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Zigzag   Listen
noun
Zigzag  n.  
1.
Something that has short turns or angles. "The fanatics going straight forward and openly, the politicians by the surer mode of zigzag."
2.
(Arch.) A molding running in a zigzag line; a chevron, or series of chevrons.
3.
(Fort.) See Boyau.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Zigzag" Quotes from Famous Books



... clearing in the trees, is reached by some scores of steps from the landing-stage. Patient "Moses," the hotel luggage-carrier, awaits the prospective guests at the pier. This handsome brown donkey is quite a character, and mounts gaily his own private zigzag path leading to the hotel when heavily laden. His dejection, however, when returning with empty panniers, is accounted for by the circumstance of "No load, no carrot!" at the end of ...
— Denmark • M. Pearson Thomson

... superstitious motive, and the small projecting stone on which their prophet is to sit when he shall judge the world assembled in the vale below. The southern side is exceedingly irregular, taking quite a zigzag direction; the south-western entrance being terminated by a mosque built over the supposed sepulchre of David, on the elevation of Mount Zion. The form and exact direction of the western and northern walls are not distinctly seen from the position now assumed; but every part of them appears ...
— Palestine or the Holy Land - From the Earliest Period to the Present Time • Michael Russell

... of one will, the actions will be harmonious, however unlike they seem. These varieties are lost sight of at a little distance, at a little height of thought. One tendency unites them all. The voyage of the best ship is a zigzag line of a hundred tacks. See the line from a sufficient distance, and it straightens itself to the average tendency. Your genuine action will explain itself and will explain your other genuine actions. Your conformity explains nothing. Act singly, and what you have already done singly ...
— Essays, First Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson

... ran a brook; the hill beyond it was covered towards the top with a wood, apparently of oak, between which and the ravine were small green fields. Both sides of the ravine were fringed with trees, chiefly ash. I descended the road which was zigzag and steep, and at last arrived at the bottom of the valley, where there was a small hamlet. On the further side of the valley to the east was a steep hill on which were a few houses—at the foot of the hill was a brook crossed ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow

... the god, come out smiling, and drift away through the shrubberies. A fat carp in a pond sucks at a fallen leaf with just the sound of a wicked little worldly kiss. Then the earth steams, and steams in silence, and a gorgeous butterfly, full six inches from wing to wing, cuts through the steam in a zigzag of colour and flickers up to the forehead of the god. And Buddha said that a man must look on everything as illusion—even light and colour—the time-worn bronze of metal against blue-green of pine and pale emerald of bamboo—the lemon sash of the girl in the cinnamon dress, with coral ...
— Letters of Travel (1892-1913) • Rudyard Kipling

... was now steered this way and that, sometimes backed, and then sent forward again. After about an hour of this zigzag work Mr. ...
— The Great Stone of Sardis • Frank R. Stockton

... The kapala whom I saw at Long Kai had the mark of a ripe durian on each shoulder in front and an immature one above each nipple. On the lower part of the upper arm was a tatu of an edible root, in Penihing called rayong. Over the back of his right hand, toward the knuckles, he had a zigzag mark representing the excrescences of the durian fruit. In regard to the presence of spirits, number of souls, blians, disease, and its cure, restrictions for pregnant women, the child's cradle—the ideas of the Bukats are identical with those ...
— Through Central Borneo: - An Account of Two Years' Travel in the Land of Head-Hunters - Between the Years 1913 and 1917 • Carl Lumholtz

... amongst the crowds of onlookers far and near. The kite, without the support of its line, soon begins to flutter downwards. It is an established tradition that it becomes the property of the person into whose hands it falls. The original owner is rarely able to get near enough to secure it. Its zigzag course makes it problematical where it will fall. Generally those who think they are going to get it are disappointed by a final flutter, which takes it out of their reach into another pair of outstretched hands. Not unfrequently nobody gets it, because it ...
— India and the Indians • Edward F. Elwin

... assert that Mr. Lloyd George is careful to keep on the right side of it. At the Conference his conduct appeared to careful observers to be traced mainly by outside influences, and as these were various and changing the result was a zigzag. One day he would lay down a certain proposition as a dogma not to be modified, and before the week was out he would advance the contrary proposition and maintain that with equal warmth and doubtless with equal ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon

... promptly told Ben he was at liberty, and he lost no time in profiting by the information. Just as he passed out of the door, he saw his master coming, and ran full speed. He had sufficient presence of mind to take a zigzag course, and running through a house occupied by colored people, he ...
— Isaac T. Hopper • L. Maria Child

... extravagant with rails, as you are with everything else. A few loads can be spared from the fences here and there, as well as not. Harness up the team, boys, and git together enough to make about ten rods o' zigzag, ...
— The Man Who Stole A Meeting-House - 1878, From "Coupon Bonds" • J. T. Trowbridge

... was vegetable nature's own home; a spot to inspire the painter and poet of still life—if they did not suffer too much from the relaxing atmosphere—and to draw groans from the gregariously disposed. Grace descended the green escarpment by a zigzag path into the drive, which swept round beneath the slope. The exterior of the house had been familiar to her from her childhood, but she had never been inside, and the approach to knowing an old thing in a new way was a lively experience. It was with a little flutter that she was ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy

... arm extends, Points every movement, every work defends, Bids closer quarters, bloodier strokes proceed, New batteries blaze and heavier squadrons bleed. Line within line fresh parallels enclose; Here runs a zigzag, there a mantlet grows, Round the pent foe approaching breastworks rise, And bombs, like meteors, vault the flaming skies. Night, with her hovering wings, asserts in vain The shades, the silence of her rightful reign; High roars her canopy with fiery flakes, And War ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow

... to obstruct its navigation in future; and being nearly straight, the timber which might float in at the head, would be apt to go clear through. There are also many places above this where the river, in its zigzag course, forms such complete peninsulas, as to be easier cut through at the necks than to remove the obstructions from the bends—which if done, would also lessen ...
— Lincoln's Inaugurals, Addresses and Letters (Selections) • Abraham Lincoln

... distance, perhaps a quarter of a mile away, Hans Mueller was still in sight, skirting the base of a sharp incline. Through the trembling heat waves he seemed a mere moving dark spot; like an ant or a spider on its zigzag journey. The grass at the base of the rise was rank and heavy, reaching almost to the waist of the moving figure. Rowland watched it all absently, meditatively; as he would have watched the movement ...
— Where the Trail Divides • Will Lillibridge

... the way and sometimes on bleak swells there were no markings at all. Some distance from Carey's Crossing a much heavier snowfall, covering a wide swath, under which the trails were entirely lost, had wandered in zigzag lines down from ...
— Winning the Wilderness • Margaret Hill McCarter

... effects of her long sleep and the cold endured—it is a wonder how she had stood the latter at all—and when, with a subdued inward sort of hum, she finally launched herself in flight, she nearly fell to the ground before righting herself and flying in a zigzag ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars

