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sinuous
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  • Slender and sinuous, olive green, mahogany red, scarlet, and ash, they were weighted with broad, gleaming leaves and velvet berries and shaded the beach stones and mud flats.†   (source)
  • I think of the muscles of his legs, defined by years of roadwork into sinuous braids of discrete tensions.†   (source)
  • The black-and-scarlet beast was draped across her shoulders, its long sinuous neck coiled under her chin.†   (source)
  • There was nothing she could not describe: the gentle pad of a maniac's tread moving sinuously along the drive, keeping to the verge to muffle his approach.†   (source)
  • Sinuous glassy wavelets.†   (source)
  • Jenny's voice drops to a sinuous whisper, like a little snake forking its tongue in my ear.†   (source)
  • Their sinuous forms wove together like twisting ropes of windblown smoke.†   (source)
  • This dream creeps beyond others of sinuous ordeals, beyond demons throwing side-glances, beyond falling out of the bed and into an abyss of molten stone, beyond slipping in traffic and being unable to get up as headlights swim toward me.†   (source)
  • One, quicker than the rest, rushed into the firelight without hesitating, moving with the disturbing, sinuous speed of a scuttling insect.†   (source)
  • He sat sinuously, with deliberately unhurried movements, till our faces were on the same level, just a foot apart.†   (source)
  • And behind them, in a long sinuous line, came the rats.†   (source)
  • Bloom thought a moment, hummed a tune, then plinked it out on the keyboard one note at a time: Over the next century this tune and its variations would be deployed in a succession of mostly cheesy movies, typically as an accompaniment to the sinuous emergence of a cobra from a basket.†   (source)
  • I tried to stay close behind her, but even under the weight of Ruth May she was sinuous and quick in the crowd.†   (source)
  • They twined sinuously together, making shapes like the vines and creepers in a jungle, like patterns woven into the nap of a thick carpet.†   (source)
  • Isabelle was slinking in a circle around him, sinuous as a snake, trailing her fingers across his chest.†   (source)
  • Nicolas walked to the bed and tried to recall the dark, supple Amanda, the fruity, sinuous Amanda of their encounters in the darkness of the locked rooms, but between the caked wool of the shawl and the gray sheets there was a strange woman with huge, lost eyes who was staring at him with inexplicable harshness.†   (source)
  • He considered it a stroke of good fortune that among so many hazardous encounters, the only woman who had made him taste a drop of bitterness was the sinuous Sara Noriega, who ended her days in the Divine Shepherdess Asylum, reciting senile verses of such outrageous obscenity that they were forced to isolate her so that she would not drive the rest of the madwomen crazy.†   (source)
  • At the same time, she writhed sinuously for Kinet's benefit.†   (source)
  • The smoke made sinuous shapes in the shaft of light leaking past the bathroom door.†   (source)
  • It became imperative that he take hold of the bottom rung of the sinuous ladder, which he did.†   (source)
  • A lissome, blond, sinuous girl with lovely legs and honey-colored skin laid herself out contentedly on the arm of the old man's chair and began molesting his angular, pale, dissolute face languidly and coquettishly.†   (source)
  • Then it pushed off the glass into a slow, sinuous somersault.†   (source)
  • The Ormenheid began to gleam; stretching sinuously through the water until it reached a length of some sixty feet.†   (source)
  • Out from the water a long sinuous tentacle had crawled; it was pale-green and luminous and wet.†   (source)
  • Never in his life had he seen a river before—this sleek, sinuous, full-bodied animal....All was a-shake and a-shiverglints and gleams and sparkles, rustle and swirl, chatter and bubble.†   (source)
  • Later this year, the bikini will be invented by Louis Ward, a French engineer, and as I stare at Ruth, I notice a sinuous beauty in the muscles of her arms.†   (source)
  • They winked, their wings fluttered like the wings of hummingbirds, and the sinuous patterns that emerged from the thousands of abrupt beats were like the magical reversals of a rapidly spinning wheel.†   (source)
  • He was little more than a spectral form—except for masses of curly blond hair that shone faintly like sinuous strands of phosphorate seaweed.†   (source)
  • It had the sinuous look of Glatun manufacture.†   (source)
  • We yield to this slow flood....In and out, we are swept, —...we cannot step outside its sinuous, its hesitating, its abrupt, its perfectly encircling walls.†   (source)
  • The course had one long straight and a large number of sinuous turns and bends.†   (source)
  • It was a yellow sand esker, rising to a height of fifty or sixty feet and winding sinuously away into the distance like a gigantic snake.†   (source)
  • H£ was a tall man: straight as a lath: sinuous from head to toe.†   (source)
  • Seaweed, shells, cork, pebbles, the lightest, most imponderable things that it could lift from its bed, are cast up in a broken, sinuous line on the sand.†   (source)
  • On days when the tide was sufficiently high, I would turn the boat toward Cannon Creek, a sinuous, narrow shortcut that wound through the heart of the marsh.†   (source)
