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Red light   Listen
noun
Red light  n.  
1.
An electrically operated set of lights at a road intersection which has different lights visible to traffic from different directions, designed to control vehicle traffic through the intersection. Each set of lights typically has a colored red light and also green and amber lights; the color of the light which is lighted at any one time changes automatically to control the flow of traffic through the intersection, allowing flow from different directions in alternating succession. Also called traffic light, traffic signal or stop light. When the red light is illuminated the signal means to stop; green means to go; and amber means to stop or procede through the intersection with caution. In simple intersections of two roads, a red light visible to traffic on one road will usually be accompanied by a green light visible to traffic on the intersecting road. In some locations the lights may be set to be illuminated in other sequences or combinations; a blinking red light is typically equivalent to a "stop" sign, and a blinking amber light typically means "procede with caution".
2.
The condition of a traffic light when the signal visible to the driver of a vehicle is red, signalling that the vehicle must stop and not enter the intersection; I got seven red lights on the way to work.
3.
Figuratively, a sign or signal that one must stop doing what one is presently doing; as, a fatal side effect is often a red light to continuation of a clinical trial.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Red light" Quotes from Famous Books



... liquid metal-flames writhing in tortuous streams through the sand; wide caldrons filled with boiling fire, over which bent ghastly wretches stirring the strange brewing; and through all, crowds of half-clad men, looking like revengeful ghosts in the red light, hurried, throwing masses of glittering fire. It was like a street in Hell. Even Deborah muttered, as she crept through, "looks like t' Devil's place!" It did,—in more ways ...
— Life in the Iron-Mills • Rebecca Harding Davis

... residences, perched on the hillside; and to the west of it, its formidable but unpicturesque-looking forts, scientifically placed on heights commanding the entrance to the Solent. On the right, at the end of a long spit of sand, were the red light-houses, and the castle, and newly erected batteries of Hurst, such as no hostile fleet would dare to encounter; outside of which could be distinguished, by the broken water, the dangerous shoal of the Shingles, well marked also by its ...
— The Three Admirals • W.H.G. Kingston

... said Germain, blowing like a forge-bellows. In a moment, the flame shot up, cast a red light at first, and finally rose in bluish flashes under the branches of the oaks, struggling with the mist, and gradually drying the atmosphere for ten ...
— The Devil's Pool • George Sand

... all around our paths, if but our watchful eyes Can trace it 'midst familiar things, and through their lowly guise; We may find it where a hedgerow showers its blossoms o'er our way, Or a cottage-window sparkles forth in the last red light of day." ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown

... against the rock, with the flat of both bands pressed tight against it for the sake of its company; and almost at once he saw a little bright red light glowing in the distance. It might have been a hundred yards, and it might have been a mile away below him; it was perfectly impossible to judge, for ...
— King—of the Khyber Rifles • Talbot Mundy

... of screaming grape and canister and of exploding magazines. And through the middle of it all, in single file—their topmasts, yards, and cordage showing above the murk as pale and dumb as skeletons at every flare of the havoc, a white light twinkling at each masthead, a red light at the peak and the stars and stripes there with it—Farragut and his wooden ships came by ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable

... grain on her head; around her comes fluttering a flock of beautiful doves of all colours, eager to be fed. Behind is a wide flat river, and across the river a stretch of ripe corn, through which a gaunt camel is being driven; the sun has set, and from the west comes a great wave of red light like wine poured out on the land, yet not crimson, as we see the Afterglow in Northern Europe, but a rich pink like that of a rose. As a study of colour it is superb, but it is difficult to feel a human interest in ...
— Miscellanies • Oscar Wilde

... revel in the Carnaby she loved. She was awakened by the howl of a wolf, and lay still shivering, until she saw the tall, dusky figure of the Canadian approach the fire and stand there as if on guard with the red light upon him. Then with a curious sense of security she went ...
— Alton of Somasco • Harold Bindloss

... night came when Lane drove a hired car out the river road, keeping ever in sight a red light in front of him. He broke the law and endangered his life by traveling ...
— The Day of the Beast • Zane Grey

... How strangely gleams through the gigantic trees The red light of the forge! Wild, beckoning shadows Stalk through the forest, ever and anon Rising and bending with the flickering flame, Then flitting into darkness! So within me Strange hopes and fears do beckon to each other, My brightest hopes giving dark fears a being As ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

... What follows? It is dowered simply with attraction. The vast mass begins to shrink, the outer portions are drawn inward. They rush and swirl in vast cyclones, thousands of miles in extent. The centre grows compact, heat is evolved by impact, as will be explained in Chapter II. Dull red light begins to look like coming dawn. Centuries go by; contraction goes on; light blazes in insufferable brightness; tornadoes, whirlpools, and tempests scarcely signify anything as applied ...
— Recreations in Astronomy - With Directions for Practical Experiments and Telescopic Work • Henry Warren

... Morning after morning I awoke to see the sunbeams glittering on the Eiger and the Jungfrau; noon after noon the snow-fields blazed beneath a steady fire; evening after evening they shone like beacons in the red light of the setting sun. Then peak by peak they lost the glow; the soul passed from them, and they stood pale yet weirdly garish against the darkened sky. The stars came out, the moon shone, but not a cloud sailed over ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds

... halted for supper at Little Cedar and hoped to reach home that evening. When I was ready to start, the tavern keeper told me that I had better stay the night, for a prairie fire was sweeping from the northwest. This was unwelcome news—but sure enough, the red light was very bright and growing more so all the time. I calculated the distance and decided to hasten on across the path of the fire before it reached the road, so I started. I had miscomputed both time and distance, so before ...
— Old Rail Fence Corners - The A. B. C's. of Minnesota History • Various

... men, nice bishops, comfortable, benevolent ladies—every man and woman on Blackwell's Island, every wretched creature living near a "red light," would gladly change places with ...
— Editorials from the Hearst Newspapers • Arthur Brisbane

