All 9 Uses
writhe
in
Sea Wolf
(Auto-generated)
- It was a strength we are wont to associate with things primitive, with wild animals, and the creatures we imagine our tree-dwelling prototypes to have been—a strength savage, ferocious, alive in itself, the essence of life in that it is the potency of motion, the elemental stuff itself out of which the many forms of life have been moulded; in short, that which writhes in the body of a snake when the head is cut off, and the snake, as a snake, is dead, or which lingers in the shapeless lump of turtle-meat and recoils and quivers from the prod of a finger.†
Chpt 2writhes = moves in a twisting or contorted motion
- He wrenched and writhed about convulsively.†
Chpt 2 *writhed = moved in a twisting or contorted motion
- He lifted into the air, described a short curve, and struck the deck alongside the corpse on his head and shoulders, where he lay and writhed about in agony.†
Chpt 3
- As I writhed about I could see in his eyes that curiosity I had so often noted, that wonder and perplexity, that questing, that everlasting query of his as to what it was all about.†
Chpt 9
- For all his pragmatic certitude, it seemed as if he watched the play and movement of life in the hope of discovering something more about it, of discerning in its maddest writhings a something which had hitherto escaped him,—the key to its mystery, as it were, which would make all clear and plain.†
Chpt 12
- Knots and ridges and mounds of muscles writhed and bunched under the skin.†
Chpt 15writhed = moved in a twisting or contorted motion
- Then the three writhed together in a swaying tangle, struggling, sliding, and falling into the arms of their mates on the crosstrees.†
Chpt 21
- He was in the same position in which I had left him, and his head was rocking—almost writhing—from side to side.†
Chpt 26writhing = moving in a twisting or contorted motion
- His face strove to compose itself, writhing and twisting in the effort till he broke down again.†
Chpt 33
Definitions:
-
(1)
(writhe) to move in a twisting or contorted motion -- often of a person when struggling or in pain
- (2) (meaning too rare to warrant focus)