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spasmodic
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  • Who does he think,' he demanded, sniffing spasmodically and wiping his nose with the back of his sturdy wrist, 'he is, a cop or something?†   (source)
  • They were getting rowdy, laughing at the spasmodic progress of the insect, urging it on as though it were a thoroughbred pounding across turf toward a finish line.†   (source)
  • Spasmodic shivers knotted my empty stomach and I hoped a roaring fire would warm me and stop these scary contractions.†   (source)
  • Inside, spasmodically, the other pain, the pain of the child, heated her.†   (source)
  • The Commandant, who should have been in his attic office, had become briefly unpinned from his schedule, and the fear which his unexpected presence caused down below was transmitted instantly to Sophie, who thought that Wilhelmine's sudden spasmodic and agonizing clutch around her thighs might cause the two of them to topple and fall.†   (source)
  • When he was agitated, a tic came over him, a spasmodic smile of fright that went up his left cheek.†   (source)
  • The wound quickened spasmodically as if it responded to light.†   (source)
  • His shoulders hunched uselessly against the smell of oranges and then jerked spasmodically.†   (source)
  • She was clutching the strap of her purse spasmodically.†   (source)
  • But I could feel the security cameras hissing at my back; and —quick spasmodic movement— I dropped my Redbreast Flake tin in the Bloomingdale's bag and shut the door and turned the key.†   (source)
  • She steps right up to it, flips her goggles down to protect her face from the heat The Rat Thing's legs stop their spasmodic movements, as though waiting for her.†   (source)
  • But—" crossing his legs spasmodically, parting himself down for a light — "I want them to think we are willing to pay the whole thing.†   (source)
  • Milo turned livid with indignation, his slim long nose flickering spasmodically between his black eyebrows and his unbalanced orange-brown mustache like the pale, thin flame of a single candle.†   (source)
  • Besides the Jews and the Home Army fighters on the train, there was a contingent of Poles—Warsaw citizens of both sexes, numbering around two hundred—who had been picked up by the Gestapo in one of their spasmodic but ruthless tapankas, the victims in this case being guilty of nothing more than the calamitous luck to be caught on the wrong street at the wrong hour.†   (source)
  • They catch each other in a spasmodic embrace.†   (source)
  • Hopton Stoddard stared, and Toohey heard Stoddard's false teeth clicking spasmodically.†   (source)
  • Of course this quickening was spasmodic.†   (source)
  • There was something desperate, almost insane, about the sharp spasmodic yelps to which they now gave utterance.†   (source)
  • He was both slow and spasmodic in the way he used the grime-crowned hands that ended his rugged white arms, lashed with extra reinforcements of sinew at the joints.†   (source)
  • And in this spasmodic way she gave an echo of what must have been my mother's feeling; only hers was much deeper, and stronger.†   (source)
  • Transfixed, timeless, he studied the curling fingers that twitched spasmodically, studied the printer's ink ingrained upon the finger tips, pondered, as if all there were in the world, the nail of the smallest finger, nipped by a press, that climbed in a jagged little stair to the hangnail.†   (source)
  • Tom Slattery owned no slaves, and he and his two oldest boys spasmodically worked their few acres of cotton, while the wife and younger children tended what was supposed to be a vegetable garden.†   (source)
  • In the garden the birds that had sung erratically and spasmodically in the dawn on that tree, on that bush, now sang together in chorus, shrill and sharp; now together, as if conscious of companionship, now alone as if to the pale blue sky.†   (source)
  • Her fingers worked spasmodically.†   (source)
  • She heard her own breath pass from loud evenness to spasmodic sobbing but her eyes were dry and burning as though there would never be tears in them again.†   (source)
  • Prissy picked lazily, spasmodically, complaining of her feet, her back, her internal miseries, her complete weariness, until her mother took a cotton stalk to her and whipped her until she screamed.†   (source)
  • "What is it?" said Sue, her spasmodic breathing suspended.†   (source)
  • "She must have seen what he was after, and should ha' refused him," cried Retty spasmodically.†   (source)
  • It lifted to a spasmodic sneeze and ended.†   (source)
  • It must take a violent spasmodic effort.†   (source)
