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Smoothness   /smˈuðnəs/   Listen
Smoothness

noun
1.
A texture without roughness; smooth to the touch.  "Some artists prefer the smoothness of a board"
2.
Powerful and effective language.  Synonyms: eloquence, fluency.  "Fluency in spoken and written English is essential" , "His oily smoothness concealed his guilt from the police"
3.
The quality of being bland and gracious or ingratiating in manner.  Synonyms: blandness, suaveness, suavity.
4.
The quality of having a level and even surface.  "The weather system of the Pacific is determined by the uninterrupted smoothness of the ocean"
5.
The quality of being free from errors or interruptions.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Smoothness" Quotes from Famous Books



... assure herself that this thinking would die out. Looking round the world, her small world, how many women there were who had not married the men they had loved first! How few, perhaps, had done so! Life was not good-natured enough for smoothness such as that. And yet did not they, as a rule, live well with their husbands? What right had she to expect anything better than their fate? Each poor insipid dame that she saw, toddling on with half-a-dozen children at her heels, might have had as good a John Gordon ...
— An Old Man's Love • Anthony Trollope

... sea. Drifting with wind and wave is a simple thing for a big vessel. There is no struggle, no tearing asunder of resisting forces. Thus might a boat caught in the pitiless current of Niagara glide towards the brink of the cataract with cunning smoothness. ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy

... is so smooth, Margaret. I never felt anything like it; and the smoothness and coolness seem to go into my head, and stop the aching. Do you think this is being sick? If ...
— Three Margarets • Laura E. Richards

... and setting them side by side like a long row of park palings between the same limits, their upper outline will be identical. Moreover, it will run smoothly and not in irregular steps. The theoretical interpretation of the smoothness of outline is that the individual differences in the objects are caused by different combinations of a large number of minute influences; and as the difference between any two adjacent objects in a long row ...
— Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development • Francis Galton

... draught of the wind has blown constantly down the strait. Such are my rough notes made during the day, as the "Pioneer" and "Intrepid" worked to the westward; but as evening drew on, the increasing smoothness of the water, and a hard icy blink to the west, prepared us for a report which came from the crow's nest about midnight, that there was very much ice to the ...
— Stray Leaves from an Arctic Journal; • Sherard Osborn

... of small vesicles filled with oily matter, in which there is no sensation, and a layer of which lies under the skin and gives smoothness and warmth ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood

... we had a very agreeable captain, and the smoothness of the water enabled the ladies to enjoy it in comfort, and also to spend an hour or two on deck afterwards, in the full beauty of the clear moon and cloudless ...
— Fair Italy, the Riviera and Monte Carlo • W. Cope Devereux

... he simply stood his own ground, saw that his work was properly done, and waited until the man courted his own punishment. In the meantime, the men mistook his forbearance, his quietness, his smoothness of tones and manner for weakness, and Marley, a bully by nature, and quite incapable of understanding his ...
— A Girl of the Klondike • Victoria Cross

... absorbed in the manipulation of the gears, and the brakes, his lower lip clutched tightly between his teeth, breathing in full short gusts like a war horse champing for battle. But when at last they were fully started and running with reasonable smoothness, ...
— Eve to the Rescue • Ethel Hueston

... variety of foliage overhung each other, connected, as it were, by bowers of creepers depending in festoons and concealing odd-shaped fragments of fallen timber, which here and there reared their blackened heads out of the water, the unruffled smoothness of which was occasionally disturbed by the splash of some wildfowl, and chequered with alternate spots of gold and gloom by the sun's rays, as they pierced through the dense ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 2 • John Lort Stokes

... and pull this through the loop on the needle), forming a new stitch or loop, take up the thread and draw through this, and so continue until the chain is of the length required, tightening each loop as drawn through, so that all will be of uniform size and smoothness. After a little practise one does this without thought. When abbreviations are used, that for ...
— Handbook of Wool Knitting and Crochet • Anonymous

... cigar back in his mouth and puffed with regularity and smoothness. Lieutenant-Colonel Hector St. Hilaire, in his turn, took his cigar from his mouth once more, blew away the fine white rings ...
— The Scouts of Stonewall • Joseph A. Altsheler

... Rix was a fox of the first quality. He lied with the smoothness of silk. He could show a dozen colors in as many moments. Come to the windward of Joe Rix? It was a delicate business! But since there was nothing else to do, she fixed her mind upon it, working out this puzzle. Joe Rix wished to destroy Donnegan ...
— Gunman's Reckoning • Max Brand

... When Edith first noticed this child, he was looking at her intently from a pair of large, clear brown eyes that had in them a wistful, hungry expression. His hair, thick and wavy, had been smoothly brushed by some careful hand, and fell back from a large forehead, the whiteness and smoothness of which was noticeable in contrast with those around him. His clothes ...
— Cast Adrift • T. S. Arthur

... do a brother's honest part, John Birkenholt. A loving part I say not. Thou wert always like a very popple for hardness, and smoothness, ay, and slipperiness. Heigh ho! But what is right by the lads, thou ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge

... cursed softly. If only the Cor had completed his sentence before he died. Hilary would have chanced a sudden rush forward to reverse it, to bring on a deluge of rain and clouds, even though it meant certain death. The machine seemed to gleam at him mockingly; the hum continued with tantalizing smoothness. ...
— Slaves of Mercury • Nat Schachner

... indeed, is here, And ease from shame, and rest from fear. There's nothing can dismarble now The smoothness of that limpid brow. But is a calm like this, in truth, The crowning end of life and youth, And when this boon rewards the dead, Are all debts paid, has all been said? And is the heart of youth so light, Its step so firm, its eye so bright, ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner

... a well-known and highly-esteemed variety, approaching very near the Peach Blow in quality. One peculiarity of this potato is, the largest tubers appear to be of as good quality as the small ones. With proper soil and culture, it yields a fair crop; is quite free from disease; and its smoothness, high flavor, and fine appearance make it much ...
— The $100 Prize Essay on the Cultivation of the Potato; and How to Cook the Potato • D. H. Compton and Pierre Blot

