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fathom
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  • Can anyone fathom the workings of a drunken man's mind?†   (source)
  • In his wildest dreams, Langdon could not fathom why.†   (source)
  • But he just couldn't fathom how such a structure could have been built.†   (source)
  • Harry didn't have time to fathom the mystery of Hermione's impossible schedule at the moment; he really needed to get on with Snape's essay.†   (source)
  • He worries that we'll never really have Du to ourselves, that he'll always be attached in occult ways to an experience he can't fathom, and as I take off Bud's shoes, I admit there can be no other way for some of us.†   (source)
  • And the fact that he feels enough regret about it to turn it into some cryptic tattoo is really beyond any guesses I could fathom at this point.†   (source)
  • She read it again before she went to bed that night, trying to fathom the coincidence, and read it again the next morning as if to make sure the whole thing wasn't a dream.†   (source)
  • Something I cannot fathom.†   (source)
  • I cannot fathom why he was so insistent and so convinced.†   (source)
  • Suddenly he blundered into the open, found himself again in that open space—and there was the fathom-wide grin of the skull, no longer ridiculing a deep blue patch of sky but jeering up into a blanket of smoke.†   (source)
  • That someone could have the face of one country and the voice of another and then move to a third was too incredible for me to fathom.†   (source)
  • Most of her customers couldn't fathom how a teenage girl could be the best mechanic in the city, and she never broadcast the reason for her talent.†   (source)
  • Or at least none that anyone else could fathom.†   (source)
  • REBECCA: I cannot fathom that.†   (source)
  • For reasons that he couldn't quite fathom, he didn't mind terribly when Juliet called him by the pet name his mother had for him.†   (source)
  • I COULDN'T QUITE FATHOM that I was leaving New York.†   (source)
  • You never know exactly what their intent is, or if you have fathomed it correctly.†   (source)
  • Stupidly, with a kind of smug removal that I can't begin to fathom, I assumed that the problems of killing and dying did not fall within my special province.†   (source)
  • I can't even fathom it.†   (source)
  • I couldn't fathom his interest, but he continued to stare at me with penetrating eyes, as if my dull life's story was somehow vitally important.†   (source)
  • He breathes in the scent of her skin, still unable to fathom that they are husband and wife.†   (source)
  • Being weightless is a sensation hard to fathom when you've been an Earthling all your life.†   (source)
  • There's been a lot of tension throughout the story since the two don't comprehend each other and the math teacher really can't fathom the troubles that drive Sonny and his music and his drug problem.†   (source)
  • I can't fathom some of the decisions they make these days.†   (source)
  • Many nights I lay awake in the shower of straw dust from the mattress above, trying to fathom the marvel of supply lavished upon us.†   (source)
  • "Full fathom five thy father lies," Leah said back to her.†   (source)
  • She could not fathom that they were no more than "electromagnetic impulses" in her father's brain.†   (source)
  • I couldn't fathom this.†   (source)
  • To her, beings from other planets belonged in the same category as souls, and therefore she could not fathom her mother's passionate interest in identifying them.†   (source)
  • The result had been a steady flow of pointless turnovers and no small amount of laughter from rival players and parents who couldn't fathom how kids playing organized soccer could be so ignorant of such basic rules.†   (source)
  • I still could not fathom what the outcome of that day would turn out to be.†   (source)
  • We couldn't fathom why all this was happening.†   (source)
  • "It was quite a shock to see you two on the front page of every paper," she said, shaking her head like she couldn't fathom how it had happened.†   (source)
  • It's hard for her to fathom.†   (source)
  • Dan suddenly felt like laughing—he'd been creeped out by the expansiveness of the cell level and the warden's secret office, but this was something else, something he could hardly fathom, even as his eyes fed him the information.†   (source)
  • This simple truth is hard to fathom.†   (source)
