Free Translator Free Translator
Translators Dictionaries Courses Other
Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Threatening   /θrˈɛtənɪŋ/  /θrˈɛtnɪŋ/   Listen
Threatening

adjective
1.
Threatening or foreshadowing evil or tragic developments.  Synonyms: baleful, forbidding, menacing, minacious, minatory, ominous, sinister.  "Forbidding thunderclouds" , "His tone became menacing" , "Ominous rumblings of discontent" , "Sinister storm clouds" , "A sinister smile" , "His threatening behavior" , "Ugly black clouds" , "The situation became ugly"
2.
Darkened by clouds.  Synonyms: heavy, lowering, sullen.



Related search:



WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |





"Threatening" Quotes from Famous Books



... now as always afterward. Grim danger was threatening the Princess May on every side. Each moment Grenfell and his companions expected to feel the shock of collision and hear the fatal crunching and splintering of the vessel's timbers upon the rocks. All of Grenfell's experiences ...
— The Story of Grenfell of the Labrador - A Boy's Life of Wilfred T. Grenfell • Dillon Wallace

... or forged Aunt Charlotte's name, or infringed the laws in any way whatever that he could think of. But just then the clerk, who had been holding a muttered consultation with another gentleman of equally threatening aspect, turned to him again with a less aggressive expression, as much as to say that he'd let him off this time if he promised never to do it any more, and intimated, with a sort of grudging nod, that he ...
— Austin and His Friends • Frederic H. Balfour

... provisions, started up the valley this morning, with instructions to go in sight of the enemy, the object being to lead the latter to suppose the advance guard of our army is before him. By this device it is expected to keep the enemy in our front from going to the assistance of the rebels now threatening Kimball. ...
— The Citizen-Soldier - or, Memoirs of a Volunteer • John Beatty

... asked the astonished stranger, his eyes sparkling with rage, and not even lowering their glance before the threatening attitude of ...
— Wood Rangers - The Trappers of Sonora • Mayne Reid

... is gone. Others are threatening to follow. Pierce has called a meeting of the Publications Committee of the Dry Goods Union. Discipline is in the air, Boss. Have you ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams

... whom he married two years later after the unhappy suicide of Harriet; in 1816, embittered by lord Eldon's decision that he was unfit to be trusted with the care of Harriet's children, and with consumption threatening, he left England never to return; spent the few remaining years of his life in Italy, chiefly at Lucca, Florence, and Pisa, in friendly relations with Byron, Leigh Hunt, Trelawney, &c.; during this time were written his greatest works, "Prometheus Unbound," "The Cenci," his noble lament on Keats, ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood

... Stationary, lurid, it smouldered while the day died slowly. The long, densely populated sea-line from Pozzuoli to Castellammare burned and smoked with intensest incandescence, sending a glare of fiery mist against the threatening blue behind, and fringing with pomegranate-coloured blots the water where no light now lingered. It is difficult to bend words to the use required. The scene, in spite of natural suavity and grace, had become like Dante's first glimpse of the City of Dis—like Sodom and Gomorrah when ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds

... that privately. The Franciscans and Theatins did not attend the conference, nor did they send their opinions—excusing themselves by letter, with various pretexts, which did not taste like honey to him. The archbishop wrote to the guardian of St. Francis an ill-tempered letter, threatening him with vengeance; but the guardian was not asleep, nor did he forget the rule of "interrogation and reply," etc. At the said conference were present the Troyan, the Augustinian and Recollect provincials, and the two Dominicans Marron and Verart, ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898—Volume 39 of 55 • Various

... damsel who flies, When winter with threatening gale, Loudly howls through the dark frozen skies, And scatters the leaves o'er the vale: In vain to the thicket I look For the birds that enchanted the fair, Or gaze on the wide-spreading oak; No shelter, no music, ...
— The Poetry of Wales • John Jenkins

... from the ship. As soon as they were gone I got all things ready that, if I saw occasion, I might assist them with my great guns. When they came to land the natives in great companies stood to resist them; shaking their lances and threatening them; and some were so daring as to wade into the sea, holding a target in one hand and a lance in the other. Our men held up to them such commodities as I had sent, and made signs of friendship; but to no purpose; for the natives waved them off. Seeing therefore they could not be prevailed ...
— A Continuation of a Voyage to New Holland • William Dampier

