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oblivion
in a sentence

show 187 more with this conextual meaning
  • "I'd a little rather not be the polo player," said Tom pleasantly, "I'd rather look at all these famous people in — in oblivion."   (source)
    oblivion = a state of being unknown and unnoticed
  • But the little, clay-bespattered Italians were still sleeping, the slatternly women across the aisle were in open-mouthed oblivion, and even the crumby, crying babies were for the nonce stilled.   (source)
    oblivion = a state of having lost all sense of what is going on -- as during sleep
  • He walked the fine line of scaring her into oblivion and soothing her enough to keep her calm.†   (source)
  • I wished he had let me live on in my oblivion.†   (source)
  • So I let the train rock me into oblivion.†   (source)
  • It is only when a clapper brings his hands together that the lie reveals itself, abandoning the clapper in that final instant so that he exits this world utterly alone, without so much as a lie to accompany him into oblivion.†   (source)
  • Any misstep, any misunderstood word might set Watanabe off, leaving him smashing teapots, upending tables, and pounding his guests into oblivion.†   (source)
  • She goes to him for amnesia, for oblivion.†   (source)
  • When Glen was eight years old, the state had come through and repaved Main Street and put up street lights, the first significant improvement that Mellen had seen, on its long glide toward oblivion after its lumbering heyday, since Truman was in office.†   (source)
  • For as sunrise leads to sunset and dust to dust, as every river returns to the sea, just so a man must return to the embrace of oblivion, from whence— "Your Excellency!"†   (source)
  • But life leaps over oblivion lightly, losing only a thing or two of no importance, and gloom is but the passing shadow of a cloud.†   (source)
  • An amusement park in California introduced the first tubular steel tracks-they twisted at severe angles unachievable with wood-and suddenly, roller coasters, which had faded to near oblivion, were back in fashion.†   (source)
  • But, as in her dream, the pictures evaporated into oblivion.†   (source)
  • Tired, hungry, and desperate to pee, but not falling into oblivion.†   (source)
  • 'If you shout his name I will curse you into oblivion,' muttered Tonks menacingly, now shunting Ginny and Hermione forwards.†   (source)
  • The ache inside Thomas was deep and gnawing, and he tried to sink further into oblivion.†   (source)
  • Famished but with no prospect of food, in a cramped room filled with strangers, mercifully, I quickly sank into the oblivion of sleep.†   (source)
  • When she has finished the dishes, she leads Frederick out onto the elevated patio, as is their routine, where he sits with his bib still around his neck, staring into oblivion.†   (source)
  • I face an incoming tide of forgetting, and then oblivion.†   (source)
  • And Redd herself made sure that no warning dispatch made it to the palace, rerouting it to oblivion by the power of her imagination.†   (source)
  • With the tines of her fork, Molly mashes the hamburger into her plate, hoping to grind it into oblivion.†   (source)
  • But Claire had seen what I had—his look bearing down—his wanting something unspoken that to give him would equal our oblivion.†   (source)
  • I close my eyes and give in to oblivion once again.†   (source)
  • It hesitated for a moment, wobbling there on the edge of oblivion, and then pitched decisively forward and fell, tumbling end over end in beautiful balletic slow-motion.†   (source)
  • I longed for my sleeping pills to give me oblivion, but some small part of me was glad I didn't have them.†   (source)
  • My whole life I'd been led to believe that Gregory Illea was a hero, the person who saved our country when we were on the edge of oblivion.†   (source)
  • And a real world that he had blasted into oblivion.†   (source)
  • I didn't want to waste what I had on a few hours of oblivion only to wake up again in my cage (or, worse: in a Dutch hospital with no passport).†   (source)
  • I felt myself growing really numb and then it got really hard to stay focused, and finally I just sort of slid off into oblivion.†   (source)
  • For a second I feel relieved: My body is prickling, like I've been stuck with needles all over my skin, and all I want to do is lie back against the softness of my pillows and sink into the darkness and oblivion of sleep, wait for the sharp pain in my head to dissipate.†   (source)