  • Dad's voice was a midnight school, teaching deep fathom hours, and the subject was life.†   (source)
  • Don't ask me why I felt the incredible need to test this person that meant so very much to me, to fathom his most personal thoughts, coolly dissect his psyche.†   (source)
  • He couldn't fathom any of it, because it was so out of character for the Adam he knew.†   (source)
  • The faces they had worn when hanging, at the mercy of mysteries they could not begin to fathom, in the middle of the air, were now discarded for the faces which they wore on earth.†   (source)
  • Cambodian men then had an average of only 2.6 years of education, and Cambodian women averaged just 1.7 years, so a new school was appreciated in a way the Americans could barely fathom.†   (source)
  • His family was in the waiting room, trying to fathom the unfathomable.†   (source)
  • And Perry was puzzled; he could not fathom why Dick, usually so full of himself, should suddenly, when he had good cause to gloat, be meek, look wilted and sad.†   (source)
  • Her avoidance of me after the wedding was another trick, the meaning of which is too deep for me to fathom.†   (source)
  • Then he looked at her again, as if trying to fathom what was in her thoughts.†   (source)
  • If they have any success, it will be in transferring the problem of fathoming to the presumably adult reader, to the inner circle of listeners.†   (source)
  • He was pleased with his own shrewdness in fathoming Gray Stoddard's mysterious motives.†   (source)
  • He looked at Miro, but the boy could not fathom what Artkin was thinking.†   (source)
  • And the one detail I can neither fathom nor shake, the one that haunts me into sleep: the feel of her fingertips tracing the outline of my face.†   (source)
  • Washington, by contrast, was constantly trying to fathom Howe's intentions, his next move.†   (source)
  • After only five minutes in her company, I cannot fathom how Bridge stands sitting with her at lunch every day.†   (source)
  • The only thing she could not quite fathom was the curious sympathy he had for the countries occupied by the Russian empire.†   (source)
  • I wasn't sure I could even fathom it, but I still envied Owen his easy bluntness, the ability to open himself out into the world instead of folding deeper within.†   (source)
  • I felt I was in the presence of a different person from the one I'd been chatting with a moment ago, someone whose ambitions I hadn't yet begun to fathom.†   (source)
  • In some way he was unable to fathom, he was convinced he had done him some unforgivable wrong.†   (source)
  • This garment, which is called a toga, went on to become a favorite costume of college fraternity parties, for reasons this author cannot fathom, as the toga is neither flattering nor comfortable, especially when worn with control-top underwear.†   (source)
  • There were rumors of unfathomable things, and because we couldn't fathom them we failed to believe them, until we had no choice and it was too late.†   (source)
  • I could not fathom why He had imposed this burden on us, but I knew we could not lift it off our shoulders without His aid.†   (source)
  • He could not fathom such a system; neither could Mississippi judges.†   (source)
  • Someone stabbed a dead body for reasons only the insane can fathom.†   (source)
  • Colonel Bradford would never be able to fathom such a choice.†   (source)
  • He had three forty-fathom coils of line in reserve now, as well as the coil he was using.†   (source)
  • Jim Buchanan could not possibly fathom what lay immediately ahead.†   (source)
  • Here in the bowels of this red lake she was now a stunning breed, and the thought of it filled her with a thrill she could hardly fathom.†   (source)
  • I couldn't fathom how a bear had gotten into the cage, only that I needed to get away from it, so I pressed myself hard against the bars.†   (source)
  • And the more I try to fathom what makes me enjoy mechanical work and them hate it so, the more elusive it becomes.†   (source)
  • His voice was mellow and loaded with more meaning than I could fathom.†   (source)
  • Nicolo asked, hoping, for no reason that he could fathom, that Alessandro was not a Communist but, rather, a Christian Democrat.†   (source)
  • There was some link between Isengard and Mordor, which I have not yet fathomed.†   (source)
  • As I rubbed the dried sweat from my forehead, I still could not fathom even now as an adult, after eight years after reading the documents, that my father had had an affair.†   (source)