... offered him no sense of satisfactory vindication. His railing and ridicule against creatures who yearned, grimaced—neurasthenics, in short—left him with no fine feeling of the victorious sufficiency of himself. Thus to conceal himself from doubts always threatening an appearance, it was necessary for him to assume a viciousness of attitude not entirely sincere. So he read with unction political speeches and art reviews denouncing the phantasts of his day, and from ...
— Erik Dorn • Ben Hecht

... almost to frenzy. Well assured that his withholding her fortune would occasion no vexation to a family of Sir Robert Somerset's vast possessions, he gave way to still more vehement bursts of passion, and in a fit of impotent threatening embarked with all his household to spend the remainder of the season on ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter

... insinuating itself into the republic, and was gaining more strength day by day; and when the same men were erecting a tomb[6] in the forum, who had performed that irregular funeral; and when abandoned men, with slaves like themselves, were every day threatening with more and more vehemence all the houses and temples of the city; so severe was the rigour of Dolabella, not only towards the audacious and wicked slaves, but also towards the profligate and unprincipled freemen, and so prompt was his overthrow ...
— The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, Volume 4 • Cicero

... a good education? And if not, the court inflicts the punishment on the parents. This but expresses the higher law of God which holds parents responsible for the training of their children. Listen to the threatening voice of God in history. Crates, an ancient philosopher, used to say that if he could reach the highest eminence in the city, he would make this proclamation: "What mean ye, fellow-citizens, to be so anxious after wealth, but so indifferent to ...
— The Christian Home • Samuel Philips

... military government) was elected president of the civilian government. He was reelected in 1998 and again in 2003. Unrest in Sierra Leone and Liberia has spilled over into Guinea on several occasions over the past decade, threatening stability and creating humanitarian emergencies. In 2006, declining economic conditions prompted two massive strikes that sparked urban unrest in ...
— The 2007 CIA World Factbook • United States

... toward the trees. It was growing dark when they had won through. The ground beyond was lower than the saw-grass land and seemed to be composed of oozy slime. The growth that covered it was tangled and twisted as if thrown together by a mad burst of storms. Dark, sinister and threatening the interior loomed before them; and without needing to consult their maps they spoke as one: ...
— The Plunderer • Henry Oyen

... breast of old Felix, the whole populace rushed upon Bernardo, disarmed him, crying "Kill him! Kill him!" Bernardo was punched and kicked and cudgelled from one infuriated person to the other in the crowd, and led to the police-station by a multitude which every moment waxed greater and more threatening. ...
— Brazilian Tales • Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis

... I see birds hesitate above the opening and then pass on, apparently as though they had not struck it at just the right angle. On one occasion a solitary bird was left flying, and it took three or four trials either to make up its mind or to catch the trick of the descent. On dark or threatening or stormy days the birds would begin to assemble by mid-afternoon, and by four or five o'clock ...
— Bird Stories from Burroughs - Sketches of Bird Life Taken from the Works of John Burroughs • John Burroughs

... and a few others; and Edna found herself face to face with the realities. She grew fond of her husband, realizing with some unaccountable satisfaction that no trace of passion or excessive and fictitious warmth colored her affection, thereby threatening its dissolution. ...
— The Awakening and Selected Short Stories • Kate Chopin

... considered to border on the scandalous; everybody ate raisins and almonds with the nervous industry of sheep feeding during threatening weather. ...
— The Toys of Peace • Saki

... commanded by the authority of the emperor to return home, and he knew that this notice would be speedily followed by his condemnation. Threatening clouds overhung his path; but as he departed from Worms, his heart was filled with joy and praise. "The devil himself," said he, "guarded the pope's citadel; but Christ has made a wide breach in it, and Satan was constrained to confess that the ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White

... is moving north in sufficient force to drive General Banks before him—precisely in what force we cannot tell. He is also threatening Leesburg and Geary, on the Manassas Gap railroad, from both north and south—in precisely what force we cannot tell. I think the movement is a general and concerted one, such as would not be if he was acting upon the purpose of a very desperate defense of Richmond. I think the time ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln

... Cap'n Ira so sternly and with so threatening a tone of voice and visage that even Ida May was silenced. "We've let you come here, my girl, because Elder Minnett asked us to; and not at all because our opinion of you is changed. Far from it. You're here on sufferance ...
— Sheila of Big Wreck Cove - A Story of Cape Cod • James A. Cooper

... rest of the party were safe, rode back at his utmost speed to report. The constable, rejoiced at seeing his prisoners again, was about to rearrest them, when Coristine and Sylvanus interposed, the latter threatening to thrash the pipe-clay out of the pensioner's "old putrified jints" if he touched the boy. The Crew meant petrified, but the insult was no less offensive to the corporal on account of the mistake. As a private individual in the Squire's kitchen, Mr. Rigby ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell

... if I carn't,' I answered, and then I pitched in and thrashed him till he cried for quarter, and I let him go, threatening all sorts of vengeance upon me, the worst of which was that he would tell his mother and have me arrested for ...
— Bessie's Fortune - A Novel • Mary J. Holmes

... were pursued, if possible, with greater steadiness and activity. Lawrie of Blackwood was condemned for having holden intercourse with a rebel, whose name was not to be found in any of the lists of the intercommuned or proscribed; and a proclamation was issued, threatening all who were in like circumstances with a similar fate. The intercourse with rebels having been in great parts of the kingdom promiscuous and universal, more than twenty thousand persons were objects of this menace. Fines and extortions of all kinds ...
— A History of the Early Part of the Reign of James the Second • Charles James Fox

... a singular collection of rarities, set out with much ceremonial show. A doll tightly wrapped in swaddling-clothes represents "the Child." Over it stands a ferocious-looking beast, easily recognized as a survival of the last political campaign,—the Tammany tiger,—threatening to swallow it at a gulp if one as much as takes one's eyes off it. A miniature Santa Claus, a pasteboard monkey, and several other articles of bric-a-brac of the kind the tenement affords, complete the outfit. The background is a picture of St. Donato, their village saint, with ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis

... inhabitants, a vast straggling heterogeneous mass of buildings in every stage of preservation and decay, splendid temples, mossy and ivy-grown, but scarcely injured by time, then wastes of broken brick and mortar; stern dark towers of Savelli, and Frangipani, and Orsini, and Colonna, dominating and threatening whole quarters of ruins; strange small churches built of odds and ends and remnants not too heavy for a few workmen to move; broken-down aqueducts sticking up here and there in a city that had to drink the muddy water of the Tiber because not a single channel remained whole to ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 1 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford

... spiritual consolation. I could not believe—when we were arrived at the New Field, and I was assisted from my chair in the midst of that hooting and jeering throng, which even the soldiers and the threatening gestures of the parson and my brother served but little to restrain—that I was myself, and still more so, when I was at last seated in ...
— The Heart's Highway - A Romance of Virginia in the Seventeeth Century • Mary E. Wilkins

... not beautiful. The chill wind of autumn had come up, and the pleasant weather that Mark had taken the trouble to praise was vanishing. The clouds were dark and gloomy, threatening a storm. When the men reached the bluff road, they saw that the ocean was disturbed, and that great white-capped waves were beating upon the beach below. Their own thoughts kept both of them in tune with the elements. Neither spoke a word as they rapidly covered the distance between ...
— Charred Wood • Myles Muredach

... more to tell, eccellenza. He went up the little hill to his own studio, and I noticed that he walked like a very old man with his head bent. Once he stopped and shook his fist in the air as though threatening some one. He let himself in at his door with a private key—and I saw him no more. I felt that he would not come out again for some time. And as I moved away to return here, I heard a sound as ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli

... found me still sore, but able to ride, and R.C. and I went off into the woods in search of any kind of adventure. This day was cloudy and threatening, with spells of sunshine. We saw two bull elk, a cow and a calf. The bulls appeared remarkably agile for so heavy an animal. Neither of these, however, were of such magnificent proportions as the one R.C. and I had ...
— Tales of lonely trails • Zane Grey

... and dragged it off the bridge, and now they came back to the cart, and bade us get down therefrom, and cross the bridge on foot, the which we did after that the constable had unbound my child, with many curses and ill words, threatening that, in return for her malice, he would keep her roasting till late in the evening. (I could not blame him much therefore; for truly this was a strange thing!) But, albeit, my child herself got safe across; ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold

... Hallason's) life (two). This, the hood says, it knows, though at most times it is 'dry.' 'Dry' here seems clearly to stand in the sense of 'clear of,' 'free from,' expers, immunis; practically, ignorant. At most times the hood is ignorant of such 'tricks' threatening Thorgils' life, though now it knows of one, even two. With this use of 'ethurr,' cf. Sturlunga^2 ii. 227{37}—"Um sum illvirki eirra er at sumum moennum eigi tvimaelis-laust, hvart er munieth urt hafa um setieth allar ...
— Laxdaela Saga - Translated from the Icelandic • Anonymous

