14 uses
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Definition
shockingly terrible or horrible
- Straightway, he now goes on to make a full confession; whereupon the mariners became more and more appalled, but still are pitiful.Chapters 7-9 -- The Chapel; The Pulpit; The Sermon (78% in)
- How being an anointed pilot-prophet, or speaker of true things, and bidden by the Lord to sound those unwelcome truths in the ears of a wicked Nineveh, Jonah, appalled at the hostility he should raise, fled from his mission, and sought to escape his duty and his God by taking ship at Joppa.Chapters 7-9 -- The Chapel; The Pulpit; The Sermon (89% in)
- For not only are whalemen as a body unexempt from that ignorance and superstitiousness hereditary to all sailors; but of all sailors, they are by all odds the most directly brought into contact with whatever is appallingly astonishing in the sea; face to face they not only eye its greatest marvels, but, hand to jaw, give battle to them.Chapters 40-42 -- Midnight, Forecastle; Moby Dick; The Whiteness of the Whale (25% in)
- Gnawed within and scorched without, with the infixed, unrelenting fangs of some incurable idea; such an one, could he be found, would seem the very man to dart his iron and lift his lance against the most appalling of all brutes.Chapters 40-42 -- Midnight, Forecastle; Moby Dick; The Whiteness of the Whale (55% in)
- It was the whiteness of the whale that above all things appalled me.Chapters 40-42 -- Midnight, Forecastle; Moby Dick; The Whiteness of the Whale (61% in)
- But not yet have we solved the incantation of this whiteness, and learned why it appeals with such power to the soul; and more strange and far more portentous—why, as we have seen, it is at once the most meaning symbol of spiritual things, nay, the very veil of the Christian's Deity; and yet should be as it is, the intensifying agent in things the most appalling to mankind.Chapters 40-42 -- Midnight, Forecastle; Moby Dick; The Whiteness of the Whale (97% in)
- 'The White Whale—the White Whale!' was the cry from captain, mates, and harpooneers, who, undeterred by fearful rumours, were all anxious to capture so famous and precious a fish; while the dogged crew eyed askance, and with curses, the appalling beauty of the vast milky mass, that lit up by a horizontal spangling sun, shifted and glistened like a living opal in the blue morning sea.Chapters 52-54 -- The Albatross; The Gam; The Town-Ho's Story (88% in)
- For as this appalling ocean surrounds the verdant land, so in the soul of man there lies one insular Tahiti, full of peace and joy, but encompassed by all the horrors of the half known life.Chapters 58-60 -- Brit; Squid; The Line (29% in)
- Here is a vital point; for you must either satisfactorily settle this matter with yourself, or for ever remain an infidel as to one of the most appalling, but not the less true events, perhaps anywhere to be found in all recorded history.Chapters 76-78 -- The Battering-Ram; The Great Heidelburgh Tun; Cistern and Buckets (3% in)
- Who can tell how appalling to the wounded whale must have been such huge phantoms flitting over his head!Chapters 79-81 -- The Prairie; The Nut; The Pequod Meets the Virgin (71% in)
- On the contrary, those motions derive their most appalling beauty from it.Chapters 85-87 -- The Fountain; The Tail; The Grand Armada (28% in)
- But agonizing as was the wound of this whale, and an appalling spectacle enough, any way; yet the peculiar horror with which he seemed to inspire the rest of the herd, was owing to a cause which at first the intervening distance obscured from us.Chapters 85-87 -- The Fountain; The Tail; The Grand Armada (93% in)
- For so revolvingly appalling was the White Whale's aspect, and so planetarily swift the ever-contracting circles he made, that he seemed horizontally swooping upon them.Chapters 133-135 -- The Chase--First Day; The Chase--Second Day; The Chase--Third Day (21% in)
- But ere that close limit was gained, and while yet all three boats were plain as the ship's three masts to his eye; the White Whale churning himself into furious speed, almost in an instant as it were, rushing among the boats with open jaws, and a lashing tail, offered appalling battle on every side; and heedless of the irons darted at him from every boat, seemed only intent on annihilating each separate plank of which those boats were made.Chapters 133-135 -- The Chase--First Day; The Chase--Second Day; The Chase--Third Day (45% in)
There are no more uses of "appalling" in Moby Dick.
Typical Usage
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