  • Once he surrendered reason, he was left at the mercy of two monsters whom he could not fathom or control: of a body moved by unaccountable instincts and of a soul moved by mystic revelationshe was left as the passively ravaged victim of a battle between a robot and a dictaphone.†   (source)
  • I knew from the shape what I was holding, but I couldn't fathom why Snow Flower hadn't come and had sent the fan instead.†   (source)
  • But I never fathomed the need of the culture even for the smallest acts.†   (source)
  • For reasons that were hard to fathom, however, and as is often the case in life, he did not have the same charisma, and while the presence of Dr. Bassiouni, with his strange appearance, had an effect on people, Dr. Mansour, despite the care he took to wear a three-piece suit summer and winter, resembled, at best, a middle-ranking bureaucrat, meaning that while with his graying hair, his glasses, his good manners, and his soft voice, he was undeniably a respectable person, he was also never anything more than that.†   (source)
  • But just as he fathomed the bag's knot-shaped clasp, the apartment door swung suddenly, wondrously, wide.†   (source)
  • Is it not the most comical and ridiculous thing in the world to think of them all going about their business and never dreaming that under their peaceful fields and floors, only a fathom down, there is a great army ready to break out upon them like a fountain!†   (source)
  • Nor could he fathom the attitude of his own body.†   (source)
  • Frederic had never been a man of action, and now so much action was going on that he could hardly fathom it.†   (source)
  • The tide was ebbing and within a couple of hours of low water; even so there should have been a fathom of water underneath their keel according to the chart.†   (source)
  • He had worked with these people, lived with them, tried to understand them, for twenty-five years, and there still were things in them that he could not fathom.†   (source)
  • Why the world was going as it was he could not fathom, but he could not think it was treachery.†   (source)
  • (MORE is abstractedly gazing over the audience) Take anchor rope, sir, you may not believe me, for a little skiff like mine, but it's a penny a fathom†   (source)
  • And immediately after all this about her hair, she exclaims: 'Who can fathom the multitude of my sins or the depths of Thy mercy?'†   (source)
  • Oh, he told Uncle Rondo I didn't learn to read till I was eight years old and he didn't see how in the world I ever got the mail put up at the P.O., much less read it all, and he said if Uncle Rondo could only fathom the lengths he had gone to to get me that job!†   (source)
  • I do not fathom it, why am I persecuted here?†   (source)
  • As with the other ancients, I cannot fathom her reasons.†   (source)
  • He couldn't fathom why WICKED felt it was so important to keep their minds clean of memory.†   (source)
  • I couldn't fathom how the Colonel grew up in such a small place.†   (source)
  • Peter was still behind him now, speaking words that Mal'akh could barely fathom.†   (source)
  • I cannot fathom how you managed it," Eragon felt compelled to reply: "I caught him by surprise."†   (source)
  • He still couldn't fathom that he was standing in this room.†   (source)
  • From where I'm standing, sister, it's hard to fathom the threat.†   (source)
  • Except this time there was something else, something extra in that look I couldn't fathom.†   (source)
  • Well—on some level I can't fathom that I live so far away.†   (source)
  • But what that is, he cannot fathom, and there's a glint of curiosity in his eye.†   (source)
  • She couldn't respond, couldn't even begin to fathom what he was asking of her.†   (source)
  • "Don't ask me to fathom the way a werewolf's mind works," hissed Snape.†   (source)
  • I say that with a bit of awe because until she came along, I couldn't fathom what that meant.†   (source)
  • Vittoria still could not fathom the director's involvement.†   (source)
  • He endured racism that many young people today couldn't even fathom.†   (source)
  • Even so, for some reason I couldn't fathom, something continued to stop me coming out with praise.†   (source)
  • The words sparked in Bellamy an idea that seemed almost impossible to fathom.†   (source)
  • Langdon could not fathom what it was doing here.†   (source)
  • Besides which, she seemed to have developed a fascination with Eragon that he was unable to fathom.†   (source)