  • The appearance resembled the reflection of the moon, or some luminous body; for the edges were sinuous from the undulations of the surface.   (source)
  • Avoiding the obstructions gave it the sinuous movement of a serpent.   (source)
  • They continued ascending the sinuous passages.†   (source)
  • His father, in the sinuous process of coming back to life.†   (source)
  • It was the only motion in the hall, a whiplash line undulating sinuously from side to side.†   (source)
  • He looked beneath him again, to the sinuous serpent of black.†   (source)
  • The wind was constantly changing them, sculpting them into sinuous, dunelike shapes.†   (source)
  • The most distant of the three was nothing more than a sinuous thread coiling over the water.†   (source)
  • You'd need to have a shrug for such a dress, a slouch, a sinuous curve, a sort of tubercular hunch.†   (source)
  • Giant sifs (long dunes with sinuous crest) of more than 1,500 meters height were produced this way.†   (source)
  • She brought her bound legs up onto the seat, curled into a sinuous ball, staring at Scarface.†   (source)
  • Then the sinuous gray thread of its body was pulled toward the large funnel.†   (source)
  • The bridge rose to meet him, sinuous as a serpent.†   (source)
  • A shiver ran the length of her sinuous body.†   (source)
  • The lamia's snake trunk now wrapped sinuously around its body.†   (source)
  • He moved slowly around the table—each step taking nearly half a second, each step flowing sinuously like river water weaving over smooth stones—his hand still outstretched.†   (source)
  • There was a nasty hissing noise as Filch swelled with fury; Mrs. Norris had arrived, unseen, and was twisting herself sinuously around Filch's skinny ankles.†   (source)
  • Moving with an unnatural, sinuous speed, he drew one hand back to the side of his head and tensed himself to spring.†   (source)
  • Alice leaped lightly over the edges of the dissipating mist that lapped at my shield and came to a sinuous stop at Edward's side.†   (source)
  • She left without another word; her walk was so fluid, so sinuous that I felt a sharp pang of jealousy.†   (source)
  • He gave her a number of complex poses that had her contort every foot of her sinuous length in fantastic ways, culminating in a series of aerial acrobatics the likes of which Eragon had never seen before.†   (source)
  • The electric wall flambeaux all shone brightly at their regular intervals, showing off the rug's blue background and sinuous, weaving pattern.†   (source)
  • His smooth spring was like the sinuous strike of a snake; his hands were so sure, so strong, so completely inescapable; his full lips were perfect as they parted gracefully over his gleaming teeth.†   (source)
  • Alice seemed to find nothing unusual in our embrace; she walked — almost danced, her movements were so graceful — to the center of the room, where she folded herself sinuously onto the floor.†   (source)
  • HE HEARD THE SOUND OF FOOTSTEPS ON THE MOW STAIRS, and his mother ducked around the vestibule door, her dark hair in a loose ponytail that swung sinuously across her shoulders.†   (source)
  • He had vague memories: listening to a man who had once been a successful radio comic and then a variety star in TV, infant days telling a very long and very hilarious joke about incest between Siamese twins; seeing the woman in the harem pants and the sequined bra do a slow and sinuous striptease to some bumping-andgrinding music from the jukebox (it seemed it had been David Rose's theme music from The Stripper); crossing the lobby as one of three, the other two men in evening dress that predated the twenties, all of them singing about the stiff patch on Rosie O'Grady's knickers.†   (source)
  • At last he crept back into his bed and pulled the blankets up and watched the shadows thrown by the alien streetlight turn into a sinuous jungle filled with flesh-eating plants that wanted only to slip around him, squeeze the life out of him, and drag him down into a blackness where one sinister word flashed in red: REDRUM.†   (source)
  • Dimly she could hear the elevator running again, and beneath her splayed fingers she could see that the carpet pattern appeared to move, swaying and twining sinuously.†   (source)
  • And as he went, the walls that had been so high and remote began to come down; the rug which had only been a blur beneath his feet took on the familiar black and blue pattern, sinuously woven together; the doors became numbered again and behind them the parties that were all one went on and on, populated by generations of guests.†   (source)
  • Down on the ground the prairies unscroll, vast and mundane and plausible as hallucinations, dusted already with snow and scrawled with sinuous rivers.†   (source)
  • It moved smoothly and sinuously, taking catlike steps back and forth across the window frame, then paused to scratch against the glass.†   (source)
  • Slowly, she stretched, torso, shoulders, arms, in one long, sinuous move that was completely unplanned.†   (source)
  • He knew that Saphira was sprawled her full, sinuous length on the ground next to him, though he could not see her.†   (source)
  • Humming, Saphira flicked her sinuous tail and twisted her head and shoulders so that he had better access to her smooth plated underside.†   (source)
