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vocabulary
1000+ books

taut
in a sentence

show 188 more with this conextual meaning
  • Tears streamed down his reddened cheeks in a continual flow, his face a taut mask of pain.†   (source)
  • She followed, along with others, and tied the canes on the taut wire that was stretched post to post.†   (source)
  • The tension in the air was as taut as the glass string I was tugging with my bloody hands.†   (source)
  • Her body had become a slender, taut line.†   (source)
  • HIS AVIATOR'S HELMET again flapping over his ears, Otis Amber danced up to his soup-kitchen companion, flung his arms around the taut body, and squeezed her tightly.†   (source)
  • His arms were taut with effort, his jaw set.†   (source)
  • August came around, and the peace of the countryside was a balm to their taut nerves.†   (source)
  • Alby yelled, his lips taut with anger, eyes on fire.†   (source)
  • Though tautly stretched at the end of the boat, it sagged a little in the middle; it made for three or four toilsome, bouncy steps.†   (source)
  • Her face was pulled taut in pain, and she jerked in her sleep.†   (source)
  • His sinews felt taut with exhilaration.†   (source)
  • Tally pulled the rope taut and lashed it to the usual tree.†   (source)
  • The flesh cloven along the bones, the ligaments dried to tug and taut as wires.†   (source)
  • Mr. Crouch's face was taut with rage.†   (source)
  • Even the muscles in his forearm are taut, defined.†   (source)
  • As Luther stared at his eggs, the green thread became taut; then it swung counterclockwise and came to rest along his left shoulder.†   (source)
  • Her leg muscles were stretched and taut.†   (source)
  • Her skin is blacker than Aibileen's by ten shades, and shiny and taut, like a pair of new patent shoes.†   (source)
  • The lines were pulled taut, and the protocarpus tree was lifted clear.†   (source)
  • Bows groaned as the archers on the mezzanine pulled their strings taut.†   (source)
  • The eyes of the nearly dead are redder than the blood that comes out of them, and it seems that their bones will tear through the skin of their taut faces at any minute.†   (source)
  • Then he nodded to Colonel Eiger and the young, frightened-looking first lieutenant; they matched their steps to the casket, they removed the American flag and snapped it taut—the medal bouncing like a coin, but it was pinned fast to the flag and couldn't fall.†   (source)
  • The bell is suspended and the wire remains taut, running vertically through the hole he has drilled in the wall.†   (source)
  • The air, which had been stretched taut with excitement, relaxed again.†   (source)
  • Now I had a long, taut line running perpendicular to the rover.†   (source)
  • The line became taut and she strained to hold on tight.†   (source)
  • My body prickles with nerves, every muscle taut and ready.†   (source)
  • She stopped at the mirror in the hallway and pulled up her shirt to examine her taut stomach muscles.†   (source)
  • And I don't want her to feel frightened, to feel the fear that is now tightening my muscles, tensing my spine, pulling me so taut that I'm certain I would break if touched.†   (source)
  • It pulled taut just as the mob reached it, and they went sprawling over it and into the mud, a tangled heap of flailing limbs.†   (source)
  • She could feel the pull of it, and over its taut span strength flowed into her, warm and sustaining.†   (source)
  • She spreads her fingers over the taut, enormous drum her middle has become, wondering where the baby's feet and hands are at this moment.†   (source)
  • He was so skinny, just skin stretched taut over bones.†   (source)
  • Adri's eyes widened, her temples pulling taut against her skull.†   (source)
  • His receding hairline, his tinted aviators and his taut military torso gave him the wind-whipped look of an ex-pilot, a man who monitored delicate instruments at some test site in the Urals.†   (source)
  • Looking at her now, at her clear gray eyes and her mouth as thin and taut as a bowstring, I feel a tug of fear.†   (source)
  • He had become both sullen and as taut as a stretched wire.†   (source)
  • Arms taut, backs stooped, the boys heave forward, their carts bulging.†   (source)
  • He stretches the rubber band taut between his thumb and index finger.†   (source)
  • He slipped a hand over her taut, jeans-clad bottom with counterfeit lechery.†   (source)
  • It's quite a storm," I observed, grasping for words that would fill the taut silence.†   (source)
  • He was a taut fat man, tight-bellied and dark.†   (source)
  • Wrinkled skin was stretched taut over protruding cheekbones.†   (source)
  • The Shade's narrow lips stretched tautly over his mouth as he laughed sharply.†   (source)
  • I saw the line quickly swing up and become taut.†   (source)
  • She twists herself on the swing until the rope becomes taut, then she lifts her feet and it spins her around, slowly at first, then gaining speed.†   (source)