... three more tributaries of the larger stream, all fairly wide and deep. Then we had once more to get across the main river, there of considerable depth and swiftness. The river traversed the plain in zigzag fashion, and, unless we wanted to follow its banks, and so lengthen the journey by double or treble the distance, this was the only course open to us. Thus, while trying to travel as much as possible in a straight line, we found ourselves for the third time before ...
— An Explorer's Adventures in Tibet • A. Henry Savage Landor

... partaken of an early breakfast, Maltese boatmen in scarlet caps and sashes, who stood up while handling their oars, rowed us to the shore. Their brightly painted boats had peculiar carved wooden posts erected at prow and stern and white awnings overhead. Walking up a sloping, zigzag pathway, constructed in a passage cut down through the high cliffs, we ascended from the busy docks to the heights above. At the summit a Maltese gentleman kindly directed us on our way to the Queen's Garden located directly above the ...
— A Trip to the Orient - The Story of a Mediterranean Cruise • Robert Urie Jacob

... on the vacant-staring wrecks of windows and of walls, gaping like the shattered skulls of a civilization which was no more. To the nostrils of the man and woman up floated an acrid, pitchy smell. And birds, dislodged from sleep, began to zigzag about, aimlessly, with frightened cries. One even dashed against the building, close at hand; and fell, a fluttering, ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England

... the face, fore part of the arms, and whole front of body continued backwards a little way over the shoulders, usually, but not always, leaving the back untouched. The pattern for the body consists of series of vertical stripes less than an inch apart, connected by zigzag and other markings—that over the face is more complicated, and on the forearm and wrist it is frequently so elaborate as to assume the appearance ...
— Narrative Of The Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Commanded By The Late Captain Owen Stanley, R.N., F.R.S. Etc. During The Years 1846-1850. Including Discoveries And Surveys In New Guinea, The Louisiade • John MacGillivray

... fervoro. Zealot fervorulo. Zealous fervora. Zebra zebro. Zenith zenito. Zephyr venteto. Zero nulo. Zest gusto. Zigzag zigzago. Zinc zinko. Zinc-worker zinkisto. Zodiac zodiako. Zone terzono. Zoology zoologio. Zoophyte ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes

... the path be long, and thorny, the cycle is closing, and many have reached the goal through its zigzag course. ...
— Cosmic Consciousness • Ali Nomad

... in its physical aspect does the Missouri appeal to the imagination. From Three Forks to its mouth—a distance of three thousand miles—this zigzag watercourse is haunted with great memories. Perhaps never before in the history of the world has a river been the thoroughfare of a movement so tremendously epic in its human appeal, so vastly significant in its relation to the development of man. And in ...
— The River and I • John G. Neihardt

... thou sew'st With fingers mild and foot like the new moon, O, then what cross of any further fate Could my content abate? Forget, then, (but I know Thou canst not so,) Thy customs of some praediluvian state. I am no Bullfinch, fair my Butterfly, That thou should'st try Those zigzag courses, in the welkin clear; Nor cruel Boy that, fledd'st thou straight Or paused, mayhap Might catch thee, for thy colours, with ...
— The Unknown Eros • Coventry Patmore

... that the New Testament exercise was over. The teacher, Mrs. Desire Cushman, a tall, slender woman, in a flounced calico dress, was walking up and down the room; a class of boys and girls stood in a zigzag line before her, swaying to and fro, and drawling the multiplication table. She was yawning as I entered, which exercise forbade her speaking, and I took my seat without a reprimand. The flies were just coming; I watched their sticky legs as they feebly crawled over my old unpainted notched ...
— The Morgesons • Elizabeth Stoddard

... tumultuous as a close-packed drove of wild horses. The rivermen rode them easily. For an appreciable time one man perched on a stable timber watching keenly ahead. Then quite coolly he leaped, made a dozen rapid zigzag steps forward, and stopped. The log he had quitted dropped sullenly from sight, and two closed, grinding, where it had been. In twenty seconds every man was ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White

... and carried out in darkness. But suddenly the day broke. Heralded by the snuffle of the horses, light began glimmering over a chaos of lines and shadows, pale as mother-o'-pearl. The stars faded, and in a smouldering zigzag the dawn fled along the mountain tops, flinging out little isles of cloud. From a lake, curled in a hollow like a patch of smoke, came the cry of a water-bird. A cuckoo started a soft mocking; and close to the carriage a lark flew up. Beasts and men alike stood ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... heart and will. Heart and will are great things, and sufficient things in your case—but after all we carry a barrow-full of clay about with us, and we must carry it a little carefully if we mean to keep to the path and not run zigzag into the border of the garden. A figure which reminds me ... and I wanted no figure to remind me ... to ask you to thank your sister for me and from me for all her kindness about the flowers. Now you will not forget? you must ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett

... the upper part of the hemispheres is removed horizontally with a sharp knife, a centre of white substance is brought to view. This is surrounded by a border of gray, which follows the depressions of the convolutions, and presents a zigzag outline. The divided surface will be seen studded with numerous small red points, which are produced by the escape of blood from the division of the minute arteries and veins. The gray border is called the cortical, ...
— A Treatise on Anatomy, Physiology, and Hygiene (Revised Edition) • Calvin Cutter

... believed in a goddess or Snake-Mother, who lived underground and knew about springs; and as water was the most important thing in that land of deserts, they showed respect to the Snake-Mother by baskets decorated in her honor. Another design showed a round center with four zigzag lines running to the border. This was intended for a lake with four streams flowing out of it, widening as they flowed; but it looked rather like a cross or a swastika. There was a design in zigzags to represent the lightning, ...
— Days of the Discoverers • L. Lamprey

... did take—about that there was no mistake—but never two of equal length, and the cart was rolling in a zigzag all the time. What a funny horse it was. It looked as if it was made of odd parts, so bony and misshapen was it. No two parts matched, and its limbs groaned and creaked ...
— Ditte: Girl Alive! • Martin Andersen Nexo

... the level of the sea than Ho (Merida). But imagine now our amazement at noticing the strange fact that the mode of communication that Chable ignored was ... by means of electric currents! Yes, of electricity! This fact is plainly indicated by the four zigzag lines, representing the lightning, coming from the four cardinal points and converging toward a centre near the upper or starting station, and also by the solitary zigzag seen about the middle of the cord—following its direction—indicating a half-way station. Then the electric telegraph, ...
— The Mayas, the Sources of Their History / Dr. Le Plongeon in Yucatan, His Account of Discoveries • Stephen Salisbury, Jr.

