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harrowing
in a sentence

show 127 more with this conextual meaning
  • These occasions are becoming harrowing times for us all. For each sunrise and sunset opens up some new danger,   (source)
    harrowing = frightening
  • Gradually a harrowing thought seeped into Curly's brain, chilling him like ice water: What if the teenaged burglar had swiped the revolver from his waistband while they were fighting?†   (source)
  • Another nine weeks were required to make the only slightly less harrowing descent; in total Waterman spent 145 days alone on the mountain.†   (source)
  • "Chaol told me he took you to see the body; I hope it wasn't too harrowing."†   (source)
  • The echoes of his footfalls ricochet off tall houses and rain back onto them, and he labors beneath her weight, and she is old enough to suspect that what he presents as quaint and welcoming might in truth be harrowing and strange.†   (source)
  • Don't do anything I wouldn't do"; and after a green limousine arrived for Lara, whose father was the only doctor in some small town in southern Alabama; and after I joined Alaska on a harrowing, we-don't-need-no-stinking-brakes drive to the airport to drop off Takumi; and after the campus settled into an eerie quiet, with no doors slamming and no music playing and no one laughing and no one screaming; after all that: We made our way down to the soccer field, and she took me to edge of…†   (source)
  • When he did, it was always harrowing.†   (source)
  • Walking the gauntlet to my next class was even more harrowing.†   (source)
  • The episode allows Paul Berlin to see a Vietcong tunnel, which his inherent terror will never allow him to do in real life, and this fantastic tunnel proves both more elaborate and more harrowing than the real ones.†   (source)
  • This will probably involve many harrowing trials with a high chance of death.†   (source)
  • Katherine's voice filled with emotion as she recounted the harrowing events of that night, how the tattooed man had broken into their estate.†   (source)
  • The bedroom whose walls would soon learn their harrowing secrets.†   (source)
  • The most harrowing moment came when we learned that the supply of blood might run out.†   (source)
  • March 19, 2003—After seventeen harrowing days, Colton's family returns to Imperial.†   (source)
  • For Farmer, the children's ward contained Zanmi Lasante's most harrowing sights and painful ghosts, and I think Alcante came to seem like the guardian angel of the place, or like Farmer's.†   (source)
  • He was calm and collected under the most harrowing circumstances, and we knew we were lucky to have him as our commander.†   (source)
  • 'All that he would have to do," continued the worried bug, "is travel through miles of harrowing and hazardous countryside, into unknown valleys and uncharted forests, past yawning chasms and trackless wastes, until he reached Digitopolis (if, of course, he ever reached there).†   (source)
  • Tad shrieked and clapped his hands to his face, pulling his cheeks down, harrowing them with his fingernails.†   (source)
  • A high, whining sound now, above the roar of the helicopter, and Kate recognized a police siren, howling and harrowing.†   (source)
  • She had been locked in a Caribbean jail for an entire harrowing year before the feds came to get her.†   (source)
  • His breathing slowed, his mind began to wander, and soon the strange sights and sounds of his waking dreams enveloped him—real, yet imaginary; vivid, yet transparent, as if the visions were made of colored glass—and, for a time, he was able to forget his responsibilities and the harrowing events of the past day.†   (source)
  • He might say this is the way you define yourself as a serious man, working through the hard questions and harrowing choices, and if you stick with it you'll be stronger in the end.†   (source)
  • He drove his Buicks in breakneck speed races at Tanforan and harebrained hill climbs up the harrowing grades of Diablo Hill and Grizzly Peak.†   (source)
  • Is it necessary at times to practice it simply to keep one's sanity, live normally, enjoy a fine meal and a glass of wine, as the world around us experiences harrowing upheavals?†   (source)
  • At eight-thirty, Colonel Liversedge made a harrowing decision.†   (source)
  • IT WAS THE THIRD TIME in two weeks I had to go over a harrowing double-murder scene.†   (source)