... the grateful smoothness of Fifth Avenue beneath the wheels he leaned forth a second time and warned Bob, "Be careful of the ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach

... had possessed none others as remarkable. But if less various he would have been less attractive. If he had shone without a cloud in any one direction, he would not have pervaded a period with the splendour of his nature, and become its type. More smoothness in his fortunes would have shorn them of their tragic picturesqueness. Failure itself was needed to colour all with the tints which surprise and captivate. He was not a martyr to forgive his persecutors. He was ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing

... consonants certain points claim special attention. And first among these is the sounding of the doubled consonants. Whoever has heard Italian spoken recognizes one of its greatest beauties to be the distinctness, yet smoothness, with which its ll and rr and cc—in short, all its doubled consonants—are pronounced. No feature of the language is more charming. And one who attempts the same in Latin and perseveres, with whatever ...
— The Roman Pronunciation of Latin • Frances E. Lord

... table, and hurried to his side. A few words passed between them, inaudible to the court; but they had the unexpected effect of apparently restoring the sufferer to complete tranquillity. He again stood erect; his brow, and it was a noble one, resumed its marble smoothness; his features grew calm, and his whole aspect returned to the stern and moveless melancholy of an ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various

... to his large hand. I shall never see a more reassuring one than his. It was broad, generous, supple. It had the little depressions and the smoothness to be noticed in the hands of truest charity; yet it had the ample outlines of the vigorously imaginative temperament, so different from the hard plumpness of coarseness or brutality. At the point where the fingers joined the back of the ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop

... would disappear. Also, without doubt, it is the Third Degree that contributes another remarkable specialty to Christian Science: viz., ease and flow and lavishness of words, and rhythm and swing and smoothness. There must be a special ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... letters, by which you will see that the spirit of Dongan has entered into the heart of his successor, who may be less passionate and less interested, but who is, to say the least, quite as much opposed to us, and perhaps more dangerous by his suppleness and smoothness than the other was by his violence. What he has just done among the Iroquois, whom he pretends to be under his government, and whom he prevents from coming to meet me, is a certain proof that neither he nor the other English governors, ...
— Count Frontenac and New France under Louis XIV • Francis Parkman

... put his hand on his side ruefully. It was his fixed belief that, because he did not get fat, he was as thin as a starved rat. Paul looked at his father's thick, brownish hands all scarred, with broken nails, rubbing the fine smoothness of his sides, and the incongruity struck him. It seemed strange ...
— Sons and Lovers • David Herbert Lawrence

... made such a nobleman a horseman, the Queen-Empress should not have made him Governor-General of India. Fillimore was full of prejudices. Gianacchi, however, found it impossible to treat him coldly. His smoothness of temperament stood in the way. Instead, he imparted the melodious information that Musquito had pecked badly twice at Tollygunge that morning, and smiled with pathetic philosophy. "Always let 'em use their noses," said Fillimore, and there ...
— The Path of a Star • Mrs. Everard Cotes (AKA Sara Jeannette Duncan)

... subject or one gigantic figure of king or deity was represented on one slab; often the same subject occupied several slabs, and not unfrequently was carried on along an entire wall. In this case the lines begun on one slab were continued on the next with such perfect smoothness, so absolutely without a break, as to warrant the conclusion that the slabs were sculptured after they had been put in their places, not before. Traces of paint show that color was to a certain extent employed to enliven these representations, ...
— Chaldea - From the Earliest Times to the Rise of Assyria • Znade A. Ragozin

... breaking up the ground near the river Oxus, to set up the royal pavilion, discovered a spring of a fat, oily liquor, which after the top was taken off, ran pure, clear oil, without any difference either of taste or smell, having exactly the same smoothness and brightness, and that, too, in a country where no olives grew. The water, indeed, of the river Oxus, is said to be the smoothest to the feeling of all waters, and to leave a gloss on the skins of those who bathe themselves ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough

... of times, Butler incurred the censure of his father-in-law; and sometimes the disputes betwixt them became eager and almost unfriendly. In all such cases Mrs Butler was a mediating spirit, who endeavoured, by the alkaline smoothness of her own disposition, to neutralise the acidity of theological controversy. To the complaints of both she lent an unprejudiced and attentive ear, and sought always rather to excuse than absolutely ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... been rolling with oily smoothness now began to show little feathery crests of foam, and they were following one another with greater quickness, as if impatient to ...
— The Moving Picture Girls at Sea - or, A Pictured Shipwreck That Became Real • Laura Lee Hope

... me with provisions, and bade me farewell, and I set out with my new companions. I soon learnt that the object of our expedition was to fill our sacks with cocoanuts, but when at length I saw the trees and noted their immense height and the slippery smoothness of their slender trunks, I did not at all understand how we were to do it. The crowns of the cocoa-palms were all alive with monkeys, big and little, which skipped from one to the other with surprising agility, seeming to be curious about us and disturbed at our appearance, and ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments • Andrew Lang.

... I cannot tell, it must have been nearer eighty than sixty miles an hour, but the smoothness of the motion was wonderful, and I felt not ...
— The Motor Pirate • George Sidney Paternoster

... almost a yard. Men dropped down from ports in its swelling sides. They made swift, careful inspections of predetermined points. They darted back up the ladders again. The thing roared once more. Then it swung about, headed for the sand-dunes, and with an extraordinary smoothness ...
— Morale - A Story of the War of 1941-43 • Murray Leinster

... valley. Taking our horses with us, Dave and I set out to look up our herds and resume our former positions. I rode through Sponsilier's cattle while en route to my own, and remembered the first impression they had made on my mind,—their uniformity in size and smoothness of build,—and now found them fatted into finished form, the herd being a credit to any drover. Continuing on my way, I intercepted my own cattle, lying down over hundreds of acres, and so contented that I refused to ...
— The Outlet • Andy Adams

