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various

... February or March, giving very little water at first. Take in before the first sign of frosts. When growth stops, dry off gradually and store in warm cellar; or better, take out of pots and pack in sand. Do not let them dry out enough to shrivel. ...
— Gardening Indoors and Under Glass • F. F. Rockwell

... merely tired to death. It was awful, and I began to have a terrible detestation for these Asiatic faces, which, because they are dead, become such a hideous green-yellow-white, and whose bodies seem to shrivel to nothing in their limp blue suitings. Such dead are an insult ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale

... a blood gland. It is situated around the windpipe, behind the upper part of the breastbone. Until about the end of the second year it increases in size, and then it begins gradually to shrivel away. Like the spleen, the thyroid and thymus glands are supposed to work some change in the blood, but ...
— A Practical Physiology • Albert F. Blaisdell

... this very uncomfortable state of mind, with the jungle wrapped in profound silence as well as gloom, there broke on the night air a wail so indescribable that the very marrow in Nigel's bones seemed to shrivel up. It ceased, but again broke forth louder than before, increasing in length and strength, until his ears seemed to tingle with the sound, and then it died away to a sigh ...
— Blown to Bits - or, The Lonely Man of Rakata • Robert Michael Ballantyne

... fairly shouted an indignant question at his wife as to her presence in this house. But that Amazonian female did not shrivel before the blistering ...
— Making People Happy • Thompson Buchanan

... plantations the plants are pruned and trimmed so that they grow unsupported. The pepper of commerce consists of the dried berries or fruit of the vine. It is the custom to pick the berries as they turn red. The berries shrivel and turn black as they dry. These, when ground, are the black pepper of commerce. When fully ripe the color of the berry turns to a pale yellow and the outer skin is easily removed. The "husked" berries are used for making the white ...
— Wealth of the World's Waste Places and Oceania • Jewett Castello Gilson

... could not even conceive why they should object to its being published after their death. But to write it—there is the rub. No man dare write it. No man ever will dare write it. No man could write it, even if he dared. The paper would shrivel and blaze at every touch of ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 1 January 1848 • Various

... dark there's never an ear, Though the tulips stand on tiptoe to hear, So give; ripe fruit must shrivel or fall. As you are mine, Sweetheart, give all! Starfire sparkles, ...
— A Dome of Many-Coloured Glass • Amy Lowell

... it, its body was so little, that I did often spoile the shape of it, before I could throughly view it: for this is the nature of these minute Bodies, that as soon, almost, as ever their life is destroy'd, their parts immediately shrivel, and lose their beauty; and so is it also with small Plants, as I instanced before, in the description of Moss. And thence also is the reason of the variations in the beards of wild Oats, and in those of Musk-grass seed, that their bodies, being exceeding ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke

... resting in her sleep in such a way that no one could possibly unclasp the necklace without awaking her. Loki stood hesitatingly by the bedside for a few moments, and then began rapidly to mutter the runes which enabled the gods to change their form at will. As he did this, Heimdall saw him shrivel up until he was changed to the size and form of a flea, when he crept under the bed-clothes and bit Freya's side, thus causing her to change her position without being roused ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber

... coming over me, I sat down with my head against a tree, and looked up at the trailing rags of clouds that drifted across the sky. It was then about four o'clock of as pleasant an afternoon as I can ever remember. But the calmness of the sky, with its deep blue distance, seemed to shrivel me up into nothing. The world was so ...
— Three Times and Out • Nellie L. McClung

... ho, a mighty weight is rolled away From off my soul, and I can breathe again! Her glance doth shrivel up my very heart, And all that bitter hate, hid deep within My bosom, well nigh strangles me ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke

... of abject dismay stole over the Treasure's face as, despite his great size, he appeared to shrivel and curl ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, April 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various

... peace—the kind god in my mother's church and the smiling goddess in Paris, the clear-eyed god of efficiency and the awakening god of the crowd—all plunging into this furnace of war with the men in whose spirits all gods dwell—to shrivel and melt in seething flame and emerge at last in strange new forms. What would ...
— The Harbor • Ernest Poole