... was, after careful examination, recognized and correctly described by him. When he was asked to point out either of the figures, he never moved his hand directly and decidedly, but always as if feeling, and with the greatest caution; he pointed them out, however, correctly. A zigzag and a spiral line, both drawn on a sheet of paper, he observed to be different, but could not describe them otherwise than by imitating their forms with his finger in the air. He said he had no idea of ...
— The Mind of the Child, Part II • W. Preyer

... bumping beetles, with hard, shiny wing-covers on their backs and soft, fuzzy velvet underneath, flew out at dusk, twenty or thirty of them, as likely as not, would make a luncheon for Mis the clown. For he was lean and hungry, and he ate and ate and ate; but he never grew fat. He hunted zigzag through the twilight of the evening and the twilight of the dawn. When the nights were bright and game was plenty, he hunted zigzag through the moonlight. When the day was dull and insects were on the wing, he hunted, though it was high noon. ...
— Bird Stories • Edith M. Patch

... line parallel with the course taken by the animal. Presently the rabbit sees the second Indian, and dashes off at a tangent. By this time the third hunter has come up and gives the quarry another turn. After the third or fourth zigzag, the rabbit is surrounded, and the hunters quickly close in ...
— My Native Land • James Cox

... her horse's mane, if he has one, or of the breastplate, so as to avoid letting her weight make the saddle slip, and also to put her weight well forward and thus assist the horse. She should let him take a zigzag course, and should on no account interfere with his head by pulling on the reins. We may notice that a waggoner with a heavy load always takes his horse in a zigzag direction up a steep hill, as it is easier for the animal, and allows him occasional intervals for rest, ...
— The Horsewoman - A Practical Guide to Side-Saddle Riding, 2nd. Ed. • Alice M. Hayes

... villa perched upon a slope of Telegraph Hill—now stood sixty feet above the sidewalk, superposed like some Swiss chalet on successive galleries built in the sand-hill, and connected by a half-dozen distinct zigzag flights of wooden staircase. Stimulated, however, by the thought that the view from the top would be a fine one, and that existence there would have all the quaint originality of Robinson Crusoe's tree-dwelling, ...
— The Heritage of Dedlow Marsh and Other Tales • Bret Harte

... the thought of what one of them contained, inspired me with new courage, and, releasing my grip upon the rein, I allowed my patient horse to proceed. Shortly after this I passed the divide—that is where the water sheds both ways—then the descent began. It was zigzag, just as the climb had been, but I preferred the climb. I did not have the unfathomable spaces so constantly before me, nor was my imagination so active. It was fixed on heights to be attained rather than on valleys to roll into. However, ...
— The Woman in the Alcove • Anna Katharine Green

... again. His courage seemed to revive in their distress. He made a straight dash for the Haven; but the straight dash was just what the Hounds could do, and within a hundred yards he was turned again, to begin another desperate game of zigzag. Then the dog-men saw danger for their Dogs, and two new ones were slipped—two fresh Hounds; surely they could end the race. But they did not. The first two were vanquished—gasping—out of it, but ...
— Animal Heroes • Ernest Thompson Seton

... down Town he would have to zigzag so as to cover both sides of the Street and glad-hand all of ...
— People You Know • George Ade

... alliances was a frontier not of language but of faith. Germany was but a geographical expression. The union of Protestantism, subscribed by a large proportion of its three hundred and seven sovereigns, ran zigzag through the country, a majority probably of the people at that moment being opposed to the ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... ruin'd shrine he stept, And in the moon athwart the place of tombs, Where lay the mighty bones of ancient men, Old knights, and over them the sea-wind sang Shrill, chill, with flakes of foam. He, stepping down By zigzag paths, and juts of pointed rock, Came on the shining levels of ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester

... hard— Lightning broke forth out of the cloud, Zigzag and dart, cleaving their way Slantwise to earth, their goal ...
— Indian Games and Dances with Native Songs • Alice C. Fletcher

... he walked, at the long zigzag shadows on the river. Forest fire in the distance showed a leaning column, black at base, pearl-colored in the primrose air, like smoke from some gigantic altar. He had seen islands in the lake under which the sky seemed ...
— The Chase Of Saint-Castin And Other Stories Of The French In The New World • Mary Hartwell Catherwood

... for the honour of yielding precedence, Chichikov succeeded in making his way (in zigzag fashion) to the dining-room, where they found awaiting them a couple of youngsters. These were Manilov's sons, and boys of the age which admits of their presence at table, but necessitates the continued use of high chairs. Beside them was their tutor, who bowed politely ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol

... The pen had started to trace its line, no longer even and straight, but zigzag, at different heights ...
— The Exploits of Elaine • Arthur B. Reeve

... Atlantic was all too short. On the fifth of April they passed the Azores, running close to the islands of Fayal and San Jorge so that the passengers might admire the zigzag rows of white houses that reached from the shore far up the steep hillsides. On the sixth day they sighted Gibraltar and passed between the Moorish and Spanish lighthouses into the lovely waters of the Mediterranean. The world-famed rock was now disclosed to their eyes, and when the ship anchored ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces Abroad • Edith Van Dyne

... in a wild zigzag darted a strip of white paper which disappeared under the bureau. ...
— K • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... volume of the Zigzag books, in which history is taught by a supposed tour of interesting places, might ...
— ZigZag Journeys in Northern Lands; - The Rhine to the Arctic • Hezekiah Butterworth

... a quarry, the two horses were unsaddled, the bridle reins lengthened by adding ropes, and crouching low, their mounts afforded the necessary screen as they grazed or were driven forward. By tacking right and left in a zigzag course they gained the wind, and a stealthy approach on the band was begun. The stabled horses grazed ravenously, sometimes together, then apart, affording a perfect ...
— Wells Brothers • Andy Adams

... climbed slowly up the zigzag path, neither of them troubled to make conversation. All in a moment it had come back—mysteriously, unaccountably—the sense of understanding, the quiet kinship of minds—for her, the sudden utter content at his nearness. While he was there beside her, by his own seeking, ...
— The Rhodesian • Gertrude Page

... thing to have all the stuff for building and fencing on the ground. The fences were made of rough logs piled up one on another in a zigzag form. This is called a snake fence. The stumps were still in the ground. It would take some years to get them out, but Michael knew that he could even plough between those farthest apart, and dig in other places, and that wheat ...
— Taking Tales - Instructive and Entertaining Reading • W.H.G. Kingston

... is recognized as the product of a long line of erroneous theory and zigzag development, but the wheat has largely been sifted and the chaff thrown to the winds of antiquity. Its therapeutic and psychological value is duly recognized ...
— Three Thousand Years of Mental Healing • George Barton Cutten

... be maintained in its dominance, that the fine sense of sound, rhythm, cadence, pronunciation, and speech-music generally be not atrophied, that the eye which normally ranges freely from far to near be not injured by the confined treadmill and zigzag of the printed page. ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall

... when within some eight rods of the game, we lay perfectly quiet for a moment, when his rifle spoke out and its voice rung and re-echoed among the surrounding hills as if a whole platoon of musketry were blazing all around us. The deer made three or four desperate leaps in a zigzag direction, and then went down. When we got to him, he was dead. He was a fine two year old buck, with spike horns, and in excellent condition. We took his saddle and ...
— Wild Northern Scenes - Sporting Adventures with the Rifle and the Rod • S. H. Hammond

