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quiescent
in a sentence

show 53 more with this conextual meaning
  • The traffic had diminished considerably, the rush hour over, the street in the doldrums of midmorning quiescence.†   (source)
  • It was the only way to keep them quiescent.†   (source)
  • For now, though, we'll have lunch, let it melt back into a nice quiescent ball and come back and try it again.†   (source)
  • "Oh," said George, relapsing into a gently simmering quiescence.†   (source)
  • She tried to reach out, to whatever coded tenacity of protein might improbably have held on six feet below, still resisting decay—any stubborn quiescence perhaps gathering itself for some last burst, some last scramble up through earth, just-glimmering, holding together with its final strength a transient, winged shape, needing to settle at once in the warm host, or dissipate forever into the dark.†   (source)
  • Then the arrival of Man stirred them from their quiescence.†   (source)
  • The memory of those days was ever with me, yet the passing of time had made it quiescent; now my own words brought it savagely alive with a shrill, stabbing pain that swept the words away.†   (source)
  • On these lonely hills and dales her quiescent glide was of a piece with the element she moved in.   (source)
  • Lady Bertram was perfectly quiescent and contented, and had no objections to make.   (source)
  • I now strove to be entirely care-free and quiescent; and my conscience justified me in the attempt; though indeed it was not so successful as I could have wished.   (source)
    quiescent = being quiet or inactive for the time being
  • The other mote lay quiescent against her.†   (source)
  • The captive worm could be ridden until it lay exhausted and quiescent upon the desert surface and a new maker must be summoned.†   (source)
  • A training table remained, and a fencing mirror with its crystal prisms quiescent, the target dummy beside it patched and padded, looking like an ancient foot soldier maimed and battered in the wars.†   (source)
  • The nematode apparently stays in the wound, more or less quiescent, for a period we're still trying to pin down.†   (source)
  • But as I swam I sometimes listened for the other ones, those girls who didn't make much noise or speech, wondering at their quiescence as they lay beneath the palms of the shore, the snorting and grunting of men skipping out over the surface of the water in soft reports.†   (source)
  • And up from the quiescent, waiting land a faint mist rose, silver as moonlight, and clung about the tree trunks.†   (source)
  • That dream, of sharing, completing, of finding in solitude on the beach an answer, was then but a reflection in a mirror, and the mirror itself was but the surface glassiness which forms in quiescence when the nobler powers sleep beneath?†   (source)
  • Once only a board sprang on the landing; once in the middle of the night with a roar, with a rupture, as after centuries of quiescence, a rock rends itself from the mountain and hurtles crashing into the valley, one fold of the shawl loosened and swung to and fro.†   (source)
  • On these lonely hills and dales her quiescent glide was of a piece with the element she moved in.†   (source)
  • He nodded and continued to lie quiescent, staring at the ceiling.†   (source)
  • Lady Bertram was perfectly quiescent and contented, and had no objections to make.†   (source)
  • And it flashes out in your face still, until you draw that veil of dull quiescence over it.†   (source)
  • But the overpowering heat inclines me to be perfectly quiescent in the daytime.†   (source)
  • He was no longer quiescent in his chair; he wandered about the room, he dropped on the couch beside her.†   (source)
  • Smiling as changelessly as an ivory figurine she sat quiescent, avoiding thought, glancing about the living-room and hall, noting their betrayal of unimaginative commercial prosperity.†   (source)
  • For, I daresay, all this may sound romantic, but it is tiring, tiring, tiring to have been in the midst of it; to have taken the tickets; to have caught the trains; to have chosen the cabins; to have consulted the purser and the stewards as to diet for the quiescent patient who did nothing but announce her belief in an Omnipotent Deity.†   (source)
  • But M. d'Orsan was not lacking in that either, and his relations with Swann—cordial, but scarcely intimate, arising from the pleasure which, as they held the same views about everything, they found in talking together—were more quiescent than the enthusiastic affection of M. de Charlus, who was apt to be led into passionate activity, good or evil.†   (source)
  • On the back seat of the car Dick remained quiescent until the yellow monolith of Golfe Juan was passed, and then the constant carnival at Juan les Pins where the night was musical and strident in many languages.†   (source)
  • If moody Ahab was now all quiescence, at least so far as could be known on deck, Stubb, his second mate, flushed with conquest, betrayed an unusual but still good-natured excitement.†   (source)
  • …works with all his energies; he is for ever driving about over his district; delivers long speeches (he maintains the opinion that the peasants ought to be 'brought to comprehend things,' that is to say, they ought to be reduced to a state of quiescence by the constant repetition of the same words); and yet, to tell the truth, he does not give complete satisfaction either to the refined gentry, who talk with chic, or depression of the emancipation (pronouncing it as though it were…†   (source)
  • Some additional ten minutes may have passed in this quiescent manner, on both sides, when Deerslayer thought he heard a slight noise, like a low rubbing against the bottom of his canoe.†   (source)
  • Her beauty, which, whilst it had been quiescent, he had praised in jest, had in its animated phases moved him to earnest; and though his seriousness was less than she imagined, it was probably more than he imagined himself.†   (source)
  • If Edgar Linton meets me, I shall not hesitate to knock him down, and give him enough to insure his quiescence while I stay.†   (source)
