toggle menu
menu
vocabulary
1000+ books

vortex
in a sentence

show 128 more with this conextual meaning
  • Headless trunks were tossed out of the vortex to linger a moment on the surface and sink out of sight.†   (source)
  • "Here we go," Georgia said, and tilted the container until the turtle began sliding, slowly, toward the neon water, which was swirling beneath him—the shark's turning had created a vortex.†   (source)
  • He's got his long knife out now, and the two blades come together above the egg, which has become the vortex of a blinding, deafening tornado of light and sound.†   (source)
  • Madaline had been speaking for a while, and I recall thinking, as we sat in the courtyard with the sunlight falling in patches all around us, that it was a measure of her capacity to absorb attention, to pull everything into her vortex so thoroughly that Thalia had gone forgotten.†   (source)
  • There is storm-music, and the fisherman drowns, sucked to the bottom of the sea in the vortex of the whirlpool.†   (source)
  • He knew he was driving straight into the center of his pain, the vortex of The Great Sadness that had so diminished his sense of being alive.†   (source)
  • He felt dust fronts, billowings, mixings of turbulence, an occasional vortex.†   (source)
  • The humming increased to an almost unbearable pitch, and then the vortex exploded outward as the blazing orbs scattered in every direction.†   (source)
  • He imagined being an adventurer on some wild white river, being pummeled by a waterfall as he was sucked into a vortex.†   (source)
  • In the vortex of the struggle, when one is constantly reacting to changing circumstances, one rarely has the chance to carefully consider all the ramifications of one's decisions or policies.†   (source)
  • She clings to me as tightly as if I were keeping her from being sucked into a vortex.†   (source)
  • I didn't have any dead cousins to send up red flags, and my mom's refusal to let my dad install a "soul-sucking vortex of trash and mindless entertainment"—that thing commonly known as a television—meant that no scary news broadcasts rocked my world.†   (source)
  • The dust was so beautiful that I inhaled in shock; the air whistled down my throat, swirling the motes into a vortex.†   (source)
  • What happens is the water spray creates a vortex, kind of like a hurricane.†   (source)
  • There are trailing vortices.†   (source)
  • Likewise, two of the places in the Arab world that have given girls the most education were Lebanon and Saudi Arabia, yet the former has been a vortex of conflict and the latter a breeding ground for violent fundamentalists.†   (source)
  • That position creates a vortex of air that pulls the chute from the pack and straight up.†   (source)
  • The only three things that I know for certain took place last night are that one, small elves climbed up my body and tied my hair into a mass of tiny knots; two, I must have slept with my mouth open because something crawled into it and died; and three, I was sucked through a vortex into some animated world where an anvil was dropped on my head.†   (source)
  • The colonel dwelt in a vortex of specialists who were still specializing in trying to determine what was troubling him.†   (source)
  • The air inside the circle whipped around us violently, like a vortex.†   (source)
  • In the stairwell, the floors and stairs below were a white-water river, a vortex of cascading waves.†   (source)
  • All that's left is this vortex.†   (source)
  • She said, "The possibility of a bomb, anomalous weather, the wake vortex from another aircraft, and various other factors were eliminated pretty early.†   (source)
  • She felt like a vortex had opened up inside her head and was sucking away her thoughts and words.†   (source)
  • I knew very well that all he said was ridiculous, not light for their darkness but flattery, illusion, a vortex pulling them from sunlight to heat, a kind of midsummer burgeoning, waltz to the sickle.†   (source)
  • In the east, the landscape had become a churning vortex of dust, soil, and trees that swirled about in gargantuan funnel clouds that rose thousands of feet before disappearing into the demon's roiling bulk.†   (source)
  • Too much now I'm at the vortex of bad happenings, and I am almost sure I ought to festoon the facade of my house and the bumpers of my car and then garland myshoulders with immense black flags of warning, to let every soul know they must steer clear of this man, not to wave greetings or small-talk with him or do anything to provoke the hand of his agreeable, gentle-faced hubris.†   (source)