... few minutes the two men stood gazing intently towards the south-west horizon. Presently a faint flash was seen, so faint that they could not be certain it was that of a signal-gun. In a few minutes, however, a thin thread of red light was seen to curve upwards into the ...
— The Floating Light of the Goodwin Sands • R.M. Ballantyne

... than it was out," I murmured. The red light poured itself along the age-polished dusky panels till the Tudor roses and lions of the gallery took colour and motion. An old eagle-topped convex mirror gathered the picture into its mysterious heart, distorting afresh the distorted ...
— Traffics and Discoveries • Rudyard Kipling

... In the red light she saw clearly now, under the round, broad-brimmed hat, the yellow face and slanting eyes of the man. Ruth did not understand it—she could not imagine why these Orientals should be here on the island. But she realized fully that the calculations ...
— Ruth Fielding on the St. Lawrence - The Queer Old Man of the Thousand Islands • Alice B. Emerson

... The cry crept out on the still night air, and the fire bells began to mug. Fred was wakened by the alarm and the red light streaming into his room. He dressed himself very quickly, and then tapped at the door ...
— The New McGuffey Fourth Reader • William H. McGuffey

... Retana's deserves quotation as an estimate of the living man by a Spanish publicist who was at the time in the employ of the friars and contemptuously hostile to Rizal, but who has since 1898 been giving quite a spectacular demonstration of waving a red light after the wreck, having become his most enthusiastic, almost hysterical, biographer: "Rizal is what is commonly called a character, but he has repeatedly demonstrated very great inexperience in the affairs of life. I believe him to be now about thirty-two years old. He is the ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal

... down after a very few moments, and, leaning forward, held out her hands to the fire. They were not pretty hands: though small and well-shaped, there was something just a little claw-like about them; but they were very white, and her almond-shaped nails, admirably manicured, gleamed in the soft red light. ...
— From Out the Vasty Deep • Mrs. Belloc Lowndes

... Nevada begins to subside in gentle undulations, and the rivers grow less rapid and yellow, on the side of a great red mountain stands Smith's Pocket. Seen from the red road at sunset, in the red light and the red dust, its white houses look like the outcroppings of quartz on the mountain side. The red stage, topped with red-shirted passengers, is lost to view half a dozen times in the tortuous descent, turning up unexpectedly in out-of-the-way ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte

... whole western portion of the city) by the North Street Postern, from which the walk winds round until it ends again at its southernly extremity in the narrow passage of Rosemary Lane. It was then twenty minutes to seven. The sun had set more than half an hour since; the red light lay broad and low in the cloudless western heaven; all visible objects were softening in the tender twilight, but were not darkening yet. The first few lamps lit in the street below looked like faint little specks of yellow light, as the captain started on his walk through one of the ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins

... fire. He could see the forms of men throwing black shadows in the red light, and as he went nearer it became known to him in some way that the ground was ...
— The Red Badge of Courage - An Episode of the American Civil War • Stephen Crane

... staring up at the cone-like top of the ancient tower in a curious, speculative fashion. Under the influence of our host's conversation I had forgotten the reasonless dread which had touched me at the moment of our arrival, but now, with the red light blazing over Sedgemoor, as if in memory of the blood which had been shed there, and with the tower of unknown origin looming above me, I became very uncomfortable again, nor did I envy Van Roon his eerie residence. The proximity of a tower of any kind, ...
— The Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer

... letters, which he had long inspected, became red, which must have been thus occasioned. Those parts of the retina which had received for some time the black letters, were so much more sensible than those parts which had been opposed to the white paper, that to the former the red light, which passed through the eyelids, was perceptible. There is a similar story told, I think, in de Voltaire's Historical Works, of a Duke of Tuscany, who was playing at dice with the general of a foreign ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. I - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin

... central pyrometer, and by colored electric lights at the furnaces, signal whether the temperatures are correct or not. It is common practice to locate three lights above each furnace-red, white and green. The red light burns when the temperature is too low, the white light when the temperature is within certain limits—for example, 20 deg.F. of the correct temperature—and the green light when the temperature ...
— The Working of Steel - Annealing, Heat Treating and Hardening of Carbon and Alloy Steel • Fred H. Colvin

... The red light flashed into the room, and in the doorway stood a tall, thin figure clad from head to foot in glittering chain armor. From behind this fierce knight, with his dark, narrow, cruel face, its deep-set eyes glistening in the light of the torches, crowded six ...
— Otto of the Silver Hand • Howard Pyle

... impression gives a light afterimage. Black becomes white and white becomes black; in the world of colors red leaves a green and green a red afterimage, yellow a blue and blue a yellow afterimage. If we look at the crimson sinking sun and then at a white wall, we do not see red light spots but green dark spots. Compared with these negative pictures, the positive afterimages are short and they last through any noticeable time only with rather intense illumination. Yet they are ...
— The Photoplay - A Psychological Study • Hugo Muensterberg

... safer there, because the charging lines must lessen speed, break ranks a little; they would not be so resistlessly borne on and over him. He was not light-headed, or he thought he was not. He lay on the rim of the gully that was now trampled into a mere trough of dust, and he looked at the red light on the rolling vapour. Where it lifted he saw, as in a pageant, war in mid-career. Sound, too, had organized. He could have beaten time to the gigantic rhythm. It rose and sank; it was made up of groaning, shouting, breathing of men, gasping, and the ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston

... explosion, not unlike the breaking of wood, yet somehow different. Clo felt a blow on the shoulder, and then a strange, heart-rending pain. She staggered, fell forward on to her knees, hanging over the window sill. But she threw the bag. A red light flamed in her eyes, not like the light of the summer day. Through the redness she thought she saw a little woman in black catch the bag and stand still, looking up. Clo tried to wave her hand, motioning "Go on—hurry!" and her lips ...
— The Lion's Mouse • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