... — N. angularity, angularness^; aduncity^; angle, cusp, bend; fold &c 258; notch &c 257; fork, bifurcation. elbow, knee, knuckle, ankle, groin, crotch, crutch, crane, fluke, scythe, sickle, zigzag, kimbo^, akimbo. corner, nook, recess, niche, oriel [Arch.], coign^. right angle &c (perpendicular) 216.1, 212; obliquity &c 217; angle of 45 degrees, miter; acute angle, obtuse angle, salient angle, reentering angle, spherical angle. angular measurement, angular elevation, angular ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... an old quarter of Florence, in that picturesque zigzag which goes round the grand church of Or San Michele, and which is almost more Venetian than Tuscan in its mingling of color, charm, stateliness, popular confusion, and architectural majesty. The tall old houses are weather-beaten ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry

... and saw, close in front of me, what looked to be some curious electric-light sign. It seemed odd in war time, and I stared for a moment before I saw that this strange design was really the black, opposite bank with its zigzag streams ...
— Antwerp to Gallipoli - A Year of the War on Many Fronts—and Behind Them • Arthur Ruhl

... indication, and surely it is to be credited with being distinctly diagnostic in those diseases of which it has itself established the 'curve.'" By the thermometric "curve" of a disease is understood the general visual impression made by the graphic chart of a temperature record—the course of a zigzag line connecting the points indicated by the various ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIV • John Lord

... valleys, one on each side, another in front, and the fourth in the rear. At the base of the citadel, crowding against one another, a group of houses stood within the circle of a wall, whose outlines undulated with the unevenness of the soil. A zigzag road, cutting through the rocks, joined the city to the fortress, the walls of which were about one hundred and twenty cubits high, having numerous angles and ornamental towers that stood out like jewels in this crown of ...
— Herodias • Gustave Flaubert

... Shannon, when suddenly the fox doubled, took the hillside, and made for Dangan. "Now, then, comes the trial of strength," I said, half aloud, as I threw my eye up a steep and rugged mountain, covered with wild furze and tall heath, around the crest of which ran, in a zigzag direction, a broken and dilapidated wall, once the enclosure of a deer park. This wall, which varied from four to six feet in height, was of solid masonry, and would, in the most favorable ground, have been a bold leap. Here, at the summit of a mountain, ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever

... set off for the Vega, eight hundred feet sheer below the mine. It was a ticklish zigzag, just to the left of the transporting machinery, with twenty places in which ...
— Adventures in Many Lands • Various

... lean-to, where de Spain, waiting, caught one foot on his shoulder, and helped her to the ground. He tried again to make her stay behind the house. Finding his efforts vain, he directed her how to make a zigzag advance, how to utilize for cover every rock and tree she could find in the line toward the pine, and, above all, to throw herself flat and sidewise after every shot—and ...
— Nan of Music Mountain • Frank H. Spearman

... us zigzag as quick as lightning, yet it does not flash conviction upon me," said ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. III - Belinda • Maria Edgeworth

... three-hundred-foot abrupt hills on the far side. Had they been able to make out the tops of these hills, they would have seen a few poplar trees. A steep brown road that started from the end of a ferry and mounted zigzag into the fog, was the beginning of a trail that at once passed into a desolate wilderness. They were within sight of the endless untraveled land that reached, unbroken by civilization, to the ...
— On the Edge of the Arctic - An Aeroplane in Snowland • Harry Lincoln Sayler

... For how, by all that was marvelous, had she for a moment doubted it? Down to its very heart, which was near to black, it was clear fire, and outward toward the facets struck flaming hyacinth hues with zigzag white cross-lights that dazzled and mesmerized. Just the look of it—the marvelous deep well of its ...
— The Coast of Chance • Esther Chamberlain

... regular "black-smithing". Every time we fired we drew a perfect hornet's nest about our heads. While attending to a casualty, a shell broke through both sides of the trench, front and back, about twelve feet away. The zigzag of the trench was between it and us, and we escaped. From my bunk the moon looks down at me, and the wind whistles along the trench like a corridor. As the trenches run in all directions they catch the wind however it blows, so one is always sure of a good draught. ...
— In Flanders Fields and Other Poems - With an Essay in Character, by Sir Andrew Macphail • John McCrae

... the track. At every bunch of feathers the ghost stops to consider, "Is this the whole of my body or only a part of it?" The doubt gives him pause, and when at last he has made up his mind fully at all the bunches, and has further wasted valuable time by the zigzag course which he invariably pursues in going from one to another, the hunters are safe at home, and the bilked ghost may stalk in vain round about the village, which he is too ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer

... the zigzag fence, so commonly used by farmers and others, was originally introduced into ...
— The Colored Inventor - A Record of Fifty Years • Henry E. Baker

... rhythmic peals, as sweet and clear and true as the singing of angels. The Devil and his minions, with one long, baffled, infuriated howl, shot upward into space. Simultaneously a great wind came roaring down the valley, uprooting trees, shaking the sturdy mission. Thunder detonated, lightning cut its zigzag way through black clouds like moving mountains; hail rattled to the earth; water fell as from an overturned ocean. And through all the bells pealed and ...
— The Splendid Idle Forties - Stories of Old California • Gertrude Atherton

... sombre eyes stared out from circles of Kohl, and, with stained, claret-coloured hands, whose nails were bright red, they clasped their light and bridal raiment to their prominent breasts. They were escorted by a gigantic man, almost black, with a zigzag scar across the left side of his face, who wore a shining brown burnous over a grey woollen jacket. He pushed the two women into the train as if he were pushing bales, and got in after them, showing enormous bare legs, with calves that stuck ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens

... have often practiced the tactics of retreat and zigzag. We know that Soviet and Chinese communism still poses a serious threat to the free world. And in the Middle East recent Soviet moves are hardly compatible with ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... a prosperous voyage: were married at Cape Town, and went up the country, bag and baggage, looking out for a good bargain in land. Reginald was mounted on an English horse, and allowed to zigzag about, and shoot, and play, while his wife and brother-in-law marched slowly ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade

... "honeysuckle," or sweet wild rose—song-birds filling the air with melody, and stately castles, towering o'er the peasant's lowly home, while far as the eye can reach 'twill rest but on some fair village dome or farm. Here the worm or zigzag fence runs round the irregularly-shaped clearings, in the same rustic garb it wore when a denizen of the forest. The wild flowers here have no perfume, but the raspberries, which grow luxuriantly in the spaces made by the turnings of the fences, have a sweet smell, and ...
— Sketches And Tales Illustrative Of Life In The Backwoods Of New Brunswick • Mrs. F. Beavan

... never seen a blacker night nor a heavier rain than we have just come through... We were constantly in fear of the falling of those gigantic boulders that overhung our path behind the swishing trees that clung along the precipice.... The zigzag road that runs down this slope is like a spiral stair in crookedness and bumps.... We could catch a glimpse now and again of a light from the little bungalows that clung to the mountain sides.... But we dare not arouse the dwellers for many obvious reasons.... Finally we did encounter ...
— Rescuing the Czar - Two authentic Diaries arranged and translated • James P. Smythe

... "leapt the live thunder." Even the distant mountains seemed to have "found a tongue." A zigzag chain of lightning flashed in the lurid sky, and after an appreciable interval another peal, louder than the ...
— The Village Watch-Tower • (AKA Kate Douglas Riggs) Kate Douglas Wiggin