  • It's hard to describe, but I imagine the way I am at this moment is a lot like getting sucked into a vortex.†   (source)
  • The electrifying vortex of Beijing.†   (source)
  • They're more like a vortex.†   (source)
  • Surely, thought Jan, it must be a vortex of some kind-a smoke-ring already many kilometres across.†   (source)
  • Yet to look at him now, in the twilit living room, gliding like a large bird in an updraft toward the sweating shakerful of booze, smiling out of his fat vortex ring's center, you'd think all was flat calm, gold, serene.†   (source)
  • Like a terrified child clutching at Daddy in the vortex of a mob, Sophie squeezed down on my fingers.†   (source)
  • Adam's irises were light blue with dark radial lines leading into the vortices of his pupils.†   (source)
  • They abandoned their bodies to live forever as vortices of force.†   (source)
  • When she looked up and outward, a vortex of light drove through and over the brown waves like a star in the water.†   (source)
  • He relaxed, permitted himself to be drawn down into a vortex of associations and began sorting.†   (source)
  • She turned, and together we ran and plunged straight into the swirling vortex.†   (source)
  • The vortex began as an abrupt billowing that rattled the entire ship.†   (source)
  • Then I plunged into the hot vortex of sand.†   (source)
  • The top of the cavern dissolved into a churning vortex of sand as large as the pyramid.†   (source)
  • The vortex turned them, twisting, tipping.†   (source)
  • To avoid the vortex of its passage and still have time to run in and mount it.†   (source)
  • A swirling sand vortex appeared, all right.†   (source)
  • I must find the right vortex, he thought.†   (source)
  • The vortex was so powerful that it ripped blocks off the pyramid and sucked them into the sand.†   (source)
  • The red tendrils of Jaz's spell wrapped around the bau and pulled it screaming into the vortex.†   (source)
  • The tunnel ended in a whirling vortex of darkness.†   (source)
  • Our wheels left the ground, and the black limousine flew headlong into the vortex.†   (source)
  • Suddenly, I feel the vortex begin to churn again.†   (source)
  • A dozen monsters were sucked into the vortex and disintegrated.†   (source)
  • "What you fail to comprehend," continued Jeod, "is the size of the vortex.†   (source)
  • We spun across the ice and flipped, sliding upside-down into the vortex.†   (source)
  • It's that vortex, threatening to swallow me whole.†   (source)
  • The entire vortex collapsed inward, sucking all six bau into Jaz's circle.†   (source)
  • As the cage entered the vortex, the bars broke into splinters of light.†   (source)
  • The beach imploded around him, swallowing the serpent and sucking the red sand into the vortex.†   (source)
  • "Yes, that is understandable," said Sam, studying the great vortex of yellow flame.†   (source)
  • A few yards ahead of us, gray clouds swirled in a heavy vortex, making a funnel cloud that almost touched the mountaintop, but instead rested on the shoulders, of a twelve-year-old girl with auburn hair and a tattered silvery dress: Artemis, her legs bound to the rock with celestial bronze chains.†   (source)
  • The pro-peller grinded into reverse, trying to slow the ship, but we kept sliding toward the center of the vortex.†   (source)
  • The leaves on the trees were every shade of red and yellow, and crinkled brown discards covered the dirt of Town Line Road, swirling in the vortex of the pickup as it passed along.†   (source)
  • A swirling vortex had opened in the center of the game's monitor, and it was sucking in bits of trash, paper cups, bowling shoes—everything that wasn't nailed down.†   (source)
  • He was spinning around like a dervish, remixing the song on the fly while simultaneously adjusting the gravity vortex of the dance floor, so that he was actually spinning the club itself, like an ancient vinyl disc.†   (source)
  • HE SAT WITH HIS BACK TO THE WORKSHOP DOOR, WAITING and counting, watching Edgar lying in front of him A vortex of smoke was rushing upward into the dark rectangle overhead.†   (source)
  • About a hundred yards down the path, a bald magician in white robes stepped out of a whirling sand vortex.†   (source)
  • The steamboat made two more suicidal turns between boulders, did a three-sixty spin round a swirling vortex, launched over a ten-meter waterfall, and came crashing down so hard, my ears popped like a gunshot.†   (source)
