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dorsal
in a sentence

show 37 more with this conextual meaning
  • When they went through Pamphrey's Pass and into Kingcome Inlet, which was the last, Mark saw the dorsal fin of a killer whale cruising slowly down the far side.†   (source)
  • Old Stingo, I mused as she climbed upward, there must be some perversity in this dorsal fixation.†   (source)
  • He was cut on the dorsal side of the thumb.
  • The moth with unusually dense dorsal tufts spread its wings over both their hearts.†   (source)
  • A cold moth with unusually dense dorsal tufts landed lightly on Rahel's heart.†   (source)
  • Her dog growled, the hair on its back standing straight up like a dorsal fin.†   (source)
  • On our port side, a spiky green dorsal fin about fifteen feet long curled out of the water and disappeared.†   (source)
  • Nereus spun and expanded, turning into a killer whale, but I grabbed his dorsal fin as he burst out of the water.†   (source)
  • Swelling up from under the water came a leviathan: a vast white mouth, a broad back parting the surface, and a long dorsal fin, ghostly in the moonlight.†   (source)
  • There were fish—big fish with protruding foreheads and very long dorsal fins, dorados they are called, and smaller fish, lean and long, unknown to me, and smaller ones still—and there were sharks.†   (source)
  • The oceanic whitetips were often shorter than the makos—some of which stretched to twelve feet—but they were much stockier and had enormous dorsal fins that they sailed high above the surface of the water, like a war banner, a rapidly moving sight that was always nerve-racking to behold.†   (source)
  • Its pernicious ghost—gray, furry and with unusually dense dorsal tufts—haunted every house that he ever lived in.†   (source)
  • Rahel stopped and turned around, and on her heart a drab moth with unusually dense dorsal tufts unfurled its predatory wings.†   (source)
  • Frank waved his left dorsal fin.†   (source)
  • His dorsal fin was down and his huge pectorals were spread wide On this circle the old man could see the fish. s eye and the two gray sucking fish that swain around him.†   (source)
  • Now he speeded up as he . smelled the fresher scent and his blue dorsal fin cut the water When the old man saw him coming he knew that this was a shark that had no fear " at all and would do exactly what he wished.†   (source)
  • Whenever Merlyn and his companion swam past them, they raised their spiky dorsal fins in menace, and only lowered them when they saw that Merlyn was a tench.†   (source)
  • May your circulation proceed unchecked and particularly the dorsal carpal branch of the ulnar artery, in which connection, comrade, Prof.†   (source)
  • That evening he was within a feather-weight's turn of abandoning his road to the nearest station, and driving across that elevated dorsal line of South Wessex which divided him from his Tess's home.†   (source)
  • Cavorting around the Nautilus was a school of triggerfish with flat bodies, grainy skins, armed with stings on their dorsal fins, and with four prickly rows of quills quivering on both sides of their tails.†   (source)
  • Newman did not hear his voice, but perceived that he presented the dorsal expression of a well-dressed Englishman.†   (source)
  • And then, every morning, he sets himself afresh to the task of earning his bread; and while his hands earn his bread, his dorsal column gains pride, his brain gathers ideas.†   (source)
  • Fritz was unanimously voted her rightful owner, but before his mother would hear of his entering the frail-looking skiff she declared that she must contrive a swimming-dress, so that 'should his boat receive a puncture from a sharp rock or the dorsal fin of a fish and collapse, he might yet have a chance of saving his life'.†   (source)
  • He has a peculiar way of showing his dorsal hooked fin in swimming, which looks something like a Roman nose.†   (source)
  • The stranger inserted his two hands in both his fobs, drew himself up without straightening his dorsal column, but scrutinizing Marius in his turn, with the green gaze of his spectacles.†   (source)
  • These were tuna from the genus Scomber, blue–black on top, silver on the belly armor, their dorsal stripes giving off a golden gleam.†   (source)
  • "Those animals are only members of the genus Balaenoptera furnished with dorsal fins, and like sperm whales, they're generally smaller than the bowhead whale."†   (source)