  • They whirled again as canvas unfurled, lines grew taut, and somewhere a flywheel hummed into the ultrasonic.†   (source)
  • But then his lips were taut.†   (source)
  • I could see one vein, taut, sticking up in his neck.†   (source)
  • The Bulldog raised his chin so high his jowls stretched taut.†   (source)
  • It was an action shot-women's volleyball-and Martha was bent horizontal to the floor, reaching, the palms of her hands in sharp focus, the tongue taut, the expression frank and competitive.†   (source)
  • Getting closer, he sees that Da5id is taut and shivering, slick with perspiration.†   (source)
  • The midwife held the cord taut and told me where to cut.†   (source)
  • His taut finger encircling the trigger.†   (source)
  • A slight man with a taut face and slicked-back hair.†   (source)
  • Dustfinger inspected his reddened fingers and felt the taut skin.†   (source)
  • The golden capstone plummeted until the lines attached to it from our side yanked taut, and our boat nearly flipped over.†   (source)
  • Her face was pale and taut with fear.†   (source)
  • Her watchfulness stretched her, made her taut and tense.†   (source)
  • Hekate deliberately turned her back on Flamel and folded her arms, then she glanced over her shoulder at Scathach, who immediately pulled the bowstring taut.†   (source)
  • Her voice was as taut as a wire.†   (source)
  • There was a light puff of wind at my back that tousled my hair and caused the tarpaulin covering the wagon to pull taut for a moment.†   (source)
  • As he steps away from the van the leash pulls taut, stretching back inside, but no dog follows.†   (source)
  • For ten years he'd been working these very same fields, his eyes were still clear, his back was straight, his skin was taut, his belly remained lean and hard.†   (source)
  • Pecola still held her stomach muscles taut and conserved her breath.†   (source)
  • She released a long, taut breath.†   (source)
  • Her mouth seemed to have shrunken in size—perhaps because she held it taut, I don't know.†   (source)
  • Her fingers dug into his shoulders, his hips. her hands squeezing then gliding to fray the taut line of his control.†   (source)
  • She was thin without the taut look of wiry people, and her printed voile dresses and flowered hats were as right for her as denim overalls for a farmer.†   (source)
  • At first he thought it could be some kind of animal trap or a path marker …. until he saw the rope tied around it, pulled taut and stretching into the shadows, and realized that it was a metal stake driven into the tree.†   (source)
  • The introduction shows a page-wide photo of a forearm and hand squeezing pliers around a length of taut barbed wire strung beneath one of the towers.†   (source)
  • Blade thin, six feet in height, straight as a sapling, bright eyed, taut; even motionless he seemed whippet quick.†   (source)
  • Every nerve in his body was taut, all his longing was concentrated in that cigarette butt--which meant more to him now, it seemed, than freedom itself--but he would never lower himself like that Fetiukov, he would never look at a man's mouth.†   (source)
  • Ten feet of soaring, plunging sailfish, it leaped, arched like a rainbow, dived, sank deep, tugged the line taut, rose, flew, fell, rose.†   (source)
  • Holding it taut, she drew it back and forth across my face, pulling the hair out.†   (source)
  • Her body grew stiff and taut.†   (source)
  • The canvas is taut and nearly translucent--sunlight filters through the material and seams, illuminating the largest candy stand of all.†   (source)
  • She pulls up her shirt to expose the pale, taut skin of her stomach, marred by a tangle of gouges.†   (source)
  • They're still grinning at each other, but their voices have dropped so low and taut I have to sweep over closer to them with my broom to hear.†   (source)
  • She pulled the sheets taut on the beds, opened the windows, dusted.†   (source)
  • A length of twisted copper wire, gleaming dully in the first sunlight, was looped round his neck and ran taut across one forepaw to the head of a stout peg driven into the ground.†   (source)
  • I mean first I got to tell you how it was all the way … I mean about the money I put in, Walter Lee … WALTER: (With taut agitation now) What about the money you put in?†   (source)
  • His chain grew taut.†   (source)
  • Her dark hair was down around her shoulders and curling with the humidity, but her skin still looked as though it had been pulled taut over the sharp angles of her face.†   (source)
  • He tightened his lips, kept his cheeks taut.†   (source)
  • Together at the card table, I could relax the taut watchfulness and caution that had governed my every move for the last three days and almost forget where I was, even as I shared every discovery that my new life offered.†   (source)
  • She was taut with denial and rage, and she drifted back to her village so she could die near her family.†   (source)
  • A line of dark hair snakes over a taut stomach.†   (source)