  • His mother's phone number, jotted down with a felt-tip pen, blurred into oblivion.†   (source)
  • Instead of going into the bar, where dark shadows sat sampling the tasty waters of oblivion, he had gone to Al Shockley's house.†   (source)
  • She was leaning on the wall beneath the train trestle, head bowed, one hand squeezing her eyes, as if the tears that flowed out of them could be squeezed into oblivion.†   (source)
  • Yet my presence was known throughout the region: I was a gaudy flag waving overhead during all those months of sickness and oblivion, just a girl in love, the center of my own universe.†   (source)
  • It's just that his brand of happy naivet6 can do nothing to arrest that slide into oblivion which the Church seems destined for.†   (source)
  • I'd pinpointed that hollow where we both had rested and waited for death while the unseen Taliban rained fire down on us from behind the rocks and finally blew us both across the open ground to oblivion.†   (source)
  • Other great actresses from the nineteenth-century American theater have faded into oblivion while Laura Keene is remembered for a single unscripted act that took place over a few minutes in the box at Ford's on April 14, 1865.†   (source)
  • Three other deaths followed in short order: Jansen, fractured skull, Electricity Building; Allard, fractured skull, Electricity Building; Algeer, stunned to oblivion by a new phenomenon, electric shock, at the Mines Building.†   (source)
  • To get on them would require taking a step over the oblivion of the deep hole beneath us.†   (source)
  • I couldn't remember what they were, but I had dispelled them many times, swatting them into oblivion with no more effort than I would a swarm of gnats.†   (source)
  • Its inhabitants no longer felt mysteriously protected; they knew that Dresden had recently been fire-bombed into oblivion.†   (source)
  • I fell at once into marine oblivion, a deep-dwelling crablike consciousness, silent and dreamless.†   (source)
  • A Deserted Village In books I meet the dead as if they were alive, in books I see what is yet to come … All things decay and pass with time … all fame would fall victim to oblivion if God had not given mortal men the book to aid them.†   (source)
  • Seven years of oblivion lifted off her and flew into the shadows on weighty, quaking wings.†   (source)
  • I leave the wine and the little bottles of gin, even though they would help me sleep, even though they would let me slide, warm and loose, into oblivion.†   (source)
  • But just as Lyra's love had drawn him back from past the final door before, so this time Lanre's power forced him to return from sweet oblivion.†   (source)
  • I was the girl who battled oblivion and won.†   (source)
  • But Jace had wanted the oblivion of fighting, the harsh diversion of killing, and the distraction of injuries.†   (source)
  • They were people whose lives were slow, who did not see themselves growing old, or falling sick, or dying, but who disappeared little by little in their own time, turning into memories, mists from other days, until they were absorbed into oblivion.†   (source)
  • The engine which has carried us halfway across a continent drones on and on in its continuing oblivion to everything but its own internal forces.†   (source)
  • For those who could afford it—or whose insurance covered it, as ours did—the hospital provided epidurals, which delivered pain-blocking oblivion directly into the central nervous system.†   (source)
  • She opened it and took out a little note: What matters our creative endless toil, When at a snatch, oblivion ends the coil?†   (source)
  • Only in drink was there some break, some floodlight, and when that closed, there was oblivion.†   (source)
  • I had groggily surrendered myself to oblivion when the car stopped.†   (source)
  • Everything in Martin's basement will be vacuumed into oblivion."†   (source)
  • He kept pursuing oblivion through drink, he kept abusing Mama, and there seemed to be no way out of it for anyone.†   (source)
  • He allowed the werelight to fade into oblivion.†   (source)
  • He could sedate me, too, and send me off to oblivion.†   (source)
  • Whatever else had been, or might have been, locked in Rufus' heart or in the heart of his father, had gone into oblivion with Rufus.†   (source)
  • There was an ungodly collision of brass, reed, and percussion--trombones and piccolos skidded into cacophony, a tuba farted, and the hollow clang of a cymbal wavered out of the big top, over our heads and into oblivion.†   (source)