  • We went up to him, but he seemed unconscious, breathing spasmodically.†   (source)
  • Joan heard Jim gasp and his hand tightened spasmodically upon hers.†   (source)
  • There could be seen spasmodic gulpings at his throat.†   (source)
  • His hands in the pockets of his dinner-jacket tightened spasmodically.†   (source)
  • You admit then that the absence of spasmodic movement was phenomenal.†   (source)
  • Chance's answer was a spasmodic jerking of his hand toward his hip.†   (source)
  • Perhaps a little too spasmodically I drew my revolver, aimed quickly and fired.†   (source)
  • His big hands went spasmodically to the place that hurt, and a terrible groan rumbled from him.†   (source)
  • That day by the pond had witnessed its last spasmodic flicker.†   (source)
  • This spurred him to a spasmodic scrambling forward to cover behind a bowlder.†   (source)
  • For an instant his face worked spasmodically, only to stiffen into a stony mask.†   (source)
  • Now and again he resisted spasmodically and to no purpose.†   (source)
  • He spasmodically ripped and tore with his fangs for a space.†   (source)
  • 'Yes,' said Sitnikov, hurriedly, and he gave a shrill spasmodic laugh.†   (source)
  • "What a night of horrors!" murmured Joseph Poorgrass, waving his hands spasmodically.†   (source)
  • "No, no, no!" said Tom, holding her small hands, which were clenched with spasmodic violence.†   (source)
  • "Oh," observed Madame de Villefort, "it must be an admirable anti-spasmodic."†   (source)
  • Bathsheba's steps became faintly spasmodic.†   (source)
  • The sea of history was not driven spasmodically from shore to shore as previously.†   (source)
  • He stood quite still; then he burst out spasmodically, "I shall see her once more?"†   (source)
  • Boldwood's arm moved spasmodically towards Troy's person again.†   (source)
  • All Troy's vigour spasmodically revived to prolong the struggle yet a little further.†   (source)
  • A very little boy stood up and sheepishly recited, "You'd scarce expect one of my age to speak in public on the stage," etc.—accompanying himself with the painfully exact and spasmodic gestures which a machine might have used—supposing the machine to be a trifle out of order.†   (source)
  • No more buffalo disturbed Milly's spasmodic periods of sewing and reading and the long spells of dreaming.†   (source)
  • 'That,' said a very young man, making spasmodic efforts to relight his cigar over the lamp; 'that …. very clear indeed.'†   (source)
  • On the following day Mr. Phillips was seized with one of his spasmodic fits of reform and announced before going home to dinner, that he should expect to find all the scholars in their seats when he returned.†   (source)
  • They had fallen a little apart from each other, and were perfectly still—No, not quite; in a white patch of light, where the moon shone through the branches, a man's hand was plucking spasmodically at the grass.†   (source)
  • A quick impulse that was somewhat spasmodic impelled her fingers to close in a sort of clutch upon his hand.†   (source)
  • But the burning brimstone went up his nostrils and into his lungs, causing him to cough spasmodically.†   (source)
  • The plague, the famine, the earthquake, the tempest were too spasmodic in their action; the tiger and crocodile were too easily satiated and not cruel enough: something more constantly, more ruthlessly, more ingeniously destructive was needed; and that something was Man, the inventor of the rack, the stake, the gallows, and the electrocutor; of the sword and gun; above all, of justice, duty, patriotism and all the other isms by which even those who are clever enough to be humanely…†   (source)
  • His face worked spasmodically.†   (source)
  • Then it was that his lips half writhed into a snarl, and the hair of his neck and shoulders involuntarily bristled, while he half crouched for a spring, his claws spasmodically clutching into the snow-surface for firmer footing.†   (source)
  • The only offensive operation men ventured upon after that night was the preparation of mines and pitfalls, and even in that their energies were frantic and spasmodic.†   (source)
  • The muscles of his whole body contracted spasmodically and instinctively, the hair on his neck and shoulders stood on end, and with a ferocious snarl he bounded straight up into the blinding day, the snow flying about him in a flashing cloud.†   (source)
  • Suddenly, he perceived that he was being watched—whereupon his hand rose spasmodically and arranged a phantom bulge in his necktie.†   (source)
