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Flutter   Listen
verb
Flutter  v. t.  
1.
To vibrate or move quickly; as, a bird flutters its wings.
2.
To drive in disorder; to throw into confusion. " Like an eagle in a dovecote, I Fluttered your Volscians in Corioli."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Flutter" Quotes from Famous Books



... are evil. If it were possible for human eye to discern and to detect the thoughts that flutter around the heart of an unregenerate man—to mark their hue and their multitude, it would be found that they are indeed 'evil.' We speak not of the thief, and the murderer, and the adulterer, and such like, ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot

... the Bad Lands, for the time being, was dead; and the pulses of the little town at the junction of the railroad and the Little Missouri began to flutter fitfully and ominously. Only the indomitable pluck of the Marquis and his deathless fecundity in conceiving new schemes of unexampled magnitude kept it alive at all. The Marquis's ability to create artificial respiration and to make ...
— Roosevelt in the Bad Lands • Hermann Hagedorn

... to beat out the flames, and in so doing allowed several unseared letters to flutter to the floor. One in particular arrested Zita's attention. It was a drawing, a plan of some sort, and was marked, ...
— The Master Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve and John W. Grey

... starting a gymnasium and organizing a "reading circle," and putting things generally in a whirl. He had a "voice," and he had a guitar, so that his "serenades" were famous; and he set Aunt Stanshy's heart all in a flutter one night when, awaking about twelve, she heard his well-known voice leading off in a serenade, while he twanged his guitar to the tune, "O dearest love, do you remember?" Will Somers was popular in a very short time with every body. In the club-circle he ...
— The Knights of the White Shield - Up-the-Ladder Club Series, Round One Play • Edward A. Rand

... names, that used to flutter Through your laughter unawares,— God's Divine Name ye can utter With less trembling, in ...
— The Well in the Desert - An Old Legend of the House of Arundel • Emily Sarah Holt

... instantaneous flutter pervaded the people as some word starting from the judge's stand ...
— Dave Dashaway and his Hydroplane • Roy Rockwood

... in bed, and knew that consciousness was wide awake in me once more. It had slept, and now rose refreshed, but trembling. Looking back, all in a flutter of new responsibility, along the misty path by way of which I had recently loitered, I shook with an awful thankfulness at sight of the pitfalls I had skirted and escaped—of the ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes

... copper snakes began to move around each of them in undulating motion. Then the Malay advanced a pace, and elevating his eyebrows very high and opening his eyes until they were of huge size, he nodded his head at Muzio ... and the eyelids of the corpse began to flutter, parted unevenly, and from beneath them the pupils, dull as lead, revealed themselves. With proud triumph and joy—a joy that was almost malicious—beamed the face of the Malay; he opened his lips widely, and from the very depths of his throat a prolonged ...
— A Reckless Character - And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev

... silent, musing, at the girl's side. He was fond of vistas. There was rest in them, a peace not to be found even in the twilight caverns of cathedrals; wind blowing over waters, the flutter of leaves, the bend in the grasses. To dwell in a haven like this. No care, no worry, no bother of grubbing about in one's pockets for overlooked coins, no flush of excitement! It is, after all, the homeless man who answers quickest the beckon of wanderlust. It is only when he comes into the shelter ...
— A Splendid Hazard • Harold MacGrath

... boy, and I own I am glad you were not—a man wants a daughter—I should have been quite willing to allow you your flutter on Wall Street, or your try at anything you felt you would like to handle. It would have interested me to look on and see what you were made of, what you wanted, and how you set about trying to get it. It's a new kind of deal you have undertaken. It's more romantic than Wall ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... above he heard the swishing flutter of other wings; he felt himself lifted from the floor; he was being floated out above the luminous pit by the flying things that ...
— The Finding of Haldgren • Charles Willard Diffin

... Lucerne. Devote Monday and Tuesday to doing Switzerland, and get into Rome by Thursday morning, taking the Italian lakes en route. On Friday cross to Marseilles, and from there push along to Monte Carlo. Let her have a flutter at the tables. Start early Saturday morning for Spain, cross the Pyrenees on mules, and rest at Bordeaux on Sunday. Get back to Paris on Monday (Monday is always a good day for the opera), and on Tuesday evening you ...
— The Second Thoughts of An Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome

... be fed, Come and be fed like hens and cocks; Hither and thither with delicate tread, Flutter around me in fairy flocks. Come, little fairies, from far and near; Come, little fairies, I know you can fly; Who can be dear if you are not dear? And who is so fond of a fairy ...
— Pinafore Palace • Various

... out and the acceptances came in. The English were flattered. Count Malagaski was buoyed by new hopes and the daughters were in a day-and-night flutter, for neither of them had ever come within speaking distance of the real young man of ...
— The Slim Princess • George Ade

... to her, wus you? You who knew her man wus livin'! You, as mebbe has ha'f a dozen wives livin'. You wus good to her! Wal, you're goin' to pay now. Savee? You're goin' to pay fer your flutter wi' chips, chips as drip ...
— The Night Riders - A Romance of Early Montana • Ridgwell Cullum

... somewhere on a false track. Not an easy trade! Besides that, I have one more line—that's false eyes and teeth. But it ain't a profitable line. I want to drop it. And besides I'm thinking of leaving all this business. I understand, it's all right for a young man, in the bloom of his powers, to flutter around like a moth, but once you have a wife, and may be a whole family even ..." he playfully patted the woman on the knee, from which she became scarlet and looked uncommonly better. "For the Lord has blessed us Jews with fecundity for all our ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin

... life against her death. Her life? The scum upon the pools of pleasure Breeds such by thousands. And her death? Perchance The obolus to appease the ferrying Shade, And waft her into immortality. Think what she purchased with that one heart-flutter That whispered its deep secret to my blade! For, just because her bosom fluttered still, It told me more than many rifled graves; Because I spoke too soon, she answered me, Her vain life ripened to this bud of death As ...
— Artemis to Actaeon and Other Worlds • Edith Wharton

... was as clean as snow, barbarically splendid with cut fringes and work of bead and porcupine quills. Her mien was sedate, and she swayed to her horse lightly and flexibly as a boy, holding aloft a lance edged with a flutter of feathers, and bearing a round shield of painted skins. Beside her rode the old chief, his blanket falling away from his withered body, his face expressionless and graven ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner

... joy, and consternation, Roddy swung the boat back toward the shore, and by the breadth of an oar-blade cleared the wharf. There was a cry of relief, of delight, a flutter of skirts, and Inez sprang into it. In an agony of fear for her safety, Roddy pushed her to the ...
— The White Mice • Richard Harding Davis

