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vocabulary
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staccato
in a sentence

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  • She heard — as if in a recurring nightmare — the pounding on the door, and then the heavy, frighteningly familiar staccato of boots on the kitchen floor.†   (source)
  • The woods echoed with the staccato bursts of automatic weapons and people screaming, but it wasn't computing, like Crisco's head snapping back and the way he flopped into the gray dust like every bone in his body had suddenly turned into Jell-O, the way his killer had swung around in a perfectly executed pirouette with the barrel of the gun flashing in the sunlight.†   (source)
  • From inside he heard steps, staccato female steps across the hall.†   (source)
  • He marched stiffly to show me how to make each finger dance up and down, staccato like an obedient little soldier.†   (source)
  • Passengers would get on and off as I listened to their conversations mix with the sounds of the train doors opening and closing, the conductors yelling their stops, and the shuffle and staccato of shoe soles and high heels going from pavement to metal to the soft thump thump on the carpeted train aisles.†   (source)
  • His face was flushed and shiny and his voice very quick, with a strained, staccato quality I knew all too well.†   (source)
  • We could just hear the short staccato sounds of the goats: ba-aaaa… baaa … baaa.†   (source)
  • I took off after him, my helmet whapping against the roof in a painful staccato.†   (source)
  • Annie's boot-heels rattled staccato down the hallwav.†   (source)
  • I was gasping out fear in staccato.†   (source)
  • More of the black things were scuttling out of the dark, their feet beating a quick staccato rhythm against roots and rocks and leaves.†   (source)
  • He laughed, a sharp staccato laugh.†   (source)
  • I drummed my fingers as I waited for my decrepit computer to wheeze awake; they snapped against the desk, staccato and anxious.†   (source)
  • Fifteen minutes later to the dot, Vee bounced the Neon up the driveway and beeped the horn staccato-style.†   (source)
  • Patrick heard another staccato of gunshots, and had to restrain himself from running toward them blindly.†   (source)
  • In staccato sentences the woman ordered the young boy to get out of the car.†   (source)
  • He remembered the fear of those days, fear of everything, covered with a mocking, staccato style, defended with the bullets of dirty words.†   (source)
  • Whispers ride the air, and I think I hear the piercing staccato of wild laughter.†   (source)
  • HER HEELS WERE A SHARP STACCATO ON the polished stairs and then she was standing in the doorway, slender and stylish in a navy suit with a narrow skirt and thickly padded shoulders.†   (source)
  • Then it began to build quickly, his voice rising until it was just a staccato list of words that he spit out, one right after another.†   (source)
  • A few seconds later there was an explosion of compressed air, and a staccato of hull popping noises as a submarine changed depth rapidly.†   (source)
  • Edgar spoke rapidly in his old staccato voice, like a radio reporter doing a series of punchy news items.†   (source)
  • He clicked past the track poles at a staccato pace.†   (source)
  • He recited this in staccato fashion as he had a million times before.†   (source)
  • Her voice is like a hail storm-hard, staccato, frigid.†   (source)
  • Behind the horrible harmonies of the howling was a faint staccato—the shouts of men, angry, seeking.†   (source)
  • I am remembering a fugue Uncle used to love—a melody Father composed in New Denver which Stephen developed— a quiet light staccato, clear and precise with long pauses between the notes of the melody.†   (source)
  • I heard the staccato of Claudia's steps as she rushed beside me, never once asking me to slacken my pace; and she stood finally, her face infinitely patient, looking up at me in a dark and narrow sheet where a few old slope-roofed French houses remained among the Spanish facades, ancient little houses, the plaster blistered from the moldering brick beneath.†   (source)
  • Yossarian went to bed early for safety and soon dreamed that he was fleeing almost headlong down an endless wooden staircase, making a loud, staccato clatter with his heels.†   (source)
  • Lieberman has left for the day," she said in a staccato cadence.†   (source)
  • The effort of holding his arms up made his "Saints Come Marching In" full of staccato notes and pauses.†   (source)
  • Ryan was still, except for scattered staccato jerking movements, like a freshly slaughtered pig.†   (source)
  • And I saw the squat man shake his fist angrily over the uplifted faces, yelling something in a staccato West Indian accent, at which the crowd yelled threateningly.†   (source)