  • He swirled his own tea in its mug, accelerating the liquid into a black whirlpool with a white lens of foam at the bottom of the vortex.†   (source)
  • His voice sounded like a backward recording—as if the words were being sucked into the vortex of his face rather than projected.†   (source)
  • And the center of the vortex—the eye of the hurricane—is a low-pressure area, which sucks the shower curtain in and up.†   (source)
  • At the intersection of the fields, and they're not low power but the highest power we can generate, a vortex forms.†   (source)
  • But that could just be me and the dark, slow-churning vortex that's always there, in me and around me, to some degree.†   (source)
  • All across the battlefield, bodies and carcasses were rolling and tumbling brokenly toward the strike sites along with acres of dirt and soil to create huge, spiraling vortexes.†   (source)
  • Again changing colors, the orb in front of Eragon shrank to the size of an apple and rejoined its companions in the swirling vortex of light that encircled him and Arya.†   (source)
  • Tartarus threw back his head and bellowed—creating a vacuum so strong that the nearest flying demons were pulled into his vortex face and shredded.†   (source)
  • The air over the vortex filled with a cyclone of twisting mist, and from the ebony throat of the abyss came a tortured howl like the cries of an injured wolf.†   (source)
  • The floor is spinning, the vortex is calling, and I'm itching for one of my pills, but there's no reaching for one now.†   (source)
  • The vortex's ghastly howl faded into the usual noise of the wind; the water assumed a calm, flat quality that betrayed no hint of the habitual violence visited upon that location; and the contorted fog that had writhed above the abyss melted under the warm rays of the sun, leaving the air as clear as oiled glass.†   (source)
  • And as I battle with invisible waves and imaginary vortexes and demons that are all too real and of my own making, I actually feel something in my chest open, a feeling so intense it's like my heart's about to burst.†   (source)
  • A swirling sand vortex appeared.†   (source)
  • I had abominable dreams—which seemed to be a compendium of all the tales of Edgar Allan Poe: myself being split in twain by monstrous mechanisms, drowned in a whirling vortex of mud, being immured in stone and, most fearsomely, buried alive.†   (source)
  • In the deeps of night that bright room reached some vortex of quiet, like a room where all brains are at work and great decisions are on the brink.†   (source)
  • Immediately, rocks and stones and sandy soil were sucked up into the vortex and hurled across the air toward Yama, who swirled his cloak and muffled his eyes with its hem, but did not otherwise stir.†   (source)
  • The vortex moved out on to the river, where it sucked up a waterspout and eventually spent itself.†   (source)
  • It was the heady race and plunge of the vortex.†   (source)
  • Though I am in still water far away from its centre, I feel the whirl of the vortex sucking me slowly, irresistibly, inescapably into itself.†   (source)
  • They form a vortex from which no ship has ever been able to escape.†   (source)
  • He had been caught in a vortex and was being whirled on with a velocity of advance and gyration that made him giddy and sick.†   (source)
  • It was never the same—a rumble, as if faint, distant thunder—a deep gurgle, as of water drawn into a vortex—a rolling, as of a stone in swift current.†   (source)
  • Now his imagination spun about the hand as about the edge of a vortex; but still he made no effort to draw nearer.†   (source)
  • Raoul dressed in frantic haste, prepared to forget his distress by flinging himself, as people say, into "the vortex of pleasure."†   (source)
  • An aching lust to join them tormented both body and soul, and whoever lacked the strength to flee to solitude was drawn into the vortex, beyond all help.†   (source)
  • They stooped in a long curve down into the golden glow, concentrating, cawing, wheeling, like black flakes on a slow vortex, over a tree clump that made a dark boss among the pasture.†   (source)
  • He had been making false progress for a good while now; wrapped in a vortex of white night, he had worn himself out blindly working his way ever deeper into the indifferent menace.†   (source)