... utter your false words. Your own arms were left in the armoury hail, where 'twas right they should be; and you took up the knife from the board, knowing full well what you meant to do with it. Oh, Roderic MacAlpin, may your tongue shrivel in your throat ere you utter such base and wicked lies again! You came to this island, the land of your fathers, with the evil purpose of climbing over our dead bodies to the kingship ...
— The Thirsty Sword • Robert Leighton

... could scarcely keep up with her rapid strides. He trembled for the consequences of her anger, just as it was, and followed close to see if Mittie, undaunted as she was, did not shrivel in her gaze. ...
— Helen and Arthur - or, Miss Thusa's Spinning Wheel • Caroline Lee Hentz

... reckon; an' to God A'mighty tu, so like's not. The friends of en be as feared of en as his foes be. An' that's awful wisht, 'cause he goes an' comes purty nigh alone. The Gosp'lers be like fry flyin' this way an' that 'fore a school o' mackerl when Michael's among 'em. Even minister, he do shrivel a inch or two 'longside o' Michael. I've seen en wras'lin' wi' the Word same as Jacob wras'led wi' the angel. An' yet, why? Theer's a man chosen for glory this five-an'-forty years, an' he knaws it so well as ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts

... Mushrooms.—Wipe them clean, take away the brown part and peel off the skin; lay them on sheets of paper to dry, in a cool oven, when they will shrivel considerably. Keep them in paper bags, which hang in a dry place. When wanted for use put them into cold gravy, bring them gradually to simmer, and it will be found that they will regain nearly ...
— Mushrooms: how to grow them - a practical treatise on mushroom culture for profit and pleasure • William Falconer

... holding her at arm's-length, and looking in her face imploringly. 'The worst of all, the worst of all! Strike me old, Meg! Wither me, and shrivel me, and free me from the dreadful thoughts that tempt ...
— The Chimes • Charles Dickens

... blessed Saint Giles that is my comfort and intercessor. May his bones rot within him with my gold chain to sweet Saint Giles. May his tongue wither at the roots—ah, good Saint Giles, save me from the fire. May he be cursed in life and may the flesh shrivel on his bones and his soul be eternally damned with another candle and fifty gold pieces to the altar of ...
— Beltane The Smith • Jeffery Farnol

... chair, stolid, righteous, imposing. The incarnation and representative of the ninety and nine who need no forgiveness, exasperatingly and mathematically virtuous as a dogma, a woman against whom no sort of reproach could be brought, and at the mere sight of whom false witnesses would shrivel up and die, like jelly-fish in the sun. She not only approved of the convent life, but she liked it. She was at liberty to do a thousand things which were not permitted to the nuns, but she had not the slightest ...
— Casa Braccio, Volumes 1 and 2 (of 2) • F. Marion Crawford

... most part, in which evil does not succeed, in which the vicious are foiled, in which the right, the honest, the sincere, and the good prevail. It cultivates the imagination, and in this respect is far better than the pulpit. The mission of the pulpit is to narrow and shrivel the human mind. The pulpit denounces the freedom of thought and of expression; but on the stage the mind is free, and for thousands of years the poor, the oppressed, the enslaved, have been permitted to witness plays wherein the slave was freed, wherein the oppressed became the victor, and ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll

... appearance. A number of raised red papules appear on the trunk, either on the back or chest; in from twelve to twenty-four hours these develop into tense vesicles filled with a clear fluid, which in another thirty-six hours or so becomes opalescent. During the fourth day these vesicles dry and shrivel up, and the scabs fall off, leaving as a rule no scar. Fresh spots appear during the first three days, so that at the end of that time they can be seen in all stages of growth and decay. The eruption is most ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various

... out of the Abdomen, &c. How long the tender Embryo of the Chick soon after the Punctum saliens is discoverable, and whilst the Body seems but a little Organized Gelly, and some while after That, will be this way preserv'd, without being too much shrivel'd up, I was hindred by some mischances to satisfie my self: but when the Faetus's, I took out, were so perfectly formed as they were wont to be about the seventh day, and after, they so well retain'd their shape and bulk, as to ...
— Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society - Vol 1 - 1666 • Various