  • …black–tinted rudderfish that you catch by using torches, fish measuring two meters and boasting white, firm, plump meat that, when fresh, tastes like eel, when dried, like smoked salmon; semired wrasse sporting scales only at the bases of their dorsal and anal fins; grunts on which gold and silver mingle their luster with that of ruby and topaz; yellow–tailed gilthead whose flesh is extremely dainty and whose phosphorescent properties give them away in the midst of the waters; porgies…†   (source)
  • …like thin seaweed, sea robins that poets call lyrefish and seamen pipers and whose snouts have two jagged triangular plates shaped like old Homer's lyre, swallowfish swimming as fast as the bird they're named after, redheaded groupers whose dorsal fins are trimmed with filaments, some shad (spotted with black, gray, brown, blue, yellow, and green) that actually respond to tinkling handbells, splendid diamond–shaped turbot that were like aquatic pheasants with yellowish fins stippled in…†   (source)
  • From the butterfish genus, whose oval bodies are very flat, I observed several adorned in brilliant colors and sporting a dorsal fin like a sickle, edible fish that, when dried and marinated, make an excellent dish known by the name "karawade"; then some sea poachers, fish belonging to the genus Aspidophoroides, whose bodies are covered with scaly armor divided into eight lengthwise sections.†   (source)
  • I also observed some wonderful snappers belonging to the order Lutianida, sacred fish for the Greeks, who claimed they could drive off sea monsters from the waters they frequent; their Greek name anthias means "flower," and they live up to it in the play of their colors and in those fleeting reflections that turn their dorsal fins into watered silk; their hues are confined to a gamut of reds, from the pallor of pink to the glow of ruby.†   (source)
  • Chief among them were specimens of that dreadful cartilaginous genus that's divided into three subgenera numbering at least thirty–two species: striped sharks five meters long, the head squat and wider than the body, the caudal fin curved, the back with seven big, black, parallel lines running lengthwise; then perlon sharks, ash gray, pierced with seven gill openings, furnished with a single dorsal fin placed almost exactly in the middle of the body.†   (source)
  • As for marine mammals, on passing by the mouth of the Adriatic Sea, I thought I recognized two or three sperm whales equipped with the single dorsal fin denoting the genus Physeter, some pilot whales from the genus Globicephalus exclusive to the Mediterranean, the forepart of the head striped with small distinct lines, and also a dozen seals with white bellies and black coats, known by the name monk seals and just as solemn as if they were three–meter Dominicans.†   (source)
  • From the eighty–ninth fish genus in Lacépède's system of classification, belonging to his second subclass of bony fish (characterized by gill covers and a bronchial membrane), I noted some scorpionfish whose heads are adorned with stings and which have only one dorsal fin; these animals are covered with small scales, or have none at all, depending on the subgenus to which they belong.†   (source)
  • During our crossing I saw numerous baleen whales belonging to the three species unique to these southernmost seas: the bowhead whale (or "right whale," according to the English), which has no dorsal fin; the humpback whale from the genus Balaenoptera (in other words, "winged whales"), beasts with wrinkled bellies and huge whitish fins that, genus name regardless, do not yet form wings; and the finback whale, yellowish brown, the swiftest of all cetaceans.†   (source)
  • Among bony fish, Conseil noticed some blackish marlin three meters long with a sharp sword jutting from the upper jaw, bright–colored weevers known in Aristotle's day as sea dragons and whose dorsal stingers make them quite dangerous to pick up, then dolphinfish with brown backs striped in blue and edged in gold, handsome dorados, moonlike opahs that look like azure disks but which the sun's rays turn into spots of silver, finally eight–meter swordfish from the genus Xiphias, swimming…†   (source)
  • VIRAG: (Prompts in a pig's whisper) Insects of the day spend their brief existence in reiterated coition, lured by the smell of the inferiorly pulchritudinous fumale possessing extendified pudendal nerve in dorsal region.†   (source)
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