  • The nightmares appeared to Hungry Joe with celestial punctuality every single night he spent in the squadron throughout the whole harrowing ordeal when he was not flying combat missions and was waiting once again for the orders sending him home that never came.†   (source)
  • He had never heard anything more harrowing.†   (source)
  • It had been my talisman on a harrowing journey, an escape from Ethiopia which he knew nothing about.†   (source)
  • Being drunk meant harrowing times with people running from the house and hiding in the trees.†   (source)
  • Between Celine's harrowing experience the night of the kidnapping during which BoneMan had broken her finger and Ryan's experience in the desert, the DA was ready to pin the abduction on him.†   (source)
  • The march south from McKonkey's Ferry was for many the most harrowing part of the night.†   (source)
  • Did she want to be exposed in the media by a police investigation in which the most harrowing, intimate details would be leaked in a matter of hours?†   (source)
  • Alayne's heart had been in her throat when she made her own ascent with Lady Lysa and Lord Petyr, and everyone agreed that the descent was even more harrowing, since you were looking down the whole time.†   (source)
  • He returned to his own wagon before the creature delved into details; the very idea of a lothario smee was quite enough after such a harrowing night.†   (source)
  • The harrowing days of April 1961 taught the Kennedy brothers an indelible lesson: they are on their own.†   (source)
  • It was the black miscreants who perpetrated mutiny, murder, and the repeated torture of my clients during a harrowing voyage of more than eight weeks.†   (source)
  • What threw me most, however, was that he would sometimes misremember whether I had children-this seems improbable, given what I would learn about his amazing feats of memory-and while talking about child-rearing he might refer to how I must know this thing or that, the way a child can be joyous and harrowing, ask of what I imagined in life for my daughter or my son.†   (source)
  • He had learned very quickly, not merely by devoted study but by some natural sympathy, to enter so fully into a painting or a song that he could cross into a world of harrowing beauty and there receive, as he floated on air, the deep, absolute, and instant confirmation of hopes and desires that in normal life are a matter only of speculation and debate.†   (source)
  • And the most harrowing thing I noticed was that my favorite game of all time—Space Invaders—had been replaced by quite possibly the most frightening thing I'd ever seen.†   (source)
  • One of the most harrowing moments in the whole history of the harrowing of the heart in Northern Ireland came when a minibus full of workers being driven home one January evening in 1976 was held up by armed and masked men and the occupants of the van ordered at gunpoint to line up at the side of the road.†   (source)
  • To change the subject he said, "You must've had a pretty harrowing day.†   (source)
  • I note these things because it is harrowing to see decent-looking men and boys assume that because a man is black they need show him none of the reticences they would, out of respect, show the most derelict white man.†   (source)
  • So when this mattress flared up around the sailor, in his Viking's funeral: the stored, coded years of uselessness, early death, self-harrowing, the sure decay of hope, the set of all men who had slept on it, whatever their lives had been, would truly cease to be, forever, when the mattress burned.†   (source)
  • In order to be given the opportunity to propose to Hoss this nearly unspeakable means for her son's salvation, she had to wait—and that in itself involved a strange, harrowing scene the next day.†   (source)
  • Sometimes I drive a bullock round the farm at home, harrowing the muck.†   (source)
  • Some two or three days later I noticed a change in Kuti: his eyes lost their dullness and the whimpering that had been so harrowing to listen to lessened and stopped.†   (source)
  • By his early twenties, he had developed a reputation for a harrowing, damn the-torpedoes approach to ascent.   (source)
  • Was she telling me that I too should display such fortitude — such defiance of pain, such bullet-biting — or was she merely revelling in the harrowing details?   (source)
    harrowing = frightening or unsettling
  • And as the Announcing Angel began his harrowing descent to the shepherds, thus distracting the congregation from us, the purple screen would be removed.   (source)
    harrowing = frightening
