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specter
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  • There is no other sound, not of traffic or airplanes or trains or radios or the specter of Frau Schwartzenberger rattling the cage of the elevator.†   (source)
  • 'I fear you more than any specter I have seen.'†   (source)
  • Her blood went cold at the sight of the shimmering specter of the first Queen of Adarlan.†   (source)
  • Suddenly, here in this sunlit kitchen, with cream in a pitcher and a bird in the apple tree beside the door — and out in the Kattegat, where Uncle Henrik, surrounded by bright blue sky and water, pulled in his nets filled with shiny silver fish — suddenly the specter of guns and grim-faced soldiers seemed nothing more than a ghost story, a joke with which to frighten children in the dark.†   (source)
  • I had more money and success and "security" than in the days when specters seemed to go up and down them with me.†   (source)
  • Sometimes they receded of their own accord, and the room he lay in grew impossibly large, terrorizing him with the specter of his own insignificance.†   (source)
  • Between the two of them, the governess and the "specter" destroy him.†   (source)
  • As for Tante Jans, her own particular specter moved very close.†   (source)
  • Now, the immigrants claim, certain units remain haunted by this chemical specter.†   (source)
  • But the Glass Eyes and card soldiers dispatched to destroy these Alysses found nothing because these Alysses were specters, reflections come to life, conjurings from the real princess' imagination that she had dispersed throughout the queendom to confuse Redd's all-seeing eye.†   (source)
  • But the nearer the big day approached, the more the specter of Lina haunted us as we did jumping jacks in the Lina Lovaton Gymnasium.†   (source)
  • His eyes in their bulging sockets ticked up and down, trying to understand the specter of this huge white man.†   (source)
  • Purple light threw horrible, ghostly shadows on the cabin walls, as if the specters were escaping right out of the fountain.†   (source)
  • Who knew that better than I, who had presided over the death of my own body, seeing all I called human wither and die only to form an unbreakable chain which held me fast to this world yet made me forever its exile, a specter with a beating heart?†   (source)
  • In the shadows of her house, the solitary widow who at one time had been the confidante of his repressed loves and whose persistence had saved his life was a specter out of the past.†   (source)
  • The last soldier panicked and fled toward the impassive specters of the Ra'zac while Sloan bombarded him with a stream of insults and foul names.†   (source)
  • there were many grim specters.†   (source)
  • "I am disturbed," I wrote to Mr. Botha in the memorandum, sent to him in March, "as many other South Africans no doubt are, by the specter of a South Africa split into two hostile camps—blacks on one side ....and whites on the other, slaughtering one another."†   (source)
  • On most days, the specter of Katie's past life didn't intrude, and they spent each day together in a state of relaxed and growing intimacy.†   (source)
  • A flesh-and-blood person, not a specter.†   (source)
  • Hey, Stevie Rae/Neferet/Damien/Twins/ Erik, I saw the specter of Elliott last month after he'd died and he'd been really scary and when he tried to attack me Nala made him bleed.†   (source)
  • A few months of military rations weren't enough to banish the specter of malnutrition that haunted the Colony's poor outer ships, Walden and Arcadia.†   (source)
  • But today the specter of death doesn't seem to matter.†   (source)
  • I met the colonists and showed them around, taught them how to light a fire in their woodstoves and taunted them with the specter of kangaroo rats, mountain lions, and the supposed ghosts that roamed the place.†   (source)
  • Suddenly, they were caught by a frightening specter: a nearly maniacal Barbara, wild-eyed, switch in hand, who snatched Leslie in midstride and snapped the switch across her face.†   (source)
  • From where I sit on the field, he's a bizarre specter, so frail and ashen.†   (source)
  • It was early morning, the specter of the full moon still visible in a dawn sky of pale peach.†   (source)
  • They moved through the night like specters.†   (source)
  • 'I give my word,' the chaplain pleaded, but it was too late, for the homely hirsute specter had already vanished, dissolving so expertly inside the blooming, dappled, fragmented malformations of leaves, light and shadows that the chaplain was already doubting that he had even been there.†   (source)
  • Autumn was always a fearful time, with the specter of winter looming ahead.†   (source)
  • He was like a specter hanging over the whole war.†   (source)
  • Misfortune and spirits, specters and shadows.†   (source)