... old woman. Yet, if you have an ear for a folk-saying, you will recognize one there in that "only for life" of hers. Be sure that a by-word so compact as that was not one old woman's invention. To acquire such brevity and smoothness, it must have been wandering about the parish for years; and when it reached me at last it had been polished by the despair of hundreds of other people, as a coin is polished by ...
— Change in the Village • (AKA George Bourne) George Sturt

... 7.20 p.m. on the next day, August 4th, the order for mobilisation was received, and conveyed throughout the county that night by the police and eager parties of volunteers. The plan of mobilisation had been closely studied in all its details, and worked with complete smoothness. By 2 p.m. on the 5th the assemblage at Reading was complete, and after a laborious day spent in medical inspection, drawing of equipment and of ammunition, 28 officers and 800 other ranks entrained in the evening for their war station at Portsmouth, while 2 ...
— The War Service of the 1/4 Royal Berkshire Regiment (T. F.) • Charles Robert Mowbray Fraser Cruttwell

... harsh hills, your bitterness Of wind and storm. Stem ye the drift of herded men With your uncouthness So, tasting of your power, they press Back shrinking where upon their warm Safe ways of smoothness They ...
— Miscellany of Poetry - 1919 • Various

... more to be feared than sameness of numbers, and every art is useful by which it may be avoided. A line, rough in itself, has yet its recommendations; it saves the ear the pain of an irksome monotony, and seems even to add greater smoothness to others. Milton, whose ear and taste were exquisite, has exemplified in his Paradise Lost the effect of ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer

... with surface is a very real thing; it is the great reality of Renaissance sculpture: this beauty, resulting from the combination, for instance, in a commonplace face, of the roughness and coarser pore of the close shaven lips and chin with the smoothness of the waxy hanging cheeks; the one catching the light, the other breaking it into a ribbed and forked penumbra. The very perfection of this kind of work is Benedetto da Maiano's bust of Pietro Mellini in the ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. II • Vernon Lee

... board, and Jack took his seat, started his engine, took the tiller and glided out upon the river, and then down toward the railroad station, Percival noting the speed, the smoothness with which everything worked, and the apparent ease with which Jack managed it all, as though he had always been used ...
— The Hilltop Boys on the River • Cyril Burleigh

... sorry company that gathered that night around the long table with its mottled oil-cloth covering and benches polished to a glass-like smoothness with their own vigorous bodies. They did not talk much about the Old Man; indeed, they came no nearer the subject than to ask Weary if he were going to drive the team in to Dry Lake. They did not talk much about anything, for that matter; even the knives and forks seemed ...
— Flying U Ranch • B. M. Bower

... surface, sufficiently to give an efficient tractile power. It seems strange that this error should have diffused itself very extensively, when it is remembered that a certain degree of roughness is essential to frictional resistance. The smoothness of the ordinary railway track is roughness compared to that of an oiled or unctuous metallic surface; and it has been amply demonstrated that the resistance of friction, of two bearing surfaces depends, not upon their extent, ...
— Scientific American, Volume XXIV., No. 12, March 18, 1871 • Various

... get me the burro. He hopes it will stop me some. But in a home a body must remember it isn't his home nor her home, but the home of everybody that belongs. If I should be naughty, it would throw things all out of—of smoothness, don't you know. I can't be naughty all by myself. If I could—no, I wouldn't like it either. When I'm selfish or bad, I always feel as if I had on a dirty apron, and I do just ...
— Reels and Spindles - A Story of Mill Life • Evelyn Raymond

... Diplomacy meant deceit, and he hadn't yet reached the stage of polite and comfortable compromise where deceit figures merely as an amiable convenience for promoting smoothness in human intercourse. But he believed that his father would "come round all right," as Mrs. Whitney had so comfortingly said. How could it be otherwise when he had done nothing discreditable, but, on the contrary, had ...
— The Second Generation • David Graham Phillips

... of ignorance so much as humour. He is a great enemy to the fine gentleman, and these things of complement, and hates ceremony in conversation, as the Puritan in religion. He distinguishes not betwixt fair and double dealing, and suspects all smoothness for the dress of knavery. He starts at the encounter of a salutation as an assault, and beseeches you in choler to forbear your courtesy. He loves not any thing in discourse that comes before the purpose, and is always suspicious of a preface. Himself falls ...
— Microcosmography - or, a Piece of the World Discovered; in Essays and Characters • John Earle

... evils, Mr. Henson, who has the charge of the waggon- building department at Camden, has built and patented a covered waggon with buffers, which unites with great strength, safety, capacity, and smoothness of motion. The scientific manner in which these waggons are framed, gives them strength in proportion to their weight. The buffers with which they are fitted, and the roof, protecting from the weather, render them altogether ...
— Rides on Railways • Samuel Sidney

... under-world of glamour and mystery. Shells, pink and pearly, brown and lilac, scarlet and cobalt, strew the flower-decked floor with infinite variety, concave and spiral, ribbed and fluted, fretted and jagged—the satin smoothness of convoluted forms lying amid rugged shapes bristling with spines and needles. We gaze almost with awe at the lovely vision of a dainty Nautilus, sailing his fairy boat down a blue channel fringed with purple and salmon-coloured anemones, beneath a hedge of rosy coral. ...
— Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings

... long in his arms and kissed her, and vowed to make no long stay and never to alight from the fairy steed. And then he shook the golden reins and the horse threw its head aloft and snorted and bore him away in a pace like that of flowing water for speed and smoothness. Anon they came to the margin of the blue sea, and still the white steed galloped on, brushing the crests of the waves into glittering spray. The sun glared upon the sea and Oisin's head swam with the heat and motion, and in mist and dreams he rode where no day was, nor night, ...
— The High Deeds of Finn and other Bardic Romances of Ancient Ireland • T. W. Rolleston