  • When they reached the drawing-room, upholstered in pink cretonne and lighted by a dim lamp, they sat down at the table — she on a sofa and Peter Ivanovich on a low pouffe, the springs of which yielded spasmodically under his weight.†   (source)
  • Now and then, in a spasmodic burst of virtue—when the house had been too uproarious over night—Gus Trenor forced his genial bulk into a tight frock-coat and routed his daughters from their slumbers; but habitually, as Lily explained to Mr. Gryce, this parental duty was forgotten till the church bells were ringing across the park, and the omnibus had driven away empty.†   (source)
  • She had the heedless generosity and the spasmodic extravagance of persons used to large fortunes, and indifferent to money; but she could go without many things which her relations considered indispensable, and Mrs. Lovell Mingott and Mrs. Welland had often been heard to deplore that any one who had enjoyed the cosmopolitan luxuries of Count Olenski's establishments should care so little about "how things were done."†   (source)
  • He rose to his feet spasmodically.†   (source)
  • But so far was she from being, in the words of Robert South, "in love with her own ruin," that the illusion was transient as lightning; cold reason came back to mock her spasmodic weakness; the ghastliness of her momentary pride would convict her, and recall her to reserved listlessness again.†   (source)
  • It was the first time she had ever come across the results of her spasmodic benevolence, and the surprised sense of human fellowship took the mortal chill from her heart.†   (source)
  • There were sturdy workmen thrusting their way along, wretched, unkempt men, clothed like clerks or shopmen, struggling spasmodically; a wounded soldier my brother noticed, men dressed in the clothes of railway porters, one wretched creature in a nightshirt with a coat thrown over it.†   (source)
  • His rubicund face expressed consternation and fatigue; he appeared to be in a spasmodic sort of hurry.†   (source)
  • Or in some narrow pathway, glancing with a transitory daring into the eyes of some lithe, white-swathed female figure, I would suddenly see (with a spasmodic revulsion) that she had slit-like pupils, or glancing down note the curving nail with which she held her shapeless wrap about her.†   (source)
  • 'But before the balloons, save for spasmodic jumping and the inequalities of the surface, man had no freedom of vertical movement.'†   (source)
  • Some of the dairy-people, who were also out of doors on the first Sunday evening after their engagement, heard her impulsive speeches, ecstasized to fragments, though they were too far off to hear the words discoursed; noted the spasmodic catch in her remarks, broken into syllables by the leapings of her heart, as she walked leaning on his arm; her contented pauses, the occasional little laugh upon which her soul seemed to ride—the laugh of a woman in company with the man she loves and…†   (source)
  • Pruitt's actions were almost too swift to follow--so swift that Catlee missed him, as with spasmodic dive he grasped and carried Jett's rifle over the mess box.†   (source)
  • "Come up," said a Voice, and Mr. Marvel was suddenly whirled about and started marching off in a curious spasmodic manner.†   (source)
  • Still, Dorset's spasmodic temper, and his wife's reckless disregard of appearances, gave the situation a peculiar insecurity; and it was less from the sense of any special relation to the case than from a purely professional zeal, that Selden resolved to guide the pair to safety.†   (source)
  • His throat worked spasmodically, but made no sound, while he struggled with all his body, convulsed with the effort to rid himself of the incommunicable something that strained for utterance.†   (source)
  • His temper continued very uncertain; for the most part his manner was that of a man suffering under almost unendurable provocation, and once or twice things were snapped, torn, crushed, or broken in spasmodic gusts of violence.†   (source)
  • First, every drawer in the tall, old-fashioned bureau is to be opened, with difficulty, and with a succession of spasmodic jerks then, all must close again, with the same fidgety reluctance.†   (source)
  • There was a spasmodic abandonment about it as if, in allowing herself to utter the sound. the woman's brain had authorized what it could not regulate.†   (source)
  • In vain did I try to detect a smile upon their lips; sometimes by a spasmodic and involuntary contraction of the muscles they seemed to laugh, but they never smiled.†   (source)
  • Nothing disturbed the tranquillity of the Castle, but the occasional tumbling open of John and Miss Skiffins: which little doors were a prey to some spasmodic infirmity that made me sympathetically uncomfortable until I got used to it.†   (source)