  • It was but of brief continuance, however; soon leaving him in a quiescent, and, to judge by his countenance, not an uncomfortable state.†   (source)
  • Just as in the mechanism of a clock, so in the mechanism of the military machine, an impulse once given leads to the final result; and just as indifferently quiescent till the moment when motion is transmitted to them are the parts of the mechanism which the impulse has not yet reached.†   (source)
  • A reception of finished politeness would probably have confused me: I could not have returned or repaid it by answering grace and elegance on my part; but harsh caprice laid me under no obligation; on the contrary, a decent quiescence, under the freak of manner, gave me the advantage.†   (source)
  • She folded herself in the large chair, and leaned her head against it in fatigued quiescence, while Tantripp went away wondering at this strange contrariness in her young mistress—that just the morning when she had more of a widow's face than ever, she should have asked for her lighter mourning which she had waived before.†   (source)
  • THE HE-APE The world's the ball: Doth rise and fall, And roll incessant: Like glass doth ring, A hollow thing,— How soon will't spring, And drop, quiescent?†   (source)
  • After a long look at him she resumed with the old quiescent warmth: "Must I go on weakly confessing to you things a woman ought to conceal; and own that no words can express how gloomy I have been because of that dreadful belief I held till two hours ago—that you had quite deserted me?"†   (source)
  • They may scorn cash now; but let some months go by, and no prospective promise of it to them, and then this same quiescent cash all at once mutinying in them, this same cash would soon cashier Ahab.†   (source)
  • Quiescent as he now sat, there was something about his nostril, his mouth, his brow, which, to my perceptions, indicated elements within either restless, or hard, or eager.†   (source)
  • Nor could she otherwise account for the Judge's quiescent mood than by supposing him craftily on the watch, while Clifford developed these symptoms of a distracted mind.†   (source)
  • Eustacia floated round and round on Wildeve's arm, her face rapt and statuesque; her soul had passed away from and forgotten her features, which were left empty and quiescent, as they always are when feeling goes beyond their register.†   (source)
  • It was not physical exercise that overwearied him,—for except that he sometimes wrought a little with a hoe, or paced the garden-walk, or, in rainy weather, traversed a large unoccupied room,—it was his tendency to remain only too quiescent, as regarded any toil of the limbs and muscles.†   (source)
  • "If you could but be persuaded to think no more of it, aunt, and to regard me with kindness and forgiveness" "You have a very bad disposition," said she, "and one to this day I feel it impossible to understand: how for nine years you could be patient and quiescent under any treatment, and in the tenth break out all fire and violence, I can never comprehend."†   (source)
  • The great buildings round the hollow yard were as dreary and tumbledown as ever, but over the old garden-wall the straggling rose-bushes were beginning to toss their summer weight, and the gray wood and old bricks of the house, on its higher level, had a look of sleepy age in the broad afternoon sunlight, that suited the quiescent time.†   (source)
  • Diving beneath the settling ship, the whale ran quivering along its keel; but turning under water, swiftly shot to the surface again, far off the other bow, but within a few yards of Ahab's boat, where, for a time, he lay quiescent.†   (source)
  • Maggie, all this time, moved about with a quiescence and even torpor of manner, so contrasted with her usual fitful brightness and ardor, that Lucy would have had to seek some other cause for such a change, if she had not been convinced that the position in which Maggie stood between Philip and her brother, and the prospect of her self-imposed wearisome banishment, were quite enough to account for a large amount of depression.†   (source)
  • He never omitted the ceremony afterwards, and the gravity and quiescence with which I underwent it, seemed to invest it for him with a certain charm.†   (source)
  • A sort of instinct seemed to warn him of her entrance, even when he did not see it; and when he was looking quite away from the door, if she appeared at it, his cheek would glow, and his marbleseeming features, though they refused to relax, changed indescribably, and in their very quiescence became expressive of a repressed fervour, stronger than working muscle or darting glance could indicate.†   (source)
  • If Miss Ingram had been a good and noble woman, endowed with force, fervour, kindness, sense, I should have had one vital struggle with two tigers — jealousy and despair: then, my heart torn out and devoured, I should have admired her — acknowledged her excellence, and been quiet for the rest of my days: and the more absolute her superiority, the deeper would have been my admiration — the more truly tranquil my quiescence.†   (source)
  • …in the Sundam trench of the Pacific exceeding 8000 fathoms: the restlessness of its waves and surface particles visiting in turn all points of its seaboard: the independence of its units: the variability of states of sea: its hydrostatic quiescence in calm: its hydrokinetic turgidity in neap and spring tides: its subsidence after devastation: its sterility in the circumpolar icecaps, arctic and antarctic: its climatic and commercial significance: its preponderance of 3 to 1 over the…†   (source)
  • …stable equilibrium he rose uninjured though concussed by the impact, raised the latch of the area door by the exertion of force at its freely moving flange and by leverage of the first kind applied at its fulcrum, gained retarded access to the kitchen through the subadjacent scullery, ignited a lucifer match by friction, set free inflammable coal gas by turningon the ventcock, lit a high flame which, by regulating, he reduced to quiescent candescence and lit finally a portable candle.†   (source)
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