... the reign of this our woodland queen. I know not why one should sigh after the blossoming gorges of the Himalaya, when our forests are all so crowded with this glowing magnificence,—rounding the tangled swamps into smoothness, lighting up the underwoods, overtopping the pastures, lining the rural lanes, and rearing its great pinkish masses till they meet overhead. The color ranges from the purest white to a perfect rose-pink, and there is an inexhaustible vegetable vigor about the whole ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 62, December, 1862 • Various

... no effort to reply, except to shrug his shoulders. They climbed up out of gloom into the light of the plain. Smoothness of the tundra was gone on this side of the crevasse. Ahead of them rolled up a low hill, and mountainward hills piled one upon another until they were lost in misty distance. From the crest of the ridge ...
— The Alaskan • James Oliver Curwood

... mutton, is a vast improvement upon obtaining food direct from the villagers. Resting here till 2 a.m., we make a moonlight march to Gadamgah, arriving there for breakfast. The trail is a revelation of smoothness, in comparison to my expectations, based upon its condition a few weeks ago. The moon is about full, and gives a light as it only does in Persia, and one can see to ride the parallel ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens

... man appeared to be a wholly different person. His face was all smiles, and there was a jaunty air about him as though he had received good news. His management of the car, too, left nothing to be desired. He started off swiftly, but with a smoothness that told of perfect mastery of the clutch and gears. He took chances, too, as he dashed through town, cutting corners, darting before this car, back of the other until, used as the colonel was to taxicabs in New York, he held his ...
— The Golf Course Mystery • Chester K. Steele

... do not saw the air too much with your hand, thus; but use all gently; for in the very torrent, tempest, and (as I may say) whirlwind of your passion, you must acquire and beget a temperance, that may give it smoothness. Oh, it offends me to the soul, to hear a robustious periwig-pated fellow tear a passion to tatters, to very rags, to split the ears of the groundlings[2]; who, for the most part, are capable of nothing ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein

... away endlessly, an immense, empty stretch of water bared to the hot eye of an August sun, its broad face only saved from oily smoothness by half-hearted flutterings of a westerly breeze. Those faint airs blowing up along the Vancouver Island shore made tentative efforts to fill and belly out strongly the mainsail and jib of a small half-decked sloop working out from ...
— Poor Man's Rock • Bertrand W. Sinclair

... answer. He merely chirruped at the horses. The willing beasts increased their pace and the sleigh sped along with that intoxicating smoothness only to be felt when travelling with double "bobs" on a ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum

... finishing touches, the first part of the work being done with powdered sandstone, sand, or ashes, all of which are used with or without water. At certain stages in the progress of the work, some articles are rubbed on a piece of sandstone to reduce the surfaces to smoothness; but the stone, in this instance, is more a substitute for the file than for the sand-paper. Perhaps I should say that the file is a substitute for the stone, for there is little doubt that stone, sand, and ashes preceded file and paper in the shop ...
— Navajo Silversmiths • Washington Matthews

... consciousness of her body. She had relaxed completely and her mind soared, free. She moved one foot, cautiously, to see whether her body was still there, and smiled when she was reassured by the cool smoothness of the linen sheet, and the other warm little foot ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed

... relate all that he said." "You must not expect to always find people agreeable." Whether we shall place the adverb before the verb or after it must often be determined by considerations of emphasis and smoothness as well as of clearness and correctness. In the foregoing sentences it is better to place accurately after the verb, and always ...
— Slips of Speech • John H. Bechtel

... overpowered and, yielding to their arguments, he had set forth for the adjoining village with the triumphant throng of tempters. At first all had gone well. The fourteen miles had slipped past with such smoothness and rapidity that Stephen, proudly enthroned at the wheel, had almost forgotten that any shadow rested on the hilarity of the day. He had been dubbed a good fellow, a true sport, a benefactor to the school—every complimentary pseudonym imaginable—and had glowed with pleasure beneath ...
— Steve and the Steam Engine • Sara Ware Bassett

... disease, owing, no doubt, to the soothing and slightly purgative properties of the oil contained in the seed. The change made in the appearance of the animals receiving some of the bolls in their steamed food is very apparent after a few weeks' trial; and the smoothness and sleekness of their shining coats plainly show the benefit derived. Is it not surprising, with this fact before our eyes, that many agriculturists—indeed, I fear the majority—persist in the old-fashioned system of taking the flax to a watering-place ...
— The Stock-Feeder's Manual - the chemistry of food in relation to the breeding and - feeding of live stock • Charles Alexander Cameron

... highly important to Mr. Hepplewhite, for upon the absolute smoothness with which tea and dinner were served and the accuracy with which his valet selected socks to match his tie his entire happiness, to say nothing of his peace of mind, depended. His daily life consisted of a series of subdued and nicely adjusted social events. They ...
— Tutt and Mr. Tutt • Arthur Train

... on an arc to return and throw the full glare of her search-lights on the scene. They lighted a vast sea, strangely stilled. An oily smoothness leveled waves and ironed them out to show more clearly the convulsions of a torn mass that rose ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, June, 1930 • Various

... twin gravitex stabilizers, mounted one on each side of the hull. These gave it amazing smoothness even when plowing through rough seas. They were adaptations of a device Tom had invented for his ...
— Tom Swift and The Visitor from Planet X • Victor Appleton

... dips and convolutions, was altogether a puzzle. "How did she ever fix it like that?" Her low evening dress—"what was it made of—some white stuff, but was it silk or muslin or what?" Her shoulders were startling in their bare powdery smoothness—"how dare that young pup dance with her?" And her face, that had seemed so jolly and friendly, floated past the window as pale and illusive as a wisp of fog. His longing for her passed into clumsy awe. He remembered, without resentment, that once on a hilltop in Dakota ...
— Free Air • Sinclair Lewis

... seriously. Loeffler was a very strict teacher and very exacting, but he achieved results, for he had a most original way of making his points clear to the student. He started off with the Sevcik studies, laying great stress on the proper finger articulation. And he taught me absolute smoothness in change of position when crossing the strings. For instance, in the second book of Sevcik's 'Technical Exercises,' in the third exercise, the bow crosses from G to A, and from D to E, leaving a string between in each crossing. Well, I simply could not manage ...
— Violin Mastery - Talks with Master Violinists and Teachers • Frederick H. Martens