  • First he needed to meet with Father's lawyers, an occasion at which we need not be present: it would be too harrowing for us, considering recent events, and he wanted to spare us as much as possible.   (source)
    harrowing = unsettling
  • Twelve years later, he remembers the day as one long, harrowing session of trying to arrange colored blocks into particular shapes.   (source)
    harrowing = frightening or unsettling
  • Then we cut off the head and filled the mouth with garlic. ... Before we moved away Van Helsing said, "Now, my friends, one step of our work is done, one the most harrowing to ourselves."   (source)
  • I was a little inclined to take his seriousness lightly, for, after all, four days of rest and freedom from burning, harrowing, anxiety does help to restore one's spirits, but when I saw his face, it sobered me.   (source)
    harrowing = frightening
  • Van Helsing ordered the former arrangement to be adhered to, explaining that, as Lord Godalming was coming very soon, it would be less harrowing to his feelings to see all that was left of his fiancee quite alone.   (source)
    harrowing = unsettling
  • Even if I survive that, my other trials will no doubt be long, harrowing, and quite possibly fatal.†   (source)
  • She was in a good mood, in spite of the harrowing and frustrating investigation.†   (source)
  • He moved on to a harrowing career as an exercise boy, then became a jockey.†   (source)
  • He's been helping Katarina and me get settled after our harrowing arrival.†   (source)
  • Then he heard her say the unbelievably harrowing I can't see anyway.†   (source)
  • I told your father that I'd finish harrowing the hill paddock.†   (source)
  • All very well, thinks Simon; but men and women are not statues, not lifeless like marble, although they often become so in the hospital surgery, after a harrowing period of noisy and leaky distress.†   (source)
  • So there are literary drownings like Henry Jr.'s, and near-drowning baptisms like Conrad's, but a character's baptism can also be less harrowing.†   (source)
  • Finally Tyrion said, "A harrowing tale.†   (source)
  • During the terrible smallpox epidemic of 1764, when Boston became "one great hospital," he went to the city to be inoculated, an often harrowing, potentially fatal ordeal extending over many days.†   (source)
  • At Camp Jupiter, Percy had recounted their trip to Alaska, which sounded as harrowing as anything Piper had experienced.†   (source)
  • This would allow you more time to spend in the mortal world, perhaps a chance to rest after your harrowing quest.†   (source)
  • It was as if a vast store of energy had been held inside her, bounding about in a terribly long, great waiting, such an abeyance really being the most lovely thing to me, and harrowing as well.†   (source)
  • "It is a fact that my clients risked life and limb to extricate these men from harrowing circumstances, Your Honor," Isham said.†   (source)
  • On December 29, Washington, Greene, Sullivan, Knox, and their troops were on the move, marching through a six-inch snowfall, to cross the Delaware at McKonkey's Ferry and nearby Yardley's Ferry, an undertaking that was as harrowing as the crossing of Christmas night.†   (source)
  • Franklin wrote to Goldie, offering her a harrowing kind of reassurance: that she shouldn't worry, even though bullets had been whizzing through his clothes.†   (source)
  • A cross-country journey was a harrowing ordeal, five days of clanging, rocking, and bumping in a confined space.†   (source)
  • What I really wondered about was the smoochy détente between the two of them, reestablished short hours after the most harrowing scene of lovers' strife I could imagine this side of a low-grade Italian opera.†   (source)
  • I got fed up with harrowing the dung.†   (source)
  • Licking an Eskimo Pie, I watched Sophie and Nathan in their old-fashioned clothes grow smaller and smaller as they were hoisted up the guide wires beneath the billowing canopies; they paused at the peak, arrested for a harrowing and breathless moment as in that endless ticktock of time before the condemned fall through the gallows trap, then plummeted earthward with a whooshing of air.†   (source)
  • There was a harrowing moment, then I drew a sigh of relief.†   (source)
  • I left under what is called a cloud, you know—I can't think why it is called that; it seemed to me a glare of unwelcome light; the process involved a series of harrowing interviews with m'tutor.†   (source)