... to do and bear, Assured in right, and mailed in prayer, Thou wilt not bow thee to despair, Carolina! Throw thy bold banner to the breeze! Front with thy ranks the threatening seas, Like thine own proud armorial trees, Carolina! Fling down thy gauntlet to the Huns, And roar the challenge from thy guns; Then leave the future ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various

... say it twice. They were all kneeling, in a moment. And then while the mysterious coughing rose stronger and stronger and the threatening glare reached farther and wider, the negro's voice lifted up ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 1. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner

... last night, we left Foligno betimes in the morning, which was bleak, chill, and very threatening, there being very little blue sky anywhere, and the clouds lying heavily on some of the mountain-ridges. The wind blew sharply right in U——'s face and mine, as we occupied the coupe, so that there must have been a great deal of the north in it. We drove through a wide plain—the Umbrian valley, ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... driven to my wits' end for money. The people I deal with in Paris are perfect demons, and are threatening all sorts of pains and penalties if I don't send them a great sum straight away. Of course if I could get my own money in, it wouldn't matter. But the dear ladies of society are so slow, and naturally I don't like to go to their gentlemen, although really I've waited so long for ...
— The Eternal City • Hall Caine

... upon the embankment of bags and he was the threatening bomb-thrower. The others were down—gray forms wrestling with brown. Dixon was lunging at the bomb-thrower, and, reaching him with the bayonet, ran him through the belly. He toppled over with an awful cry and ...
— The Desert of Wheat • Zane Grey

... first Peace gave himself out to Mrs. Bailey as a hawker, but before long he openly acknowledged his real character as an accomplished burglar. With characteristic insistence Peace declared his passion for Mrs. Bailey by threatening to shoot her if she did not become his. Anxious friends sent for her to soothe the distracted man. Peace had been drowning care with the help of Irish whiskey. He asked "his pet" if she were not glad to see him, to which the lady replied with ...
— A Book of Remarkable Criminals • H. B. Irving

... with his eyes. When she came to examine the poor dragon in the cool light of her own reason it appeared at the worst to be but a pushful patent medicine of an inferior order which, on account of its cheapness and the superior American skill in distributing it, was threatening to drive ...
— Septimus • William J. Locke

... comrade. The guard was called out: there was firing, and some citizens fell. There was disaffection, too, among the troops: one soldier was arrested for refusing to fire on a Protestant: another was shot for threatening to run his sword through a Papist. In the Council Perth moved that one Canaires, minister at Selkirk, should be arraigned for preaching against the Pope; but he found no man on his side except Claverhouse, who, though ...
— Claverhouse • Mowbray Morris

... and expectation mute Gapes round the silent circle's peopled walls. Bounds with one lashing spring the mighty brute, And, wildly staring, spurns with sounding foot The sand, nor blindly rushes on his foe; Here, there, he points his threatening front, to suit His first attack, wide waving to and fro His angry tail; red ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca

... None indeed could gaze at the hero while he was slaying the foe. Urging their heroes to great speed by spurs, by the horns of their bows, by deep growls, by encouraging behests, by whips, by cuts on their flanks, and by threatening speeches, thy men, viz., thy cavalry and thy car-warriors, as also thy foot-soldiers, struck by the shafts of Arjuna, fled away from the fields. Others (that rode on elephants), fled away, urging those huge beasts by pressing their flanks with their hooks and many warriors ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli

... part of the town was a place of great resort to the gallants, and all such as affected a courtly carriage. And it happened that, on the morning after the meeting, a proclamation was sent forth, describing the persons and clothing of the prisoners who had escaped from the tolbooth with me, threatening grievous penalties to all who dared to harbour them. This Heron Brownlee seeing affixed on the cheek of the Netherbow, came and told me; whereupon, after conferring with him, it was agreed that he should provide ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt

... preposterous propositions to me. When you are sober, you will, perhaps, be wise enough to know, that, fool as I may be, I am not such a fool as you think me; and that if I have got money, I intend to keep it—every farthing of it, though you were to be ten times as drunk, and ten times as threatening as you are now." ...
— Memoirs of Mr. Charles J. Yellowplush - The Yellowplush Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray

... sea-breeze would do her good. She returned with several letters, and brought them to me, seeming to desire my company while she read them. One was from Marmaduke, one from Mr. R——, her husband's lawyer in Lincoln. The former puzzled me; it was vague and threatening, and yet there were expressions in it almost befitting a love-letter. Lina read it to me with hardly any change of expression, but dropped it from her fingers as she finished it, with a look of mingled indifference and disgust. The grave, business-like letter of the lawyer ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various