  • A few beds over, one of the girls had finally dropped off into the oblivion of sleep, and her snores were helping to cover our conversation.†   (source)
  • They all sounded the same when they cried out, emerging from the drugged sleep, stunned, reeling out of oblivion into the reality of the bus.†   (source)
  • But now, when I looked in dismay at Allie, who was champing at the bit to get back to her oblivion; when I thought about whether Pennsatucky would be able to keep it together and prove herself the good mom that she aspired to be; when I worried about my many friends at Danbury whose health was crushed by hepatitis and HIV; and when I saw in the visiting room how addiction had torn apart the bonds between mothers and their children, I finally understood the true consequences of my own…†   (source)
  • "I went to the can and you could've ignited yourself into oblivion.†   (source)
  • And I figured if that Al Qaeda bunch was behind it we were going to start bombing what was left of Afghanistan into oblivion any minute.†   (source)
  • This gentle, painless easing of his human body into oblivion would be the final gift.†   (source)
  • These things were lost to oblivion like so much about so many who are born and die without anyone ever taking the time to write it all down.†   (source)
  • She is gone, disappeared into some otherworldly oblivion of pain.†   (source)
  • It would be wonderful to find oblivion in Heath's arms …. in the scarlet seduction of Heath's blood ….†   (source)
  • Not seeing these, she did not crash into the oblivion of either bitterness or futility but remained airborne.†   (source)
  • Numbness carne over my limbs, and then the paralysis of oblivion.†   (source)
  • Clara decided that if craziness can repeat itself in a family, then there must be a genetic memory that prevents it from being swallowed by oblivion.†   (source)
  • He felt himself falling, falling ecstatically in love with her as she kissed him again and again with lips that were steaming and wet and soft and hard, mumbling deep sounds to him adoringly in an incoherent oblivion of rapture, one caressing hand on his back slipping deftly down inside his trouser belt while the other groped secretly and treacherously about on the floor for the bread knife and found it.†   (source)
  • It had been blown into oblivion, into nonexistence.†   (source)
  • Kitsch is the stopover between being and oblivion.†   (source)
  • Drugged themselves to oblivion.†   (source)
  • The river still rushed on, the trees behind him still glowed in oblivion, and the blackness ahead remained pitch dark.†   (source)
  • And Buddhist enlightenment is very much like the Gnostic idea that we live in a land of oblivion, but can waken spiritually right here while we're still part of this world.†   (source)
  • Oblivion was what she wanted, what she prayed for.†   (source)
  • For three good years, from the time I was ten until I turned thirteen, I lived in a beautiful oblivion, safe from the past, unaware of what waited for us when our childhoods ran out.†   (source)
  • As I listened to her plans, so selfless and suffused with hope, I felt the wretchedness of my own selfish scheme for escape into a false oblivion.†   (source)
  • She turned herself loose to the liquid rhythm of their coupling and found beyond its sorrow some brief oblivion.†   (source)
  • Felicia feels herself getting younger in her sleep, so young in fact that she fears she will die, be driven beyond the womb to oblivion.†   (source)
  • Yet this captain, in whatever altered state he occupied, watched oblivion approach with no apparent concern, even with delight, as though he recognized no physical threat to himself.†   (source)
  • God said to go down
    Go down
    Brother Moses
    Brother Moses
    To the shore of the great Nile River
    The choir clapped and stomped each syllable into a devastating reality, and just as it did, the congregation reached up, grabbed the phrase, and tried to clap and stomp it back into oblivion.†   (source)
  • Except for what these two books told, the past, further back than three recorded centuries, was a long oblivion.†   (source)
  • I rested my head on her stone shoulder, and drifted into a more peaceful oblivion than I had any hope of.†   (source)
  • Sailing on an overcrowded ship tossed by wind and sea, eating hardbread crawling with weevils and drinking black tar rum to sweet oblivion, sleeping on piles of moldy straw with the stench of strangers in his nostrils …. all that he had expected when he made his mark on that scrap of parchment in Volantis, pledging the Tattered Prince his sword and service for a year.†   (source)