... York, and, when close in, were completely becalmed. The boats of each ship were ordered ahead to tow; and thus we slowly progressed along one of the most picturesque scenes it has ever been my fortune to witness in the arctic regions. The water was of glassy smoothness, the sky of brightest blue, and the atmosphere of perfect transparency; while around floated numberless icebergs of the most beautiful forms, and of dazzling hues, while all around was glancing and glittering beneath ...
— Peter the Whaler • W.H.G. Kingston

... direction of melodic cleverness. This influence was still further strengthened by the constant effort of the composer to impart to each voice as characteristic an individuality of movement as possible. Hence there is a distinct gain in smoothness of melody, and there are occasional appearances of truly expressive quality in this part of the music, even in the most elaborate of the contrapuntal compositions. Meanwhile the various forms of popular minstrelsy, whose general course we have already traced, were powerfully appealing to this ...
— A Popular History of the Art of Music - From the Earliest Times Until the Present • W. S. B. Mathews

... renewal of happiness to her heart, wearied with jealousy, to find one to whom old times were precious, and who took her up where he had last seen her. His blunt ways, and downright attacks, were a refreshment to a spirit chafing against the external smoothness and refinement of her way of life, and the pleasure of yielding to his arguments was something new and unexampled. She liked to gain the bright approving look, and with her universal craving for attention, she could not bear not to be engrossing him, whether for blame ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge

... on Father Baby; but, like a skittish girl, the friar hopped across the room, shook off his wooden shoes, picked up the skirt of his habit, and began to dance. The exhilarating drink, the ruddiness of the fire, the discomfort outside, the smoothness of the oak boards,—these were conditions of happiness for Father Baby. This was perhaps the crowning instant of his experience. He was a butterfly man. He saw his lodger, Dr. Dunlap, appear at the door as haggard as the dead. ...
— Old Kaskaskia • Mary Hartwell Catherwood

... CHOCOLATE.—The adulterants of these substances are generally harmless, as they usually consist of flavoring extracts, sugar, starch, flour, and animal fats. No tests other than flavor, consistency, and smoothness need be considered. Good cocoa and chocolate should be slightly bitter, with a pleasant characteristic odor and taste; they should have a smooth, even consistency and be free from grit ...
— The Home Medical Library, Volume V (of VI) • Various

... insinuations and questions shall be answered in their proper places; here I will but say that I scorn and detest lying, and quibbling, and double-tongued practice, and slyness, and cunning, and smoothness, and cant, and pretence, quite as much as any Protestants hate them; and I pray to be kept from the snare of them. But all this is just now by the bye; my present subject is my Accuser; what I insist upon here is this unmanly attempt of his, in his concluding ...
— English: Composition and Literature • W. F. (William Franklin) Webster

... shown them all the map, adding a rough sketch of his own. The next rapid appeared to be no more dangerous than the previous one. But below it the river widened out into a circular bay, a great tureen within which the waters moved with an oil-like smoothness. But when Milton threw a stick into this strange basin, it was whirled the entire circumference of the bay with a velocity that all the men agreed boded ill for any boat that did not cling to the wall. The west end of the bay, where it was all but blocked by the closing in of the Canyon ...
— The Enchanted Canyon • Honore Willsie Morrow

... the water morning and evening. There were diversions for all,—hunting and fishing parties, yachting excursions, rides, music, games, promenades. Carriage wheels whirled flickering along the beach, seaming its smoothness noiselessly, as if muffled. Love wrote its ...
— Chita: A Memory of Last Island • Lafcadio Hearn

... woods ring far and wide. I concluded that he laughed in derision of my efforts, confident of his own resources. Though the sky was by this time overcast, the pond was so smooth that I could see where he broke the surface when I did not hear him. His white breast, the stillness of the air, and the smoothness of the water were all against him. At length, having come up fifty rods off, he uttered one of those prolonged howls, as if calling on the god of loons to aid him, and immediately there came a wind from the east and rippled the surface, and filled the ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester

... her beautifully shaped mahogany linen wheel, made by the skillful artificers of England or Holland, more beautiful perhaps, but not more capable than that of the farm wife, whittled and sandpapered into smoothness by her husband or sons, and both were used with the ...
— The Development of Embroidery in America • Candace Wheeler

... our island under an assumed name," said Darrow in tones that had the smoothness and the rasp of silk. "Rather annoying. Not good form, quite, ...
— The Mystery • Stewart Edward White and Samuel Hopkins Adams

... the odour of her milk; then its taste is gratified by the flavour of it: afterwards the appetites of hunger and of thirst afford pleasure by the possession of their objects, and by the subsequent digestion of the aliment; and, lastly, the sense of touch is delighted by the softness and smoothness of the milky fountain, the source of such variety ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. I - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin

... been ascribed to reflection from the crests of the sea-waves. But this hypothesis is negatived by the fact, that the echoes were produced in great intensity and duration when no waves existed—when the sea, in fact, was of glassy smoothness. It has been also shown that the direction of the echoes depended not on that of waves, real or assumed, but on the direction of the axis of the trumpet. Causing that axis to traverse an arc of 210 deg., and the trumpet ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall

... Montessori, our methods are growing more natural. The adult learns by doing and so does the child. Doctor Montessori teaches the children to use all their senses. She gives them fabrics of various textures and objects of different shapes and colors. Thus they learn colors, forms, smoothness, roughness, etc. She teaches them how to dress and undress and how to take their baths. She lets them go about the schoolroom instead of compelling them to sit still at their desks in cramped positions. ...
— Maintaining Health • R. L. Alsaker

... doubting mood, expressing a strong disbelief of his offspring's abilities in writing poetry. Thus put upon his mettle, John resolved to do his best to change the scepticism of his father, and having written some verses which he liked, and corrected them over and over again into desirable smoothness, he one evening read them to his astonished parents. But the result was thoroughly disappointing. So far from admiring his son's poetry, Parker Clare expressed his strong conviction that it was mere rubbish, not to be compared to the half-penny songs of the fairs. John was much humbled ...
— The Life of John Clare • Frederick Martin