  • Prince Hippolyte laughed spasmodically as he stood in the porch waiting for the vicomte whom he had promised to take home.†   (source)
  • Sometimes to be sure I could not, for the very soul of me, avoid falling into sudden spasmodic passions with him.†   (source)
  • Dorothea darted instantaneously from the window; Will followed her, seizing her hand with a spasmodic movement; and so they stood, with their hands clasped, like two children, looking out on the storm, while the thunder gave a tremendous crack and roll above them, and the rain began to pour down.†   (source)
  • Their torpidity, under the influence of sunshine and Mother Council, had given way to a sort of spasmodic cheerfulness, as insects in winter revive when laid on the hearth.†   (source)
  • Poor Noggs literally gasped for breath as this flood of questions rushed upon him, and moved spasmodically in his chair at every fresh inquiry, staring at Nicholas meanwhile with a most ludicrous expression of perplexity.†   (source)
  • "O God!" half shrieked Ligeia, leaping to her feet and extending her arms aloft with a spasmodic movement, as I made an end of these lines--"O God!†   (source)
  • He feels that for a Dedlock to be laid upon his back and spasmodically twitched and stabbed in his extremities is a liberty taken somewhere, but he thinks, "We have all yielded to this; it belongs to us; it has for some hundreds of years been understood that we are not to make the vaults in the park interesting on more ignoble terms; and I submit myself to the compromise."†   (source)
  • Chapter IV A Vanishing Gleam Mr. Tulliver, even between the fits of spasmodic rigidity which had recurred at intervals ever since he had been found fallen from his horse, was usually in so apathetic a condition that the exits and entrances into his room were not felt to be of great importance.†   (source)
  • _) _Nora_ (_gropes distractedly about, seizes_ HELMER'S _domino, throws it round her, while she says in quick, hoarse, spasmodic whispers_).†   (source)
  • Masses of Negroes stood idle, or, if they worked spasmodically, were never sure of pay; and if perchance they received pay, squandered the new thing thoughtlessly.†   (source)
  • The monster's body was stiff and motionless, which made its rolling and fiery eyes, and the slow spasmodic undulations of its tail more fearful by contrast.†   (source)
  • "So," said I, "you consider crime a mere spasmodic disease, which requires no body of criminal law to deal with it?"†   (source)
  • Mr. Rochester, on hearing the name, set his teeth; he experienced, too, a sort of strong convulsive quiver; near to him as I was, I felt the spasmodic movement of fury or despair run through his frame.†   (source)
  • The frantic beast tugs and draws the load, trembling all over, gasping for breath, moving sideways, with a sort of unnatural spasmodic action—it's awful in Nekrassov.†   (source)
  • My eyes followed its outward or upward whirls with the eagerness of the most unmeaning despair; they closed themselves spasmodically at the descent, although death would have been a relief, oh! how unspeakable!†   (source)
  • After which Mr Dorrit was seized with a doze for about a minute, out of which he sprang with spasmodic nimbleness.†   (source)
  • Then the ventilator in the window-pane spasmodically started off for a new spin, and the pathos of Donald's song was temporarily effaced.†   (source)
  • And now abating in his flurry, the whale once more rolled out into view; surging from side to side; spasmodically dilating and contracting his spout-hole, with sharp, cracking, agonized respirations.†   (source)
  • Mr. Jarndyce had fallen into this company in the tenderness of his heart and his earnest desire to do all the good in his power; but that he felt it to be too often an unsatisfactory company, where benevolence took spasmodic forms, where charity was assumed as a regular uniform by loud professors and speculators in cheap notoriety, vehement in profession, restless and vain in action, servile in the last degree of meanness to the great, adulatory of one another, and intolerable to those…†   (source)
  • Rosamond in her agitated absorption had not noticed the silently advancing figure; but when Dorothea, after the first immeasurable instant of this vision, moved confusedly backward and found herself impeded by some piece of furniture, Rosamond was suddenly aware of her presence, and with a spasmodic movement snatched away her hands and rose, looking at Dorothea who was necessarily arrested.†   (source)