... a match to the powder, a bright red light filled the room, and the audience, following the index-finger of the impassioned Mephisto, gazed into the placid, stupid faces of four meek little boys on ...
— Lovey Mary • Alice Hegan Rice

... fireplace where he knew the tinder-box to be kept, and then groped for and found the heap of pine knots. A moment more and the fat wood was burning brightly, casting its red light throughout the hut, and choking ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston

... red light was in the west I went down to the river, and as I paused, and looked alternately at the stars reflected and flickering in the water and at the lights in the little gypsy camp, I thought that as ...
— The Gypsies • Charles G. Leland

... ever a matter to make a man feel like stringin' rhymes, that evenin' that Crop and I spent on the lower chain of ponds, or little lakes on Bog River, was a thing of that sort. The sun threw his bright red light on the tops of the mountains away off to the East, spreading it all over the lofty peaks, like a golden shawl, while the gorges and deep valleys around their base rested in deep and solemn shadow. The loon spoke out clear, like a bugle on the lakes, and his voice went echoin' around ...
— Wild Northern Scenes - Sporting Adventures with the Rifle and the Rod • S. H. Hammond

... Werbode held my horse while I went to the side of the thane and looked at his charge. Wonderfully beautiful that young maiden seemed in the red light of the sunset, even though her face was white and her fair hair all tangled over her shoulders, and her rich dress all in tatters from the hands of the wild men. And at first I thought that she was dead. Then I minded ...
— A King's Comrade - A Story of Old Hereford • Charles Whistler

... last line of the chorus floated through the open windows, an alarm of fire sounded, followed by a jangle of bells and a rumble of patrol wagons. On going to the west window, Edith saw a blaze of red light against the sky, far in the distance, in the direction of Lone Mountain. Soon after, almost on the heels of the first, came another alarm with its attendant clangings, its cries of 'Fire!' its chatterings and conjectures, its rushing of small boys in all directions, its ...
— Marm Lisa • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... and how happy he felt that night returning to the railroad station. A long file of sleighs moved noiselessly in pairs at a gentle trot along the narrow fir-lined path of the forests, which were covered with a heavy layer of snowflakes. Some one struck a red light in the dark, and the pleasant aroma of a good cigarette was wafted toward him. Osip, the sleigh-tender, ran from sleigh to sleigh, knee-deep in snow, telling of the elks that were roaming in the deep snow, nibbling the bark of aspen trees, and of the bears emitting their warm ...
— The Awakening - The Resurrection • Leo Nikoleyevich Tolstoy

... horizon, scarcely believing that its strange hue was not really the reflection of a fire in the woods, till, with a report as of a thousand cannon crashing on all sides, and the fierce blast of a tornado, the storm was upon us. It spent itself, however, in that one blast; the red light gradually paled and died, stars peeped through the riven clouds, and the muttering thunder rolled away ...
— A Trip to Manitoba • Mary FitzGibbon

... Whitehall gate looked forth into the night, And saw o'erhanging Richmond Hill, the streak of blood-red light; Then bugle's note, and cannon's roar, the death-like silence broke, And with one start, and with one cry, the royal city woke; At once, on all her stately gates, arose the answering fires; At once the wild alarum clashed from all her reeling spires; From all the batteries ...
— The Canadian Elocutionist • Anna Kelsey Howard

... unruly followers. They, on their part, drew gradually together towards the far end of the block-house, and the low hiss of their whispering sounded in my ear continuously like a stream. One after another they would look up, and the red light of the torch would fall for a second on their nervous faces; but it was not towards me, it was towards Silver that they ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 6 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... first a hand, then a pale face appeared at the window, which, if I had seen a ghost, could not have startled me more. It was the face of Miss Kit, with the red light of the ...
— Kilgorman - A Story of Ireland in 1798 • Talbot Baines Reed

... heavily and run slowly with a large volume of steam blowing at the exhaust, the carbon points and cab lights will only show a dull red light. ...
— The Traveling Engineers' Association - To Improve The Locomotive Engine Service of American Railroads • Anonymous

... let her go. The situation had jumped at him too unexpectedly for him to know how to meet it. He stood, motionless, the red light in his eyes burning like distant camp-fires in the night. For the first time in his life he had been given the ...
— Man Size • William MacLeod Raine

... 'the first ray glitters on the sail that brings our friends up from the under world, and the last falls on that which sinks with all we love below the verge.' Even at night there is no cessation to this coming and going; only, a red light or a white, and the distant strokes of a paddle-wheel in the hush of the moonless void are then the sole signs of all this motion. What hopes and fears contend in unseen hearts under those moving stars! Is it nothing to have the opportunity to watch them from the ivied porch ...
— Some Private Views • James Payn

... madam, I say," cried the voice of the guard. Then from the garden behind came running footsteps and voices; and a red light ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson

... the first glimpse of the red light in the distance, we felt very much inclined to appreciate any thing approaching comfort, tired and dripping as we were; but what our happy Fates had in store for us, we never for a moment imagined. We ...
— Life at Puget Sound: With Sketches of Travel in Washington Territory, British Columbia, Oregon and California • Caroline C. Leighton

... and quick the bells all night rang out from Bristol town, And ere the day three hundred horse had met on Clifton down; The sentinel on Whitehall gate looked forth into the night, And saw o'erhanging Richmond Hill the streak of blood-red light: Then bugle's note and cannon's roar the death-like silence broke, And with one start, and with one cry, the royal city woke. At once on all her stately gates arose the answering fires; At once the wild alarum clashed from all her reeling spires; From all the batteries of the Tower pealed ...
— Lyra Heroica - A Book of Verse for Boys • Various