  • Their minds can be hard to fathom and they do not always show affection as mortals do.†   (source)
  • He hated her with a passion that she could not even fathom.†   (source)
  • Jace couldn't imagine why, but he'd long ago given up trying to fathom why his father did anything.†   (source)
  • Marvin looked behind him to fathom what was lovely that he'd missed.†   (source)
  • I could not fathom that he might not believe me.†   (source)
  • Amanda couldn't fathom the thought of eating.†   (source)
  • It was hard to fathom that he still wanted to spend an evening with her.†   (source)
  • I can't fathom anything better than Notre-Dame.†   (source)
  • I was young, unable to fathom the depths of emotion he had just revealed.†   (source)
  • He was trying to fathom the thought of this small-town librarian living in his neighborhood.†   (source)
  • He couldn't fathom sleeping there alone.†   (source)
  • The attorney Giuliani squinted at the hut master, trying to fathom his motives.†   (source)
  • He tried to fathom more deeply what had happened.†   (source)
  • Once again, she could not fathom that such words had passed her lips.†   (source)
  • For reasons he could not fathom, it was a reverse trap.†   (source)
  • The effort of fathoming what is in another's mind creates a distortion of what is seen.†   (source)
  • 'Don't try to fathom his Swiss accounts,' said d'Anjou.†   (source)
  • Office of the Pope, Langdon thought, having difficulty fathoming that he was standing outside one of the most sacred rooms in all of world religion.†   (source)
  • When I look at the shift my life has made in the past eight months, I can't fathom what my life will be eight months from now.†   (source)
  • Anderson could not fathom why they would be interested in this incident at the Capitol, or how they had found out so fast.†   (source)
  • She got pregnant, and later, when she learned that he couldn't even fathom the idea of selling the coins, she realized that she'd be stuck with a husband who showed little interest in anything she did.†   (source)
  • She opened her can of apple juice and took a swallow, trying to fathom what was going through her head.†   (source)
  • I was extraordinarily confused, because the one thing happening in my universe was Mr. Jiminez writing on the blackboard, and I couldn't fathom how he could be both an auditory and a visual presence in my life.†   (source)
  • She may not have been immortal anymore, but she still had a grace and easiness about her that I could not fathom.†   (source)
  • As Arya's face hardened into a blank mask, he winced inwardly, knowing that he had chosen the wrong approach, although he could not fathom why the question should offend her.†   (source)
  • They look at me strangely as if trying to fathom what could have happened back then, though I seldom bother to explain.†   (source)
  • He sat in the rocker again, this time alone, trying once again to fathom the evening that had just passed.†   (source)
  • Only three weeks had passed since Steve and Heather Morrison died, and she still couldn't fathom that her parents were gone, hit by a drunk driver.†   (source)
  • For reasons I can't begin to fathom, the city's brain trust decided to turn our beautiful riverfront into Lake Middletown, an infrastructural project that apparently involved shoveling tons of dirt into the river and hoping something interesting would come of it.†   (source)
  • She could not fathom, and certainly not accept, that they were only paper and printer's ink from a ribbon in her father's portable typewriter.†   (source)
  • Langdon could not fathom that Leigh Teabing would be capable of killing them in cold blood here in the Chapter House, and yet Teabing certainly had been involved in killing others during his misguided quest.†   (source)
  • I try to take it in, my eyes darting between both ends of the Bridge, but my mind just can't fathom this place.†   (source)
  • What she couldn't fathom was why.†   (source)
  • You cannot begin to fathom the effect Morzan's betrayal had on Brom until you understand the depth of Brom's affection for him.†   (source)
  • The children who hounded us daily for money and food weren't dim-witted beggars; they were accustomed to the distribution of excess, and couldn't fathom why we held ourselves apart.†   (source)
  • It's hard to fathom.†   (source)
  • It was as earthly a chapel as Langdon could fathom, almost as if Galileo and the Illuminati had designed it themselves.†   (source)