... think she will shrivel up," said the old witch, with much content. "You are a great wizard, lord; ...
— King Alfred's Viking - A Story of the First English Fleet • Charles W. Whistler

... shrivel him! That shot of his scraped a bone for me, and put my horse out of business. For that reason we came on quietly, and these good fellows listened at the window of Marto before they carried me in. It is ...
— The Treasure Trail - A Romance of the Land of Gold and Sunshine • Marah Ellis Ryan

... Miss Quiney stretched forth her arms; but at first she seemed to shrivel and grow very small in her chair. Nor can her first comment ...
— Lady Good-for-Nothing • A. T. Quiller-Couch

... winter. But it was four years before the Tenas Tyee found the centre of the great salt-chuck oluk and plunged his hunting-knife into its evil heart. In its death-agony it writhed through the Narrows, leaving a trail of blackness on the waters. Its huge body began to shrink, to shrivel; it became dwarfed and withered, until nothing but the bones of its back remained, and they, sea-bleached and lifeless, soon sank to the bed of the ocean leagues off from the rim of land. But as the Tenas Tyee swam homeward and his clean, young ...
— Legends of Vancouver • E. Pauline Johnson

... never again would she cast as much as a second thought on him and tear his silly postcard into a dozen pieces. And if ever after he dared to presume she could give him one look of measured scorn that would make him shrivel up on the spot. Miss puny little Edy's countenance fell to no slight extent and Gerty could see by her looking as black as thunder that she was simply in a towering rage though she hid it, the little kinnatt, ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce

... doctor, "I doubt if ever I've seen a cloud above it—much less on it! If it weren't for the creek yonder the whole post would shrivel up and blow away. Even the hygrometer's dead of disuse—or dry rot. But, talk of drying up, did you ever see the beat of him?" and the doctor was studying anatomy as displayed ...
— Tonio, Son of the Sierras - A Story of the Apache War • Charles King

... when Father Payne showed me his heart in all its strength and cleanness. No one whom I ever met had his power of lighting a flame of pure desire and beautiful hopefulness, in the fire of which all that was base and mean seemed to shrivel away. ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson

... mandarin nods under his purple umbrella. The rose in his hand shoots its petals up in thin quills of crimson. Then they collapse and shrivel like ...
— Men, Women and Ghosts • Amy Lowell

... Always the honorable orators, Buttoning the buttons on their prinz alberts, Pronouncing the syllables "sac-ri-fice," Juggling those bitter salt-soaked syllables— Do they ever gag with hot ashes in their mouths? Do their tongues ever shrivel with a pain of fire Across those ...
— American Poetry, 1922 - A Miscellany • Edna St. Vincent Millay

... morning air seems to shrivel him, and he crouches into a little gelid ball on the seat beside the driver, while we wind along the Po on the smooth gray road; while the twilight lifts slowly from the distances of field and vineyard; while ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells

... passion or imagination might have deplored the lack of romance in the betrothal. He might have desired on the part of the maiden either more shyness, delicacy, and elusiveness, or more resonant emotion. The finer tendrils of his being might have shivered, ready to shrivel, as at a touch of frost, in the cool ironical atmosphere which the girl had created around her. But Doggie was not such a young man. Such passions as heredity had endowed him with had been drugged by training. No tales of immortal love had ever ...
— The Rough Road • William John Locke

... without repining and abhorrence. My time was divided between the terrors of an animal that skulks from its pursuers, the obstinacy of unshrinking firmness, and that elastic revulsion that from time to time seems to shrivel the very hearts of the miserable. If at some moments I fiercely defied all the rigours of my fate, at others, and those of frequent recurrence, I sunk into helpless despondence. I looked forward without ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin

... room, opened one of her trunks, lifted out the tray, worked somewhat impatiently down through several layers of yellow, paper-covered literature, that would have made the classics on the Patriarch's bookshelves shrivel up and draw their skirts hurriedly around them in righteous horror could they but have known or been capable of such intensely human characteristics, and finally produced a daintily jewelled little cigarette case and match box. She slammed the tray back, ...
— The Miracle Man • Frank L. Packard