  • But you understand, you, my self, who always comes at a call (that would be a harrowing experience to call and for no one to come; that would make the midnight hollow, and explains the expression of old men in clubs—they have given up calling for a self who does not come), you understand that I am only superficially represented by what I was saying tonight.†   (source)
  • "" The same harrowing, mysterious voice was to be heard in the call of the Greek Apollo to the fleeing maiden Daphne, daughter of the river Peneus, as he pursued her over the plain.†   (source)
  • How he must have loved harrowing them with descriptions of her activities with the store, the mills, the saloon.†   (source)
  • In the Japanese "Records of Ancient Matters" appears another harrowing tale, but of very different import: that of the descent to the underworld of the primeval all-father Izanagi, to recover from the land of the Yellow Stream his deceased sister-spouse Izanami.†   (source)
  • He must know how harrowing her experience had been, must know she did not want to spend an evening at Melanie's when her tired body and jangled nerves cried out for the warm relaxation of bed and blankets—with a hot brick to make her toes tingle and a hot toddy to soothe her fears.†   (source)
  • "And what is it?" asked Lucy fearfully, expecting some harrowing tale.†   (source)
  • Oh, we have imagined the most harrowing things.†   (source)
  • Love, jealousy, hatred, burst out around us in harrowing cries.†   (source)
  • He looked away, for that epicene tenderness of hers was too harrowing.†   (source)
  • But even more harrowing than this, was the problem of a way out that was before him.†   (source)
  • She saw from his face that he was getting into one of his tempestuous, self-harrowing moods.†   (source)
  • 54 Plowing, harrowing, and furrowing….†   (source)
  • "A harrowing old man, Mis'ess Yeobright," said Christian despondingly.†   (source)
  • I'll hear his harrowing plea the rest of my life!†   (source)
  • He looked like a man who had passions, secrets, and private harrowing griefs and adventures.†   (source)
  • It was pretty harrowing—the only person it didn't disturb was Abe North—he flew off to Havre—he probably doesn't know about it yet.†   (source)
  • You want the luxury of harrowing yourself by thinking what a poor, bawling, wretched, story-book wife I am.†   (source)
  • For there were still two men lying impotent in their bunks; and these, seeing the water pour in and thinking the ship had foundered, began to cry out aloud, and that with such harrowing cries that all who were on deck tumbled one after another into the skiff and fell to their oars.†   (source)
  • And yet I couldn't believe that they would choose this occasion for a scene — especially for the rather harrowing scene that Gatsby had outlined in the garden.†   (source)
  • Never would Edna Pontellier forget the shock with which she heard Madame Ratignolle relating to old Monsieur Farival the harrowing story of one of her accouchements, withholding no intimate detail.†   (source)
  • The audience was just enthusiastic enough over it to have her return and sing a sorrowful lay, whose lines told of a mother's love and a sweetheart who waited and a young man who was lost at sea under the most harrowing circumstances.†   (source)
  • She felt the grim and somber presence of death; she felt the imminence of further developments, sinister, harrowing, revolving more around her.†   (source)
  • He imagined what would happen perfectly; he went through it all motionless by the hatchway with the lamp in his hand—he went through it to the very last harrowing detail.†   (source)
  • And I protest yet a third time, against the harrowing alternative you have presented us with: Prussianism or Gothic reaction.†   (source)
  • He was simply regarding the harrowing contingencies of human experience, the unexpectedness of things.†   (source)
  • It is a harrowing and desperate story.†   (source)
  • His voice suggested sympathetic reproof but at the same time indicated that a few harrowing details would not be unacceptable.†   (source)
  • Yes, dear, and I must tell you that it was not his frightful threats when setting me free that helped me to keep my word, but the harrowing sob which he gave on the threshold of the tomb.†   (source)
  • Baby's younger Englishman had been chaperoning the women down appropriate inclines and harrowing them on the bob-run.†   (source)
  • But Mr. Dashwood rejected any but thrilling tales, and as thrills could not be produced except by harrowing up the souls of the readers, history and romance, land and sea, science and art, police records and lunatic asylums, had to be ransacked for the purpose.†   (source)