... The flutter of wings was round her. Little Thumbelina looked. How glad she was, for there, indeed, was the little bird she had tended and cared for so long. She told him, weeping, she must not stay. She must marry the mole and live underground, and never see ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf; a Practical Plan of Character Building, Volume I (of 17) - Fun and Thought for Little Folk • Various

... greeted Rob as he stepped out and followed Shaddy down to the fire. The clearing was one mass of glorious colour, the sky gorgeous with the sunrise tints, and the river flushed with orange, blue and gold. Birds sang, piped, and shrieked loudly, butterflies were beginning to flutter about, and a loud chattering from the nearest tree roused Rob to the fact that the puma had been following him, for it suddenly made three or four leaps in the direction of the sounds, and then crouched down to gaze at ...
— Rob Harlow's Adventures - A Story of the Grand Chaco • George Manville Fenn

... openly abide, All have laid their mirth aside, —Where is he that giddy Sprite, Blue-cap, with his colours bright, Who was blest as bird could be, Feeding in the apple-tree, Made such wanton spoil and rout, Turning blossoms inside out, Hung with head towards the ground, Flutter'd, perch'd; into a round 70 Bound himself, and then unbound; Lithest, gaudiest Harlequin, Prettiest Tumbler ever seen, Light of heart, and light of limb, What is now become of Him? Lambs, that through the mountains went Frisking, bleating merriment, When the year was in it's prime, They ...
— Poems In Two Volumes, Vol. 1 • William Wordsworth

... men impatient is to experience the monstrous unfairness of receiving the mean and vexatious reward of ingratitude from individuals who have enjoyed one's favors and greatest benefactions. Base ingratitude is extremely painful for human nature to endure. It makes the heart flutter and the blood boil with a spirit of revenge. When no alternative presents, an outburst of reviling, execration and threatening follows. Flesh and blood has not the power of restraint to enable it to remain calm when evil is returned for favors ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. II - Epiphany, Easter and Pentecost • Martin Luther

... flutter to the ground, and turned to Audrey with a kindly smile. "I am much afraid that this man of the church, whom I gave thee for guardian, child, is but a rascal, after all, and a wolf in sheep's clothing. But let him go hang while I show you ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston

... like to eat bird seed, broken corn, or any kind of grain, and enjoy that kind of food much better than bread-crumbs. They need fresh water to drink, and will bathe now and then, like a canary, if they have a bath dish large enough to flutter in. ...
— Harper's Young People, March 23, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... to flutter the ribbons on her shoulders and bare neck, and to stir the tendrils of her powdered hair, a light breeze blowing steadily from the bay as the sun went down into the crimson flood. Bang! A cloud of white ...
— The Reckoning • Robert W. Chambers

... George Eliot's pseudonyme has been too recently told to require allusion, except to point out its practical value to herself, shielding as it did her susceptibilities,—in fact, guarding like a chrysalis the first strivings, the flutter into full life, of that immortal ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, Old Series, Vol. 36—New Series, Vol. 10, July 1885 • Various

... not aware you knew Mrs. Ford," said Mrs. Markham, observing the little flutter in Julia's cheeks, and thinking there was a ...
— Bart Ridgeley - A Story of Northern Ohio • A. G. Riddle

... you have writ your annals true, 't is there That, like an eagle in a dove-cote, I Flutter'd your Volscians in Corioli: Alone I ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett

... am," says Jack. "The fact is, I'm so excited and agitated that I can't sit still anywhere for five minutes together. Ridiculous as it may appear to you, I'm in a perpetual state of nervous flutter. I can't, for the life of me, help fearing that we shall be found out. I fancy that every man who looks twice at me in the street ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Detective Stories • Various

... band which fastened the wings of the bird to the mother's heart, where did it flutter now? whither had it been wafted? The stork only had seen it. The band was the green stalk, the cup of the flower the cradle in which lay the child, that now in blooming beauty had been folded to the ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen

... my lips, and never did its sound deceive thee; never did my tongue raise the war cry, and the foe appeared not. Be warned then to beware the white man. He has fixed his serpent eye upon you, and, like the charmed bird, you flutter each moment nearer ...
— The Indian Princess - La Belle Sauvage • James Nelson Barker

... ingenious men, they had that unsettled speculative mode of conversation which is offensive to a man regularly taught at an English school and university. I found that, instead of listening to the dictates of the Sage, they had teazed him with questions and doubtful disputations. He came in a flutter to me, and desired I might come back again, for he could not bear these men. 'O ho! sir,' said I, 'you are flying to me for refuge!' He never, in any situation, was at a loss for a ready repartee. He answered, with quick vivacity, 'It is of two evils chooseing the least.' I was delighted with ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell

... down below and fetched up a pannikin of water and some biscuit. He set the water down, and breaking the biscuit sprinkled it over the white deck. Then he clapped his hands to see them all flutter and crowd round him, dipping their bright heads to the food and drink he ...
— The Field of Clover • Laurence Housman

... all the whispers that the soft winds utter Speak earthly things— There mingleth there, sometimes, a gentle flutter Of ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Susan Warner

... the watering-place supremacy which Leghorn enjoys in Italy, and which must make our quiet hotel in the season glisten and twitter and flutter with the vivid national life. The preparation includes a delightful drive by the seashore, with groves and gardens, to the city gate and indefinitely beyond it, which we one day followed as far as an old fort, where a little hotel ...
— Roman Holidays and Others • W. D. Howells

... flung the shutter, when, with many a flirt and flutter In there stepped a stately Raven of the saintly days of yore. Not the least obeisance made he; not a minute stopped or stayed he; But, with mien of lord or lady, perched above my chamber door— Perched upon a bust of Pallas ...
— Selections From American Poetry • Various

... for another way. There was none. He must run across. He scowled. Disinclination increased. He snarled: "Green ice!" He crossed then like a cat—on tiptoe and swiftly; and he came to the other side with his heart in a flutter. "Whew!" ...
— Harbor Tales Down North - With an Appreciation by Wilfred T. Grenfell, M.D. • Norman Duncan

... at the house of John Kendrick Bangs at Yonkers. When Davis's "turn" in the programme came, he announced that he would read a portion from an unpublished story written by himself. Immediately there was a flutter in the audience, particularly among the ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok (1863-1930)