... Love doth wrestle All night by the fords we cross, To shrivel our sinews of self And give His ...
— Song-waves • Theodore H. Rand

... hunt for her offspring, for the race. Nothing is simpler than to distinguish between the two kinds of hunting. When the insect wants a few good mouthfuls of honey and nothing else, she abandons the bee contemptuously when she has emptied its stomach. It is so much valueless waste, which will shrivel where it lies and be dissected by ants. If, on the other hand, she intends to place it in the larder as a provision for her larvae, she clasps it with her two intermediate legs, and, walking on the other four, drags it to and fro along the edge of the bell-glass ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre

... sweet marjoram and other pot-herbs, with a saucer full of chopped celery. When it boils, add a quart of rich milk-and as soon as it boils again, take out the herbs, and put in the oysters just before you send it to table. Boiling them in the soup will shrivel them and destroy ...
— Seventy-Five Receipts for Pastry Cakes, and Sweetmeats • Miss Leslie

... life before that was not so long as the time that had gone by since the car had started. And he was jolting and swinging about in the stretcher, clutching hard with his hands at the poles of the stretcher. The pain in his legs grew worse; the rest of his body seemed to shrivel under it. From below him came a rasping voice that cried out at every lurch of the ambulance. He fought against the desire to groan, but at last he gave in and lay lost in the ...
— Three Soldiers • John Dos Passos

... give Gladys Todd a hint of the rich depths of my voice. To make an impression on Gladys Todd had become the business of my life. I was glad that I had come to McGraw, because here I had met her. McGraw's past and future were of no moment to me; her growth was nothing. She might shrivel up until I was the only student, yet I should still be happy in my nearness to Gladys Todd. And what of Penelope? I did think of Penelope that night as I sat alone in my room, cocked on two legs of my chair, gazing blankly at the ...
— David Malcolm • Nelson Lloyd

... be, is quite successful. For a long time the body is repeatedly shaken, but in vain; the tibiae, the hard claws refuse to yield to the patient saw. Sparrows and Mice grow dry and shrivel, unused, upon the gallows. My Necrophori, some sooner, some later, abandon the insoluble mechanical problem: to push, ever so little, the movable support and so to unhook ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre

... I answered. "And in the eyes of Papa Gage, if they could once be focused upon it, our world would shrivel to ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... nondescript sort of woman. She is not the product of any known better stock; she is, well, a freak of nature! You cannot transplant that kind of flower, Dick. The roots are hid in shallow soil of a peculiar kind. If you planted her in, well, in even your artistic world, she would either die, shrivel up, and be finished, or she might spread her roots, and finish you! I've seen more than ...
— Janet of the Dunes • Harriet T. Comstock

... in the cities, while a hundred miles away thousands of barrels of apples are rotting on the ground. Famine devastates one country, while the granaries of another are bursting with food. Men and women drink themselves into the gutter from sheer loneliness, while other men and women shrivel up in isolated comfort. One of the most pitiful examples of this failure to connect is that of the childless woman and ...
— The Business of Being a Woman • Ida M. Tarbell

... years clutching a few bits of metal? What can be fine about paring the necessities of life to the very quick? We all know "economical people" who seem to be niggardly even about the amount of air they breathe and the amount of appreciation they will allow themselves to give to anything. They shrivel—body and soul. Economy is waste: it is waste of the juices of life, the sap of living. For there are two kinds of waste—that of the prodigal who throws his substance away in riotous living, and that of the sluggard who allows his substance to rot ...
— My Life and Work • Henry Ford

... dies in ten seconds," he answered. "It is a circle of fire; many friends of mine have flown in, none ever returned: your daughter will shrivel up and perish ...
— Bimbi • Louise de la Ramee

... heaven, it will be on your ladder, Mate. You have coaxed me up with confidence and praise, you have steadied me with ethical culture books, and essays, and sermons. You have gotten me so far up (for me), that I am afraid to look down. I shrink with a mighty shrivel when I think of disappointing you in any way, and I expand almost to bursting when I think of justifying your belief ...
— Lady of the Decoration • Frances Little

