All 50 Uses of
abrupt
in
Atlas Shrugged
- When he rose abruptly, without apology, they rose, too, accepting it as a command.†
Chpt 1.3abruptly = suddenly and unexpectedly
- He turned abruptly, took out his handkerchief and dipped it in the water of the river.†
Chpt 1.5
- She started running down the hill to meet him, but stopped abruptly.†
Chpt 1.5
- He had been silent for a long time, when she rose abruptly and told him that she had to go.†
Chpt 1.5
- But the smile vanished abruptly; he saw the entrance of a new guest: it was Dagny Taggart.†
Chpt 1.6
- He turned abruptly and started toward his car.†
Chpt 1.7
- It was past midnight, when, still sitting at his desk, bent over blueprints of the bridge for the John Galt Line, he stopped his work abruptly, because emotion reached him in a sudden stab, not to be escaped any longer, as if a curtain of anesthesia had broken, He slumped down, halfway, still holding onto some shred of resistance, and sat, his chest pressed to the edge of the desk to stop him, his head hanging down, as if the only achievement still possible to him was not to let his head drop down on the desk.†
Chpt 1.7
- By pressing her face to the pane, she could see the whole of the Taggart Building, its lines converging abruptly to its distant pinnacle in the sky.†
Chpt 1.8
- Instead, she saw the shadow jerk abruptly, as if he were jolted backward, then he turned and walked away.†
Chpt 1.8
- Trees and telegraph poles sprang into sight abruptly and went by as if jerked back.†
Chpt 1.8
- He turned to her abruptly, the words exploding as if a safety fuse had blown.†
Chpt 1.9
- He picked up his drink, took a gulp, and chuckled abruptly at a sudden recollection.†
Chpt 1.9
- He refilled his glass and drained it, but his gaiety vanished abruptly.†
Chpt 1.9
- Then his smile vanished abruptly; the way he jerked the cru-fin was the first break in the smooth competence of his movements: it looked like a jolt of anger.†
Chpt 1.9
- The road ended abruptly behind the turn of a hill.†
Chpt 1.9
- He rose abruptly, but stopped to glance down at the broken remnant and said, with a chuckle that was not gay, "There was the motor for the John Galt Line."†
Chpt 1.9
- When I went to college—" He broke off abruptly.†
Chpt 1.10
- Today, if you saw the kind of men I've had to interview, you'd—" He stopped abruptly, as if at a sudden recollection.†
Chpt 2.1
- It stopped her abruptly; she took a few seconds to realize that it was the old man at the cigar stand who had called.†
Chpt 2.2
- Francisco turned abruptly, not waiting for an answer, and started away.†
Chpt 2.2
- "I wish—" Rearden began and stopped abruptly.†
Chpt 2.2
- There were the voices abruptly choked off, the pools of silence, then sounds of a different nature; the rising, hysterical inflections of uselessly repeated questions, the unnatural whispers, a woman's scream, the few spaced, forced giggles of those still trying to pretend that nothing was happening.†
Chpt 2.2
- The secretary smiled with sudden animation, as if she were about to utter an enthusiastic compliment, but the smile vanished abruptly.†
Chpt 2.3
- Dagny found herself pushing people out of the way, fighting to reach the end of the train-but an emaciated man, with the staring eyes of years of malicious futility, rushed at her, shouting, "It's all right for you, you've got a good overcoat and a private car, but you won't give us any trains, you and all the selfish—" He stopped abruptly, looking at someone behind her.†
Chpt 2.5
- His facial muscles moved abruptly, and the movement vanished, having conveyed no expression.†
Chpt 2.6
- That's not the way to be moral—" Rearden started, and stopped abruptly, realizing that— it was the way, the only way left, realizing through how many twists of intellectual corruption upon corruption this boy had to struggle toward his momentous discovery.†
Chpt 2.6
- He vanished beyond the stone fence, as abruptly and soundlessly as he had come.†