... tobacco, blended to honey-smoothness. And a flavor that has won more than 100,000 taste tests. No artificial treatment ... just better tobacco, that's all. And it has put OLD GOLD among the leaders in THREE years! Take a carton home. Do it today. For this is the weather for mild ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science February 1930 • Various

... Lady Mary Chance; and the next minute listening with a deference graceful enough to turn even the seasoned head of a warrior to a grey-haired general describing the taking of the Vimy Ridge; and finally, Helena, holding a dancing class under the cedars on the yellow smoothness of the lawn, after tea, for such young men as panted to conquer the mysteries of "hesitation" or jazzing, and were ardently courting instruction in the desperate hope of capturing their teacher for a dance that ...
— Helena • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... All Isabella's smoothness and policy had dropped away from her, and the real woman stood there, plotting and unscrupulous, as I'd ...
— Further Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... noted its peculiar smoothness, its remarkable weight for its size; he noted, too, that it was veined with concentric markings, like a series of arabesques ...
— Spawn of the Comet • Harold Thompson Rich

... Under the smoothness of Sir George's words, under the subtle mockery of his manner, throbbed a volcano of passion and vengeance. But this was for the lawyer only, even as he alone saw the moonlight gleam faintly on the pistol barrel that lurked behind his companion's thigh. For Mr. Dunborough, it would be hard ...
— The Castle Inn • Stanley John Weyman

... every bit as wild as this are being received in silence every day. All strokes slip on the smoothness of a polished wall. All blows fall soundless on the softness of a padded cell. For madness is a passive as well as an active state: it is a paralysis, a refusal of the nerves to respond to the normal stimuli, as well as an unnatural ...
— A Miscellany of Men • G. K. Chesterton

... all literature than some of those we come across in Mrs. Browning's poems. But her ruggedness was never the result of carelessness. It was deliberate, as her letters to Mr. Horne show very clearly. She refused to sandpaper her muse. She disliked facile smoothness and artificial polish. In her very rejection of art she was an artist. She intended to produce a certain effect by certain means, and she succeeded; and her indifference to complete assonance in rhyme often gives a splendid richness ...
— Miscellanies • Oscar Wilde

... shaped like a great overhanging hood, out of which, crudely suggested by the configuration of the rock, peered a diabolical face, weather-worn to the smoothness of polished marble. ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler

... Ground for a Bed.—Travellers should always root up the stones and sticks that might interfere with the smoothness of the place where they intend to sleep. This is a matter worth taking a great deal of pains about; the oldest campaigners are the most particular in making themselves comfortable at night. They should also scrape ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton

... later. Its temperature remains pretty nearly the same at all seasons, about 48 deg. Fahrenheit. In winter it is crossed on the ice, the passage ordinarily occupying about five hours. The lake generally freezes when the air is perfectly still so that the surface is of glossy smoothness until covered with snow. A gentleman in Irkutsk described to me his feelings when he crossed Lake Baikal in winter for the first time. The ice was six feet thick, but so perfectly transparent that he seemed driving over the surface of the water. The illusion was ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox

... touching that one rectifies the mistakes of the eyes; one judges thus of smoothness and solidity. Let me kiss these two fair sources of life. I prefer them to the hundred breasts of Cybele, and I ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt

... avoid the neighborhood and escape the notice of others whose acquaintance would bring them no credit; how we laughed at the awkward movements and labors of the servants of the circus, who were busying themselves in giving its final smoothness to the saw-dust and hurrying through the last little offices of so vast a preparation, urged on continually by the voices or lashes of the managers of the games; nor how our ears were deafened by the fearful yellings of the maddened beasts confined in the vivaria, ...
— Zenobia - or, The Fall of Palmyra • William Ware

... magnesia in quicklime and water, an article was produced which seemed to be all that he could desire. Some sheets of India-rubber made by this process drew a medal at the fair of the American Institute in 1835, and were much commended in the newspapers. Nothing could exceed the smoothness and firmness of the surface of these sheets; nor have they to this day been surpassed in these particulars. He obtained a patent for the process, manufactured a considerable quantity, sold his product readily, and thought his difficulties were at ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton

... doubt his guess was justified. There was an oily smoothness about that dazzling haze which made it remarkably like a lake of still and rather dirty water under a ...
— The Lord of Death and the Queen of Life • Homer Eon Flint

... with which he has adhered to the words as well as the spirit of the original. Not least will they appreciate the fact that he has left the hewn stones of Bjoernson's lines in their native ruggedness instead of attempting to reduce them to a brick-and-mortar smoothness. Yale Review. ...
— Modern Icelandic Plays - Eyvind of the Hills; The Hraun Farm • Jhann Sigurjnsson

... "it is temperance of the soul in exercising the power of taking revenge." This moderation of soul comes from a certain sweetness of disposition, whereby a man recoils from anything that may be painful to another. Wherefore Seneca says (De Clementia ii, 3) that "clemency is a certain smoothness of the soul"; for, on the other hand, there would seem to be a certain roughness of soul in one who ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas

... proportion of these recent motifs demand a broad method of treatment—a manner often called "unfinished" by those who approve only the smooth polish of an antique Venus, and would limit sculpture to the narrow class of subjects with which this smoothness harmonizes. ...
— Women in the fine arts, from the Seventh Century B.C. to the Twentieth Century A.D. • Clara Erskine Clement

... was now in the full bloom of ornamental sorrow. A very shallow crape bonnet, frilled and froth-like, allowed the parted raven hair to show its glossy smoothness. A jet pin heaved upon her bosom with every sigh of memory, or emotion of unknown origin. Jet bracelets shone with every movement of her slender hands, cased in close-fitting black gloves. Her sable dress was ridged with manifold flounces, from beneath ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... cul-de-sac. The first locomotives, apart from the heavy tradition of their ancestry, were, like all experimental machinery, needlessly clumsy and heavy, and their inventors, being men of insufficient faith, instead of working for lightness and smoothness of motion, took the easier course of placing them upon the tramways that were already in existence—chiefly for the transit of heavy goods over soft roads. And from that followed a very interesting ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells

... four seconds went to the door and, affecting intense maturity, spat out from it. The younger, dipping his head in the water-butt near the leader, took a small comb from his pocket and, using the disturbed water-butt as a mirror, began parting into ideal smoothness his upward-turning locks. ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... example, the impressions of roundness, angularity, smoothness, roughness, colour, etc., of a table contain, all told, nothing that could assure us of the existence of the object 'table' as the real content of an external world. How, then, do we receive the conviction of the latter's ...
— Man or Matter • Ernst Lehrs

... contiguity of its provinces to the sea. The Mediterranean has given rise to so many great and powerful nations, only from the superior advantages which it afforded for commerce during the long infancy of navigation. The number and fertility of its islands, the serenity of its climate, the smoothness of its waters, the smallness of its entrance, which although of itself sufficient to indicate to the skilful pilot the proximity of the ocean, is still more clearly defined by the Pillars of Hercules, towering on each side of it, and forming land-marks not to be mistaken ...
— Statistical, Historical and Political Description of the Colony of New South Wales and its Dependent Settlements in Van Diemen's Land • William Charles Wentworth

... simply prolonged mountain crests reflecting the sun's rays more vividly by their superior altitude and comparative smoothness?" ...
— All Around the Moon • Jules Verne

... a sudden jet of flame in the Liverpool coal fire gave a sort of silent sound, rebuking the humanity that lived there. No noise was heard from below stairs; the middle-aged and well-trained servants did their work with the regularity and almost with the smoothness of machines. It occurred to Esther anew that her life was excessively quiet; and a thought of Pitt, and how good it would have been to see him, arose again, as it had risen so many times. And then came the thoughts of the afternoon. ...
— A Red Wallflower • Susan Warner

... fingers—and as he gestured he quivered to his very finger-tips, and down there on the benches they quivered with him. The cold words—he warmed and revivified them. Under the caress of his beautiful, barely perceptible brogue the commonest, harshest lines took on smoothness and roundness; and from out his mouth the fine, tender words bloomed like summer flowers; and the larger, colorful words flashed ...
— Sonnie-Boy's People • James B. Connolly

... wheels into and through every exposed part of the mechanism. Soon the explosions became irregular, and we found the cams operating the sparker literally plastered over with mud, so that the parts that should slide and work with great smoothness and rapidity would not operate at all. This happened about every four or five miles. This mechanism on this particular machine was so constructed and situated as to catch and hold mud, and the fine grit worked ...
— Two Thousand Miles On An Automobile • Arthur Jerome Eddy

... real Keats, with his passionate wilfulness, his fantastic moods and his fine inconsistence. Part of Keats's charm as a man is his fascinating incompleteness. We do not want him reduced to a sand-paper smoothness or made perfect by the addition of popular virtues. Still, if Mr. Colvin has not given us a very true picture of Keats's character, he has certainly told the story of his life in a pleasant and readable manner. ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde

... healthy, well-cared-for appearance of a country-dweller who has been turned into a town dandy without suffering in the process. His blue- black hair, growing very low down on a broad forehead, was brushed back in a smoothness that gave his head the appearance of a rain-polished sloe; his eyebrows were two dark smudges and his large violet-grey eyes expressed the restful good temper of an animal whose immediate requirements have been satisfied. The lunch had been an excellent one, and it was jolly ...
— When William Came • Saki

... The smoothness of the rock was deceptive. The caterwheel car lurched and bumped and swayed and rocked. It rolled and dipped and wallowed. Nobody could have remained in a normal seat on such terrain, but Bordman felt hopelessly ...
— Sand Doom • William Fitzgerald Jenkins

... string quartet. Some of his slow movements, in their sudden moments of unsuspected depths of feeling, prophesy of the coming of the great human Beethoven rather than the ethereal, divinely beautiful Mozart. Suavity, smoothness, piquancy, perfect balance between section and section, and each movement and the other movements—these characterize all the later quartets. They were intended for chamber use only—to play them in a ...
— Haydn • John F. Runciman

... truly represented within the House of Commons. Of this fact the recent history of electoral legislation on the Continent and in the Colonies furnishes incontrovertible proofs. Proportional representation has been embodied in the laws of several countries, and these laws work with perfect smoothness. ...
— Proportional Representation - A Study in Methods of Election • John H. Humphreys

... of being Sophia's mother for nearly sixteen years had not been lost on Mrs. Baines, and though she was now discovering undreamt-of dangers in Sophia's erratic temperament, she kept her presence of mind sufficiently well to behave with diplomatic smoothness. It was undoubtedly humiliating to a mother to be forced to use diplomacy in dealing with a girl in short sleeves. In HER day mothers had been autocrats. But ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett

... is the most important element in touch. By it we learn of the form, size, and other properties of objects, as their smoothness and hardness. As we all know, the sense of touch varies in different parts of the skin. It is most acute where the outer skin is thinnest. The tips of the fingers, the edges of the lips, and the tip of the tongue are the ...
— A Practical Physiology • Albert F. Blaisdell

... graceful form of words; it regards neatness and propriety in dress, as something due to society, and avoids tawdriness in apparel, as offensive to good taste; it avoids selfishness in conduct and roughness in manners: hence, a polite person is called a gentle man. True politeness is the smoothness of a refined mind and the tact of ...
— The Ladies' Vase - Polite Manual for Young Ladies • An American Lady

... range of Donatello's work surpasses these two bas-reliefs for harmonies of line and grouping, for choice of form, for beauty of expression, and for smoothness of surface-working. The marble is of great delicacy, and is wrought to a wax-like surface. At the high altar are three more fragments from the mutilated tomb. One is a long low frieze of children bearing garlands, which probably formed the base of Aragazzi's monument, ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds

... mouth was no longer a thin, hard line, but had a certain curve and fullness, borrowed perhaps from the warmth of innocent baby-kisses. Embarrassment and stifled joy had brought a rosier color to her cheek; Gay's vandal hand had ruffled the smoothness of her sandy locks, so that a few stray hairs were absolutely curling with amazement that they had escaped from their sleek bondage; in a word, Samantha Ann Ripley was lovely ...
— Timothy's Quest - A Story for Anybody, Young or Old, Who Cares to Read It • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... cheek to her father's. It was smooth and cold from the October air. Clementine's hair hung in large pale ringlets; for she was an ashen maid, gray-toned and subdued; the roughest wind never ruffled her smoothness. She made her father know that she had come with Beauport women and men from Quebec, as soon as any were allowed to leave the fort, to escort her. She leaned against the bed, soft as a fleece, yielding her ...
— The Chase Of Saint-Castin And Other Stories Of The French In The New World • Mary Hartwell Catherwood

... the day dawned fair, and by eight o'clock we set off with a guide for the ascent of the Hoheneck, rather, I should say, for a long ramble over gently undulating green and flowery ways. After climbing a little beechwood, all was smoothness under our feet, and the long detour we had to make in order to reach the summit was a series of the gentlest ascents, a wandering over fair meadow-land several thousand feet above the sea-level. Here we found the large yellow gentian, used in the fabrication of ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards

... music it is equal to any of his poems. Much has been said about the model which he followed in his versification, the majority of critics tracing in it an imitation of Fairfax's Tasso. The fact seems to be that Waller, with a good ear, had a very limited theory of verse. He worshipped smoothness, and sought it at every hazard. He preferred the Jacob of a soft flowing commonplace to the rough hairy Esau of a strong originality, cumbered with its own weight and richness. We think that this excessive love of the soft, and horror at ...
— Poetical Works of Edmund Waller and Sir John Denham • Edmund Waller; John Denham

... her, he, to a certain degree, succeeded in his kindly attempt. Quickly alive to the charms of scenery, she entered by degrees into the external beauties which every turn in the road opened to their view; and the silvery smoothness of the river, that made the constant attraction of the landscape, the serenity of the time, and the clearness of the heavens, tended to tranquillize a mind that, like a sunflower, so instinctively turned from the shadow to ...
— The Pilgrims Of The Rhine • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... Bruff would utter a remonstrant growl, for Jack would set to work trying to solve the problem why the dog's curly coat would not lie down smooth and straight; and in his efforts to produce that smoothness that he was accustomed to see upon his own skin, he sometimes tugged vigorously ...
— Mother Carey's Chicken - Her Voyage to the Unknown Isle • George Manville Fenn

... every one who cares for skill pure and simple. "Les Odes Funambulesques" and "Les Occidentales" are like ornamental skating. The author moves in many circles and cuts a hundred fantastic figures with a perfect ease and smoothness. At the same time, naturally, he does not advance nor carry his readers with him in any direction. "Les Odes Funambulesques" were at first unsigned. They appeared in journals and magazines, and, as M. de Banville applied the utmost lyrical skill to light topics of the moment, they were the ...
— Essays in Little • Andrew Lang

... chapter to give some idea of the ease and smoothness with which this delicate operation of transportation was carried out. The Battalions which composed the First Expeditionary Force had been spread in small groups over the whole length and breadth of Britain. They had been mobilised, embarked, piloted across the Channel in the face ...
— "Contemptible" • "Casualty"

... second locomotive, he began to direct his particular attention to the state of the Road; as he perceived that the extended use of the locomotive must necessarily depend in a great measure upon the perfection, solidity, continuity, and smoothness of the way along which the engine travelled. Even at that early period, he was in the habit of regarding the road and the locomotive as one machine, speaking of the rail and the wheel ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles

... repelled and fascinated. A few yards from the base of the heap of skulls was a great block of jasper, polished and of a smoothness like glass. Upon this one after another of ten thousand human beings, strong struggling men and perhaps women and children had lain, while priests as terrible as vultures held them, while one priest of high skill and infinite cruelty drove his knife and made his gash and withdrew the ...
— Daughter of the Sun - A Tale of Adventure • Jackson Gregory

... yet with a form that displayed exquisite grace.... It was a countenance of singular loveliness and power. The lips and the moulding of the chin resembled the eager and impassioned tenderness of the shape of Antinous; but instead of the effeminate sullenness of the eye and the narrow smoothness of the forehead, shone an expression of profound and piercing thought. On each side of the clear and open brow descended, even to the shoulders, the clustering locks of golden hair; while the eyes large and yet deep, beamed with ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli

... materials of uniform colour, require all the help of recessed shadows and projections to catch the light; whereas in textiles, form is assisted by colour, and smoothness of surface is a primary consideration. The strongly accentuated design for wood-carving becomes poor and lifeless when deprived of its essential conditions and raison d'etre, and the pattern which looks charming, outlined and filled in with colour, could be hardly seen incised on a flat stone ...
— Needlework As Art • Marian Alford

... produced by a portion of the animal called the mantle; and, for explanation's sake, we may add that gourmands practically know the mantle as the beard of the oyster. When living in its glossy house, should any foreign substance find its way through the shell to disturb the smoothness so essential to its ease, the fish coats the offending substance with nacre, and a pearl is thus formed. The pearl is, in fact, a little globe of the smooth, glossy substance yielded by the oyster's beard; yielded ordinarily to smooth the narrow home to which his nature binds him, but yielded ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 430 - Volume 17, New Series, March 27, 1852 • Various



Words linked to "Smoothness" :   silkiness, fineness, expressive style, suavity, texture, style, graciousness, slip, effortlessness, slick, blandness, evenness, invariability, suaveness, eloquence, powderiness, roughness, gloss, sleekness, fluency, slipperiness, polish, burnish, glossiness, slickness, smooth



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