terra firmain a sentence
- Hidden from the congregation's view, but ominously visible to us, Barb Wiggin seized the controls of the angel-lowering apparatus like a heavy-equipment operator about to attack the terra firma with a backhoe.† (source)
- When the elevator thumped to a stop, Langdon was relieved to feel terra firma beneath his feet.† (source)
- It was, in fact, the flagship of the Terra Firma fleet, and had arrived here after May 1708, having sailed from the legendary fair of Portobello in Panama where it had taken on part of its fortune: three hundred trunks of silver from Peru and Veracruz, and one hundred ten trunks of pearls gathered and counted on the island of Contadora.† (source)
- A gangplank leads to terra firma.† (source)
- Terra Firma.† (source)
- The contraption lay with its stomach on terra firma, heavy and sluggish and looking more like a wounded duck than like one of those newfangled airplanes they were starting to produce in the United States.† (source)
- Cedric, unaware of Catholic dogma, shrugs, though he's happy to feel the conversation land on the terra firma of religion.† (source)
- God Almighty, I'm glad I'm right here on old terra firma.† (source)
- "Terra firma," the pilot announced as they touched down.† (source)
- The lowest two rows, those beneath the pyramid, represent the earth itself—terra firma—the lowest of all the realms.† (source)
- Harold Crosby, who thought both his God and Barb Wiggin had abandoned him forever, swung like the victim of a vigilante killing among the mock flying buttresses; Dan, an accomplished mechanic of all theatrical equipment, eventually mastered the angel-lowering apparatus and returned the banished angel to terra firma, where Harold collapsed in relief and gratitude.† (source)
show 19 more with this conextual meaning
- The Terra Firma fleet was composed of no less than twelve supply ships of varying sizes, and it set sail from this port traveling in a convoy with a French squadron that was heavily armed but still incapable of protecting the expedition from the accurate cannon shot of the English squadron under Commander Charles Wager, who waited for it in the Sotavento Archipelago, at the entrance to the bay.† (source)
- Somebody put serious money on a horse called Terra Firma and he began to worry when it finished first.† (source)
- Today would be Easter on terra firma, right?† (source)
- And then they returned to terra firma, that is to say, to some passage that led them to the little girls' dancing-school, where brats between six and ten were practising their steps, in the hope of becoming great dancers one day, "covered with diamonds …."† (source)
- Today's the king's birthday on terra firma—and so we celebrate it, too, as best we can, we're only human.† (source)
- I recognize today's mood; it is the same mood that reigns when the holidays of terra firma are religiously observed on those great arks—as reminders of a world outside, nostalgia as per calendar.† (source)
- As for his suspicions, once on terra firma, once that he had seen the indifferent, if not friendly, appearance of his hosts, his anxiety had quite disappeared, or rather, at sight of the goat, had turned to appetite.† (source)
- Chingachgook obeyed, and by the time he had reached the head of the scow, Hurry was on the platform, stamping his feet, like one glad to touch what, by comparison, might be called terra firma, and proclaiming his indifference to the whole Huron tribe in his customary noisy, dogmatical manner.† (source)
- Certainly, too, it is neither an attractive nor an easy task to undertake an investigation into the lowest depths of the social order, where terra firma comes to an end and where mud begins, to rummage in those vague, murky waves, to follow up, to seize and to fling, still quivering, upon the pavement that abject dialect which is dripping with filth when thus brought to the light, that pustulous vocabulary each word of which seems an unclean ring from a monster of the mire and the…† (source)
- Deep ruts and "cradle-holes" were worn in the ice, as on terra firma, by the passage of the sleds over the same track, and the horses invariably ate their oats out of cakes of ice hollowed out like buckets.† (source)
- For not only do fabulous rumors naturally grow out of the very body of all surprising terrible events,—as the smitten tree gives birth to its fungi; but, in maritime life, far more than in that of terra firma, wild rumors abound, wherever there is any adequate reality for them to cling to.† (source)
- He dragged and pulled, and I sprawled, and crawled, and waded, sometimes on my reeds like a raft, sometimes lugging them along with me, till we luckily got back to terra firma.† (source)
- On landing, the Sergeant kissed his daughter kindly, for he was so much of a soldier as always to feel more at home on terra firma than when afloat; and, taking his gun, he announced his intention to pass an hour in quest of game.† (source)
- …barrowing, rolling, furrowing, in admirable order, as if they were bent on making this a model farm; but when I was looking sharp to see what kind of seed they dropped into the furrow, a gang of fellows by my side suddenly began to hook up the virgin mould itself, with a peculiar jerk, clean down to the sand, or rather the water—for it was a very springy soil—indeed all the terra firma there was—and haul it away on sleds, and then I guessed that they must be cutting peat in a bog.† (source)
- Believe me, and take comfort, this is better for me than tons of gold and cases of diamonds, even were they not as problematical as the clouds we see in the morning floating over the sea, which we take for terra firma, and which evaporate and vanish as we draw near to them.† (source)
- But you are no' sorry, I take it, young lady, that you've got your pretty foot on terra firma once more."† (source)
- Four shallops came off with very little noise alongside the lugger, which, no doubt, in acknowledgement of the compliment, lowered her own shallop into the sea, and the five boats worked so well that by two o'clock in the morning all the cargo was out of The Young Amelia and on terra firma.† (source)
- It did not simply flutter like a butterfly, nor soar like the larger hawks, but it sported with proud reliance in the fields of air; mounting again and again with its strange chuckle, it repeated its free and beautiful fall, turning over and over like a kite, and then recovering from its lofty tumbling, as if it had never set its foot on terra firma.† (source)
- "I have already told thee, Sancho," said Don Quixote, "not to give thyself any uneasiness on that score; for if an island should fail, there is the kingdom of Denmark, or of Sobradisa, which will fit thee as a ring fits the finger, and all the more that, being on terra firma, thou wilt all the better enjoy thyself.† (source)
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