... beyond the last hole. "I'll look just as desperate as he does, now—except for his old jug. Daddy didn't have any jug, and I'm glad—that's where the difference is—it's the jug. But, I wish he had had one of those black horn effects for his scarf." She knotted the brilliant red scarf with its zigzag border of yellow, about her neck, and snatching a small pair of scissors from the dressing table, removed the heavy belt, and proceeded to bore a tongue hole at the point she had marked with her finger nail. So engrossed she became in the work, that she failed to hear the approach ...
— The Gold Girl • James B. Hendryx

... and steep, formed a pleasant change to the monotony of the rugged plain. Up this 'berg' our ponies wound their way zigzag between the rough boulders of rock which strewed the path. At the top we met several men with their train of ponies, waiting for us to pass them, the path being only wide enough for single file. Here we waited to give the ponies breath, and admired the view, which was wonderfully ...
— A Girl's Ride in Iceland • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie

... with long braids of hair hanging down their backs and silver chainlets. They began at last to mount the road in zigzags among forests of oak and beech; little by little the marvellous horizon displayed itself on the left; at each turn of the zigzag, rivers, valleys with their spires pointing upward came into view, and far away in the distance, the hoary head of the Finsteraarhorn, whitening beneath an ...
— Tartarin On The Alps • Alphonse Daudet

... the afternoon, and we had landed with full water-bottles, for drinking water was unavailable. Towards evening some double-roofed tents were run up. The men settled down in the empty sheds alongside the creek. We got to bed in a thunderstorm—a vivid zigzag banging affair that circled round most of the night. The rain turned the ground into something beyond description as regards its slippery properties. Only a native donkey can keep footing in such ground. ...
— In Mesopotamia • Martin Swayne

... push behind, the rickshaws had brought them up a zigzag hill to a cautious wooden gateway half open in a close fence ...
— Kimono • John Paris

... two of Guido Franceschini, are unapproachable, in their kind, by any living or dead poet, 'me judice'. Here Browning's jerkiness comes in with inevitable effect. You get lightning glimpses — and, as one naturally expects from lightning, zigzag glimpses — into the intense night of the passion of these souls. It is entirely wonderful and without precedent. The fitful play of Guido's lust, and scorn, and hate, and cowardice, closes with a master stroke: — "Christ! Maria! God! . . . POMPILIA, ...
— Sidney Lanier • Edwin Mims

... us that the Canticle after a Lesson is designed to respond to the message of the Lesson, and to make with it an act of Praise. We must dismiss from our minds all idea that our Services were put together in a zigzag fashion, introducing something different as soon as any Psalm or Lesson has been said. The Service-makers valued variety of expression and method within reasonable limits; but the Service itself proceeds from point to point in a regulated progress. When the metrical ...
— The Prayer Book Explained • Percival Jackson

... better path for you up the hill," he said; "I must speak to Sam Wright about it." And carefully he flung the noiseless zigzag of light back and forth in front of her, and told some more stories that he might hear that ...
— The Awakening of Helena Richie • Margaret Deland

... is expressed by certain recurring wave-lines, which remind us of the ancient linear symbols of the zigzag and meander used from the earliest times to express water. In the streams that channel the sands of the sea-shore when the tide recedes we may see beautiful flowing lines, sometimes crossing like a network, and sometimes running into a ...
— Line and Form (1900) • Walter Crane

... the subject would have been the tree one-third from the left side, the white cow touching its line, one or two of those lying on the ground working toward the foreground in a zigzag, little or no diversion from the distance on the left of tree. The swing of the picture would then have been from the foreground to the focus, the white cow and tree, thence to the group under the tree and out through the sky. This would have divided ...
— Pictorial Composition and the Critical Judgment of Pictures • Henry Rankin Poore

... French "roder," which means to wander. The flight is at any rate wholly different from that to which the sportsman is accustomed when one of these birds is flushed in covert. In the latter case, either instinct or experience seems to have taught it extraordinary tricks of zigzag man[oe]uvring that not seldom save its life from a long line of over-anxious guns; though out in the open, where it generally flies in a straight line for the nearest covert, few birds of its size are easier to bring down. Fortunately, we do not in England ...
— Birds in the Calendar • Frederick G. Aflalo

... rising into a narrow gorge, and as suddenly and in like manner descending on the point opposite that on which Fullam was toiling up his way. In addition to this, the gulley was winding and brokenly circuitous—now making a broad sweep of the circle—then terminating in a zigzag and cross direction, which, until the road was actually gained, seemed to have no outlet; and at no time was the advancing force enabled to survey the pass for ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms

... the Warrenton road. The two wanderers, breathless, with torn uniforms, swollen faces, halt, gasping, to take their bearings. They can see the turnpike far beyond the stone bridge half-way to Centreville: they see crowds fleeing in zigzag lines over the open fields, see horses plunging wildly, laden down by two and even three men on their backs; they see vehicles overturned at the roadside, whence the horses have been cut or killed by the rebel shells; they ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan

... the Federalists, severed the old Republican party into warring factions. In later years, Daniel S. Dickinson spoke of "the tangled web of New York politics"; and Horace Greeley complained of "the zigzag, wavering lines and uncouth political designations which puzzled and wearied readers" from 1840 to 1860, when Democrats divided into Conservatives and Radicals, Hunkers and Barnburners, and Hards and Softs; and when Whigs were known as Conscience and Cotton, and Woollies and Silver ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander

... one beyond another with deep canons between them, bending this way and that in long curves and reaches, interrupted here and there with white upboiling masses that looked like the spray of waterfalls. Zigzag lances of lightning followed each other in quick succession, and the thunder was so gloriously loud and massive it seemed as if surely an entire mountain was being shattered at every stroke. Only the trees were touched, however, so far as I could see,—a few firs ...
— The Mountains of California • John Muir

... the latter was threatened with extinction, Daylight developed one of the shaded springs into his water-cress garden and declared war upon any invading cattail. On her wedding day Dede had discovered a long dog-tooth violet by the zigzag trail above the redwood spring, and here she continued to plant more and more. The open hillside above the tiny meadow became a colony of Mariposa lilies. This was due mainly to her efforts, while Daylight, who rode with ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London

... plateau towers on the north Monte Baldo, which, near the river gorge, sends out southward a sloping ridge, known as San Marco, connecting it with the plateau. At the foot of this spur is the summit of the road which leads the traveller from Trent to Verona; and, as he halts at the top of the zigzag, near the village of Rivoli, his eye sweeps over the winding gorge of the river beneath, the threatening mass of Monte Baldo on the north, and on the west of the village he gazes down on a natural depression which has been sharply furrowed by a torrent. The least experienced eye ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose

... stag-beetle led us to the edge of the ravine; and, continuing to follow a zigzag path shaded with shrubs, we came out in front of a hut. On the threshold there was a young woman spinning a piece of cotton cloth, whom I recognized as one of the dancers of the night before. The loom which held the weft was fastened at one end to the trunk of a tree, the other being wound round ...
— Adventures of a Young Naturalist • Lucien Biart