  • Adah Price ATLANTA JANUARY 1985 F ULL FATHOM five thy father lies; Of his bones are coral made: Those are pearls that were his eyes: Nothing of him that doth fade,But doth suffer a sea-changeInto something rich and strange.†   (source)
  • Grinning like a boy with his first dagger, he lit a taper with the coals from a brazier, which she could not fathom how he endured in the stifling weather, carried the flaming brand back to the bench, and used it to start a pipe packed with cardus weed.†   (source)
  • He still could not fathom the influence of this man named Janus and the ancient brotherhood he commanded.†   (source)
  • Symbologist Robert Langdon, in his wildest academic interpretations, could not fathom how this grid of symbols could be deciphered to mean anything at all.†   (source)
  • Mal'akh could fathom no sacrifice more potent and symbolic than one performed on this altar, by this man, with this knife, plunged into the heart of an offering whose mortal flesh was wrapped like a gift in a shroud of mystical symbols.†   (source)
  • Camerlegno Ventresca had prayed all his life for this moment, and still, even he could not fathom that God had found a way to make it manifest.†   (source)
  • More than you can fathom.†   (source)
  • But in his need to fathom the "labyrinth" of human nature, as he said, he was drawn to Shakespeare and Swift, and likely to carry Cervantes or a volume of English poetry with him on his journeys.†   (source)
  • Aside from the local historian—who seemed to have fathomed a plausible explanation, in Lexie's opinion—at least two other outside groups or individuals had investigated the claim in the past without success.†   (source)
  • He isn't mentioned anywhere in Dag's material, and I can't fathom any connection between him and Dag and Mia.†   (source)
  • Otherwise he would have been clearer, more forthcoming; instead, for reasons Jason could not fathom, Alexander Conklin did not want to talk about Medusa or whatever he had learned in peeling away twenty years of deceit.†   (source)
  • I couldn't fathom why he would.†   (source)
  • He still had trouble fathoming the path his life had suddenly taken, nor could he reconcile it with the life he once had lived.†   (source)
  • This alliance isn't worth their sacrifice, and for the life of me, I cannot fathom why you continue to defend it.†   (source)
  • He couldn't quite fathom not talking to Clary one last time before he died—he couldn't even remember the last words they'd exchanged.†   (source)
  • My difficulty was further compounded by the fact that for some years my father and I had tended — for some reason I have never really fathomed — to converse less and less.†   (source)
  • Some small part of me probably fathomed what he intended, and yet I simply watched the scene like a disinterested spectator, whose instant glint of prescience is somehow self-fulfilling.†   (source)
  • For what purpose, I can't fathom.†   (source)
  • Her letter failed because she couldn't conceive of the profundity of your problem-she couldn't fathom the pressures brought to bear upon you because of environment, intellectual frustration and a growing tendency toward isolationism.†   (source)
  • Of course "minor" and "insignificant" represent the outside world's view—for the girls, both phenomena are earthshaking depositories of information they spend that whole year of childhood (and afterward) trying to fathom, and cannot.†   (source)
  • I was a partner to it but could no more fathom it than I could the mystery of the man in the doorway.†   (source)
  • After it is light, he thought, I will work back to the forty-fathom bait and cut it away too and link up the reserve coils.†   (source)
  • But nonetheless it explained her speech, her education, what I was finally understanding to be her class, which I hadn't quite fathomed until then, having had no contact with such Koreans.†   (source)
  • My stomach felt permanently tense, and in the evenings, I couldn't fathom the idea of cooking a dinner that I would have to eat alone.†   (source)
  • Later, they were not quite able to fathom this themselves; they sifted through the facts with grave purpose.†   (source)
  • and everyone answers himself and says, There's a crack or chasm split open and a nice warm glow coming up through it from the Really Deep Land, a thousand fathom under us.†   (source)
  • And when I asked Aphra where Faith was, her only answer was a high-pitched, keening chant in words I could not fathom.†   (source)