  • He turns to Aidan Richter, who looks haunted and stares at me like I'm a specter.†   (source)
  • In point of fact, Daniel was found in the very same wagon stall where Sukeena and I witnessed the ghostly specter of Laura's misfortune.†   (source)
  • "They have ever been the specter that stalks with the Plague, Anna," she said.†   (source)
  • The specter of such an operation wouldn't do much for the glory of Old Glory.†   (source)
  • A block away lived another Hasidic sect, Jews from southern Poland, who walked the Brooklyn streets like specters, with their black hats, long black coats, black beards, and earlocks.†   (source)
  • I steel myself against the specters always haunting me, gather all my inner strength, softly kiss the promise of his lips.†   (source)
  • The specter of technology the Sutherlands are running from becomes not an evil but a positive fun thing.†   (source)
  • On and off the field, they lived under the specter of being booed, spat upon and having their lives threatened.†   (source)
  • The specter of suffocation vanished.†   (source)
  • The ghostly specters stretch across the wall, their faces shifting from benevolent to grisly.†   (source)
  • That invading energy scared him more than the prospect of being embraced by the fiery arms of this shambling specter.†   (source)
  • There is of course the specter of pregnancy†   (source)
  • For even as we set about the work of sprucing up her late husband's gravesite, with all the typically complicated specters and notions attending such a task, I was in fact nearly giddy, and I believe she was as well.†   (source)
  • For the first time, I was facing the specter and power and the incorporeal evil of The Ten with all my questions answered and all my fears allayed.†   (source)
  • He must have known, writing the will, facing the specter, how the bouncing would stop.†   (source)
  • Dust, like a specter hedge, hovered in the distance.†   (source)
  • And the trees, themselves white as specters,
    Come out on the road jostling and thronging,
    Just as if they were waving their farewells
    To the white night which has witnessed so very many things.†   (source)
  • The one matter which really was of concern to him and truly had meaning and made that time much more fearful than it would otherwise have been was the specter of the death of the children of this country and around the world—the young people who had no part and knew nothing of the confrontation, but whose lives would be snuffed out like everyone else's.†   (source)
  • Call the Cruets, the Hags, the Specters, and the people of the Toadstools.†   (source)
  • Then there was dysentery, the specter of which was raised with every loose stool.†   (source)
  • His face was haggard and pale, like he'd seen a specter.†   (source)
  • She had the sense they were being watched, not by anyone in the flesh, but by specters in the dark.†   (source)
  • It seemed to be the specter that haunted them all.†   (source)
  • In the dim flashlight beam, her face looked like one of Nico's specters.†   (source)
  • Vittoria looked like a specter now, lit from below by the lamp beneath the glass.†   (source)
  • The specter seemed transparent, radiating light.†   (source)
  • What she saw frightened her far more than the specter of the Jackal.†   (source)
  • It crept toward Max's double, as dark and shrouded as a specter.†   (source)
  • Aphrodite was curled up on the chair, cowering from the specters.†   (source)
  • I see specters and shadows that aren't there.†   (source)
  • The specter of my genie, physically haunting me.†   (source)
  • The dark specters had cut off the path of retreat to the ships.†   (source)
  • Does the specter of death make a child more precious?†   (source)
  • The same place I'd seen the other two ghosts or specters or whatever.†   (source)
  • And then, on the path, I saw those men, and they seemed like specters.†   (source)
  • It was a deadly specter, right there above us.†   (source)
  • The men you saw in the woods—now you see they were not specters but flesh and blood.†   (source)
  • In the hot parlor, beside the specter of the pianola shrouded in a white sheet, Colonel Aureliano Buendia did not sit down that time inside the chalk circle that his aides had drawn.†   (source)
  • Ammu looked at herself in the long mirror on the bathroom door and the specter of her future appeared in it to mock her.†   (source)
  • The slow-moving man who appeared to be her husband folded and unfolded his beefy arms, and spontaneously, upon the mother's utterance—the specter in jungle fatigues tipped his head back and spat another sizable, mud-colored trajectory.†   (source)
  • But the specter—†   (source)
  • Later on, when Aureliano Triste told how he had seen her changed into an apparition with leathery skin and a few golden threads on her skull, Amaranta was not surprised because the specter described was exactly what she had been imagining for some time.†   (source)