... progress seemed impracticable. Precipitous rocks, with their slopes of debris at foot, closed in the valley all round, excepting only the narrow gullet by which we had come; but, following the footpath, a way up the mountain-side gradually disclosed itself—a zigzag up the face of what seemed to be a sheer precipice—and this we were told was the road to Dormilhouse. The zigzag path is known as the Tourniquet. The ascent is long, steep, and fatiguing. As we passed up, we observed ...
— The Huguenots in France • Samuel Smiles

... Heights. Possibly because the two hundred men would make poor showing in tents, Brock has his soldiers here take quarters in the farmhouses. For the rest it is such a rural scene as one may witness any midsummer,—rolling yellow wheat fields surrounded by the zigzag rail fences, with square farmhouses of stone and the fields invariably backed by the uncleared bush land. Six miles farther down the river, where the waters join Lake Ontario, is the English post, Fort George, near the old capital, Newark, and just opposite the American fort of Niagara. With the ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut

... by experience, for lines such as these do not present themselves in our experience. If, on the other hand, the lines meant are such straight lines as we do meet with in experience, lines straight enough for practical purposes, but in reality slightly zigzag, and with some, however trifling, breadth; as applied to these lines the axiom is not true, for two of them may, and sometimes do, inclose a small portion of space. In neither case, therefore, does ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill

... clouds, which, like the folds of a huge shroud, draped the heavens in darkness. On the starboard, the heaving waters, black as night, were covered with pure white ice-cakes, striking and battering together with heavy grindings. The lightnings played against the inky clouds, forked, zigzag, and dazzling to the eye. The thunder-echoes, unmuffled by vegetation, were reverberated from bare granitic mountains and naked ice-fields with a hollow rattle that deafened and appalled us; and, in the intervals ...
— Left on Labrador - or, The cruise of the Schooner-yacht 'Curlew.' as Recorded by 'Wash.' • Charles Asbury Stephens

... was still addressing these sentences to me, we had crossed the rivulet that gurgled through the valley, and commenced our ascending zigzag way. The skins and bones of sheep destroyed by the wolves that infest these mountains were scattered on every hand, and the foot-marks of these furious brutes and bears were plainly distinguishable on those parts of the soil moistened ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross

... Romana, I walked for some distance along the city wall, and then, turning to the left, toiled up the hill of Bellosguardo, through narrow zigzag lanes between high walls of stone or plastered brick, where the sun had the fairest chance to frizzle me. There were scattered villas and houses, here and there concentrating into a little bit of a street, paved with flag-stones from side to side, as ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... the lantern kept up their dance, but they flared now and again upon stone hedges built in zigzag layers, and upon unknown feathery bushes, intensely green and ...
— The Ship of Stars • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... out towards it. You ascend to it by a hill, and a wide stretch of green sward lies before the door. The gray stone presbytery joins the church and communicates with it. A ragged boreen, or bit of lane, between rough stone walls runs zigzag from the gate, ever open, that leads to the church, and wanders away to the left to the village on the rocks above the sea. Everything is just the same to-day as on that morning when Father Anthony, looking across to the mainland from the high gable window ...
— An Isle in the Water • Katharine Tynan

... a narrow depression in the ridge, commanded on each side by high pine-clad mountains. The approach to it from the Kuram valley was up a steep, narrow, zigzag path, commanded throughout its entire length from the adjacent heights, and difficult to ascend on account of the extreme roughness of the road, which was covered with large fragments of rocks and boulders. Every point of the ascent was exposed ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts

... descended was a narrow road carried zigzag down the cliff—for the pass by which we had entered the valley was fully six hundred feet above the level of the lake—and at short intervals along its course this road was defended by walls of very solid ...
— The Aztec Treasure-House • Thomas Allibone Janvier

... necessary conditions and surroundings. Man is a product; you must have the soil and food. The obstacles presented by nature must not be so great that man cannot, by reasonable industry and courage, overcome them. There is upon this world only a narrow belt of land, circling zigzag the globe, upon which you can produce men and women of talent. In the Southern Hemisphere the real climate that man needs falls mostly upon the sea, and the result is, that the southern half of our world has never produced a man or woman of great genius. ...
— The Ghosts - And Other Lectures • Robert G. Ingersoll

... appears to lose patience, and to take a strange mysterious revenge; nothing more relentless than this wrath of the inanimate. This enraged lump leaps like a panther, it has the clumsiness of an elephant, the nimbleness of a mouse, the obstinacy of an ox, the uncertainty of the billows, the zigzag of the lightning, the deafness of the grave. It weighs ten thousand pounds, and it rebounds like a child's ball. It spins and then abruptly darts off at ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various

... be heard!... I have several remarks to make ... especially in respect of the zigzag footprints!... It all lies in that!... Mathias had not ...
— The Eight Strokes of the Clock • Maurice Leblanc

... lay on the ground; and showing it to the dog, his master told him to find the boy. The good hound sniffed about, and then set off with his nose to the ground, following the zigzag track Tommy had taken in his hurry. The hunter and several of the men went after him, leaving the farmer with the others to ...
— The Louisa Alcott Reader - A Supplementary Reader for the Fourth Year of School • Louisa M. Alcott

... to pick it up, her veil floated off. She caught it ere it reached the ground, and when she raised her hands to spread it over her hat, the loose open sleeves of her dress slipped back, and there, on the left arm, was a long, zigzag scar, like ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson

... captain told him, were long ones. The width of the shaft was about six feet by nine. It was nearly perpendicular, and the slope of the ladders corresponded with its width—the head of each resting against one side of it, and the foot against the other, thus forming a zigzag of ...
— Deep Down, a Tale of the Cornish Mines • R.M. Ballantyne

... few excited zigzag turns on the leaf and pulled at his head, to Maya's intense concern. However, the little bee had observed by this time that there wasn't much sense to be got out of his ...
— The Adventures of Maya the Bee • Waldemar Bonsels

... their ideas were of the vaguest. The rest of the tribe, having brought their women and children into the outer enclosure of the ancient stronghold, and with them their sheep and goats and the few cattle which remained to them, were employed in building up the entrance permanently with stones, a zigzag secret path upon the river side, that could be stopped in a few minutes, being now their only method of ingress and egress through the thickness of the walls. A certain number of men were also sent out as spies to ...
— Benita, An African Romance • H. Rider Haggard

... Bratvold, where the lighthouse was built just on the edge of the slope, which here fell so steeply off towards the sea as to make the descent difficult and almost dangerous, while in ascending it was necessary to take a zigzag course. The sheep, which had grazed here from time out of mind, had cut out a network of paths on the side of the hill, so that from a distance these paths seemed to form a pattern of curves and projections on ...
— Garman and Worse - A Norwegian Novel • Alexander Lange Kielland

... Ellenborough is coming this way; you have danced with him but once, and he is a very desirable partner; so, pray, accept, if he asks you," said Mrs. Carroll, watching a far-off individual who seemed steering his zigzag course toward them. ...
— A Modern Cinderella - or The Little Old Show and Other Stories • Louisa May Alcott