  • Haji Ali and Twaha pulled the cord taut and whipped it against the ground, leaving white lines on the packed earth where the walls of the school would stand.†   (source)
  • When he pulled the string taut and affixed the rocket to it, he was excited.†   (source)
  • Reinventing his voice yet again, Mr. Moritz's third book, Sing, was written in a stripped-down language described in the New York Times as "taut as a drum.†   (source)
  • Sho holds the head, pulling it taut.†   (source)
  • As he drove, the killer's nerves were taut and excited.†   (source)
  • Day did not link to day making a taut and jerking chain; rather, the moon rose over lapping waves.†   (source)
  • The line was taut as a banjo string, and the merest tug would snap it on and blind the shivering quarry in a blaze of light.†   (source)
  • Her hand had blown up so much that her fingers were like sausages in my palm, the skin so shiny and taut it looked ready to split.†   (source)
  • His line was strong and made for heavy fish and he held it against his hack until it was so taut that beads of water were jumping from it.†   (source)
  • Cedric, sitting lightly on his taut blanket, looks across the dorm room at Rob Burton, who is slumped on his mother-made bed, looking right back.†   (source)
  • In his taut expression I saw complete concentration.†   (source)
  • The Shataiki remained silent, face taut, eyes unblinking.†   (source)
  • The dozen white-gloved hands waiting taut upon the silken ropes.†   (source)
  • Keep your halyards taut, Phil.†   (source)
  • She could pull her knees up a bit, but the harness and the foot restraints grew taut immediately.†   (source)
  • All week, throughout the funeral for Anys, and later, when he had looked in almost hourly on Mem, he had been thin-lipped and taut as a bowstring, as if struggling to contain a terrible rage.†   (source)
  • Her face becomes taut.†   (source)
  • Holding the other end of the loop taut with his left hand, he drew one side of the cord over the other with the middle finger of his right hand.†   (source)
  • I cried when I saw him bandaged in white, his arms taut in midair like a sea gull.†   (source)
  • "Just got… battered around a little," she said in a voice taut with pain.†   (source)
  • From the porch I could, at last, make out the three now taut lines, and then I caught sight of her washboards just above the water line.†   (source)
  • He sat hunched, bitterly smiling, as always, his muscles taut as old nautical ropes in a hurricane.†   (source)
  • Rosalind became taut, ready for any movement.†   (source)
  • Her face was round and strangely taut.†   (source)
  • He has the body of an Olympic swimmer, taut and muscled.†   (source)
  • She bowed, her slender figure standing tautly straight but for the slow, formal movement of her head.†   (source)
  • ELESIN has stood rock-still, his knuckles taut on the bars, his eyes glued to the body of his son.†   (source)
  • I admired the elegiac understatement of its streets, the whole taut containment of the lower city, fragrant in its vines, disciplined in its stones.†   (source)
  • She wore a colorful wrap that draped off one shoulder, revealing an incredibly taut, muscular arm.†   (source)
  • His contours, taut and sinewy, are exactly the same.†   (source)
  • I pushed her hands together above her head and held them there tightly with one hand, my free one searching the scallops of her ribs, her taut neck, now unfolding inside her needy mouth.†   (source)
  • He rested his hand on Enrico's taut neck.†   (source)
  • He listens, his mouth a taut line, as Conrad explains.†   (source)
  • "Never interrupt me!" the wizard shouted, the veins in his neck taut and bulging and his face turning as red as blood.†   (source)
  • They all dropped as though attached by taut rope.†   (source)
  • Before them was an enormous tent, white and taut, the kind used for weddings and festivals.†   (source)
  • The loose-fitting hospital attire concealed a body that was slender and taut, with narrow hips and the lightly muscled thighs and calves of a long-distance runner.†   (source)
  • But that he had done things far worse, and the effects were everywhere in the cloudless sky, on the dry brown hills, shrinking skin and hide taut over sharp bone.†   (source)
  • He looked taut, his arms wiry rather than muscled, his legs downright scrawny.†   (source)
  • My throat hurt constantly, vocal cords taut to snapping.†   (source)
  • They join the two belts, and hold them taut between them.†   (source)
  • Her mouth, usually agile and humorous, was drawn into a taut, colorless line.†   (source)
  • A short novel then, also acclaimed, having to do with my wartime experiences—a taut, searing book eviscerating the military in a tragicomedy of the absurd.†   (source)
  • Tom kept the rein taut, rode without trouble for several seconds.†   (source)
  • Her nerves were strung taut.†   (source)
  • BRADY (Red-faced, his larynx taut, roaring stridently) As they would look to the mountains whence cometh our strength.†   (source)