  • Silent as a specter, Arya grasped the post and, using only the strength of her arms, pulled herself hand over hand toward Eragon.†   (source)
  • Lord Rickard Karstark pushed past the Greatjon, like some grim specter with his black mail and long ragged grey beard, his narrow face pinched and cold.†   (source)
  • The specter was so notorious that Dr. Urbino realized how much it threatened the harmony of his home, and as soon as he detected it he hastened to tell his wife: "Don't worry, my love, it was my fault.†   (source)
  • There was no specter haunting him, no visits from beyond, no restless spirit with a message to deliver.†   (source)
  • The house was still mainly framework although Bud had been working for many months in a conscientious struggle that Richard thought had less to do with gutting and reshaping a house than destroying some dread specter, maybe Bud's old drug habit, once and for all.†   (source)
  • The specter of her departure, coupled with the isolation from her family and friends, only intensified their desire to pass as much time together as possible.†   (source)
  • She remembered the feel of the golden saber in her hand as she slashed down her father's specter—his face full of outrage and betrayal.†   (source)
  • Although he was most certainly dead by then, he did not fall, as Carn's magic held him upright: a ghastly, grinning specter that was the equal of the most terrible things Roran had ever seen in his nightmares or on the battlefield—both being much the same.†   (source)
  • The specter at the feast, thought Tyrion as he watched the King's Justice stride forward, gaunt and grim.†   (source)
  • But first, to give this other specter his walking papers, I should say the following: Perhaps he would have gone in the direction I'm now about to go in if this second wave of crystallization, the metaphysical wave, had finally grounded out where I'll be grounding it out, that is, in the everyday world.†   (source)
  • Bryn is the one who's been living with the ghost—the specter of a man who never stopped loving someone else.†   (source)
  • A flash of white streaked across the sky, like a banished specter, and resolved itself beside Saphira in the form of Blagden.†   (source)
  • After his experience with Minos, Nico realized that most specters held only as much power as you allowed them to have.†   (source)
  • Max would have thought them specters but for the fact that they opened doors, their steps made footfalls, and the curtains swayed at their passing.†   (source)
  • It was like seeing a ghost—a specter of the boy to whom she'd been foolish enough to give her heart.†   (source)
  • Whole networks he had used as Cain, listening posts and ersatz consulates that were no more than electronic espionage stations ...even the bloody specter of Medusa.†   (source)
  • We had already made peace with our lot, and you have to tantalize us with the specter of a hope we had abandoned.†   (source)
  • Only with her coronation did it feel as if the specter of Galbatorix's oppression had begun to recede.†   (source)
  • Even in a two-hand grip, the pistol shook, but Joe squeezed off one, two, four, six rounds, and at least four of them hit the seething specter.†   (source)
  • In the stained-glass window, the lovely rose changed before our eyes into a ghostly specter of my daughter's misshapen and withered arm.†   (source)
  • There was also a seam of anger in her voice but it was the anger that arises from fear as well as mistreatment or injury, and I could tell the doctor was haunting her, his specter making her see him even as she was looking at me.†   (source)
  • The faun began to jerk about as if it were a puppet on a string, letting loose a shriek that was cut short as its shadow ripped free in the specter's grip.†   (source)
  • True to its name, Helgrind was a place of death, and stood cloaked in the razor-sharp, sawtooth folds of its scarps and clefts like a bony specter risen to haunt the earth.†   (source)
  • And yet it seems nearly wrong that the next people will never know what sort of man walked the halls within, or know the presences of his daughter and his lady friend, or wonder about the other specters of his history.†   (source)
  • Above, the specter of their race looped down over the elves, brushing them with an insubstantial wing.†   (source)
  • From the fast moment when a living, bullet-ridden man had opened his eyes in a humid, dingy room on Ile de Port Noir through the frightening revelations of Marseilles, Zurich and Paris-especially Paris, where the specter of an assassin's mantle had fallen over his shoulders, the expertise of a killer proven to be his.†   (source)
  • Erik had been there, and as Neferet had said then, he had proven himself a warrior when he'd stayed by Heath's side and fought the specters, giving me time to cast my own circle and send the ghosts back to wherever it is they'd slithered away from.†   (source)