  • But the sleek silver drug boat was greeted by the staccato gunfire of automatic weapons.†   (source)
  • Every now and then a staccato interjection from my grandmother.†   (source)
  • The firing stopped as quickly as it had begun; they heard a staccato click-click-click as the hidden weapons ran out of ammunition.†   (source)
  • His long syllables become staccato.†   (source)
  • "Motive power?" the man was saying in a voice that had a brusque, staccato snap and a slurred, nasal drawl, together.†   (source)
  • "He's going to have a gun, you know" The words were staccato, and her voice was a tone I'd only heard a couple times during all the years we'd been together.†   (source)
  • Deirdre was leaping down the stairs two at a time, and there came a vibration now, from the staccato beat of the horses' hooves behind us.†   (source)
  • "Hear, O Lord," "Now and ever shall be," "glorious cherubim" she muttered ceaselessly in her hoarse, staccato patter.†   (source)
  • As the three men spoke, they leaned in and out of the illumination, their faces and gesticulating hands suddenly appearing and disappearing in staccato eclipses.†   (source)
  • a staccato command
  • It's all very well for me to think these things, quick as staccato, a jittering of the brain.†   (source)
  • Suddenly a staccato crack echoed overhead.†   (source)
  • A neighborhood dog breaks into a staccato of barks.†   (source)
  • Staccato footsteps accompany his muttered threats and pleas.†   (source)
  • Cooper counted off Max's errors in a flat, clipped staccato.†   (source)
  • Tess's low heels clicked against this in a staccato beat.†   (source)
  • Staccato explosions erupted in his head; his mind was thrown back.†   (source)
  • The muffled cracks came in staccato repetition; stone and asphalt exploded all around them.†   (source)
  • There were sharp sounds–footsteps, staccato against a hard floor.†   (source)
  • My heart was pounding so fast it felt like a staccato drumroll in my chest.†   (source)
  • The pulse came swift and staccato, increasing gradually until I fairly danced between the nodes.†   (source)
  • A staccato kiss, break away, a longer one, his hand slipping under your shirt.†   (source)
  • "It was an accident," said a young man with a staccato voice and an odor of public payroll.†   (source)
  • The train passed over with a great staccato clatter and they all waited until it was past.†   (source)
  • Staccato explosions thundered from the second vehicle.†   (source)
  • After a moment, he spoke up in a staccato voice.†   (source)
  • It was summed up in a word he used with staccato regularity.†   (source)
  • After a moment there's a series of little staccato pops, like a handful of pebbles rattling down a drainspout.†   (source)
  • Once a month, he drove from Kabul to visit them in Shadbagh, his arrival announced by a staccato of honks and the hollering of a horde of village kids who chased the big blue car with the tan top and shiny rims.†   (source)
  • For those who are actually in it there are many colours, excessive colours, too bright, too red and orange, too liquid and incandescent, but for the others the war is like a newsreel — grainy, smeared, with bursts of staccato noise and large numbers of grey-skinned people rushing or plodding or falling down, everything elsewhere.†   (source)
  • Kilvin growled out a couple words and pounded his fist on the table, each thump as his hand came down was accompanied by a staccato burst of reddish light that welled up from his hand.†   (source)
  • A wireless set mumbles the names of ministers in a harried, staccato voice—de Gaulle in London, Petain replacing Reynaud.†   (source)
  • Voice staccato and cracked.†   (source)
  • Out of loudspeakers all around Zollverein, the staccato voice of the Reich grows like some imperturbable tree; its subjects lean toward its branches as if toward the lips of God.†   (source)
  • Her words arrived in a shrill staccato.†   (source)
  • Double helixes of DNA twisted and spiraled across my screen, then were overlaid with faded, unreadable newspaper clippings, staccato chunks of sound, colored postcards of New York.†   (source)
  • Puller described the situation in staccato sentences containing precise details and closed the phone.†   (source)
  • The metallic clash of spear striking against shield and sword intensified until it rivaled a machine gun's staccato.†   (source)
  • The white-gowned figure burst into the room, his automatic pistol spitting indiscriminately, the staccato reports deafening.†   (source)
  • "The only thing that is 'meant,' Agent Cooper, is for us to keep Max and David from the witches," she snapped, employing the dry staccato she reserved for particularly dense students.†   (source)