  • It was an odd form of mortification for some pattern of behavior, or grain of being, too transparent for this adman to fathom.†   (source)
  • From time to time, when a piece of music no one has ever written, or a painting no one has ever painted, or something else impossible to predict, fathom, or yet describe takes place, a new feeling enters the world.†   (source)
  • No one reading this book, we hope, can fathom the sadistic cruelty of those soldiers who used a pointed stick to tear apart Dina's insides.†   (source)
  • Thirty ells, or say, about eighteen fathom: that's no more than your guess at the height of the cliff.'†   (source)
  • He struggled to learn the language, and in what seemed an equally daunting task, to fathom the complexities of the Dutch system of government.†   (source)
  • Unlike the abandoned chambers they had seen before the ambush, those they passed through now were filled with tapestries, furniture, and strange devices made of brass and crystal, the purpose of which Eragon could not fathom.†   (source)
  • Alessandro attributed the grim mood to the state of the empire and the arrival of winter, but even if it would be gray until spring he could not fathom why some of the women cried as they passed, and some of the men staggered and could hardly walk.†   (source)
  • I just can't fathom why anyone would stand on a ledge when there's a respectable amount of walking space right next to it.†   (source)
  • Each line, as thick around as a big pencil, was looped onto a green-sapped stick so that any pull or touch on the bait would make the stick dip and each line had two forty-fathom coils which could be made fast to the other spare coils so that, if it were necessary, a fish could take out over three hundred fathoms of line.†   (source)
  • It is not as if, had you asked me, I would have claimed to fathom the thoughts and sentiments of two whose station in life was so far distant from mine.†   (source)
  • His face was long, with a high forehead, he had deep darkling eyes, hard to fathom, though the look that they now bore was grave and benevolent, and a little weary.†   (source)
  • Coastal people never really know what the ocean symbolizes to landlocked inland people...what a great distant dream it is, present but unseen in the deepest levels of subconsciousness, and when they arrive at the ocean and the conscious images are compared with the subconscious dream there is a sense of defeat at having come so far to be so stopped by a mystery that can never be fathomed.†   (source)
  • Which do you think I prefer, to live and keep all these memories alive, even though they're a poor substitute for life itself, or to die and chance that perhaps, in some way that I cannot fathom, by some miracle, unlikely though it may be, I'll join them?†   (source)
  • Elinor and I spoke of this as we walked back to the rectory, for we still had come no nearer to fathoming why the Plague felled some and yet not others.†   (source)
  • De Roos repeated it slowly, but, seeing that Alessandro was not comprehending, he produced a piece of paper and a fountain pen, and wrote the word so fast that Alessandro could not have fathomed it unless he had already known it.†   (source)
  • I zipped back to the kitchen again, breathing like a dragon, unable to fathom the game I was playing, unable to figure out what exactly was happening.†   (source)
  • I don't say suppose the right side goes under, I say suppose all sides are right as it seems to them and they all blur together and their beliefs grow confused and the pluribus becomes so complicated and, more important, so dense that no human mind or even group of minds can fathom the unum.†   (source)
  • Their gaze is overcome with awe,
    Nor is their panic hard to fathom:
    The gardens leave their boundary walls,
    The laws that govern the earth are shaken—
    A god is being interred.†   (source)
  • Rage at her for what in particular she could not fathom: for her foolish pamphlet, for being a flirt, for praising Streicher, for being born a dirty Pole, perhaps all of these.†   (source)
  • I wanted Mary to be aware and proud of her aloof, unspoken beauty and Anna to somehow fathom the wonder of her smile.†   (source)
  • How could Sophie ever fathom or define her ultimate feeling about Wanda—composed as that emotion was of love, envy, distrust, dependence, hostility and admiration?†   (source)
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