  • Just as Alice veiled her eyes in horror, under the impression that they were about to be swept within the vortex at the foot of the cataract, the canoe floated, stationary, at the side of a flat rock, that lay on a level with the water.†   (source)
  • I hired a boat directly, and we put off to her; and getting through the little vortex of confusion of which she was the centre, went on board.†   (source)
  • In this way, metaphorically speaking, a strong lens applied to Mrs. Cadwallader's match-making will show a play of minute causes producing what may be called thought and speech vortices to bring her the sort of food she needed.†   (source)
  • It may be easily understood that in the present disposition of his master nothing could be more disagreeable to Bazin than the arrival of d'Artagnan, which might cast his master back again into that vortex of mundane affairs which had so long carried him away.†   (source)
  • 'I do not, Julia, I do not,' said Mr W. 'The society in which you move—necessarily move, from your station, connection, and endowments—is one vortex and whirlpool of the most frightful excitement.†   (source)
  • The vortex of thoughtless folly into which I there so immediately and so recklessly plunged, washed away all but the froth of my past hours, engulfed at once every solid or serious impression, and left to memory only the veriest levities of a former existence.†   (source)
  • Despite the indifference to the affairs of the world he had expressed to Pierre, he diligently followed all that went on, received many books, and to his surprise noticed that when he or his father had visitors from Petersburg, the very vortex of life, these people lagged behind himself—who never left the country—in knowledge of what was happening in home and foreign affairs.†   (source)
  • The long, dark streak of the gliding weapon, and the little bubbling vortex which followed its rapid flight, were easily to be seen: but it was not until the handle snot again into the air by its own reaction, and its master catching it in his hand, threw its tines uppermost, that Elizabeth was acquainted with the success of the blow.†   (source)
  • Mrs. Pardiggle accordingly rose and made a little vortex in the confined room from which the pipe itself very narrowly escaped.†   (source)
  • As a whirlpool of boiling waters has a centre point, so, all this raging circled round Defarge's wine-shop, and every human drop in the caldron had a tendency to be sucked towards the vortex where Defarge himself, already begrimed with gunpowder and sweat, issued orders, issued arms, thrust this man back, dragged this man forward, disarmed one to arm another, laboured and strove in the thickest of the uproar.†   (source)
  • Occasionally there was a crash, followed by sudden peals of fright, telling of other ships ridden down, and their crews drowned in the vortexes.†   (source)
  • If his private affairs leave him any leisure, he instantly plunges into the vortex of politics; and if at the end of a year of unremitting labor he finds he has a few days' vacation, his eager curiosity whirls him over the vast extent of the United States, and he will travel fifteen hundred miles in a few days, to shake off his happiness.†   (source)
  • Jasper looked gravely, for he well knew nothing would hold the vessel did she get within the vortex of the breakers, the first line of which was appearing and disappearing about a cable's length directly under their stern.†   (source)
  • The devine afflatus usually lasted a week or two, and then she emerged from her 'vortex', hungry, sleepy, cross, or despondent.†   (source)
  • But then good society has its claret and its velvet carpets, its dinner-engagements six weeks deep, its opera and its faery ball-rooms; rides off its ennui on thoroughbred horses; lounges at the club; has to keep clear of crinoline vortices; gets its science done by Faraday, and its religion by the superior clergy who are to be met in the best houses,—how should it have time or need for belief and emphasis?†   (source)
  • Time was necessary to blend the numerous and affluent colonists of the lower province with their new compatriots; but the thinner and more humble population above, was almost immediately swallowed in the vortex which attended the tide of instant emigration.†   (source)
  • If it was the last word I had to speak, against that vortex with my utmost powers I strove, and out of it I came.†   (source)
  • Over Descartian vortices you hover.†   (source)