  • It twisted itself into something massive and black and sinuous that rose over Cal as he stood his ground, fighting to hold back his dog, who strained and barked like a mad thing.†   (source)
  • There were now seven of them, seven human heads set atop sinuous necks that had sprouted from the serpent's body.†   (source)
  • Her red lips curving with amusement, Íorunn rose from her chair with a sinuous motion and in a low, husky voice said, "It seems it falls to me to decide the outcome of today's meet.†   (source)
  • The Red Branch entered the tunnel last, backing sinuously through the doorway, their eyes never leaving the advancing vyes.†   (source)
  • Saphira arched her sinuous neck and gazed upward at the tree, then shook her head and shoulders to rid herself of the droplets that had accumulated on the sharp edges of her faceted scales.†   (source)
  • He stayed with the Jaguars past Haystack Corner, past The Safety Pin and cautiously put his foot down on the sinuous back straight.†   (source)
  • The back straight was sinuous and fast with a left-hand bend at the end of it leading down a steep hill to a very sharp right-hand corner, called The Slide.†   (source)
  • The shadows and lurid reflections move sinuously as flames along the wall spaces.†   (source)
  • The train toiled sinuously up among gouged red cuts with slow labor.†   (source)
  • How the ear teased for that rippling, sinuous sound.†   (source)
  • Lurid reflections appear on the walls in odd, sinuous shapes.†   (source)
  • Eugene walked swiftly along the sinuous paved curves of Rutledge Road.†   (source)
  • In and out, we are swept now into this large figure; it holds us together; we cannot step outside its sinuous, its hesitating, its abrupt, its perfectly encircling walls.†   (source)
  • Beneath English trees I meditated on that lost maze: I imagined it inviolate and perfect at the secret crest of a mountain; I imagined it erased by rice fields or beneath the water; I imagined it infinite, no longer composed of octagonal kiosks and returning paths, but of rivers and provinces and kingdoms ....I thought of a labyrinth of labyrinths, of one sinuous spreading labyrinth that would encompass the past and the future and in some way involve the stars.†   (source)
  • I am not sinuous or suave; I sit among you abrading your softness with my hardness, quenching the silver-grey flickering moth-wing quiver of words with the green spurt of my clear eyes.†   (source)
  • At the end of Academy Street, the hill loomed abruptly; a sinuous road, well paved, curved up along the hillside to the right.†   (source)
  • Our bodies, his hard, mine flowing, are pressed together within its body; it holds us together; and then lengthening out, in smooth, in sinuous folds, rolls us between it, on and on.†   (source)
  • As he looked at the comely thighs of the young women on horses, fascinated to see their shapely legs split over the strong good smell of a horse, he wondered if the warm sinuous vibration of the great horse-back excited them, and what their love was like.†   (source)
  • Avoiding the obstructions gave it the sinuous movement of a serpent.†   (source)
  • For what end are her fair complexities, her changes of soil, her sinuous coast?†   (source)
  • He bowed low with elaborate and sinuous grace.†   (source)
  • Then she was in the water, swimming to the floating surfboard with a sinuous crawl.†   (source)
  • Subsequently a peculiar luminous and sinuous marking appeared on the unillumined half of the inner planet, and almost simultaneously a faint dark mark of a similar sinuous character was detected upon a photograph of the Martian disk.†   (source)
  • She was smaller and thinner than Lily Bart, with a restless pliability of pose, as if she could have been crumpled up and run through a ring, like the sinuous draperies she affected.†   (source)
  • Even the Ape-man lacked that inward sinuous curve of the back which makes the human figure so graceful.†   (source)
  • away and were rekindled by turns, a rare and transient fire—the next instant it had taken on all the iridescence of a peacock's tail, then shook and wavered in a flaming and fantastic shower, distilled and dropping from the groin of the dark and rocky vault down the moist walls, as though it were along the bed of some rainbow grotto of sinuous stalactites that I was following my parents, who marched before me, their prayer-books clasped in their hands; a moment later the little lozenge windows had put on the deep transparence, the unbreakable hardness of sapphires clustered on some enormous breastplate; but beyond which could be distinguished, dearer than all such treasures, a fleetin†   (source)
  • Helen observed with a thrill that the cougar was magnificent, seen erect on all-fours, approaching with slow, sinuous grace.†   (source)
  • The next instant, with a sinuous dive he swept under Harker's arm, ere his blow could fall, and grasping a handful of the money from the floor, dashed across the room, threw himself at the window.†   (source)
  • Face foremost he slipped downward with the gliding, sinuous movement of a snake, and reaching the grassy bench he lay quiet.†   (source)
  • Presently the hide-and-seek frolicking began, and Tom and Becky engaged in it with zeal until the exertion began to grow a trifle wearisome; then they wandered down a sinuous avenue holding their candles aloft and reading the tangled web-work of names, dates, post-office addresses, and mottoes with which the rocky walls had been frescoed (in candle-smoke).†   (source)