  • Back to the cave, or on to oblivion.†   (source)
  • Disobey and you shall be cast into Oblivion.†   (source)
  • They had come to the desolation that lay before Mordor: the lasting monument to the dark labour of its slaves that should endure when all their purposes were made void; a land defiled, diseased beyond all healing — unless the Great Sea should enter in and wash it with oblivion.†   (source)
  • And though the implication is that I am the sort who is always careful and preparing, I think that's not right, either; in fact I feel I have not really been living anywhere or anytime, not for the future and not in the past and not at all of-the-moment, but rather in the lonely dream of an oblivion, the nothing-of-nothing drift from one pulse beat to the next, which is really the most bloodless marking-out, automatic and involuntary.†   (source)
  • Other than the uncontrollable fear of dying and oblivion, would there be anything else?†   (source)
  • In imagination of yet another of her lovers, he knew oblivion.†   (source)
  • Though the mining under the fields of the region was good, the dwarves seemed destined to fade away into oblivion.†   (source)
  • As I left his office, he shook my hand and said gravely, "Now you go into oblivion."†   (source)
  • Those who had not destroyed themselves had sought oblivion in ever more feverish activities, in fierce and suicidal sports that were often indistinguishable from minor wars.†   (source)
  • But it was my father, last surviving son of my grandmother's six children, who rescued the trove from its musty oblivion amid the termites and the spiders and the mice.†   (source)
  • Let him sit beside these other three and drink oblivion till you return.†   (source)
  • On a whim, he had once traveled to Florida with a group of friends, bought the boat which Humphrey Bogart captained in the film The African Queen, and brought it back to Yamacraw Island, where it survived a year then rotted slowly into oblivion.†   (source)
  • Then her soul is overcome By sleep and oblivion.†   (source)
  • Powerhouse is so monstrous he sends everybody into oblivion.†   (source)
  • Tom appeared from his oblivion as we were sitting down to supper together.   (source)
    oblivion = a state of being unknown and unnoticed
  • Once removed from CERN, the canister was on a one-way, twenty-four-hour trip to oblivion.†   (source)
  • In a blizzard, you can get lost in a matter of yards and wander off course into oblivion.†   (source)
  • There is only the future now He sinks into a dark oblivion.†   (source)
  • "Oblivion," her family shouts, describing her power.†   (source)
  • I surrender to the soft, musty fur and oblivion.†   (source)
  • Come aboard if your destination is oblivion—it should be our next stop.†   (source)
  • I have only the hope of oblivion after everything is gone and the Aleu fall nameless from the sky.†   (source)
  • The cable stretched upward into oblivion.†   (source)
  • For if disaster and oblivion have followed this painting down through time—so too has love.†   (source)
  • He should have brought a mickey or even a whole bottle, for the oblivion that's in it.†   (source)
  • Life and death and oblivion always at my fingertips.†   (source)
  • Ignoring the warnings of their wives, both men drank themselves into oblivion.†   (source)
  • Dismayed by the cruelty of oblivion, he said: "He does not remember me anymore."†   (source)
  • What matters creative endless toil,When, at a snatch, oblivion ends the coil?†   (source)
  • She had said goodbye to her mother and imagined her lonely wait for a train back home to oblivion.†   (source)
  • If those leaving them had wanted oblivion, there was always fire.†   (source)
  • My parents' abilities mixed—my father was an oblivion and my mother a storm."†   (source)
  • The Titanos family were oblivions, she says, her voice all around.†   (source)
  • They deserve shame before they get oblivion.†   (source)
  • Why do you think I evaporated him into oblivion?†   (source)
  • The one who brought us back from oblivion!†   (source)
  • I stared at the flaming drop to oblivion and the Lake of Fire below.†   (source)
  • He had tossed and turned all day, prowling the bed like an animal seeking sleep, oblivion.†   (source)
  • This time he moved, but only barely before settling back into oblivion.†   (source)
  • If you take the statue, you'll disappear with it forever, right into oblivion.†   (source)
  • He became lost in misty byways, in times reserved for oblivion, in labyrinths of disappointment.†   (source)