... of the marshes. Though the full force of the gale could not reach him, his long fair curls were blown across his face, and he clung determinedly to his small, round hat. For a while he watched the beam of red light, till the jagged fringe of clouds closed over it, and it was gone. Then, in the dusk, he began to feel a little frightened; but he knew his father would soon be back, and he didn't like to call him again. He listened to the waves washing, surging, beating, roaring, on the shoals beyond ...
— Earth's Enigmas - A Volume of Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts

... who took an active part in the murder, stood for some time about the conflagration; and as it threw its red light upon their fierce faces and rough persons, soiled as they now were with smoke and black streaks of ashes, the scene seemed to be changed to hell, the murderers to spirits of the damned, rejoicing over the arrival ...
— Phelim O'toole's Courtship and Other Stories • William Carleton

... other to stay behind for talk. The charm, happily, was in other things too—partly in there being scarce a spot at Weatherend without something to stay behind for. It was in the way the autumn day looked into the high windows as it waned; the way the red light, breaking at the close from under a low sombre sky, reached out in a long shaft and played over old wainscots, old tapestry, old gold, old colour. It was most of all perhaps in the way she came to him as if, since she had been turned on to deal with the simpler sort, he might, should he choose to ...
— The Beast in the Jungle • Henry James

... glowworms glittered like jewels on black velvet. The moon had gone down, and inside Ypres the light of the distant flares only glimmered faintly above the broken walls. In a tunnel of darkness voices were speaking and some one was whistling softly, and a gleam of red light made a bar across the grass. We walked toward a group of black figures, suddenly silent at ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs

... of the open, of the normal man in perfect physical health, and he ate heartily his eyes wandering out of the open window down the long, dismal street. A drunken man lay in front of the "Red Light" Saloon sleeping undisturbed; two cur dogs were snarling at each other just beyond over a bone; a movers' wagon was slowly coming in across the open through a cloud of yellow dust. That was all within the ...
— Keith of the Border • Randall Parrish

... the scrubby common, the waggoner lazy and wayworn, the dog couched on the ground, its tongue hanging out in the heat; boats drawn up on the shore at sunset; the fisher's children looking seawards, the red light full on their dresses and faces; farther back, a clump of cottages, with bait-baskets about the door, and the smoke of the evening meal coiling up into the coloured air. These things are forever with him. Beauty, which is a luxury to other men, is his daily food. Happy vagabond, ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith

... drifting clouds. The sombre waste about us; the deep violet vault overhead; those far summits, glowing with reflected rose; the deep impenetrable gloom which filled the gorge, and slowly and with vapour-like stealth climbed the mountain wall, extinguishing the red light, combined to produce an effect which may not be described; nor can I more than hint at the contrast between the brilliancy of the scene under full light, and the cold, death-like repose which followed when the wan cliffs and pallid snow were ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: Explorers • Various

... other; but they were quite sure that the words he read were these: "And lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the world!" The next thing they remembered was their walking slowly down the hill in the red light, and all at once waking up to the fact that the man was gone, they did not know when or where. But their arms were round each other's necks, and they were full of a strange awe. Then Andrew saw ...
— The Elect Lady • George MacDonald

... down the road upon which the slanting red light of the declining sun was shining, and there she saw a cloud of dust. This road was not a great thoroughfare, and she knew that was the stage, and it probably would bring ...
— Our Young Folks at Home and Abroad • Various

... the Newtonian spectrum, corresponding with Fig. 1. Sir John Herschel and Seebeck have shown that there exists, beyond the violet, a faint violet light, or rather a lavender to b, to which gradually becomes colorless; similarly, red light exists beyond the assigned limits of the red ray to a. The greatest amount of actinic power is shown at E opposite the violet; hence this color "exerts" the greatest amount of influence in the ...
— American Handbook of the Daguerrotype • Samuel D. Humphrey

... simultaneous cry from half-a-dozen sailors of "Light on the starboard bow!" produced a temporary excitement, and caused the engineers to "fire up" at their utmost speed. But the alarm proved false. The red light that had been so confidently reckoned on as the port lantern of some steamer moving across the Sumter's bows, was at length set down as a mere meteor, or it might be some star setting crimson through the dim ...
— The Cruise of the Alabama and the Sumter • Raphael Semmes

... the edge and a gradual changing of the shape, you say? That means refraction. The Earth's atmosphere has been playing tricks on you. The umbrella of dull red light was a refracted view of the Moon before she really came into sight. Rays of light from the hidden Moon were bent around to you. Then, as she gradually moved from behind the Earth, her appearance was magnified by the convex lens formed by the atmosphere, ...
— Pharaoh's Broker - Being the Very Remarkable Experiences in Another World of Isidor Werner • Ellsworth Douglass

... still, though his face has whitened, and a wrathy red light has come into his deep eyes; "in the pre-Huntley era, I laid my heart at her feet—by-the-way, I must have been in petticoats at the time—and she kicked it away, as she had, no ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton

... onlooker to move very fast; but to be progressing indolently in long leisurely bounds and pauses in the midst of the overtaking waves. It was only when actually passing the stern within easy hail of the Ferndale, that her headlong speed became apparent to the eye. With the red light shut off and soaring like an immense shadow on the crest of a wave she was lost to view in one great, forward swing, melting into ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad

... fleet of Confederate gunboats blazed and the thundering explosions of their magazines split the clear air. Freight depots with supplies were burning. Plunderers were spreading the fires and slipping like ghouls through red light and black shadows. At daybreak the last retreating gun rumbled past and, at sunrise, Dan looked back from the hills on the smoking and deserted city and Grant's ...
— The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come • John Fox

... But the splash of red light on the floor at their feet warned them of the lateness of the hour and they turned to the ...
— The Man of the Desert • Grace Livingston Hill

... parts were deserted, and no collision was really to be feared, the novice exacted a rigorous watch during the night. He never sailed without having his lights in position—a green light on the starboard, a red light on the larboard—and in that he ...
— Dick Sand - A Captain at Fifteen • Jules Verne