Chpt 2.7
- Mitchum rose abruptly and walked upstairs to his office, clutching Locey's order in his hand.†
Chpt 2.7
- Abruptly, behind a turn of the road, she saw the green acres of pastures stretching to a distant farmhouse.†
Chpt 3.1
- On a distant mountainside, in the dense green of a forest, she saw a pine tree slanting down suddenly, tracing a curve, like the hand of a clock, then crashing abruptly out of sight.†
Chpt 3.1
- She rose to her feet, but stopped: she heard his voice, its tone abruptly changed and grave, as if in answer to the shock of some sight confronting him: "What's the matter?†
Chpt 3.2
- She leaped abruptly to her feet.†
Chpt 3.2
- I used to tell him that in those college years, when I'd catch him sitting on the ground in my back yard, on cold, foggy evenings-he was reckless that way, he made me worry, he should have known it was dangerous and—" He stopped abruptly; he read in Dagny's startled eyes the same thought as his own: the thought of the kind of dangers the adult Ragnar had chosen to face.†
Chpt 3.2
- The plane swooped down abruptly, but it was only the start of its final rise, it cut a swift diagonal across the mountains and shot into the open sky.†
Chpt 3.2
- "But, John!" cried Mulligan, waving his arm at the valley, "if anything happens to you, what would we—" He stopped abruptly and guiltily.†
Chpt 3.2
- Then, abruptly, he shot to his feet.†
Chpt 3.3
- It's a deal with a mission-a worthy, public-spirited mission-to manage the nationalized properties of the various People's States of South America, to teach their workers our modern techniques of production, to help the underprivileged who've never had a chance, to—" He broke off abruptly, though she had merely sat looking at him without shifting her glance.†
Chpt 3.4
- It's like on the railroad, too: I could get along with Gem Weatherby, he was civilized, but Cuffy Meigs-that's something else again, that's ...."He stopped abruptly.†
Chpt 3.4
- She stopped abruptly, as if she had admitted too much.†
Chpt 3.4
- "Ladies and gentlemen!" the voice of the radio speaker leaped forth abruptly; it had a tone of panic.†
Chpt 3.5
- Rearden turned abruptly to look off, at the city.†
Chpt 3.5
- The crane broke down at the task of loading a train; it stopped abruptly and hung still against the evening sky, between a string of empty cars and piles of suddenly immovable ore.†
Chpt 3.5
- "You're not officially supposed to hire anybody, bat that's just a technicality, if you'll put me on, my friends will okay it without any trouble and—" Something about Rearden's eyes made him stop abruptly, then ask in an angrily impatient voice, "Well, what's the matter?†
Chpt 3.5
- Then the stories vanished abruptly and the newspapers kept silent, then began to print admonitions urging people not to believe unpatriotic rumors.†
Chpt 3.5
- When he drove up to his former home, that afternoon, he stopped his car abruptly at the foot of the hill.†
Chpt 3.6
- "Are you going to let some political ideas of yours—" She saw the look on his face and stopped abruptly.†
Chpt 3.6
- But Lawson's avid pleasure at the familiar formula of self-immolation, vanished abruptly at the sound of Rearden's voice, a cold, trader's voice answering: "I do."†
Chpt 3.6
- The man waved to someone to replace him, then vanished abruptly from his post.†
Chpt 3.6
- The radio music had gone off abruptly, choking on an odd little gasp of static, cut in the middle of a ringing phrase.†
Chpt 3.7
- "It's a national emer—" Then a man came rushing toward Mr. Thompson, and she stopped, as did everyone else-and the look on the man's face swept the crowd into an abruptly total silence.†
Chpt 3.7
Definitions:
-
(1)
(abrupt as in: an abrupt change) sudden and unexpected
or (less commonly): characterized by sudden changes or at a steep angle -
(2)
(abrupt as in: she is abrupt) rude or unfriendly because of using too few words or moving too quickly