  • The ploughland was in splendid condition; in a couple of days it would be fit for harrowing and sowing.†   (source)
  • All the trampling by the many nations, all the harrowing by kings, all the inventions of enemies, all the changes of time, have been in vain.†   (source)
  • Yet, perhaps, under the harrowing circumstances, to speak out was the one wrong act which can be better understood, if not forgiven in her, than the right and politic one, her rival being now but a corpse.†   (source)
  • "Ay, that is just the difference between ploughing and harrowing," returned the Sergeant, with a grim smile.†   (source)
  • Often, in the last fortnight, Adam had imagined himself as close to Arthur as this, assailing him with words that should be as harrowing as the voice of remorse, forcing upon him a just share in the misery he had caused; and often, too, he had told himself that such a meeting had better not be.†   (source)
  • She remonstrates, implores, flies to the doors and finds them locked, calls for help and finds none at hand, runs screaming from side to side, and, after a harrowing scene, is overpowered and faints.†   (source)
  • And Mr Chivery junior went his way, having spontaneously composed on the spot an entirely new epitaph for himself, to the effect that Here lay the body of John Chivery, Who, Having at such a date, Beheld the idol of his life, In grief and tears, And feeling unable to bear the harrowing spectacle, Immediately repaired to the abode of his inconsolable parents, And terminated his existence by his own rash act.†   (source)
  • Strange and harrowing must be his story, frightful the storm which embraced the gallant vessel on its course and wrecked it—thus!†   (source)
  • 'Though harrowing to myself to mention, the alienation of Mr. Micawber (formerly so domesticated) from his wife and family, is the cause of my addressing my unhappy appeal to Mr. Traddles, and soliciting his best indulgence.†   (source)
  • I warn my "kyind friends," then, that I am going to tell a story of harrowing villainy and complicated—but, as I trust, intensely interesting—crime.†   (source)
  • Moreover, it was not at all unlikely that his wife would fail at her farming, if she had not already done so; and he would then become liable for her maintenance: and what a life such a future of poverty with her would be, the spectre of Fanny constantly between them, harrowing his temper and embittering her words!†   (source)
  • In a word, June, with a wife's keenness of perception, had detected Arrowhead's admiration of Mabel; and, instead of feeling that harrowing jealousy that might have rendered her rival hateful, as would have been apt to be the case with a woman unaccustomed to defer to the superior rights of the lordly sex, she had studied the looks and character of the pale-face beauty, until, meeting with nothing to repel her own feelings, but everything to encourage them, she had got to entertain an…†   (source)
  • I was aware also that I should often lose all self-command, all capacity of hiding the harrowing sensations that would possess me during the progress of my unearthly occupation.†   (source)
  • An expression of pain knit the dark face of the monarch, as if his mind were swept by a harrowing recollection.†   (source)
  • Moreover, it was apparent also that the harrows and all the agricultural implements, which he had directed to be looked over and repaired in the winter, for which very purpose he had hired three carpenters, had not been put into repair, and the harrows were being repaired when they ought to have been harrowing the field.†   (source)
  • It was by that harrowing misfortune that Becky had won her friend back, and it was one of the very first points, we may be certain, upon which our poor simple little Emmy began to talk to her new-found acquaintance.†   (source)
  • But when an old man falls, and dogs disfigure his grey head and cheek and genitals, that is most harrowing of all that men in their hard lives endure.†   (source)
  • As a smoke column from a burning town goes heavenward, propelled by the gods' anger, grief to many a townsman, toil for all, Akhilleus brought the Trojans harrowing grief.†   (source)
  • After which harrowing denouement sufficient to appal the stoutest he snapped the blade to and stowed the weapon in question away as before in his chamber of horrors, otherwise pocket.†   (source)
  • To be a castaway is to be caught in a harrowing ballet of circles.   (source)
    harrowing = frightening
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