... slowly and reluctantly detached himself from the window-sill, and set the lawnmower on another zigzag journey. His hat, his coat, and his trousers hung limper than ever. He moved wearily, and at the end of the garden he sat down under a cherry-tree to muse on the strange, sad fact that his new employer promised to be not ...
— Treasure Valley • Marian Keith

... all! I wrung my habit out as well as I could, F—— poured the water out of his boots, and we proceeded, first over a plain, and then to climb a high steep hill. I wonder if you have any idea how disagreeable and dangerous it is to go zigzag up the side of a mountain after such rain as we have had. The soil was just like soap, nothing for the horses' hoofs to take hold of, not a pebble or a tuft of grass; all had been washed away, and only the slippery clay remained. ...
— Station Life in New Zealand • Lady Barker

... sometimes to follow on foot. It seemed miles across that wilderness of stone. Foxes and wolves trotted over open places, watching stealthily. All around dark mountain peaks stood up. The afternoon was far advanced when Kells started to descend again, and he rode a zigzag course on weathered slopes and over brushy benches, down and down into the ...
— The Border Legion • Zane Grey

... the plain below. Behind it was a steep cliff; in front there was a gradual descent covered with scrub but affording a splendid view of the lowlands. At one side was the rocky canyon with its brook struggling among the boulders, and on the other side the roadway that wound up the mountain in zigzag fashion, selecting the ...
— Mary Louise • Edith van Dyne (one of L. Frank Baum's pen names)

... while, a little later on, a meridian altitude of the sun fixed our latitude for us. Then, for nearly thirty hours, we found ourselves enveloped in one of the densest fogs I ever experienced, with light, baffling variable winds that made of our wake a continual zigzag, winding up with three days of thoroughly foul weather—a whole gale of wind from the north-east—during the greater part of which we lay hove- to under close-reefed fore and main topsails, with our head to the south-east. Then the weather cleared and moderated; the wind gradually worked ...
— Overdue - The Story of a Missing Ship • Harry Collingwood

... nothing is extraordinary in human nature. What we consider the normal never happens. Nature's course is always zigzag, and no one can predict a ...
— Sister Teresa • George Moore

... to the breakwater headland on another, and on its land side commanded a complete view of the gay little haven, with its white houses built terrace on terrace upon its wooded slopes, connected by flights of zigzag steps, by which the apparently inaccessible shelves and platforms circulated their gay life down to the gay heart of the place,—the circular boulevard, exquisitely leafy and cool, where one found the great casino and the open-air theatre, the exquisite orchestra, into which only the mellowest brass ...
— The Quest of the Golden Girl • Richard le Gallienne

... walk, they came to a winding staircase cut in the rock, which led them a zigzag course up through galleries and grottos looking out through curious windows and loop-holes upon the sea, till finally they emerged at the old sculptured portal of a shady garden which was surrounded by the cloistered arcades of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 44, June, 1861 • Various

... chintz coverings, and furniture of the simplest maple and pine wood —a charming summer retreat, fitted up with unostentatious taste. There was a tiny garden at the back, shut in by a low chalk cliff, a rough zigzag path that goats might have climbed led to the downs, and there was a breach where we could enjoy the ...
— Esther - A Book for Girls • Rosa Nouchette Carey

... now. I wish you could see Arizona canyons in their gorgeous colors. We have had frost right along and the mornings are great. There's a broad zigzag belt of gold halfway up the San Francisco peaks, and that is the aspen thickets taking on their fall coat. Here in the canyon you'd think there was blazing fire everywhere. The vines and the maples are red, scarlet, carmine, cerise, ...
— The Call of the Canyon • Zane Grey

... distorted and monstrous form. To all the facts and forms of nature it wilfully and resolutely opposes itself; it will not draw a man, but an eight-armed monster; it will not draw a flower, but only a spiral or a zigzag. ...
— The Two Paths • John Ruskin

... hence I walked at the same rapid pace along Piccadilly, insinuating myself among the crowd with the skill born of long acquaintance with the London streets, crossed amidst the seething traffic at the Circus, darted up Windmill Street and began to zigzag amongst the narrow streets and courts of Soho. Crossing the Seven Dials and Drury Lane I passed through the multitudinous back-streets and alleys that then filled the area south of Lincoln's Inn, came out by Newcastle Street, Holywell Street and Half-Moon ...
— The Mystery of 31 New Inn • R. Austin Freeman

... implicit confidence with which he let her lift and place his feet; having now to support herself by the rope she had only one hand to spare; but the feat was accomplished each time with the same precision and skill, till the precipitous part of the ascent was passed and they had commenced the zigzag path. ...
— A Loose End and Other Stories • S. Elizabeth Hall

... assisting, Quin good-humoredly allowed himself to be conducted in a zigzag course to the imposing doorway of a large apartment-house across ...
— Quin • Alice Hegan Rice

... renders the mass mobile though it immobilizes personality. The symbol is the instrument by which in the short run the mass escapes from its own inertia, the inertia of indecision, or the inertia of headlong movement, and is rendered capable of being led along the zigzag of ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann

... some forms of dementia shakiness is so excessive that it becomes dysgraphy, with zigzag letters. The handwriting of persons subject to apoplectic strokes has often the appearance of copper-plate. Monomaniacs intersperse their writings with illustrations and symbols. They write very closely in imitation of print, as do mattoids, hysterical persons, and megalomaniacs, and ...
— Criminal Man - According to the Classification of Cesare Lombroso • Gina Lombroso-Ferrero

... beautiful bay opened up to view, with a narrow strip of yellow shingle round the base of the cliffs, which here lost for a short distance their rugged character, though not their height, and were covered with herbage. A zigzag path led to the top, and the whole neighbourhood was full of ocean-worn coves and gullies, some of them dry, and many filled with water, while others were filled at high tide, and left empty when ...
— The Lighthouse • Robert Ballantyne

... and should have done so if the great streaks of lightning which now and then shot zigzag through the sky had taken the shape of words and bid us all beware. I was not one to be daunted, and knew no other course than that of advance when once a stroke of justice had been planned, and ...
— The Old Stone House and Other Stories • Anna Katharine Green

... automobile had to lower its speed. Burned walls were bulging out over the street and half-charred beams were obstructing the way, obliging the vehicle to zigzag through the smoking rubbish. The vacant lots were burning like fire pans between the houses still standing, with doors broken, but not yet in flames. Desnoyers saw within these rectangular spaces partly burned wood, chairs, beds, sewing machines, iron stoves, all the ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... of a volcano, or down the fabled abyss into hell, the whole grand horror of a battle burst upon my sight. For a moment I could neither feel nor think. I scarcely beheld, or beholding did not understand or perceive. Only the roar of guns, the blaze that flashed along a zigzag line and was straightway smothered in smoke, the creek lying glassily beneath me, the gathering twilight, and the brownish blue of woods! I only knew that some thousands of fiends, were playing with fire and ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend

... reminding me what hour of night it was, I speedily got upon my feet, although none too steadily after my potations, and, having duly taken leave of Byrrhaena, guided my zigzag steps upon the homeward way. But at the very first corner we turned, a sudden gust of wind blew out the solitary torch on which we depended, and left us, plunged in the unforeseen blackness of night, to stumble wearily and painfully to ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne

... progress that waxed more perilous as he proceeded. The waves dashed themselves to cataracts below him. Return was impossible, and many would have deemed advance equally so. But he struggled on, maintaining his zigzag course upwards, with nerve unfailing and ...
— The Rocks of Valpre • Ethel May Dell

... a red moustache," "a young man in grey smoking a pipe." The October sunlight rested upon all these men and women sitting immobile; and little Johnnie Sturgeon took the chance to swing down the staircase, carrying his large mysterious parcel, and so dodging a zigzag course between the wheels he reached the pavement, started to whistle a tune and was soon out of sight—for ever. The omnibuses jerked on, and every single person felt relief at being a little nearer to his journey's end, though some cajoled ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf

... the road, I saw just before me a negro standing, with a hoe and a watering-pot in his hand. He had evidently just gotten over the "worm-fence" into the road, out of the path which led zigzag across the "old field" and was lost to sight in the dense growth of sassafras. When I rode up, he was looking anxiously back down this path for his dog. So engrossed was he that he did not even hear my horse, and I reined in to wait until he should turn around and satisfy my curiosity ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 9 • Various

... strong as an ox, and whipping with ease every man who could force him into a fight. So that, in the whole man, a sensitive observer would have felt a peculiar pathos, as though nature had given him a desire to be, and no power to become, and had then sent him on his zigzag way, never to dream wherein his ...
— Christmas Eve on Lonesome and Other Stories • John Fox, Jr.

... the Barnard house the Pembroke woman partly drew rein again; the old horse meandered in a zigzag curve, with his head lopping. "That's where Charlotte Barnard lives," she said. Suddenly she lowered her voice. "There she is now, out in the ...
— Pembroke - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... The application of the zigzag passageway has the inconvenience of slightly elongating the car, but it is advantageous to the passengers, who can thus enjoy a view of the landscape on both ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 613, October 1, 1887 • Various

... hopeful heart I followed the trail in its zigzag course down the steep mountain-side, which was vocal with the chanting call of myriads of partridges. Covey after covey flushed around me; the whole country, far and near, seemed to be alive with them. Before the end of that trip I got to hate and dread partridges more than any living ...
— Reminiscences of a South African Pioneer • W. C. Scully

... vineyard, some two miles east of Cheylas, stood the low, square grey building of the Convent of Saint Francis. Thither did Monsieur de Garnache bend his horse's steps. Up the long white road that crept zigzag through the Franciscans' vineyards rode the Parisian and his servant under the welcome sunshine of ...
— St. Martin's Summer • Rafael Sabatini

... Mostar to Metcovich, it is the only attempt at road-making in the province. It is bad enough, as all Turkish roads are, their engineers having not the slightest idea of levelling. They take the country as they find it, apparently thinking that a zigzag, no matter at what slope the angles may be, is the highest triumph of their art. Until our arrival at Blagai, six miles from Mostar, an escort was deemed necessary, though it was really of not the slightest use, since the rebels, if so inclined, might have disposed of the whole ...
— Herzegovina - Or, Omer Pacha and the Christian Rebels • George Arbuthnot

... rude to her grandmother—she was never offensive. No one could have helped feeling all the time that she was a little lady.—I thought I would venture a question with her. I stood still at a turn of the zigzag, and looked down into the hollow, still a good way below us, where I could now distinguish the form, on the opposite side of the pond, of a woman seated at the foot of a tree, and stooping ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald

... the silk and crewel on the surface, and only a single thread of the ground is taken up; but in place of lying in long lines, from end to end of the material, they are of even length, and are taken in a pattern, such as a waved line or zigzag; so that when finished the ground presents the appearance ...
— Handbook of Embroidery • L. Higgin

... precipice drives back from the bed of the river over the mountain spurs, the pathfinder takes his bearings from countless signs. Moss is on the north side of tree-trunks. A steep slope compels a zigzag, corkscrew ascent, but the slope of the ground guides the climber as to the way to go; for slope means valley; and in valleys are streams; and in the stream is the 'float,' which is to the prospector the one shining signal to be followed. Timber-line ...
— The Cariboo Trail - A Chronicle of the Gold-fields of British Columbia • Agnes C. Laut

... no chance of getting her hands up to her head, she tried to get her head down to them, and was delighted to find that her neck would bend about easily in any direction, like a serpent. She had just succeeded in curving it down into a graceful zigzag, and was going to dive in among the leaves, which she found to be nothing but the tops of the trees under which she had been wandering, when a sharp hiss made her draw back in a hurry: a large pigeon had flown into her face, and was beating her ...
— Alice's Adventures in Wonderland - Illustrated by Arthur Rackham. With a Proem by Austin Dobson • Lewis Carroll

... you see San Francisco spread out below you as multicolored as a rug of Kermanshah. No other city in the two Americas, not excepting Quebec or Rio de Janeiro, so overwhelms the beholder with its vistas—with its luminous enchantments. At night the lights of the city zigzag in patterns of distracting loveliness, and Market street reaches from the foot of the mountain to the Embarcadero like the tail of some flaming comet ...
— Fascinating San Francisco • Fred Brandt and Andrew Y. Wood

... any sunset light The gray day darkened into night, A night made hoary with the swarm And whirl dance of the blinding storm, As zigzag, wavering to and fro, 25 Crossed and recrossed the winged snow; And ere the early bedtime came The white drift piled the window frame, And through the glass the clothesline posts Looked in like tall and ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell

... north side there are a plain square-headed doorway and two bold round arches let into the outer wall over the graves of some great men of these distant times. The drip-mould of one of these arches is carved with a shallow zigzag ornament which is repeated on the western door, a door whose slightly pointed arch may mean a rather later date than the rest of the church. The wooden roof, as at Villarinho, has a very gentle slope with eaves of considerable projection ...
— Portuguese Architecture • Walter Crum Watson

... a great place for public parades. On one side is a high ascent, with a broad expanse of gardens upon the top, and zigzag roads, handsomely walled up, and ornamented with statues and fountains, and with marble seats placed here and there for foot passengers to rest themselves ...
— Rollo in Rome • Jacob Abbott

... Sacsahuaman, which stood upon a steep and rocky hill overlooking the capital. On the side toward the city the fortress was practically impregnable on account of the precipitous slopes of the cliffs. The other side was defended by three stone walls laid out in zigzag shape, with salient and reentrant angles (demi-lunes), like an old-fashioned rail fence, with many doors, each closed by stone portcullis, in each wall. Within the walls was a citadel of three tall towers. The whole constituted a most ...
— South American Fights and Fighters - And Other Tales of Adventure • Cyrus Townsend Brady



Words linked to "Zigzag" :   zigzag goldenrod, locomote, travel, crank, turn, angular shape, go, zig, zag



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