  • When he saw Katrina again, the butcher seemed to crumple inward, losing height and stature until Roran felt as if he were looking at a specter of the original man.†   (source)
  • Marching toward them, from horizon to horizon, were the howling, snarling forms of Wendigo, and with them, mute and relentless, came the hooded specters of thousands and thousands of Shadow-Born.†   (source)
  • The Wolfson brothers appear on either side of the cover, and in the center are drawings of a strange metal box on three legs, a levitating table, a fearsome specter, and a skeleton kicking his bony head about.†   (source)
  • I cannot be part of this gaudy convocation of princesses and fairies, jesters and imps, specters and illusions.†   (source)
  • The boat passes pictures of terrifying specters, their cloaks spread out to show the souls they've devoured.†   (source)
  • They felt the Specters go by them like a cold wind and they felt the ground shake beneath them under the galloping feet of the Minotaurs; and overhead there went a flurry of foul wings and a blackness of vultures and giant bats.†   (source)
  • A specter of a man came through the dark shed.†   (source)
  • An evening at home rarely passed without some allusion to this image, this specter, this hope.†   (source)
  • Then the specter that I went in dread of came nearer, till I saw it plain.†   (source)
  • I saw no other way of escape from this dreadful specter.†   (source)
  • But this oath is probably a mice-and-man matter, for here the specter of one of this breed was over me.†   (source)
  • Moonlight faded after a time, and with it that distant specter of the mountain; then the triple mischiefs of darkness, cold, and wind increased until dawn.†   (source)
  • Between the brandy which was smoothing out the harsh contours of remorse and Rhett's mocking but comforting words, the pale specter of Frank was receding into shadows.†   (source)
  • I saw this specter of white anger coming from the savage gray and meanwhile shot northward, in a great hurry to get to Bruges and out of this line of white which was like eternity opening up right beside destructions of the modern world, hoary and grumbling.†   (source)
  • There was another specter following him.†   (source)
  • At night she was there like a slender specter, pacing beside him under the moaning pines.†   (source)
  • The old question, like a specter, stalked from its grave to haunt him.†   (source)
  • He became again the grim, stalking specter of a soldier.†   (source)
  • A group of specters trooped out of the shadows of dusk and, gathering round him, escorted him to his bed.†   (source)
  • Troop on troop of specters moved out of the black night, assembling there, waiting for Kells to join them.†   (source)
  • She marched the shrinking ghost-seer down to the spring and ordered her to proceed straightaway over the bridge and into the dusky retreats of wailing ladies and headless specters beyond.†   (source)
  • He stalked like the specter of a soldier, his eyes burning with the power of a stare into the unknown.†   (source)
  • They resembled specters.†   (source)
  • It would come, and it would come; a grisly thing, a specter born in the black caverns of terror; a power primeval, cosmic, shadowing the tortures of the lost souls flung out to chaos and destruction.†   (source)
  • Tormented, in the hall, with difficulties and obstacles, I remember sinking down at the foot of the staircase—suddenly collapsing there on the lowest step and then, with a revulsion, recalling that it was exactly where more than a month before, in the darkness of night and just so bowed with evil things, I had seen the specter of the most horrible of women.†   (source)
  • Yet once at the Cranstons', and despite the keen allurement of Sondra, he could not keep his mind off Roberta's state, which rose before him as a specter.†   (source)
  • People began by laughing and making fun of this specter dressed like a man of fashion or an undertaker; but the ghost legend soon swelled to enormous proportions among the corps de ballet.†   (source)
  • People stared in bewilderment at the face of this charming specter, who seemed to see them and yet did not, who was not at all affected by their gaze, and whose laughter and waves were not meant for the present, but belonged to the then and there of home—it would have been pointless to respond.†   (source)
  • Then, farther out on the sage, a dark, compact body of horsemen went by, almost without sound, almost like specters, and they, too, melted into the night.†   (source)
  • The tree was a specter.†   (source)
  • At the same time, and as impractical and evasive as it may seem, there was the call of that diverting world of which Sondra was a part, evenings and Sundays, when, in spite of Roberta's wretched state and mood, he was called to go here and there, and did, because in so doing he was actually relieving his own mind of the dread specter of disaster that was almost constantly before it.†   (source)