  • And yet this loss of self was not selfish oblivion.†   (source)
  • She's so weighted into oblivion, she looks as if she did die.†   (source)
  • The enemy's center line had been charred to oblivion.†   (source)
  • I wanted to cry, to fall off the horse and lie in oblivion.†   (source)
  • Any moment the sea might dissolve and we'd fall into oblivion.†   (source)
  • I've spent the last hundred years believing that our kind was doomed to oblivion, said Glaedr.†   (source)
  • The god slapped his belly and uttered a booming chuckle and then faded into oblivion.†   (source)
  • Whoosh, whoosh, like windows into gray oblivion.†   (source)
  • Arya snapped her fingers, and the wash of light faded into oblivion.†   (source)
  • If she'd told me to jump off the World Tree into oblivion, I would've done it in a second.†   (source)
  • By the time Mom has dinner ready, Daddy has reached a state of oblivion.†   (source)
  • "She's going to wash him into oblivion!"†   (source)
  • As the final refrain faded into oblivion, Eragon raised his hands and said, "Welcome, one and all.†   (source)
  • The narrow hallway beyond was devoid of lanterns and soon faded into the soft oblivion of shadow.†   (source)
  • And then the doctor's words as I left his office yesterday: Now you go into oblivion.†   (source)
  • I had gone from being proud to say my age—because of all I had done so young—to not bringing it up, for fear I was getting too close to forty and, therefore, professional oblivion.†   (source)
  • "There's the silver lining I've been looking for," she whispered, and then she was kissing him as she had never kissed him before, and Harry was kissing her back, and it was blissful oblivion better than firewhisky; she was the only real thing in the world, Ginny, the feel of her, one hand at her back and one in her long, sweet-smelling hair— The door banged open behind them and they jumped apart.†   (source)
  • … The usual enchantments… "Time to leave, Harry," said Dumbledore quietly, and as the in tie elf bobbed away bearing the boxes, Dumbledore grasped Harry once again above the elbow and together they rose up through oblivion and back to Dumbledore's office.†   (source)
  • The last moment before seeing a shell hit the ground, feeling the wing blown from my plane and the dizzying nosedive into oblivion, the warehouse roof falling down at me while I'm pinned helplessly to my cot.†   (source)
  • And the temporary oblivion of sex.†   (source)
  • At last, as he had begun to think she had just sailed off into oblivion forever with no fuss or fanfare, she lowered the trap and went on as if she had never stopped speaking.†   (source)
  • Utter and permanent oblivion.†   (source)
  • I like to think that it isn't weakness or evasion, but a final act of kindness, a stand against oblivion and despair, to let my lovers live and to unite them at the end.†   (source)
  • …toward them, sucking their way closer to Harry's despair, which was like a promise of a feast… He saw Ron's silver terrier burst into the air, flicker feebly, and expire; he saw Hermione's otter twist in midair and fade, and his own wand trembled in his hand, and he almost welcomed the oncoming oblivion, the promise of nothing, of no feeling… And then a silver hare, a boar, and fox soared past Harry, Ron, and Hermione's heads: the dementors fell back before the creatures' approach.†   (source)
  • "Come now, petite cachotiere," says the man, "don't look so frightened," and she can hear him reaching for her; she smells rot on his breath, hears oblivion in his voice, and something—a fingertip?†   (source)
  • That had been the milder form: the single man at the window, drinking himself into oblivion to the mournful strains of the tango.†   (source)
  • Suddenly she exclaimed: What matters our creative endless toil, When, at a snatch, oblivion ends the coil?†   (source)
  • She evoked him as she evoked the day she had sent her first telegram, and she could never erase from her heart the memory of the sad little bird condemned to oblivion.†   (source)
  • The pile of stones is called, in their various languages, The Haunt of Flying Snakes, The Heap of Rubble, The Abode of Howling Mothers, The Door of Oblivion, and The Pit of Gnawed Bones.†   (source)
  • But Ángeles Alfaro left as she had come, with her tender sex and her sinner's cello, on an ocean liner that flew the flag of oblivion, and all that remained of her on the moonlit roofs was a fluttered farewell with a white handkerchief like a solitary sad dove on the horizon, as if she were a verse from the Poetic Festival.†   (source)