  • The staccato explosions tore the posts apart as the railing fell, the bullets shattering the walls and the door beneath him.†   (source)
  • And then the night-that night-when blinding lights and staccato explosions were all around him, and below him, telling him he was about to die.†   (source)
  • I heard the sound of drums, drumbeats, not staccato shots but hand drums maybe, dull and soft-skinned, coming out of the park.†   (source)
  • I had just begun to feel the pulsing set up between myself and the people, hearing them answering in staccato applause and agreement when Tod Clifton caught my eye, pointing.†   (source)
  • A staccato volley of automatic gunfire burst from the shadows of the tunnel's parking area cutting the Russian down, his instantly limp, punctured body collapsing and falling off the roof of the gatehouse, plummeting to the ground out of sight at the rear.†   (source)
  • Brother Jack roared staccato.†   (source)
  • A staccato burst of fireworks filled the glen, resounding through the woods, swelling in intensity as the stunned crowd reacted in shock.†   (source)
  • When Louis became agitated he used a staccato patter, a kind of hyperdrawl with elements of falsetto pique that he strung throughout at a master pitch.†   (source)
  • Dr. Ferris leaned toward Dr. Stadler-through the staccato hoof beats of the announcer's voice galloping across the continent with a description of the new invention-and said in the tone of a casual remark, "It is vitally important that there be no criticism of the Project in the country at this precarious time," then added semi-accidentally, as a semi-joke, "that there be no criticism of anything at any time."†   (source)
  • Jason and Sergei once more approached the kitchen's entrance, and once again they were stopped by a second sudden explosion followed by staccato gunfire, the bullets piercing the thin, louvered panels of the Silence.†   (source)
  • This face brought back the darkness and torrential winds in the night sky, explosions coming one after another, sounds of a staccato gunfire echoing through the myriad tunnels of a jungle.†   (source)
  • Not here]' Gunfire suddenly filled the winds off the water, staccato bursts that joined the myriad sounds of the harbour.†   (source)
  • A long staccato burst from a Sten gun echoed throughout the room, throughout the entire house, a thousand dead sounds forming a running chord beneath, as sprays of bullets imbedded in a lead shield backed by a steel plate in the door.†   (source)
  • And there on the platform I too had stridden and debated, a student leader directing my voice at the highest beams and farthest rafters, ringing them, the accents staccato upon the ridgepole and echoing back with a tinkling, like words hurled to the trees of a wilderness, or into a well of slate-gray water; more sound than sense, a play upon the resonances of buildings, an assault upon the temples of the ear: Ha! to the gray-haired matron in the final row.†   (source)
  • She strolled slowly, painfully, down the pavement, mesmerized by the colour and the hectic movement and the unending, staccato chatter all around her.†   (source)
  • A deafening, echoing, staccato burst of gunfire erupted from the woods; the killer rolled over and over on the campsite grass, bullets ripping up the earth as he reached the darkness of the trees.†   (source)
  • The miles-striding staccato of the drums carried across the fields to the town, across the town, across the purple grove and across the wastes of marshland that lay behind it.†   (source)
  • So that it seemed as if the slow rhythm of the rising fields had been picked up, stressed, accelerated and broken into the staccato chords of the finale.†   (source)
  • And she would summon the waiter to her side, her voice sharp and staccato, cutting the air like a saw.†   (source)
  • …lazily, almost cryptically, stroking onto the plate himself now the picture which he wanted there; I can imagine how he did it—the calculation, the surgeon's alertness and cold detachment, the exposures brief, so brief as to be cryptic, almost staccato, the plate unaware of what the complete picture would show, scarce-seen yet ineradicable: —a trap, a riding horse standing before a closed and curiously monastic doorway in a neighborhood a little decadent, even a little sinister, and…†   (source)
  • I stood there and listened to the rapid, diminishing staccato of her heels on the marble of the corridor.†   (source)
  • I did not hear the report, for it was lost and merged with the other more positive staccato series of reports, on my left.†   (source)
  • I could imagine her tramping through the rooms, perhaps paying sixpence for admission, ripping the quietude with her sharp, staccato laugh.†   (source)