  • The ravine seemed to send forth stealthy, noiseless shapes, specter and human, man and phantom, each on the other's trail.†   (source)
  • A specter of reproach came to him.†   (source)
  • But even so, and in the face of all this amazingly wonderful love on her part for him, the specter of Roberta and all that she represented now in connection with all this, was ever before him—her state, her very recent edict in regard to it, the obvious impossibility of doing anything now but go away with her.†   (source)
  • Afterward, when he saw the despair of his family, and reckoned up the money he had spent, the tears came into his eyes, and he began the long battle with the specter.†   (source)
  • His knowledge of his inability to take vengeance for it made his rage into a dark and stormy specter, that possessed him and made him dream of abominable cruelties.†   (source)
  • To toil long hours for another's advantage; to live in mean and squalid homes, to work in dangerous and unhealthful places; to wrestle with the specters of hunger and privation, to take your chances of accident, disease, and death.†   (source)
  • You demonstrate yourself, so as to put yourself out of the reach of false relations, and you draw to you the first-born of the world, those rare pilgrims whereof only one or two wander in nature at once, and before whom the vulgar great show as specters and shadows merely.†   (source)
  • Everywhere, these black-robed, soft-sandaled, tallow-visaged specters appeared, flitted about and disappeared, noiseless as the creatures of a troubled dream, and as uncanny.†   (source)
  • At the next instant the form of Chingachgook appeared from the bushes, looking like a specter in its paint, and glided across the path in swift pursuit.†   (source)
  • He sprang forward to enter, but the specter plucked him back, and waved threateningly before him a...†   (source)
  • And as the three tall white figures sped, with soundless tread, through the opalescent light, they appeared like specters flying from hateful shadows.†   (source)
  • "Well!" cried he, throwing his sword upon the bed, "this man must be the devil in person; he has disappeared like a phantom, like a shade, like a specter."†   (source)
  • But when the crafty Huron spoke of his nation by name, the eyelids of the old man raised themselves, and he looked out upon the multitude with that sort of dull, unmeaning expression which might be supposed to belong to the countenance of a specter.†   (source)
  • As he talked along, softly, pleasantly, flowingly, he seemed to drift away imperceptibly out of this world and time, and into some remote era and old forgotten country; and so he gradually wove such a spell about me that I seemed to move among the specters and shadows and dust and mold of a gray antiquity, holding speech with a relic of it!†   (source)
  • That is, to be a leper was to be treated as dead—to be excluded from the city as a corpse; to be spoken to by the best beloved and most loving only at a distance; to dwell with none but lepers; to be utterly unprivileged; to be denied the rites of the Temple and the synagogue; to go about in rent garments and with covered mouth, except when crying, "Unclean, unclean!" to find home in the wilderness or in abandoned tombs; to become a materialized specter of Hinnom and Gehenna; to be at all times less a living offence to others than a breathing torment to self; afraid to die, yet without hope except in death.†   (source)
  • By the sudden and hasty glimpses that he caught of these figures, they seemed more like dark, glancing specters, or some other unearthly beings, than creatures fashioned with the ordinary and vulgar materials of flesh and blood.†   (source)
  • Unlike other men engaged in the spirit-stirring business of war, they stole from their camp unostentatiously and unobserved resembling a band of gliding specters, more than warriors seeking the bubble reputation by deeds of desperate daring.†   (source)
  • The scout had stood, while making his observations, sheltered by a brake, and his companions still lay in the bed of the ravine, through which the smaller stream debouched; but on hearing his low, though intelligible, signal the whole party stole up the bank, like so many dark specters, and silently arranged themselves around him.†   (source)
  • While one of the lovely beings we have so cursorily presented to the reader was thus lost in thought, the other quickly recovered from the alarm which induced the exclamation, and, laughing at her own weakness, she inquired of the youth who rode by her side: "Are such specters frequent in the woods, Heyward, or is this sight an especial entertainment ordered on our behalf?†   (source)
  • Again the spectre raised a cry, and shook its chain and wrung its shadowy hands.   (source)
    unconventional spelling: This is a British spelling. Americans use specter.