... herself seemed to answer, "But didn't you know this all along?" That large conviction that her wealth and position were but the culmination of a great and honourable social service, a conviction that had been her tacit comfort during much distasteful loyalty seemed to shrivel and fade. No doubt the writer was a thwarted blackmailer; even her accustomed mind could distinguish a twang of some such vicious quality in his sentences; but that did not alter the realities he exhibited and exaggerated. There was a description of how Sir Isaac pounced ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells

... This gift of beauty doesn't confer immunity from fatigue, accident, old age. This loveliness must fade and crack and wrinkle, these full organ tones must shrivel to a shrill pipe; and I—I! shall one day be a tottering old ...
— The Bacillus of Beauty - A Romance of To-day • Harriet Stark

... of the pansy expands into three valves, each scooped out like a boat and laden in the middle with two rows of seeds. When these valves dry, the edges shrivel, press upon the grains ...
— The Life of the Spider • J. Henri Fabre

... year came the drought again, killing the growth off slowly, and wearing down human courage. The corn stood there and shrivelled up; the potatoes—the wonderful potatoes—they did not shrivel up, but flowered and flowered. The meadows turned grey, but the potatoes flowered. The powers above guided all things, no doubt, but ...
— Growth of the Soil • Knut Hamsun

... was perfectly still, and the colours of the leaves still left glowed in the sunbeams. Beneath, the dank bronzed fern that must soon shrivel was wet, and hung with spiders' webs that like a slender netting upheld the dew. The keeper swore a good deal about a certain gentleman farmer whose lands adjoined the estate, but who held under a different proprietor. Between these two there was a constant bickering—the ...
— The Amateur Poacher • Richard Jefferies

... of sand arose, which were borne with great velocity through the air, sometimes appearing in the shape of columns sixty feet high, which moved majestically over the plain. Ere long some of these clouds of sand enveloped them, and they were accompanied by hot winds, which seemed to shrivel up, not only the skin, but the very vitals of the travellers. The pores of their skin closed, producing feverish heat in the blood and terrible thirst, while their eyes became inflamed by the dazzling glare of the sun ...
— Digging for Gold - Adventures in California • R.M. Ballantyne

... Sammy, "if we could fumigate this vessel and feel sure that only the bad germs would shrivel, I'd be in favor of ...
— The Great Stone of Sardis • Frank R. Stockton

... somewhat crabbed handwriting so accurately that even an expert would have had some difficulty in detecting the difference; he then tore the sheet into small pieces, put them into the heart of the fire, and watched them shrivel up to nothing. ...
— A Girl of the Commune • George Alfred Henty

... but they are now known to belong to another fungus (Cicinnobulus), parasitic upon the mildew. They usually appear at the base of the chains of conidia, causing the basal cell to enlarge to many times its original size, and finally kill the young conidia, which shrivel up. A careful examination reveals the presence of very fine filaments within those of the mildew, which may be traced up to the base of the conidial branch, where the receptacle of the parasite is forming. The spores ...
— Elements of Structural and Systematic Botany - For High Schools and Elementary College Courses • Douglas Houghton Campbell

... background, and that her movements and attitudes were of the kind to display the exquisite lines of her body. She was picking delicately the pale little blossoms and letting them flutter to the ground. Her way was strewn with the frail yellow things already beginning to wither and shrivel, adding their portion of earth unto earth, to be transmuted to life unto life with the next ...
— The Side Of The Angels - A Novel • Basil King

... perfume. But the scene is brief as enchanting: the flowers fade a few hours after they are full blown, to be succeeded by tiny berries that are at first green, then a yellowish red, and finally ripen into a rich crimson or purple; after which, unless gathered at once, they shrivel and drop from the tree. This is about seven months after the blooms make their appearance. The pulp is torn off and separated from the seeds by means of a machine, and the grains, after being thoroughly washed, are dried in the sun and put up in bags. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 29. August, 1873. • Various

... the other hand, leaves that really have to grow under water, sacrifice their tissue, and keep only their ribs, like coral animals; ('Ranunculus heterophyllus,' 'other-leaved Frog-flower,' and its like,) just as, if you keep your own hands too long in water, they shrivel ...
— Proserpina, Volume 1 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin

... it was boiled, while the supposed criminal's name was repeatedly mentioned. The moment the liquid began to boil, they commenced to address their imaginary spirits in the following terms: "Is the party on whom I pour this water guilty or not? If he is, may it scald him and shrivel up his skin." If the application of the boiling liquid did not injure the suspected person he was declared innocent, but if it burned him he was pronounced guilty. People anxious to know the result of approaching warlike ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant

... daffodils in that spot at least a century, opening every March to the dry winds that shrivel up the brown dead leaves of winter, and carry them out from the bushes under the trees, sending them across the meadow—fleeing like a routed army before the bayonets of the East. Every spring for a century at least the daffodils had ...
— Amaryllis at the Fair • Richard Jefferies

... of living forms resembling those of the earth, for imagine the heat of the sun in the middle of a summer's day increased six or seven fold! If there were no mitigating influences, the face of the earth would shrivel as in the blast of a furnace, the very stones would become incandescent, and the oceans would ...
— Other Worlds - Their Nature, Possibilities and Habitability in the Light of the Latest Discoveries • Garrett P. Serviss

... matured. Ordinarily, a hard freeze late in the season will cause the trees to drop the leaves the next day. The nuts on the trees were frozen solid and mostly turned black within a few days and began to shrivel. Development was stopped, with the result that the nuts on all varieties were very poorly filled. The cavities appeared on first cracking to be full of kernel, but on drying these shrunk so that they were practically valueless. Some of the nuts were planted in a nursery row in the fall ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Incorporated 39th Annual Report - at Norris, Tenn. September 13-15 1948 • Various

... without water. Take a bean, for instance, and put it in an empty glass on the window sill; and even if the sun shines full upon it, nothing will happen, except that after a few days it will shrivel and dry up. But fill the glass with water, and in a few hours the bean will begin to swell; and in a few days it will burst, and a little shoot will grow out of one end of it and a tiny root at the other. The water and the warmth together have made ...
— The Child's Day • Woods Hutchinson

... up in the air, which makes it hard to evaluate. The ad-men have to be figuring what they're going to do next half-century, so that they'll be there with the right thing when the time comes. But it seems they don't like what they see. People have to buy what the ad-men are selling, or the ad-men shrivel up, and already the trend seems to be showing up. People aren't in such a rush to buy. Don't have the same sense of urgency that they used to—" Her hands fluttered. "Well, as I say, it's all up in the air. Let the boys analyze for a while. The suicide business is a little more tangible. ...
— Martyr • Alan Edward Nourse

... pass our houses by. Why do you deny your brothers so? You said you slept in the fields, eh? That is bad. You shouldn't. The earth here is full of evil, and the malaria comes up with the dampness. Your bones grow brittle and break, or they go all soft, you shrivel up and become white, or swellings come out on you and you get bigger and bigger until you die. No, no! God be thanked you came ...
— A Tramp's Sketches • Stephen Graham

... always a little sorry to see them go, her kindly pretty playmates that, nine times out of ten no doubt, only drooped and died in the hands that purchased them, as human souls soil and shrivel in the grasp of the ...
— Bebee • Ouida

... up and off in chariots, Sea! and ride, All generations, up, till mountain-eyed, To welcome earth-ward, God's Supreme delight. Imagination swirls in swallow flight, Giddy with Beauty, deepening—Oh, how glide From star to star, to the haloes, season-dyed And countless! Its wings shrivel up ...
— Freedom, Truth and Beauty • Edward Doyle

... of thine I pledge thee, Eric Brighteyes! May Valhalla refuse me and Hela take me; may I be hunted like a fox from earth to earth; may trolls torment me and wizards sport with me o' night; may my limbs shrivel and my heart turn to water; may my foes overtake me, and my bones be crushed across the doom-stone—if I fail in one jot from this my oath that I have sworn! I will guard thy back, I will smite thy enemies, thy hearthstone shall be my temple, thy honour ...
— Eric Brighteyes • H. Rider Haggard



Words linked to "Shrivel" :   mummify, lessen, die back, wither, decrease, diminish, die down, blast, dry up, shrivel up, fall, shrink, atrophy



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