  • Lerolan, oblivions, orange and red.†   (source)
  • I enter sleep angry and dread waking up, and when I do wake I lie beside the sleeping body of Jon, in our bed, listening to the rhythm of his breathing and resenting him for the oblivion he still controls.†   (source)
  • The future will erase everything there's no level of fame or genius that allows you to transcend oblivion.†   (source)
  • Percy wasn't sure what that meant, but he wanted to crack the floor and send these stupid gold-shirted twins down to oblivion.†   (source)
  • The peacock jumped onto the hood of the Buick and once more spread its tail, sending the flashy Buick into oblivion.†   (source)
  • The whole structure seemed to occupy its own space, one of solitude and oblivion, protected from the vices of time and the habits of the birds.†   (source)
  • We untangled ourselves and sprinted across the sky bridge as more stones disintegrated and fell into oblivion.†   (source)
  • But why should we worry ourselves that Proust and Hume and Aristotle and Archimedes are all fading into oblivion?†   (source)
  • A painless oblivion.†   (source)
  • Drinking had drawbacks—namely, the volume needed to reach oblivion—and I didn't like the taste or the history—my mother had done that.†   (source)
  • Ice coated the floor, which sloped downward at such a perilous angle I was afraid Otis and Marvin would slip and drag us to oblivion.†   (source)
  • He stood and raised his hammer in preparation to charge, but as he stepped forward, his head throbbed in unison with his wounded shoulder, the ground vanished in a burst of light, and he toppled into oblivion.†   (source)
  • His eyes swept the crowd and found the Mirror Maze, the empty oblivion which beckoned with ten times a thousand million light years of reflections, counterreflections,, reversed and double-reversed, plunging deep to nothing, facefalling to nothing, stomach-dropping away to yet more sickening plummets of nothing.†   (source)
  • He maintained the spell for several seconds, so he could marvel at the beauty of the summoning, and then he let the spell slip free of his grasp and the ghostly sword slowly faded into oblivion.†   (source)
  • On the other hand, if we can keep even a piece of Sharp over the next two years, we'll be in line for some of the Department of Tourism budget, maybe even a crack at the state lottery if they don't mismanage it into oblivion by then. juicy pies, Vic.†   (source)
  • My passport to oblivion.†   (source)
  • He complains of an energy waning within him, and is convinced that the time he's stolen between death and oblivion is coming to an end.†   (source)
  • The beggar was running away; an old man with eyes of steel was racing into the crowds, into oblivion.†   (source)
  • She lay still, the tears staining her cheeks, as if all this that had risen to the surface had left her weak and desperate for oblivion, as if the room around her, as if I, were not there.†   (source)
  • 'You're taking these people to their oblivion because of your lunatic theories of changing lead into gold!†   (source)
  • Their early morning thoughts were stimulated by the confluence of great energy and minds freshly drawn from oblivion.†   (source)
  • His own shadow preceded him, then fell behind, but again preceded him, flowed here into a pool of gloom and vanished like a soul into oblivion, only to swim into view three steps later.†   (source)
  • He hadn't cried at all from the beating, had lain there on the ground for a few moments after the brief blackout, and then had dragged himself up and made it agonizingly to the locker room at school, walking as if on a tightrope and one misstep would send him hurtling into depths below: oblivion.†   (source)
  • Not now, not yet, she told herself and she lifted his head between her hands and quested blindly for the oblivion of his mouth.†   (source)
  • No one tended the garden, either to water it or to weed it, until it was swallowed up by oblivion, birds, and wild grasses.†   (source)
  • As I sink closer to oblivion I breathe Trey in, desperate inhalation I want him beneath my skin, held fast by my bones, absorbed by my body like oxygen.†   (source)
  • The truth is that I can see myself wrapped around a bottle of bad likker for good company, that there are times when the very thought of that oblivion is so, so appealing.†   (source)
  • Evan found the baggie that Sam dropped and blew (literally) both Grace and himself to lime-green oblivion.†   (source)
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