... waited, his eyes anxiously fixed on the water in the direction from which the red light had shone. Tonet and the two sailors were sitting on the bow, their legs dangling over the water. They were hungrily studying the brilliantly lighted town. Rosario's husband had been stationed at Algiers once, and he had all sorts of stories to tell about his gay escapades ...
— Mayflower (Flor de mayo) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... in the seat in front of her in the theater nestled toward his sweetheart and harshly muttered, "Oh you old honey!" In the red light from the globe marking an exit she saw his huge red hand, with its thicket of little golden hairs, creep toward ...
— The Job - An American Novel • Sinclair Lewis

... when, in the dead of the long nights, Hitty woke from her broken and feverish sleep, it was to hear muffled sounds from the cellar below, never heard there before; and once, wrapping a shawl about her, she stole down the stairways with bare feet, and saw streams of red light through the chinks of the cellar-door, and heard the ring of metal, and muttered oaths, all carefully dulled by such devices as kept the sounds from chance passers in the street, though vain as far as the inhabitants of the house itself were concerned. Trembling and cold, she stole back ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various

... this way; we must find the stairs." But Mrs. Fisher held her with firmer fingers than ever, and they turned into a narrower hall, up toward a blinking red light that sent a small bright spark out through the thick smoke, and in a minute, or very much less, they were out on the fire-escape, and looking down to hear—for they couldn't see—Jasper's voice calling from below, "We are all here, Polly," and "Be careful, wife, ...
— Five Little Peppers Abroad • Margaret Sidney

... lenses could be made to do better than one. But every one who has studied optics knows that white light passing through a single lens is not all brought to the same focus, but that the blue light will come to a focus nearer the objective than the red light. There will, in fact, be a succession of images, blue, green, yellow, and red, corresponding to the colors of the spectrum. It is impossible to see these different images clearly at the same time, because each of them will render all ...
— Side-lights on Astronomy and Kindred Fields of Popular Science • Simon Newcomb

... A red light from the sinking sun fell upon the dunes. As they rode back over them their horses seemed to be wading through a silent sea of blood. The sky in the west looked like an enormous conflagration, in which tortured things were struggling and lifting ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens

... landing-stages built out over the water, lined the banks on either side, and at one of them our boatmen suddenly drew in, and we disembarked in the soft darkness, suffused with the red light from the square and vibrating with the music from a band playing ...
— Five Nights • Victoria Cross

... clothes as decency will permit. Sam has on a pair of trousers—nothing more. I am in the same state! There is little room, as may be supposed. We have to lie huddled up as we best can, and a strange sight we are as the red light of the flaring lamp falls on us. At this moment Myouk's wife is cutting a fresh steak. The youngest boy is sound asleep with a lump of fat between his teeth. The captain is also sound, with his legs sprawling over the limbs of half a dozen ...
— Fast in the Ice - Adventures in the Polar Regions • R.M. Ballantyne

... gone when he entered the station. He had seen the order in the book, and had waited the arrival of the west-bound express, which arrived five minutes later. Had he not seen the red light he would have gone on, and the trains would have met about two miles east of ...
— A Lover in Homespun - And Other Stories • F. Clifford Smith

... crater, on the top of the mountain, had a fairy-like effect. I dropped down behind a boulder and lay for a long time alone, lost in ecstasy, out of sight of the others. All at once I saw a blue veil fluttering in the breeze quite near me. It was the young Danish girl, who had sat down with me. The red light of the evening, Nemi and she, merged in one. Not far away some people were setting fire to a blaze of twigs and leaves; one solitary bird warbled across the lake; the cypresses wept; the pines glowered; the olive trees bathed ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes

... in graceful purple and crimson folds glorious beyond description. Father called us out into the yard in front of the house where we had a wide view, crying, "Come! Come, mother! Come, bairns! and see the glory of God. All the sky is clad in a robe of red light. Look straight up to the crown where the folds are gathered. Hush and wonder and adore, for surely this is the clothing of the Lord Himself, and perhaps He will even now appear looking down from his high heaven." This celestial ...
— The Story of My Boyhood and Youth • John Muir

... mouth. . . . I didn't care about my vanity now; I called out to him, but the others were making such a noise. . . . The car started, I was blinded by the head-lights. When I could see again, there was only a little pin-point of red light. I shouted, ran. . . . Then I came back. When every one else had gone to bed, I told Jim. And I thought he'd have killed me. . . . And then I swore solemnly that Jack should have me if he wanted me. I wrote to him, and he never answered my letter. I tried to ...
— The Education of Eric Lane • Stephen McKenna

... in silence for a few minutes, coughing out the smoke and dust from his lungs. It was almost dark, but the whole city was blazing now, and the sky glowed with a red light that mingled with the remnants of a lurid sunset. A strong wind blew the smoke and the flying sparks ...
— Barlasch of the Guard • H. S. Merriman

... and his long lashes of the darkest dye, gave a deeper and perhaps softer shade than they otherwise would have worn to eyes quick and observant in their expression and of a light hazel in their colour. His cheek was very fair, and the red light of the fire cast an artificial tint of increased glow upon a complexion that had naturally rather bloom than colour; while a dark riding frock set off in their full beauty the fine outline of his chest and the slender symmetry of ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... civilization, liberty, and religion. Terrible in battle, may it be beneficent in peace. Happily, no bird or beast of prey has been inscribed upon it. The stars that redeem the night from darkness, and the beams of red light that beautify the morning, have been united upon its folds. As long as the sun endures, or the stars, may it wave over a nation neither enslaved nor enslaving! Once, and but once, has treason dishonored it. ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various

... as a priest, in a black cope sown all over with death's heads, waving papers in his hands, and proclaiming indulgences to all Protestant-killers, so loud that he might be heard at Charing Cross; and next behind him a fellow carrying a silver cross, that shone very fine in the red light of the bonfire and the flambeaux, and drew attention to what came after. For behind him came eight Religious, Carmelites and Franciscans, in the habits of their Orders, going two by two with clasped hands and bowed heads as if they prayed; and after them that which was, in intention, the ...
— Oddsfish! • Robert Hugh Benson