  • "Spectre," said Scrooge, "something informs me that our parting moment is at hand."   (source)
  • "At this time of the rolling year," the spectre said, "I suffer most."   (source)
  • "Ghost of the Future!" he exclaimed, "I fear you more than any spectre I have seen."   (source)
  • When it had said these words, the spectre took its wrapper from the table, and bound it round its head, as before.   (source)
  • The spectre, after listening for a moment, joined in the mournful dirge; and floated out upon the bleak, dark night.   (source)
  • There was something very awful, too, in the spectre's being provided with an infernal atmosphere of its own.   (source)
  • Scrooge was very much dismayed to hear the spectre going on at this rate, and began to quake exceedingly.   (source)
  • The apparition walked backward from him; and at every step it took, the window raised itself a little, so that when the spectre reached it, it was wide open.   (source)
  • He thought of it, felt how easy it would be to do, and longed to do it; but had no more power to withdraw the veil than to dismiss the spectre at his side.   (source)
  • The truth is, that he tried to be smart, as a means of distracting his own attention, and keeping down his terror; for the spectre's voice disturbed the very marrow in his bones.   (source)
  • But finding that he turned uncomfortably cold when he began to wonder which of his curtains this new spectre would draw back, he put them every one aside with his own hands; and lying down again, established a sharp look-out all round the bed.   (source)
  • Marx a spectre is haunting Europe Hilde got off her bed and went to the window facing the bay.†   (source)
  • The first sentence in this manifesto says: A spectre is haunting Europe—the spectre of Communism.†   (source)
  • And by taking his second wife in Maine you raised the spectre of his first loss.†   (source)
  • But the spectre of the dragon loomed somewhere up ahead.†   (source)
  • But the spectre of delivering a speech brownnosing the teachers jammed her imagination.†   (source)
  • They had rejected or removed M-2 Bradley infantry fighting vehicles, M-1 Abrams tanks, and AC-130 Spectre gunships.†   (source)
  • Un spectre.†   (source)
  • While they were completing this, I opened up comms to the AC-130 Spectre gunship, which I knew was way up there somewhere monitoring us.†   (source)
  • You shall no longer take things at second or third hand ....nor look through the eyes of the dead ....nor feed on the spectres in books.†   (source)
    unconventional spelling: This is a British spelling. Americans use specters.
  • What had hours before been the mart of commerce was now an indescribable chaos of broken columns, fallen walls, streets covered with debris, melted metal, charred and blackened trees standing like spectres.†   (source)
  • Her hair had since turned entirely white and she had so "fallen away" as to be "but a spectre" of what she once was.†   (source)
  • Reason and liberty are over-spreading the world, nor will progress be impeded until the towering crown shall fall, and the spectre of royalty be broken in pieces, in every part of the globe.†   (source)
  • We looked at each other, streaked with sweat, thin and bony like scarecrows and as ugly, and suddenly what he had said seemed very funny; and first Selvam and then Ira began to laugh, helpless, speechless, with tears running down their cheeks, until we older people slowly joined them-could not help but join in their laughter-and the spectre of what had been tweaked at our memories in vain.†   (source)
  • The eyes of the gaunt spectre darkened again, as they had in his youth.†   (source)
  • The grisly parade of the spectre years trooped through his brain.†   (source)
  • He noticed an expression of surprise on the spectre's horrid countenance" but they passed one another without speaking.†   (source)
  • Their shadows, and the shadow of the tower on which they stood, and all the spectres of the burning trees, stretched over the parkland in broad strips of indigo.†   (source)
  • Gant was a spectre in waxen yellow.†   (source)
  • And as their talk wore on, and Gant heard the spectre moan of the wind, he was entombed in loss and darkness, and his soul plunged downward in the pit of night, for he saw that he must die a stranger—that all, all but these triumphant Pentlands, who banqueted on death—must die.†   (source)
  • I had the illusion of having got the spectre by the throat at last.†   (source)
  • I am fearful of life, spectre-seeing always.†   (source)
  • The spectre was trying to slip out of my grasp.†   (source)
  • Of the foul German spectre — the Vampyre.†   (source)
  • The spectre of his old look seemed to pass as he said the word.†   (source)
  • what say of CONSCIENCE grim, That spectre in my path?†   (source)
  • The morning has its spectres as well as the evening.†   (source)
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