  • All sorts of objects that had fallen out of use, which made them all the more captivating, were kept inside: a pair of sinuous silver candlesticks; a broken barometer, its wooden case carved with figures; an album of daguerreotypes; a cedar chest for liqueurs; a little Turk in a bright silk costume, whose body was rigid to the touch but contained a mechanism that, though it had long since fallen into disrepair, had once enabled him to run across the table; a model of an old-fashioned ship; and way at the bottom, a rattrap no less.†   (source)
  • He twisted down a long, sinuous blackness, where the moonlight was shut away except for tiny glints and patches...then suddenly sank panting into a corner by a fence, exhausted.†   (source)
  • At the front on the right was a device like the dial on a clock for regulating the turntable's tempo, to its left, the lever that started and stopped it; at the rear on the left, however, was the sinuous, club-shaped nickel tube that had pliant, movable joints and ended in a flat, round sound-box equipped with a screw into which the needle was inserted.†   (source)
  • Her arms, burned to butternut, moved sinuously among the dull platinum ripples, elbow appearing first, casting the forearm back with a cadence of falling water, then reaching out and down, stabbing a path ahead.†   (source)
  • Of those sorrows, of which the little phrase had spoken to him then, which he had seen it—without his being touched by them himself—carry past him, smiling, on its sinuous and rapid course, of those sorrows which were now become his own, without his having any hope of being, ever, delivered from them, it seemed to say to him, as once it had said of his happiness: "What does all that matter; it is all nothing."†   (source)
  • Tom produced a folded paper from his pocket and read aloud, pausing at intervals so that Amory could see that it was free verse: "So Walter Arensberg, Alfred Kreymborg, Carl Sandburg, Louis Untermeyer, Eunice Tietjens, Clara Shanafelt, James Oppenheim, Maxwell Bodenheim, Richard Glaenzer, Scharmel Iris, Conrad Aiken, I place your names here So that you may live If only as names, Sinuous, mauve-colored names, In the Juvenalia Of my collected editions."†   (source)
  • She had been taught in her girlhood to fondle and cherish those long-necked, sinuous creatures, the phrases of Chopin, so free, so flexible, so tactile, which begin by seeking their ultimate resting-place somewhere beyond and far wide of the direction in which they started, the point which one might have expected them to reach, phrases which divert themselves in those fantastic bypaths only to return more deliberately—with a more premeditated reaction, with more precision, as on a crystal bowl which, if you strike it, will ring and throb until you cry aloud in anguish—to clutch at one's heart.†   (source)
  • "If such is the case, we ought not to lie here a minute longer than is necessary," said Hutter, glancing through the leaves of his cover, as if he already distrusted the presence of an enemy on the opposite shore of the narrow and sinuous stream.†   (source)
  • He saw creeping across the green meadow a sinuous line of figures of men and horses—some foolish commander was permitting the soldiers of his escort to water their beasts in the open, in plain view from a hundred summits!†   (source)
  • The passage of the savage, through the tender and brittle limbs of the cotton-wood, could be likened only to the sinuous and noiseless winding of the reptiles which he imitated.†   (source)
  • The narrow, uneven, sinuous streets, full of angles and turns, were admirably chosen; the neighborhood of the Halles, in particular, a network of streets more intricate than a forest.†   (source)
  • Perhaps the rapidity of the changes from one of these paces to the other created an optical illusion, which might thus magnify the powers of the beast; for it is certain that Heyward, who possessed a true eye for the merits of a horse, was unable, with his utmost ingenuity, to decide by what sort of movement his pursuer worked his sinuous way on his footsteps with such persevering hardihood.†   (source)
  • I could see the water purling away from keeled scales that ran in a crest down the sinuous neck.†   (source)
  • "Willie gave it me for my fifth birthday," he had said, finger gently stroking the sinuous curves.†   (source)
  • She stretched, arching her back, and the curve of her spine echoed the strangely sinuous curve of her belly.†   (source)
  • She leads him towards the steps, drawing him by the odour of her armpits, the vice of her painted eyes, the rustle of her slip in whose sinuous folds lurks the lion reek of all the male brutes that have possessed her.†   (source)
  • At once came forth whatever creeps the ground,
    Insect or worm: those waved their limber fans
    For wings, and smallest lineaments exact
    In all the liveries decked of summer's pride
    With spots of gold and purple, azure and green:
    These, as a line, their long dimension drew,
    Streaking the ground with sinuous trace; not all
    Minims of nature; some of serpent-kind,
    Wonderous in length and corpulence, involved
    Their snaky folds, and added wings.†   (source)
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