... thus runs public custom. At about fifteen the girl must leave her mother's fostering care and enter the house of the stranger. The wedding is, of course, a great ceremony; and here, if nowhere else, Athenian women can surely prepare, flutter, and ordain to their heart's content. After the somewhat stiff and formal betrothal before witnesses (necessary to give legal effect to the marriage), the actual wedding will probably take place,—perhaps in a few days, ...
— A Day In Old Athens • William Stearns Davis

... others rather wanted to find fault, but it was hard, because the word "wings" raised a flutter of joyous excitement in ...
— Five Children and It • E. Nesbit

... a pony-carriage, with an aged, semi-military driver, pull up at the door, and the flutter of a veil as the vehicle passed through the entrance; and this was the only glimpse I ever caught of the little lady that dingy office called mistress. There was, however, a certain briskness in the movement ...
— Trifles for the Christmas Holidays • H. S. Armstrong

... you, Glasenapp, that it would be no end of a satisfaction to me to flutter these dove-cotes here pretty thoroughly. These people ought to be made to feel that they're dealing with somebody, after all. Who absented himself from the festivities on the emperor's birthday? Fleischer, of course. The man is simply capable of anything. He can put ...
— The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann - Volume I • Gerhart Hauptmann

... the other ladies: "Oh, let us go and see it too!" They flutter out of the drawing-room, where Mrs. Somers and Campbell remain alone together as before. He continues silent, while she ...
— Five O'Clock Tea - Farce • W. D. Howells

... was sanglant.[320] Beyond these quips and jests the Jacobins and royalists did not go. When the phrase your subjects was publicly assigned to the Corps Legislatif by its courtier-like president, Fontanes, there was a flutter of wrath among those who had hoped that the new Empire was to be republican. But it quickly passed away; and no Frenchman, except perhaps Carnot, made so manly a protest as the man of genius at Vienna, who had composed the "Sinfonia Eroica," ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose

... been sitting the last hour by myself, and have fancied that time moved not with its usual swiftness,—that the old year lingered with a sad regret, as if loath to pass away and let the new come in. Even now the midnight clock is striking,—eleven,—twelve;—the last flutter of the old year's robe is out of sight, and the new year glides in with noiseless feet, like one who enters the chamber of the dead. These are but melancholy fancies;—because I am sad myself must ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various

... the heavy door of the Bordj, and put the key in the inner pocket of my coat. As I did so, I fancied I saw the heavy black lids of the murderer's closed eyes flutter for a moment. But I cannot be sure. My head was aching with fatigue. The Spahi, too, looked stupid with sleep. He jerked the cord, the murderer awoke with a start, glanced heavily round, stood up. Pulling him as one would an obstinate dog, the Spahi made him lie down on the bare floor ...
— The Desert Drum - 1905 • Robert Hichens

... music, stole through his senses. This was a new thing. He was bewildered. He leaned a little further across the table. He found himself watching the faint blue veins of her delicate fingers, noticing the curious perfume of roses that seemed to come to him from the flutter of the lace around ...
— The Mischief Maker • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... came to them would banish any such tendency in people less kindly than the Cliffords; but their home-life meant so much to them all that they were naturally solicitous concerning one who must, from the intimate relations she would sustain, take from or add much to it. Therefore it was with a flutter of no ordinary expectancy that they waited for her appearance. The only one indifferent was Leonard's youngest boy, who, astride his grandpa's cane, was trotting quietly about, unrestricted in his gambols. Alfred had thawed out since his return from the station, ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe

... darts around him Are the power of his enchantment, Are the arrows that he uses.' "Many years, in peace and quiet, On the peaceful Star of Evening 250 Dwelt Osseo with his father; Many years, in song and flutter, At the doorway of the wigwam, Hung the cage with rods of silver, And fair Oweenee, the faithful, 255 Bore a son unto Osseo, With the beauty of his mother, With the courage of his father. "And the boy grew up and prospered, And Osseo, to delight ...
— The Song of Hiawatha - An Epic Poem • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

... fuafua for a staff, and as he did so he cursed the missionaries for meddlers and the treaty officials for crazy fools. When the flag was at last in place, Fetuao and he drew away to get a better view of it from the beach. Standing there, in silence they watched the vivid colors flaunt and flutter against the wooded hills behind, while Jack, with a seaman's instinctive reverence for the flag, bared his head, and Fetuao clapped her ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne

... news of papa's puts me all in a flutter. [Footnote: See second foot-note, page 247.] 16. What means that hand upon that breast of thine? [Footnote: See second ...
— Higher Lessons in English • Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg

... if I press the button, no less than six little, picture maids flutter to my door, each begging for the honor of fastening me up the back. How delighted Jack would be to assign them this particular honor for life. Such whispers over the wonders of a foreign-made dress as they struggle with the ...
— The Lady and Sada San - A Sequel to The Lady of the Decoration • Frances Little

... impatient she is! How she thunders at the door! This moment, Madam! How came I to double-lock myself if! What have I done with the key! Duce take the key! Dear Madam! You flutter one so! ...
— Clarissa, Volume 3 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson

... you are wrong," put in the Doctor. "I think my look-out worse than yours. Sold my practice seven years ago to flutter on the Stock Exchange. Lost my money in seven minutes, and have never had a patient since. I went to West Slocum (my old home) the other day, and found the place occupied by three Doctors, and the local Undertaker told me there was not room enough ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 103, December 31, 1892 • Various

... acting. The player in the "apron" of a Queen Anne stage resembled a drawing-room entertainer rather than a platform orator. Fine gentlemen and ladies in the boxes that lined the "apron" applauded the witticisms of Sir Courtly Nice or Sir Fopling Flutter, as if they themselves were partakers in the conversation. Actors like Colley Cibber acquired a great reputation for their natural representment of the manners of ...
— The Theory of the Theatre • Clayton Hamilton

... long drive wore to its end. The sun was golden upon Pulwick when the carriage at length drew up before the portico. Miss Sophia received them in the hall, in a state of painful flutter and timidity. She had a constitutional terror of her aunt's sharp eyes, and, though she examined her young cousins wistfully, Madeleine's unconscious air of dignity repelled her as ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle

... the library and made to sit in a most comfortable easy-chair. Miss Alicia fluttered about him with sympathy still delicately tinged with alarm. How long, how long, it had been since he had been fluttered over! Nearly forty years. Ladies did not flutter now, and he remembered that it was no longer the fashion to call them "ladies." Only the lower-middle classes spoke of "ladies." But he found himself mentally using the word again as he ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... really agitated, roused his brother magistrate, and communicated to his worship the important discovery. The Squire fell into a solemn flutter. 'We must be regular, brother Masham; we must proceed by rule; we are a bench in ourselves. Would that my clerk were here! We must send for Signsealer forthwith. I will not decide without the statutes. The law must be consulted, and it must be obeyed. The fellow hath ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli

... the village green people rushed out of all the houses in a flutter of excitement; and, at the sight of the gathering crowd, old Boitelle took to his heels, and regained his abode, while Antoine; swelling with rage, his sweetheart on his arm, advanced majestically under the staring eyes, ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant

... hear the fall of timber From distant flats and fells, The pealing of the anvils As clear as little bells, The rattle of the cradle, The clack of windlass-boles, The flutter of the crimson flags Above ...
— In the Days When the World Was Wide and Other Verses • Henry Lawson

... It was simply interest in the departure of the vessel that held her. Just the same, as it was simply interest that stirred her heart and set it a-flutter, as the sound of the ship's siren came up to her from below. And surely it was only a 'God-speed' to the departing vessel that was conveyed in the fluttering handkerchief she held out and waved, as the graceful giant passed out ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum

... that Bouille, beginning to bestir himself in the rural Cantonments eastward, is but a Royalist traitor; that Chateau-Vieux and Patriotism are sold to Austria, of which latter M. de Malseigne is probably some agent. Mestre-de-Camp and Roi flutter still more questionably: Chateau-Vieux, far from marching, 'waves red flags out of two carriages,' in a passionate manner, along the streets; and next morning answers its Officers: "Pay us, then; and we will march with you to ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle

... distinction in violent hysterics. And the next moment he was in the glass lantern, and the latticed panes gave way like tissue paper as he broke through into the open air, causing the pigeons on the roof to whirr up in a flutter of alarm. ...
— The Brass Bottle • F. Anstey

... as the breeze through the cryptomerias, And pause like long flags flapping, And dart and flutter ...
— Japanese Prints • John Gould Fletcher

... ribbons and skirt, As she flew, flirted high on the wind; The children at play, Paused to see one so gay, And all in a flutter behind. ...
— The Youth's Coronal • Hannah Flagg Gould

... II. Goldsmith, says Boswell, was silent during the narrative, because (so his kind friend supposed) he was jealous of the honour paid to the dictator. But his natural simplicity prevailed. He ran to Johnson, and exclaimed in 'a kind of flutter,' "Well, you acquitted yourself in this conversation better than I should have done, for I should have bowed and stammered through the ...
— Samuel Johnson • Leslie Stephen

... not bid you buy them, They're here, if you will try them. They like to change their cages; But for their proving sages No warrant will we utter— They all have wings to flutter. The pretty birds! Young loves to sell! ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLV. July, 1844. Vol. LVI. • Various

... spring breeze sweeps it away unawares, and the flutter of my own heart moves it as the waves move ...
— The Fugitive • Rabindranath Tagore

... is released, the switch flies up, and the unlucky bird dangles in the air by the legs. If the trapper is near he can easily release the struggling creature before it is at all injured, otherwise it will flutter itself ...
— Camp Life in the Woods and the Tricks of Trapping and Trap Making • William Hamilton Gibson

... stairs, as fast as possible. Evidently a crisis had occurred below. All the girls in their white dresses and pink or blue sashes, all the boys in their white collars of ceremony, were grouped about on the lawn, around the base of a big shade tree. Pink hair bows were a-flutter with excitement. The patent leather pumps of the boys trod upon the white slippers of the little girls in their efforts to see what ...
— The Cricket • Marjorie Cooke

... proper end of existence: intellectually he was still in the slums. In the spring of 1914 society offered the new-comer precisely what the new-comer wanted, not cut-and-dried ideas, still less a perfect civilization, but an intellectual flutter, faint and feverish no doubt, a certain receptivity to new ways of thinking and feeling, a mind at least ajar, and the luxurious tolerance of inherited wealth. Not, I suppose, since 1789 have days seemed more ...
— Pot-Boilers • Clive Bell

... reveal. A few yards from the gate I was stopped by one of the guard at the Barrack, who asked where I was going. "To visit a sick woman," I promptly replied, and he let me pass. Soon after this, before my heart ceased to flutter, I thought I heard some one running after me. My resolution was at once taken. I would never be caught and carried back alive. My fate was at last, I thought, in my own hands. Better die at once than to ...
— Life in the Grey Nunnery at Montreal • Sarah J Richardson

... ladies sit to interview aspiring telephone debutantes, one stands in a dim golden glow, among great fluted pillars and bowls of softly burning radiance swung (like censers) by long chains. Occasionally there is an airy flutter, a bell clangs, bronze doors slide apart, and an elevator appears, in charge of a chastely uniformed priestess. Lights flash up over this dark little cave which stands invitingly open: UP, they say, LOCAL 1-13. The door-sill of the cave shines with a row of golden beads (small lights, to guide ...
— Pipefuls • Christopher Morley

... In a very agreeable flutter I left my room and, descending the stairs, passed the Count's door very much at my leisure. There was just a chance that the beautiful songstress might emerge. I dropped my stick on the lobby, near their door, and you may be sure it took me some little ...
— The Room in the Dragon Volant • J. Sheridan Le Fanu

... beings clustered on the pier-head, and at the large doorways of the warehouse which stood open on the steamer wharf. As the big ship slowly backed out there was a fluttering of handkerchiefs from the mass on the pier, and an answering flutter from those who crowded along the bulwarks of the steamer. The tug slowly pulled the prow of the vessel round, and at last the engines of the steamship began their pulsating throbs—throbs that would vibrate night and day until the steamer reached an older civilization. The crowd on the pier became ...
— A Woman Intervenes • Robert Barr

... is a prayer: no boast Or ruin of sunset makes the wan world wroth; Here, through the twilight, like a pale flower's ghost, A drowsy flutter, flies the tiger-moth; And dusk spreads darkness ...
— Poems • Madison Cawein

... Brer Rabbit bad ez he kin, so he cotch 'im by de behime legs en slung 'im right in de middle er de brier-patch. Dar wuz a considerbul flutter whar Brer Rabbit struck de bushes, en Brer Fox sorter hang 'roun' fer ter see w'at wuz gwineter happen. Bimeby he hear somebody call 'im, en way up de hill he see Brer Rabbit settin' cross-legged on a chinkapin log koamin' de pitch outen his har wid a chip. Den Brer Fox know dat he bin swop ...
— Reveries of a Schoolmaster • Francis B. Pearson