  • But on seeing that precious little face, which for the last three days she had only looked at from a distance, she trembled all over and her gray head began twitching spasmodically over the coffin.†   (source)
  • He quickened the horse's pace, and had soon risen into the high country lying between there and Mellstock, Henchard's spasmodic run after him lending yet more substance to his thought of evil purposes.†   (source)
  • During the most violent shocks of the Typhoon, the man at the Pequod's jaw-bone tiller had several times been reelingly hurled to the deck by its spasmodic motions, even though preventer tackles had been attached to it—for they were slack—because some play to the tiller was indispensable.†   (source)
  • Mr. Tulliver, who had begun, in his intervals of consciousness, to manifest an irritability which often appeared to have as a direct effect the recurrence of spasmodic rigidity and insensibility, had lain in this living death throughout the critical hours when the noise of the sale came nearest to his chamber.†   (source)
  • Instantly afterwards, the company were seized with unspeakable consternation, owing to his springing to his feet, turning round several times in an appalling spasmodic whooping-cough dance, and rushing out at the door; he then became visible through the window, violently plunging and expectorating, making the most hideous faces, and apparently out of his mind.†   (source)
  • Ali turned his intelligent countenance towards the boy, on whom he gazed without any apparent emotion; but the spasmodic working of the nostrils showed to the practiced eye of Monte Cristo that the Arab had been wounded to the heart.†   (source)
  • A continual cascade played at the bows; a ceaseless whirling eddy in her wake; and, at the slightest motion from within, even but of a little finger, the vibrating, cracking craft canted over her spasmodic gunwale into the sea.†   (source)
  • All generous spirits are ambitious, I suppose, but the ambition that calmly trusts itself to such a road, instead of spasmodically trying to fly over it, is of the kind I care for.†   (source)
  • He sat with his legs up on the sofa as if quite at home and, having stuck an amber mouthpiece far into his mouth, was inhaling the smoke spasmodically and screwing up his eyes.†   (source)
  • Reaching Whittle's bedside the corn-factor shouted a bass note so vigorously that Abel started up instantly, and beholding Henchard standing over him, was galvanized into spasmodic movements which had not much relation to getting on his clothes.†   (source)
  • In the meanwhile, as the thing is difficult to find in France, and your abbe is not probably disposed to make a journey to Paris on my account, I must continue to use Monsieur Planche's anti-spasmodics; and mint and Hoffman's drops are among my favorite remedies.†   (source)
  • Heated and irritated as he was by his spasmodic toil at the pumps, for all his first nameless feeling of forbearance the sweating Steelkilt could but ill brook this bearing in the mate; but somehow still smothering the conflagration within him, without speaking he remained doggedly rooted to his seat, till at last the incensed Radney shook the hammer within a few inches of his face, furiously commanding him to do his bidding.†   (source)
  • Out of the bottomless profundities the gigantic tail seems spasmodically snatching at the highest heaven.†   (source)
  • Now to this hand, now to that, he yawed in his faltering flight, and still at every billow that he broke, he spasmodically sank in the sea, or sideways rolled towards the sky his one beating fin.†   (source)
  • As both steel and curse sank to the socket, as if sucked into a morass, Moby Dick sideways writhed; spasmodically rolled his nigh flank against the bow, and, without staving a hole in it, so suddenly canted the boat over, that had it not been for the elevated part of the gunwale to which he then clung, Ahab would once more have been tossed into the sea.†   (source)
  • A couched spear of acuminated granite rested by him while at his feet reposed a savage animal of the canine tribe whose stertorous gasps announced that he was sunk in uneasy slumber, a supposition confirmed by hoarse growls and spasmodic movements which his master repressed from time to time by tranquilising blows of a mighty cudgel rudely fashioned out of paleolithic stone.†   (source)
  • By inserting the barrel of an arruginated male key in the hole of an unstable female lock, obtaining a purchase on the bow of the key and turning its wards from right to left, withdrawing a bolt from its staple, pulling inward spasmodically an obsolescent unhinged door and revealing an aperture for free egress and free ingress.†   (source)
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