... by the fire, saw its red light falling on the old man, propped up on his pillows and bed-rest, with his bony hand holding out the key, and the money lying on the quilt before him. She never forgot that vision of a man wanting to do ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot

... A brilliantly intense red light flared upon a panel and a bell clanged brazenly the furious signals of the sector alarm. Simultaneously a speaker roared forth its message of a ship in ...
— Triplanetary • Edward Elmer Smith

... one of the men on shore, separated from the rest, wave a red flag, or (if at night) show a red light and then conceal it, you are to haul upon the rocket line until you get a tailed block with an endless fall ...
— The Lifeboat • R.M. Ballantyne

... won't say it ter me ag'in, not whiles I got dis whup in my han'! She sting lak a rattlesnake, she do! She's a daisy an' a half! Cher-whack! You gwine sass me any mo', you grea' big over-my-size coward, you? Take dat! An' dat! An' dat! Now run! Whoop! Heah come de red light!" ...
— Solomon Crow's Christmas Pockets and Other Tales • Ruth McEnery Stuart

... gray light, which the three-quarters of an hour filtered through the window-panes of the station, fell on her like the rays of an immense hour-glass which measured for her the minutes of happiness lost. She was lamenting her fate, when, in the red light of the sun, she saw the locomotive of the express stop, monstrous and docile, on the quay, and, in the crowd of travellers coming out of the carriages, Jacques approached her. He was looking at her with ...
— The Red Lily, Complete • Anatole France

... table; he was straining forward, his hands gripping the arms of his chair. His eyes and every tense instinct of the man were concentrated on the fireplace. The red light of the embers was in the room. I could see him clearly, and the table beyond him with the calculations; but the fireplace seemed strangely out of perspective—it extended ...
— The Sleuth of St. James's Square • Melville Davisson Post

... glimmered through the dusk like an intricate white skeleton. Better fuel no one could desire. Thady made for it at once with knife and matchbox, and in a few minutes crackling flames were crunching up the twigs and gnawing at a log. The red light washed flickering over the wet walls, and was caught on the glancing of the water as it fled by, rapid and dark. Blue smoke trailed up lazily against the frame of the arch, blurring gleams of tossed foam as it ...
— Strangers at Lisconnel • Barlow Jane

... stalactites and unhewn blocks of stone, formed a deep grotto at the end of the hall, whence peered the gigantic head of a monster whose open jaws formed the fireplace of the chimney. Logs of fragrant Arabian wood were blazing brightly on the hearth, and the dragon's ruby glass eyes diffused a red light through the apartment which, blended with the rays of the white and pink lamps in the shape of lotus flowers fastened among gold and silver tendrils and groups of sedges on the walls and ceiling, filling the spacious apartment with the soft light whose ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... to hang about a railway station and wait for a train. Did you ever hear a small boy complain of having to hang about a railway station and wait for a train? No; for to him to be inside a railway station is to be inside a cavern of wonder and a palace of poetical pleasures. Because to him the red light and the green light on the signal are like a new sun and a new moon. Because to him when the wooden arm of the signal falls down suddenly, it is as if a great king had thrown down his staff as a signal and started a ...
— All Things Considered • G. K. Chesterton

... is nearly dawn. A red light in the northeast is coming up over the snowy hills. The water, steely grey—the tide rising. What strange moving bodies are those, scudding along over the dim surface, like the ghosts of sea planes? ...
— The War on All Fronts: England's Effort - Letters to an American Friend • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... they taken up their stand there, when, in the red light of the sunset, they saw a strange sight. Along, not that road they had followed, but another, which led round the farther side of King's Grave Mount, now seen and now hidden by the forest trees, a tall man in armour mounted on ...
— The Lady Of Blossholme • H. Rider Haggard

... red light was on the columns of the Parthenon, and the Greek women who were knitting their stockings and sometimes crying to a child to come and have the insects picked from its head were as jolly as sand- martins in the heat, quarrelling, scolding, suckling their ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf

... with thousands of chinks looking like eyes, or fell into compact masses of darkness. Not a leaf was stirring; the topmost branches of the lilacs and acacias seemed to stretch upwards into the warm air, as though listening for something. The house was a dark mass now; patches of red light showed where the long windows were lighted up. It was a soft and peaceful evening, but under this peace was felt the secret ...
— Rudin • Ivan Turgenev

... where the heavens touch the earth, where the stars kiss the flowers, a soft red light was seen, such as the sky sometimes has in spring, ...
— The Violet Fairy Book • Various

... round the edge—say they can't hold 'em. It looks very much as if we're going to get our chance to-night. When a red light flashes three times at this near corner of the woods, we're to ride into 'em in line—it'll mean that our chaps are falling back in a hurry, leaving lots of room between 'em and the wood for us to ride through. Better join your men, you fellows! Oh, lord! What wouldn't ...
— Winds of the World • Talbot Mundy

... something very interesting. The six who returned from beyond Ventura B were not the same six who went! They are identical in every facial, bodily, and mental characteristic, identical enough to fool even the families of the lost explorers. But when we secretly photographed them with infra-red light we found that their skins contained elements ...
— Daughters of Doom • Herbert B. Livingston

... will be a sound... as the riving of wood... a sound as of thunder coming up from the ground. A cleft will run like a mouse across the floor. There will be a red light, and then no light at all, and in the ...
— Plays of Gods and Men • Lord Dunsany

... wristlet, decked with stars and cunningly wrought in myriad-coloured jewels. But more beautiful to me thy sword with its curve of lightning like the outspread wings of the divine bird of Vishnu, perfectly poised in the angry red light of the sunset. ...
— Gitanjali • Rabindranath Tagore