... room. "Let's see! It must be some time now—practically ever since the wreck. It must be about six weeks. Yes; she came just before I left to take on this job—the week of the Graydown Meetings." Bunny's eyes kindled at the memory. "We had some sport the day she came, I remember; quite a little flutter. In fact we soared so high that I thought we were going to create a sensation, and then"—Bunny whistled dramatically—"down we came with a rush, and I was broke!" He began to laugh. "It's rather a shame to tell you, isn't it? But you ...
— Charles Rex • Ethel M. Dell

... found himself watching the laundresses on the shore. They were the usual shrill, shrewd, and laughing line—the trade seems to induce high mirth—and as such no bait for the old merchant by ordinary; but just now the sun and breeze together made a bright patch of them, set them at a provoking flutter. Baldassare, prickly with dust, found them like their own cool linen hung out to dance itself dry in the wind. Most of all he noticed Vanna, whom he knew well enough, because when she knelt upright she was taller and more wayward than the rest, and because the ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett

... my tent and looking carelessly about, my attention was attracted by what I took to be a leaf flutter down close to the above-mentioned bamboo, and to my surprise disappear before it reached the ground. Wondering at this, I got up and approached the place, when from the aforementioned hole in the bamboo out darted a little bird; and looking in I saw a neat ...
— The Nests and Eggs of Indian Birds, Volume 1 • Allan O. Hume

... immoderate affection subjected her, when early one morning the appearance of a traveller on the lonely mountain-road, revived hopes which had begun to sink into listless despair. There was no sign of Saxon subjugation about the stranger. At a distance she could see the flutter of the belted-plaid that drooped in graceful folds behind him, and the plume that, placed in the bonnet, showed rank and gentle birth. He carried a gun over his shoulder, the claymore was swinging by his side with its usual ...
— Chronicles of the Canongate • Sir Walter Scott

... four feet long or over, the sport of landing so gamey a fish can be realized. When hooked, he invariably turns golden. The idea of the series of leaps is to rid himself of the hook, and the man who has made the strike must be of iron or decadent if his heart does not beat with an extra flutter when he beholds such gorgeous fish, glittering in golden mail and shaking itself like a stallion in each mid-air leap. 'Ware slack! If you don't, on one of those leaps the hook will be flung out and twenty feet away. No slack, and away he will ...
— The Cruise of the Snark • Jack London

... Louis XIII, in 1643, the little chateau of Versailles was abandoned as a dwelling. Then followed a fall in values at Versailles and a great flutter of uncertainty among those that had followed the King there. This feeling of doubt lasted for seven years. The faces of the court favorites were turned back toward Paris, and individual fortunes were speculatively ...
— The Story of Versailles • Francis Loring Payne

... cobblestones round the base, and whitewashed them. Evidently he was a prideful little man, and liked to see things done in a seamanlike manner. And presently it became a habit with The Laird to watch night and morning, for the little pin-prick of color to flutter forth from the house on the Sawdust Pile, and if his own colors did not break forth on the instant and the little cannon boom from the cliff, he was ...
— Kindred of the Dust • Peter B. Kyne

... gold-flecked eyes smiling frankly and trustfully into his, pulling off her gloves and disclosing, in almost disconcerting intimacy, her warm wrists and hands. Was he dreaming, as he sometimes did, in broad daylight, of a queer heaven in which he was strong like other men and felt the flutter of wings upon his cheek? Something soft was in his hand. Mechanically he began to stuff it up his sleeve. It was his napkin. Zora's laugh brought him to ...
— Septimus • William J. Locke

... He passed under the archway, and found himself in a curious cul-de-sac, that was apparently occupied by a French Laundry, as a perfect network of clothes-lines was stretched across from house to house, and there was a flutter of white linen in the morning air. He walked right to the end, and knocked at a little green house. After some delay, during which every window in the court became a blurred mass of peering faces, the door was opened by a rather rough-looking foreigner, who asked ...
— Lord Arthur Savile's Crime and Other Stories • Oscar Wilde

... resolution she could take, in the present flutter of her spirits, was to make the best of her way to London, where she thought she might find an asylum in the house of a female relation, married to an eminent physician, known by the name of Kawdle. In the execution of this hasty resolve, she travelled at a ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett

... shanty and looked at the wind and water, his pulses all a-flutter between the strong brandy and the wonderful gold in his pocket; and as he watched the veering of the pine-boughs to see which way they moved, their moaning seemed to be the voice of his widowed mother by her kitchen fire that day, saying, "He is in trouble. Where is ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend

... Simpson was to point out several times later) Mentone on its left hand and Monte Carlo on its right. A long winding path led up through its garden of olives to the front door, and through the mimosa trees which flanked this door we could see already a flutter of white aprons. The staff was on the loggia waiting to ...
— The Sunny Side • A. A. Milne

... train, and a young man—a friend of Raye's—having met them at the door, all four entered the registry-office together. Till an hour before this time Raye had never known the wine-merchant's wife, except at that first casual encounter, and in the flutter of the performance before them he had little opportunity for more than a brief acquaintance. The contract of marriage at a registry is soon got through; but somehow, during its progress, Raye discovered a strange and secret gravitation ...
— Life's Little Ironies - A set of tales with some colloquial sketches entitled A Few Crusted Characters • Thomas Hardy

... our last bell was ringing she moved off down the bay. Then we backed slowly out in the same fashion, and, although we had not the advantage of seeing ourselves, we saw a great sight on the wharf, which was covered with people, ringing with cheers, and white with the flutter ...
— In a Steamer Chair And Other Stories • Robert Barr

... will," she answered him, and he was at a loss to know if she really did flutter to him a fraction of an inch as he had suspected her of doing in his car on the night of her debut on Broadway. The charm of Kentucky girls is composed of many illusions and realities, which they themselves hardly understand, ...
— Blue-grass and Broadway • Maria Thompson Daviess

... and dashing, that Grandmamma looked up from the knitting she was trying to fancy she was doing in her arm-chair by the fire, and Grandpapa put down his five days' old newspaper which he was reading by the window, with a curious flutter of sudden hope all through them, notwithstanding their ...
— "Us" - An Old Fashioned Story • Mary Louisa S. Molesworth

... are to get the lozenges at Squire's in Oxford Street, and be sure to ask for the Vade mecum lozenges. She is all in a flutter about the hounds. She says she hopes John will do nothing of the kind because of the expense; but we all know that she would like him to have them. The subscription is not very good, only L1500, and it would cost him ever so much a year. But everybody ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope

... was very full. It was not the usual flutter and terror of an eloping girl. Eustacie was a fearless little being, and her conscience had no alarms; her affections were wholly with Berenger, and her transient glimpses of him had been as of something come out of a region higher, tenderer, stronger, purer, more trustworthy than that where ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge

... Baby! You look quite ruffled. I was only pulling your leg: the pink-cheeked girls don't really flutter round, they run away in terror at your scowl. You know he can scowl, Lorraine. At least it isn't exactly a scowl; it'smore a cast-iron solemnity of such degree that it has a Medusa-like effect and freezes the poor little peach-blossom girls ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page

... he comes, loading his gun; Look out for the partridges—hush! there is one! Poor victim! a bang, and a flutter—'tis o'er,— And those fair dappled wings shall expand nevermore; It was shot for our invalid sister at home, Yet we sigh as beneath the tall ...
— Canadian Wild Flowers • Helen M. Johnson

... useless; but on looking over the side I observed cat's-paws playing on the surface of the ocean. Now they appeared, now they vanished, but as yet we had not felt the slightest breath of wind. Presently, however, I saw the dog-vane rise and flutter slightly; ...
— The Young Llanero - A Story of War and Wild Life in Venezuela • W.H.G. Kingston

... away from his friend, from the low fort and the weather-beaten stockade, and resolutely denied himself the pain of looking back to catch the last flutter of the Union Jack as the long rise of land dipped toward the south. How often had he strained his eyes to see that symbol of his country as he returned from the various forays and hunting trips! But duty called! This was the only thought that he dared allow himself—and his sister, ...
— A Man of Two Countries • Alice Harriman

... burrows among the roots of the thorn. Twice a cock-pheasant uttered a drowsy, raucous crow, and there was a blundering of unseen feathery bodies among the spruce, while, when this ceased, he heard a water-hen flutter with feet splashing across a hidden pool. Then heavy stillness followed, intensified by the clamor of a beck which came foaming down the side of a fell until, clattering loudly, wood-pigeons, neither asleep nor wholly awake, drove out against the sky, wheeled and fell clumsily into ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss

... with which a well-bred woman prepares to condole with a person of her acquaintance upon a bereavement. All these little details I perceived in a moment, and also the shrug of M. Termonde's shoulders, the quick flutter of his eyelids, the rapidly-dismissed expression of disagreeable surprise which my sudden appearance called forth. But what then? Was it not the same with myself? I could have sworn that at the same moment he experienced sensations exactly similar ...
— Stories of Modern French Novels • Julian Hawthorne

... little time I observed the noise and flutter of wings to increase very fast, and my box was tossed up and down like a sign in a windy day. I heard several bangs or buffets, as I thought, given to the eagle (for such I am certain it must have been, that held the ring of my box in his beak), and then all ...
— Gulliver's Travels - Into Several Remote Regions of the World • Jonathan Swift

... boys even grazed him but there was little room to spare and the wind of the two wheels caused his coat to flutter violently and almost took off ...
— The Hilltop Boys - A Story of School Life • Cyril Burleigh

... their right to be out of their own tree. He came near them, alighted, and began to hop still closer. Not in the least startled by his threatening manner, the nearest youngster looked at him, and began to flutter his wings, to call, and to move toward him, as if expecting to be fed. This was too much even for a ...
— Little Brothers of the Air • Olive Thorne Miller

... Gazette,—one would look in vain, in the barren columns of that journal, for any intelligence of an incident, in 1782, which, from the celebrity in after-life of the chief actor, and the local repute of the reigning belle of the day, must have caused a flutter among the F. F. Q. of the period. We mean the tender attachment of Horatio (Lord) Nelson, commanding H. M. frigate Albemarle, 28 guns then in port,—his romantic admiration for Miss Mary Simpson, the youthful ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine

... seized the proffered hands, and, shaking them cordially, said with an energy which caused Alexander's heart to flutter, "Come, the world is ours!" He conducted Alexander quickly and silently to the round-table in the middle of the pavilion, on which several rolls of paper were lying. Unfolding the largest, and spreading it on the table, he said, "Sire, look here. This is a map of the world. ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach

... received Mrs. Redmain's card, inviting her with her husband to an evening party, it raised in her a bewildered flutter—of pleasure, of fear, of pride, of shyness, of dismay: how dared she show her face in such a grand assembly? She would not know a bit how to behave herself! But it was impossible, for she had no dress fit to go anywhere! What ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald

... house was theirs till Christmas; between this and then he would think about it. He could very well afford to keep the house on till next Midsummer, and then they might see what had best be done. There was plenty of money, and Priscilla need not put herself into a flutter. In answer to that word flutter, Priscilla ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope

... collect some sticks for the fire, the boy fetched his bow, and shot at a bird that was just flying towards its nest. But he had not taken proper aim, and the bird was only wounded, and fluttered along the ground. The boy ran to catch it, but though he ran very fast, and the bird seemed to flutter along very slowly, he never could quite come up with it; it was always just a little in advance. But so absorbed was he in the chase that he did not notice for some time that he was now deep in the forest, in a place where he had never been before. Then he felt it would be foolish ...
— The Crimson Fairy Book • Various

... naive and simple, not alone for the innocent conceits that flutter round the curly heads of children, but also for the legend, the folk song, the tales of the world of marvel and mystery. The sense of the marvellous is in the child the first form of that sense of the infinite without which ...
— The Simple Life • Charles Wagner

... a flutter of her skirts, she had vanished from the room, smiling and self-reliant and very, very smug. To her belief, she had borne down the ignorant oppression of the unbeliever; she had given testimony to her indomitable confidence in her new creed; she ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray

... serious manner, there were few of us whose hearts did not flutter responsively to this surmise, for the danger became every minute more imminent, and we knew what a terrific surf there must be then running on the shingle beach. But we now rapidly approached the shore; we were ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat

... his ANNIE tremble and he saw his ANNIE start, Her changing colour trumpeted the flutter at her heart; Young GILBERT'S manly bosom rose and sank with jealous fear, And he said, "O gentle ANNIE, what's ...
— More Bab Ballads • W. S. Gilbert

... property of charm. Such women, he knew, stirred life profoundly, reanimating it with extraordinary efforts and desires. Their mere passage, the pressure of their fingers, were more imperative than the life service of others; the flutter of their breath could be more tyrannical that the most ...
— Wild Oranges • Joseph Hergesheimer