  • …his gaunt worn unshaven face, his patched and faded gray tunic, the pistol still hanging against his flank: the two of them, brother and sister, curiously alike as if the difference in sex had merely sharpened the common blood to a terrific, an almost unbearable, similarity, speaking to one another in short brief staccato sentences like slaps, as if they stood breast to breast striking one another in turn, neither making any attempt to guard against the blows: Now you cant marry him.†   (source)
  • Its music was pierced by the wild staccato yelp of a hunting coyote.†   (source)
  • She grew tense and staccato, "It means too much to me.†   (source)
  • Then she heard strange wild yelps, staccato, piercing, somehow infinitely lonely.†   (source)
  • He was a thin, sallow man with a red nose, quick, staccato, and smartly but stiffly dressed.†   (source)
  • She screamed shrilly, in wild, staccato notes.†   (source)
  • A pack of coyotes commenced to pierce the air in staccato cries.†   (source)
  • Gervais laughed softly with a hissing chuckle, and Speranski in a high-pitched staccato manner.†   (source)
  • Did you ever see anything like that?" said Celia, in her comfortable staccato.†   (source)
  • "Poor Dodo," she went on, in an amiable staccato.†   (source)
  • Dick thought he would probably be a fine clinician, for the sonorous or staccato cadences by which he disciplined nurse or patient came not from his nervous system but from a tremendous and harmless vanity.†   (source)
  • Suddenly the painter appeared at the door of the studio, and made staccato signs for them to come in.†   (source)
  • A series of staccato taps on the west window brought Anne flying in from the yard, eyes shining, cheeks faintly flushed with pink, unbraided hair streaming behind her in a torrent of brightness.†   (source)
  • He spoke in a slow staccato fashion, choosing his words with care, and gave the impression generally of a man of learning and letters who had had ill-usage at the hands of fortune.†   (source)
  • Later, Martin was to note that the reception-room of the Institute was smaller, yet more forbiddingly polite, in its white paneling and Chippendale chairs, than the lobby of the Rouncefield Clinic, but now he was unconscious of the room, of the staccato girl attendant, of everything except that he was about to see Max Gottlieb, for the first time in five years.†   (source)
  • "What they must have cost at this season—though of course it's the sentiment one cares about!" the lady was saying in a sighing staccato as Archer came in.†   (source)
  • With the most charming, cool precision in her staccato, a soprano warbled and trilled an aria from La Traviata.†   (source)
  • The tumultuous noise resolved itself now into the disorderly mingling of many voices, the gride of many wheels, the creaking of waggons, and the staccato of hoofs.†   (source)
  • He made no answer, and had turned his face away from her again, and Mrs. Hall, feeling that her conversational advances were ill-timed, laid the rest of the table things in a quick staccato and whisked out of the room.†   (source)
  • Twilight brought cold wind, the staccato bark of coyotes, the flicker of camp fires through the cedars.†   (source)
  • The same nervous staccato laugh broke from her thin lips, and her fingers began to play with a long tortoise-shell paper-knife.†   (source)
  • The day had progressed at a staccato rate, and in spite of its satisfactions she was not habituated to such strain.†   (source)
  • Often he felt lonely with her, and frequently she tired him with the short floods of personal revelations that she reserved exclusively for him, "I'm like this—I'm more like that," but this afternoon he would have been glad had she rattled on in staccato for a while and given him glimpses of her thoughts.†   (source)
  • Through the closed doors came the sounds of the discreet staccato accompaniment of the orchestra, and a single female voice rendering distinctly a musical phrase.†   (source)
  • Celia was not impulsive: what she had to say could wait, and came from her always with the same quiet staccato evenness.†   (source)
  • While still in the anteroom Prince Andrew heard loud voices and a ringing staccato laugh—a laugh such as one hears on the stage.†   (source)
  • "Dodo!" said Celia, in her quiet staccato; then kissed her sister, whose arms encircled her, and said no more.†   (source)
  • Celia, who had been hanging a little in the rear, came up presently, when she saw that Mr. Casaubon was gone away, and said in her easy staccato, which always seemed to contradict the suspicion of any malicious intent— "Do you know, Dorothea, I saw some one quite young coming up one of the walks."†   (source)
  • Long varied train of an emblem, dabs of music, Fingers of the organist skipping staccato over the keys of the great organ.†   (source)
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