... for a red light that came through the crack of a door, and stumbled over a three-legged chair, as I pitched my last cigar-stump to one of the dogs chained to the wall, who caught it in his mouth. When the door was opened by my guide, I saw a big blaze like a prairie ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman

... Covington saw what Marjory meant when she wondered how Hamilton could look like a white-robed choir-boy as he sang to her. He had grown suddenly calm, and when he spoke the red light in his eyes had turned ...
— The Triflers • Frederick Orin Bartlett

... is a strange thing. First, perhaps, rides a shepherd, erect and careless in his saddle, the red light glowing from the tip of his cigarette; and beside his horse a collie-dog, nosing at objects, but always with ears for the sheep and ...
— The Free Range • Francis William Sullivan

... keep, And know not to resign— I would, but cannot weep! These are not tears, my father, but hot blood That fills the warrior's eyes; For every drop that falls, a mighty flood Our foemen's hearts shall yield us, when the dawn Begins of that last day Whose red light ushers in the fatal fray, Such as shall bring us back old victories, Or of the empire, evermore withdrawn. Shall make a realm of silence and of gloom, Where all may read the doom, But none shall dream the horrid history! I do not weep—I do not shrink—I ...
— Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXII No. 4, April 1848 • Various

... the time the orphans were putting up this garland, that two young ladies, who were returning home after their evening walk, stopped at the gate of the churchyard to look at the red light which the setting sun cast upon the window of the church. As the ladies were standing at the gate, they heard a voice near them crying, "O, mother! mother! are you gone for ever?" They could not see anyone, so they walked softly round to the other side of the church, ...
— The Parent's Assistant • Maria Edgeworth

... mighty fine ones in other places, you know; the Santa Cruz forest is splendid. But it's the Mariposa Big Trees, in the Yosemite, I mean. We'd drive from Wawona early in the morning, one day, and stay till the sunset. You can't think what sunset's like among the giant Sequoias, with the red light, like a rain of ruby stars, falling through the branches. And those trees are God's own architecture. I guess even you have never seen a cathedral to touch it; because there can't be one. All day you should stay in the forest. I'd find you places for lunch and dinner, and the ...
— The Port of Adventure • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson

... isn't a dream.... It comes again and again.... You hear ivy crying on steeples the flames haven't caught yet and images screaming when they see red light on the lilies on the stained glass window of St. Joseph. The girl with the black eyes holds you tight, and you run... and run past the wild, wild towers... and trees in the gardens tugging at their feet and little frightened dolls shut up in the shops crying... ...
— Sun-Up and Other Poems • Lola Ridge

... for us to spare large sums of money, because such capital is available and not missed at home. If there was the absolute certainty that all the foreign short term loans would be paid on maturity there would be no reason to show the red light. ...
— The War After the War • Isaac Frederick Marcosson

... mahogany and horsehair, awaited the uncle and nephew. As daylight, darkened by the windows, could not penetrate to this corner, the cook had left two dips burning, whose unsnuffed wicks showed a sort of mushroom growth, giving the red light which promises length of life to the candle from slowness of combustion—a discovery due to ...
— The Commission in Lunacy • Honore de Balzac

... suddenly over the edge of the cliffs, and while it was yet deep shadow in the valley, its red light struck upon the white cross of perished wood that towered above the Tree of Doom and on the black shape of Hokosa crucified to it living. The camp of the king saw and understood, and from every throat of the thousands of men, women and children gathered there, went up a roar of rage and horror. ...
— The Wizard • H. Rider Haggard

... rest; fatigue, however, at length overcame her, and she sank gradually into an uneasy slumber. She could not tell how long she had remained in this state, when she awakened, and immediately on opening her eyes, she perceived by the faint red light of the smouldering turf embers, two persons, one of whom she recognised as her husband, noiselessly gliding ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume I. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

... the Forum. In autumn it is still hot, and people are glad to sleep after eating. At the same time it is pleasant to hear the noise of the fountain in the atrium, and, after the obligatory thousand steps, to doze in the red light which filters in through ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz

... he cried, as a glimmer of light shot across the surface of the lake, "What, ho! A light in the ship-house! Tis the red light of danger! I forbode." ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 2, April 9, 1870 • Various

... opened a port at last, although it was dangerous, the sea being very rough. It was going on for six in the evening. When the disk was swung back, a red light entered, glorious and radiant. The dying sun appeared upon the horizon in dazzling splendour, through a torn rift in a gloomy sky; its blinding light glanced over the waves, and lit up the floating hospital, like ...
— An Iceland Fisherman • Pierre Loti

... gleaming platform slid away from them. There was a faint red light in the west where the sunset had been drowned. Christine turned her face towards it. She was like a little old child. Her little feet in the shabby, worn-out shoes scarcely touched the floor. Her drooping ...
— The Dark House • I. A. R. Wylie

... ... exactly." Gefty indicated the emergency panel. "Little red light there, on the storage deck section—it wasn't showing a minute ago. It means that the vault doors have ...
— The Winds of Time • James H. Schmitz

... mighty edifices, not one left upon another, lie upon them to keep them down. A dull purple poisonous haze stretches level along the desert, veiling its spectral wrecks of massy ruins, on whose rents the red light rests, like dying fire on defiled altars; the blue ridge of the Alban Mount lifts itself against a solemn space of green, clear, quiet sky. Watch-towers of dark clouds stand steadfastly along the promontories of the Apennines. From the plain to the ...
— Frondes Agrestes - Readings in 'Modern Painters' • John Ruskin

... fiend's intention! Gale tried to close his eyes, but could not. He prayed wildly for a sudden blindness—to faint as Thorne had fainted. But he was transfixed to the spot with eyes that pierced the red light. ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey

... door out of his hand; the fire in his blood was quenched, and the image of Cecilia receded. He looked out, and saw reflected on the low clouds the dull glare of the distant city. Just over there was Great Ormond Street, and underneath that dim, red light, like the light of a great house burning, was Madge Hopgood. He lay down, turning over from side to side in the vain hope that by change of position he might sleep. After about an hour's feverish tossing, he just lost himself, but ...
— Clara Hopgood • Mark Rutherford

... across the road into the cactus, bursting the second front-wheel tire. Like demons indeed Link and Nels worked. Shuddering, Madeline felt the declining heat of the sun, saw with gloomy eyes the shading of the red light over the desert. She did not look back to see how near the sun was to the horizon. She wanted to ask Nels. Strange as anything on this terrible ride was the absence of speech. As yet no word had been ...
— The Light of Western Stars • Zane Grey

... Torches were seen on high affronting the pale light of the moon; and, at a very short distance from the two females, in the cross street, advanced a company of seven or eight men, bearing, as seen by the red light of the torches, the formidable badge ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... was some distance from Bromley Towers, and quite dusk as he drove through the park. Snow was on the ground, and still falling slowly, the two roaring fires in the hall, as the doors were thrown open, flung a red light on the holly berries and gigantic bunch of mistletoe suspended from the chandelier, and flickered on dark oil paintings let into the panels. The footmen were unfamiliar, but the old butler beamed on the young heir he ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston

... not a hundred feet off, he nearly stumbled across the form of a sleeping woman. The object which emitted the crimson rays was lying on the ground, several yards away from her. It was like a small jewel, throwing off sparks of red light. He barely threw a glance at ...
— A Voyage to Arcturus • David Lindsay

... Anglesea, splendid in its heathery crest, and foot planted in the deep sea, once thought of as sacred—a divine promontory, looking westward; the Holy Head or Headland, still not without awe when its red light glares first through storm. These are the hills, and these the bays and blue inlets, which, among the Greeks, would have been always loved, always fateful in influence on the national mind. That Snowdon is your ...
— Sesame and Lilies • John Ruskin

... black. The red light on the horizon and billowy clouds of smoke intensified the darkness. Over the range, cattle were bellowing in their mad fear of fire. They were coming closer to the reservation ...
— Land of the Burnt Thigh • Edith Eudora Kohl

... was rising, he saw a white light, and then the loom of a green. "All right; well clear," he muttered. "Glad the fog's no higher. Why doesn't he use his whistle?" Then, with the suddenness of lightning, he found the red light opened on him, and, with a chill at his heart, he discovered that he could not get his own vessel out of the road. Once he sang out, and then came the looming of a black mountain over him. Until the monster's stem took him on the quarter and the ...
— The Chequers - Being the Natural History of a Public-House, Set Forth in - a Loafer's Diary • James Runciman

... summit of the hill which commanded the city, blazed like a volcano. One after another the buildings fell in, with a tremendous crash, and were swallowed up in the fiery abyss. The roofs of cedar were like sheets of flame; the gilded pinnacles shone like spikes of red light; the gate towers sent up tall columns of flame and smoke. The neighboring hills were lighted up; and dark groups of people were seen watching in horrible anxiety the progress of the destruction: the walls and heights of the upper city were crowded with faces, some pale with the ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White

... to answer when a wild shout from the crew caused him to start up and look round. A flare from the volcano had cast a red light over the bewildering scene, and revealed the fact that the brig was no longer above the ocean's bed, but was passing in its wild career right through, or rather over, the demolished town of Anjer. A few of the houses that had been left standing by the previous waves were being swept—hurled—away ...
— Blown to Bits - or, The Lonely Man of Rakata • Robert Michael Ballantyne

... lamp, by which alone her figure and face are illuminated; and her features wear such an arch smile, as well becomes a pretty woman when practising some prankish roguery; in the background, and, excepting where the dim red light of an expiring fire serves to define the form, in total shadow, stands the figure of a man dressed in the old Flemish fashion, in an attitude of alarm, his hand being placed upon the hilt of his sword, which he appears to be in the ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 1 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

... on a stool by the door of his hut with his rhinoceros-horn-handled axe which was fastened to his right wrist by a thong, leaning against his thigh, and a wolfskin hanging from his broad shoulders. Very grim and fierce he looked thus, with the red light of the sunset playing on him. He greeted me and pointed to another stool on which I sat myself down. Apparently he had been watching my eyes, ...
— She and Allan • H. Rider Haggard

... There was a soft crimson glow in the east, which announced the approach of the sun, and he could hear the chirping of the awakening birds in the trees. But Brian did not see the marvellous breaking of the dawn. He stood staring at the red light flaring in the east, and ...
— The Mystery of a Hansom Cab • Fergus Hume

... the pit below would seem shrouded in almost Stygian darkness, save for some bar of light that gleamed out from a crack or draft, and then there would be a rattle of iron and a flare of blood-red light that came with the flinging ...
— Frank Merriwell's Nobility - The Tragedy of the Ocean Tramp • Burt L. Standish (AKA Gilbert Patten)

... Dartmoor is never more impressive than under those evening effects which have last been suggested. The singular shapes assumed by the granite cappings of the tors are strongly projected against the red light of the sunset, which gleams between the many openings in the huge piles of rock, making them look like passages into some unknown country beyond them, and suggesting that idea of infinity which is afforded by no other object of sight in equal degree. Meanwhile, the heather of the foreground ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote

... hymns up over and over Until there's not the least mistake. Seven-seventy-one. (Look! there's a plover! It's gone!) Who's that Saint by the Lake? The red light from his mantle passes Across the ...
— Georgian Poetry 1916-17 - Edited by Sir Edward Howard Marsh • Various

... King Olaf heard the cry, Saw the red light in the sky, Laid his hand upon his sword, As he leaned upon the railing, And his ships went sailing, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 74, December, 1863 • Various



Words linked to "Red light" :   stoplight, warning light, traffic light, visual signal, idiot light, traffic signal



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