... they here forbidden to teach them other truths before they be baptized? This text as fairly denieth to the unbaptized believer heaven and glory. Nay, our author, in the midst of all his flutter about this 28th of Matthew, dare venture to gather no more therefrom, but that it may be strongly supposed. Behold therefore, gentle reader, the ground on which these brethren lay the stress of their separation from their fellows, is nothing else but a supposition, without ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... scarecrow image that had been stuck up by a freakish joker in a London street. The respectability that still clung to him made him the more ludicrous. His clothes were the ruined cast-offs of a middle-class tradesman, and over them he wore his old masters gown. It did not flutter out behind now, but lay dank and heavy along his sides like the wings of a ...
— The Dark House • I. A. R. Wylie

... driver now turned their gaze beyond the lion-headed gateway to the winding walk that passed among the trees up to the old mansion house. Far off, through the great columns of the trees, there might indeed this morning now be seen the flutter of a gown of white. The faint sound of voices might be heard. Mary Ellen, conscientious marketer, was discussing joints and salads with her aunt. And then Mary Ellen, deliberately tying the strings of her bonnet under her chin, turned, answering her aunt's summons for replevin of a forgotten ...
— The Girl at the Halfway House • Emerson Hough

... was so mild, and the sun shone into the house so pleasantly, that Mrs Enderby had been permitted to leave her chamber, and establish herself for the day in the drawing-room. There she was found in a flutter of pleasure at the change of scene. Matilda's canary sang in the sunshine; Philip had filled the window with flowering plants for his mother, and the whole room was fragrant with his hyacinths. The little Greys had sent Mrs Enderby ...
— Deerbrook • Harriet Martineau

... sun embraces the earth with fervor and determination. How his beams pour into the woods till the mould under the leaves is warm and emits an odor! The waters glint and sparkle, the birds gather in groups, and even those unwont to sing find a voice. On the streets of the cities, what a flutter, what bright looks and gay colors! I recall one preeminent day of this kind last April. I made a note of it in my notebook. The earth seemed suddenly to emerge from a wilderness of clouds and chilliness into one of these blue sunlit spaces. How the voyagers rejoiced! Invalids came forth, ...
— A Year in the Fields • John Burroughs

... swinging the hands in a vertical plane pivoting at the elbows and/or shoulders (depending on the magnitude of the handwave); alternatively, holding the forearms in one position while rotating the hands at the wrist to make them flutter. In context, the gestures alone can suffice as a remark; if a speaker makes an outrageously unsupported assumption, you might simply wave your hands in this way, as an accusation, far more eloquent than words could express, that ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0

... down, I think she did not quite know what to do with me; or she might think that I was dull; or she might have work to do in which I hindered her; for she called Phillis, and bade her put on her bonnet, and go with me to the Ashfield, and find father. So we set off, I in a little flutter of a desire to make myself agreeable, but wishing that my companion were not quite so tall; for she was above me in height. While I was wondering how to begin our conversation, she took up ...
— Cousin Phillis • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

... pipes, they hurried to oppose our progress, but it was too late. Our footing was obtained in their impregnable fortress, and, exulting in our success, we dashed on. Still the Dutchmen fought very bravely. As I kept by Mr Johnson's side I observed the flutter of some white dresses just before us. They were those of ladies, I guessed, who had been sent to the fort for security, and who now, taken by surprise, were endeavouring to make their escape from us. Not knowing where they were ...
— Marmaduke Merry - A Tale of Naval Adventures in Bygone Days • William H. G. Kingston

... of hay bound on the top of their yoke with a log chain, and each attended by a driver, with a handspike on his shoulder, marching by their side, emerged one after another from the woods, and came filing up the road towards the spot where he stood. As the long column approached, Elwood, with a flutter of the heart, recognized in the driver most in advance, the erect, stalwart figure and the proud and haughty ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson

... from Jayadeva, when the sound of an angry pair of slippers was heard approaching rapidly. They were the familiar footsteps of his father, Haribar Mukerji, and Hemanta, not knowing what it meant, was in a flutter ...
— The Hungry Stones And Other Stories • Rabindranath Tagore

... ravage our fields and desolate our orchards, and from whose successful inroads, nothing but the birds can ever protect us. Think of it, ye who can enjoy no music made by these winged choristers of the skies, except that of their agonizing screams, as they fall before your well-aimed weapons, and flutter out their innocent lives before your heartless gaze! Drive away as fast and as far as you please, from your cruel premises, all the little birds that you cannot destroy, and then find, if you can, those who will sympathize with you, when the caterpillars weave their destroying webs ...
— Langstroth on the Hive and the Honey-Bee - A Bee Keeper's Manual • L. L. Langstroth

... introduction to the evening readings as this had ever happened before in all Mrs. Armadale's experience as a listener. She looked up from the sofa in a flutter of curiosity, and besought her reverend friend to favor ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins

... he went back to the barn all in a tremble, his hands shaking like an aspen and his heart in a flutter. ...
— The Evolution of Dodd • William Hawley Smith

... the day advanced there were some bright streaks in the dull gray of the leaden sky, and the excellence of concrete pavements was shown, as they were free from mud, and the slosh was soon trodden into water, which ran off in the gutters. The flags, which had clung to the staffs, began to dry and flutter in the breeze. Nearly every house was decked with bunting, while upon many the most artistic designs of decorative art were displayed. Upon the broad sidewalks of Pennsylvania Avenue a living tide of humanity—men, women, and children—flowed toward the Capitol, pausing now and then to gaze ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore

... fitness to become a master over sheep. Here were two fair samples of men out of the world's assorted stock—himself and Reid. One of them, deliberate, calm, assured of his way, but with little in his hand; the other a grig that could reel and spin in the night-lights, and flutter to a merry tune. ...
— The Flockmaster of Poison Creek • George W. Ogden

... said, "I think things are quite complicated enough as they are. I am in a flutter all day long, as it is, about your mission here and your real identity. I simply could not include ...
— The Zeppelin's Passenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... scene, she played "at him." He repaid this tribute by distorting his face in agony when Camille was light-hearted, and by breaking into noiseless merriment as her woes were causing handkerchiefs to flutter throughout the audience. When we went to visit her next day, as we often did, she scarcely ever failed to reproach him in some such fashion as: "Ah, Meester Fielt, why will you seet in the box and talk ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson

... her hands and rushes from the room, overturning several chairs in her course toward the door. Ashley remains staring after her, while a succession of impetuous rings make themselves heard from the street door. There is a sound of opening it, and then a flutter of skirts and anxieties, and Miss Garnett ...
— The Daughter of the Storage - And Other Things in Prose and Verse • William Dean Howells