  • This was the obscure, removed spot to which was about to return a man whose latter life had been passed in the French capital—the centre and vortex of the fashionable world.†   (source)
  • Every few weeks she would shut herself up in her room, put on her scribbling suit, and 'fall into a vortex', as she expressed it, writing away at her novel with all her heart and soul, for till that was finished she could find no peace.†   (source)
  • So, floating on the margin of the ensuing scene, and in full sight of it, when the halfspent suction of the sunk ship reached me, I was then, but slowly, drawn towards the closing vortex.†   (source)
  • Amid the uncertainties of the position, with the menace of serious danger giving a peculiarly threatening character to everything, amid this vortex of intrigue, egotism, conflict of views and feelings, and the diversity of race among these people—this eighth and largest party of those preoccupied with personal interests imparted great confusion and obscurity to the common task.†   (source)
  • Saunterers pricked up their attention to observe it; busy people, crossing it, slackened their pace and turned their heads; companions pausing and standing aside, whispered one another to look at this spectral woman who was coming by; and the sweep of the figure as it passed seemed to create a vortex, drawing the most idle and most curious after it.†   (source)
  • The nuts gave way, and ripped out of its socket, the skiff was hurled like a stone from a sling into the midst of the vortex.†   (source)
  • Many of them came to the surface together, and on the same plank or support of whatever kind continued the combat, begun possibly in the vortex fathoms down.†   (source)
  • Even with a microscope directed on a water-drop we find ourselves making interpretations which turn out to be rather coarse; for whereas under a weak lens you may seem to see a creature exhibiting an active voracity into which other smaller creatures actively play as if they were so many animated tax-pennies, a stronger lens reveals to you certain tiniest hairlets which make vortices for these victims while the swallower waits passively at his receipt of custom.†   (source)
  • There he leant over the wall and lowered the lamp, only to behold the vortex formed at the curl of the returning current.†   (source)
  • And now, concentric circles seized the lone boat itself, and all its crew, and each floating oar, and every lance-pole, and spinning, animate and inanimate, all round and round in one vortex, carried the smallest chip of the Pequod out of sight.†   (source)
  • 'When you first came upon me, sir, in the Lodge, this day, more as if a Upas tree had been made a capture of than a private defendant, such mingled streams of feelings broke loose again within me, that everything was for the first few minutes swept away before them, and I was going round and round in a vortex.†   (source)
  • …West Wind quit its wild rage
    but the South came on at once to hound me even more,
    making me double back my route toward cruel Charybdis.
    All night long I was rushed back and then at break of day
    I reached the crag of Scylla and dire Charybdis' vortex
    right when the dreadful whirlpool gulped the salt sea down.
    But heaving myself aloft to clutch at the fig-tree's height,
    like a bat I clung to its trunk for dear life—not a chance
    for a good firm foothold there, no clambering up it…†   (source)
  • The trout rose withouthaste, a shadow in faint wavering increase; again the little vortex faded slowly downstream.†   (source)
  • The fading vortex drifted away down stream and then I saw the arrow again,nose intothe current, wavering delicately to the motion of the water above which the May fliesslanted and poised.†   (source)
  • The legislative department is everywhere extending the sphere of its activity, and drawing all power into its impetuous vortex.†   (source)
  • This great philosopher freely acknowledged his own mistakes in natural philosophy, because he proceeded in many things upon conjecture, as all men must do; and he found that Gassendi, who had made the doctrine of Epicurus as palatable as he could, and the vortices of Descartes, were equally to be exploded.†   (source)
  • To these examples might be added that of Carthage, whose senate, according to the testimony of Polybius, instead of drawing all power into its vortex, had, at the commencement of the second Punic War, lost almost the whole of its original portion.†   (source)
▲ show less (of above)