  • Sergeant Jelal welcomed us warmly, told us that we were joining a smart outfit, "best in the Fleet," in a taut ship, and didn't seem to notice our ear skulls.†   (source)
  • Samuel's face was taut with attention.†   (source)
  • Their stern faces didn't brighten any but they seemed to become less taut, as if some great need had been partly satisfied.†   (source)
  • As she started on the yams, the rope she had dropped wiggled and snapped taut.†   (source)
  • Gradually his breathing became more regular, his body more relaxed, as he drifted from the taut pain of fever to the calm of sleep; Liz, watching him, sensed that the worst was over.†   (source)
  • Ira's face was strained and taut and queerly defensive, as if she had been hurt and was wondering where the next blow would fall.†   (source)
  • Mrs. Watts held it taut between her pink hands, and Mrs. Carson underscored each line slowly with her thimbled finger.†   (source)
  • Her face lost its childishness and became drawn and taut.†   (source)
  • He was well in control of himself, but as taut as wire.†   (source)
  • It was a taut leer, an evil thing, more threatening than a look of rage.†   (source)
  • She looked so young in those pictures—her skin taut, her face thin.†   (source)
  • The veins in his neck bulged in taut cords.†   (source)
  • With them, straining at taut leashes, were two large dogs, their eyes glittering, their lips curled.†   (source)
  • Mr. Robert's mouth tightened like a rope pulled taut.†   (source)
  • Kohler's usually emotionless face was taut.†   (source)
  • With one finger, she had poked the taut. shiny skin just below his left knee.†   (source)
  • He broke off and listened, his face taut with concentration for a few minutes.†   (source)
  • Thomas felt the bag going taut; then his head was pulled up.†   (source)
  • Its windows are missing and have been replaced by squares of multicolored fabric, pulled taut.†   (source)
  • I listen for some life as I pull the sheets up taut on the bed.†   (source)
  • Now the jibvines were beginning to pull taut as the thick leaves filled with wind.†   (source)
  • His face was taut, his breath shallow, but his expression held no hint of surprise.†   (source)
  • The four vines tied to Alby below hung tautly around him.†   (source)
  • His shoulders rounded over his controller, slamming buttons, his forearms taut, veins visible.†   (source)
  • She plants her hands on her knees and stares right at me, her features taut with sudden ferocity.†   (source)
  • Lord Renly took a step back, taut as a bowstring.†   (source)
  • Her mouth was too taut and her tongue too still to attempt the strange sounds.†   (source)
  • Only the skin on her throat was taut and smooth, stretched over an enormous goiter.†   (source)
  • Correction: It's a taut cable, His sword won't cut it.†   (source)
  • Kris stammered, her back pressed against the wall, her expression taut with terror.†   (source)
  • He held his face taut as he raised his eyes to the corporal's face.†   (source)
  • Vittoria, who had been silent, was suddenly airborne, her body taut with hatred.†   (source)
  • He released a strangled breath and pulled his shoulders taut.†   (source)
  • There was a light feeling in my head, fluttery and taut at the same time.†   (source)
  • There was a taut blue quality in the January light, a hardness and confidence.†   (source)
  • When Mariam picked her up, she could feel her hip bone poking through the taut skin.†   (source)
  • He was taller than I was, every sinew taut from labor.†   (source)
  • I could feel the pull of her through the taut line.†   (source)
  • He was coiled and taut, a mousetrap set to spring at the slightest touch.†   (source)
  • He paused a taut moment and looked up at Langdon.†   (source)
  • I keep my eyes focused on the horizon, a solid thin line, taut as a tightrope.†   (source)
  • Where she touched herself her flesh was taut and smooth.†   (source)
  • Ser Jaremy bristled, his face taut with anger.†   (source)
  • His voice was held taut by a cord of pain.†   (source)
  • He was weatherworn inside and out, as taut and rugged as the horses he ran wild on the mountain.†   (source)
  • All those taut lines were moaning and wailing like an infernal stringed orchestra.†   (source)
  • His face was pulled taut, his eyes turbulent.†   (source)
  • Prometheus dangled from them, his arms drawn taut, his bones showing knobs through the skin.†   (source)
  • The inch of skin showing on Hilly's neck grows taut.†   (source)
  • The sculpted hollows on either side of his taut, beautiful buns.†   (source)
  • I was drawn taut as an archer sighting against the sky, waiting for the bird to flush.†   (source)
  • The leather straps pulled taut; the bit forced Bud's head up and forward.†   (source)
  • She grimaced, muscles pulling taut to her bones.†   (source)
  • Adri fixed a cold glare on her, lips pulled taut.†   (source)
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