... only after her father had broken the news to her. He had not asked her consent; he had told her, in a flutter of pride, that this thing must be, and for her country's sake. She came to me, in the short dusk, upon the terrace overlooking the Taravo. She was of heart too heroic to linger out our agony. In the dusk she stretched out both hands—ah, God, the child ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine

... remarkable. The elegant interesting figure of the woman, the fop with his hat in the air, the bully with the big sword, the man with the blunderbuss, and the bewildered rustic, to say nothing of the muffled figures on the coach, make up a perfect play. There seems a flutter over all; it is like, as it was intended to be, ...
— Pickwickian Manners and Customs • Percy Fitzgerald

... scan, And learn from HOWARD what man owes to man! These, Virtue! are thy triumphs, that adorn Fitliest our nature, and bespeak us born For loftier action; not to gaze and run From clime to clime; nor flutter in the sun, Dragging a droning flight from flower to flower, Like summer insects in a gaudy hour; Nor yet o'er love-sick tales with fancy range, And cry—'Tis pitiful, 'tis wondrous strange! 100 But on life's varied views to look around, And raise expiring sorrow from ...
— The Poetical Works of William Lisle Bowles, Vol. 1 • William Lisle Bowles

... to peer more sharply. What was the child—"She's climbing a tree!" breathed Aunt Olivia in undisguised astonishment. Even as she breathed it, there came to her faintly the snapping of twigs and flutter of leaves. Then all was quite still, but she could discern with her pair of trusty Plummer eyes two long legs ...
— Rebecca Mary • Annie Hamilton Donnell

... the railroad you may still travel by diligence in Germany, and rumble along the roads in its stuffy interior. As you pass through a village the driver blows his horn, old and young run out to enjoy the sensation of the day, the geese cackle and flutter from you in the dust, you catch glimpses of a cobble-stoned market-place, a square church-tower with a stork's nest on its summit, Noah's Ark-like houses with thatched or gabled roofs, tumble-down balconies, and outside staircases of wood. Sometimes when ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick

... lady, and would have deemed it the height of absurdity that a man with a great black beard should have any such name. We fall into the midst of a quiet family: we drop like a stone, say, into a pool,—we are perfectly compact and cool, and little know the flutter and excitement we make there, disturbing the fish, frightening the ducks, and agitating the whole surface of the water. How should Harry know the effect which his sudden appearance produced in this little, quiet, sentimental family? He ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray

... acting, who above all makes it apparent in her personality and her achievements that the soul can be sufficient to itself and can exist without taking on a burden of the fever or dulness of other lives, there is a flutter of vague discontent among the mystified and bothered rank and file, and we are apprised that she is "cold." That is what happened in ...
— Shadows of the Stage • William Winter

... firm belief in reincarnation which sent the Celtic warrior laughing to his death; but in the traditions of the peasantry, abounding with nature myths, sorcerers still haunt their mountain caves, fairies and May maidens still flutter about their ...
— The Counts of Gruyere • Mrs. Reginald de Koven

... admitted that the members of the committee were men of character. But human nature was very complex. Even Professors might be misled by the desire for notoriety. Like moths, we all love best to flutter in the light. Heavy-game shots liked to be in a position to cap the tales of their rivals, and journalists were not averse from sensational coups, even when imagination had to aid fact in the process. Each member of the committee had his own motive for making the most of his results. ('Shame! ...
— The Lost World • Arthur Conan Doyle

... she cried," admitted the Tin Owl. "For my part, I'll have to give up the notion of marrying Nimmie Amee, but I'll try not to let that make me unhappy. If it's my duty, I'd like to do my duty, but if magic prevents my getting married I'll flutter along all by myself and be ...
— The Tin Woodman of Oz • L. Frank Baum

... he rattles! see, see, see, there are his eyes! ugh! there's his tongue! now he darts out his head and neck! Heavens! what malignant rage and ferocity. Keep back, girls! don't be too curious to see! Thrust him again! How he makes the bush flutter! how his eyes shoot around! how his tongue darts in and out—and whir-r-r-r-r-r—how his rattles shake. Now he comes out, head up, tongue out, eyes like coals of fire—give him the stones now—a full battery of them! Halloo! what's ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 5. May 1848 • Various

... framed in the soft light shining through the doorway, looking out at him. He waved his hand. He saw her hand flutter ...
— Spring Street - A Story of Los Angeles • James H. Richardson

... any one desire better than two such sons?" thought Christina, as for the first time for eighteen years she crossed the wild ravine where her father had led her, a trembling little captive, longing for wings like a dove's to flutter home again. Who would then have predicted that she should descend after so long and weary a time, and with a gallant boy on either side of her, eager to aid her every step, and reassure her at each giddy pass, all joy and hope before her and them? ...
— The Dove in the Eagle's Nest • Charlotte M. Yonge

... most elaborate. After the oysters, came a fish nearly three feet long all done up in sea-weed, then a big silver bowl was brought in covered with pie-crust. When the carver broke the crust there was a flutter of wings, and "four and twenty black birds" flew out. This it seems was done by the Japanese cook as a sample of his skill. All sorts of queer courses followed, served in the most unique ...
— Lady of the Decoration • Frances Little

... to the end, and at the end it was accepted. When Sir John's name was mentioned—when the interview in the library of the great London house was briefly touched upon—Jack saw the flutter of a small lace pocket-handkerchief, and at no other time. The slate was wiped clean, and it almost seemed that Jocelyn preferred it thus with the scratches upon it where the ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman

... whirring partridge, from a branchy holm Beheld him, as beneath the turf he plac'd His son's lamented body, and with joy Flutter'd his feathers; while his chirping song Proclaim'd his gladness: then the only bird Known of his kind, in elder days unseen; But lately cloth'd with feathers, through the crime Flagitious, Daedalus, of thee! To thee, Thy sister, witless how his fate was doom'd, Her son committed for instructing ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid



Words linked to "Flutter" :   flap, wink, thump, flit, flicker, waver, disruption, hurry, tumult, flapping, hoo-ha, move back and forth, travel rapidly, earthquake, storm centre, beat, pound, disorder, incident, move, uproar, stir, turmoil, upheaval, flutter kick, arrhythmia, splash, cardiac arrhythmia, garboil, to-do, bat, flitter, movement, nictitate, commotion, wave, speed, tumultuousness, palpitate, storm center, motion, fleet, motility, hoo-hah, nictate, kerfuffle, disturbance, tempest, quiver, dart, butterfly, hurly burly, blink, fluttering, undulation



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