... the end as she had wished it—alone in the immensity of the frozen lake. This was like the true conception of life—one vast, ever darkening sphere filled with threatening voices, where she and others wandered in sorrow, in regret, in disappointment, and, also, in joy. Oh! that redeemed it. Her joy had been so beautiful, so true to the promise of God in the pitiful heart of man. She said to herself ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick

... eyes, pausing in his eternal push-push, to look at the rocks which they were passing in threatening proximity. For the slash which held the river had narrowed. And the rock of its walls was naked of earth, save for sheltered pockets holding the drift of sand dust, while boulders of all sizes cut into the path of the ...
— Storm Over Warlock • Andre Norton

... Carnac had saved her life, had taken her home safe from danger, and had begun a friendship with behind it only a desire to help her. And how had she repaid the saviour of her life? By tricking him into a marriage, and then by threatening him if he did not take her to his home. Truth is, down beneath her misconduct was a passion for the man which, not satisfied, became a passion to destroy him and his career. It was a characteristic of her blood and breed. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... that it will come to a speedy close,—altho', being in good health myself, and of an age when hope dies slowly, I despair not of recovering both liberty and friends. Yet, in the event of our further detention, of sickness or any other evil that may befall me—and there is one threatening—I write these pages of true history, praying that they may some time reach the hand of my guardian and uncle, Dr. William Scrivener, if he be still alive and dwelling in these parts. Should they chance, instead, to meet the eyes ...
— Margaret Tudor - A Romance of Old St. Augustine • Annie T. Colcock

... the threatening crowd, which once or twice jostled him more than was accidental. He came into the post- office, got an envelope, put his letter inside it, stamped it, addressed it to Christine, and dropped ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... "There is one thing more. I don't know what it is, and I don't wish to know, but evidently you have been saying, or threatening to say, something concerning this lady, Mrs. Armstrong, which should not be said. You are not to mention her ...
— Shavings • Joseph C. Lincoln

... pieces more in play than Black, instead of only one, and the mobility of the White Queen, which Black himself has brought out, begins to have a threatening effect on Black's game. ...
— Chess Strategy • Edward Lasker

... especially the charge of sacrilege, founded upon the teachings of the Church for ages. As we have seen, even such men in the early Church as Tertullian and St. Augustine held anatomy in abhorrence, and the decretal of Pope Boniface VIII was universally construed as forbidding all dissection, and as threatening excommunication against those practising it. Through this sacred conventionalism Vesalius broke without fear; despite ecclesiastical censure, great opposition in his own profession, and popular fury, he studied his science by the only method that could give useful results. No peril daunted ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White

... waggons were discharging fresh loads of cabbages. He turned his eyes, and away in the distance saw carts yet streaming out of the Rue Turbigo. The tide was still and ever rising. He had felt it about his ankles, then on a level with his stomach, and now it was threatening to drown him altogether. Blinded and submerged, his ears buzzing, his stomach overpowered by all that he had seen, he asked for mercy; and wild grief took possession of him at the thought of dying there of ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola

... a idgit," he said to himself, with a threatening shake of his head. "Jes wouldn't I like to hev a chance at him! Rome ull git ...
— A Cumberland Vendetta • John Fox, Jr.

... reclining position weariness had caused him to assume. Full and deep upon the still night air rang out the tolling of the mysterious bell. To the anxious watcher, its tones no longer rang full and sweet as upon the previous evening, but sounded slow and threatening, as if freighted with an ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely

... waited, thrilling with expectation, I heard beneath me the quickening pulse-beat of the town. The watch hurried here and there, hectoring, threatening, and commanding. But, in spite of all, men gathered as soon as their backs were turned in the alleys and street openings. Clusters of heads showed black for a moment in some darksome entry, cried "U-g-g-hh!" with a hateful sound, and vanished ere the steel-clad veterans of the Duke's guard could ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett

... proclamation from Oxford, dated June 22d, forbidding the assembly and threatening consequences, the first meeting duly took place on the day appointed—Saturday, July 1, 1643; and from that date till February 22, 1648-1649, or for more than five years and a half, the Westminster Assembly is to be borne in mind as a power of institution in ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various

... the priest who had performed the ceremony, the amount of the fees paid for the same (seventy-five roubles), and statements (1) that the priest had refused to solemnise the wedding until Chichikov had frightened him by threatening to expose the fact that he (the priest) had married Mikhail, a local corn dealer, to his paramour, and (2) that Chichikov had ordered both a koliaska for the couple's conveyance and relays of horses from the post-houses on the road. Nay, the narrative, as detailed by Nozdrev, even reached the ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol

... could not rest; the most troubled and fantastic dreams came to her,—her mother, Mary Wanita, Percy, Maurice, and many other persons seemed to surround her—but in every change of scene there appeared the shadowy figure of her father, constantly working or threatening harm. Sometimes she saw him as he looked in his portrait, and shrank from him as a kind of evil genius, beautiful and yet terrible—sometimes like the Indian who had met her by the river, a hideous, scarcely human object. ...
— A Canadian Heroine, Volume 1 - A Novel • Mrs. Harry Coghill

... around. The lawyer and the bank cashier had been, until that winter, congenial comrades, sharing their business success and their apartment in complete accord; and now a shadow as black as that enveloping the unlighted apartment hung over their good names, threatening one or the other with the charge of forgery and of murder. Kent sighed and turned ...
— The Red Seal • Natalie Sumner Lincoln

... Barlow?" demanded the stranger. "I understand you been threatening, unless you get your pay raised, to commit sabotage ...
— Somewhere in France • Richard Harding Davis

... Ann Rutledge came upon Lincoln, for a time threatening to destroy his ambition and blast his life, he was in a most encouraging position. Master of a profession in which he had an abundance of work and earned fair wages, hopeful of being admitted in a few months to the bar, a member of the State Assembly ...
— McClure's Magazine, Volume VI, No. 3. February 1896 • Various

... and fury. Being thus on his knees, Mr. Tebrick was down on her level very nearly, and her muzzle was thrust almost into his face. Her ears lay flat on her head, her gums were bared in a silent snarl, and all her beautiful teeth threatening him that she would bite him again. Her back too was half-arched, all her hair bristling and her brush held drooping. But it was her eyes that held his, with their slit pupils looking at him with savage desperation ...
— Lady Into Fox • David Garnett

... in the following year, another Act of Parliament decreed that to increase the public utility of the library, Cotton House should be purchased of Sir John Cotton for 4500 pounds, and a new building erected for the collection of books. Still, nothing was done, till the house, actually threatening to tumble down, the books were removed to Essex House, in the Strand, where they remained for twenty-eight years. In 1730, Ashburnham House, Westminster, was purchased by the nation for the reception of the Cottonian, ...
— Studies from Court and Cloister • J.M. Stone

... reached Timbuctoo, only to find orders awaiting them to "prepare for evacuation," in the face of a threatening Tuareg army. Joffre for once disobeyed orders, and decided, instead, to attack. He did so, and administered a crushing defeat to the brigands. He followed this up so thoroughly, that the whole district was ...
— Boys' Book of Famous Soldiers • J. Walker McSpadden

... naturally and delightfully. The fifth year of war will assuredly see some definite policy or action towards greater unity proceeding from France. The quiet, unhasty, resolved manner in which the Chaplains to the Forces in France are moving is in striking contrast to the hasty proposals and hasty actions threatening on the less prepared soil at home. Indeed in this last sentence I have touched upon the two actual terrors which the Church in France feels. FIRST, that hasty and purely sectional action on unimaginative and traditional lines ...
— The War and Unity - Being Lectures Delivered At The Local Lectures Summer - Meeting Of The University Of Cambridge, 1918 • Various

... sounds, both of the dogs and of men's voices, which gradually approached until there was a pause, caused undoubtedly by a colloquy with Aunt Sheba and her associate washerwomen. It did not last very long; and then, to Graham's dismay, the threatening sounds were renewed, and seemed coming directly toward him. He soon gave up all hope, and felt that he had merely to congratulate himself that, from the nature of his hiding-place, he could not be torn by the dogs, when he perceived that the hunt was coming no ...
— His Sombre Rivals • E. P. Roe

... strife. That whistle garrison'd the glen At once with full five hundred men, As if the yawning hill to heaven A subterraneous host had given. Watching their leader's beck and will, All silent there they stood and still. Like the loose crags whose threatening mass Lay tottering o'er the hollow pass, As if an infant's touch could urge Their headlong passage down the verge, With step and weapon forward flung. Upon the mountain-side they hung. The mountaineer cast ...
— MacMillan's Reading Books - Book V • Anonymous

... Babylon, to his great anguish, falls in love with his friend's wife, Tisbina; and being overheard by her and her husband threatening to kill himself, the lady, hoping to divert him from his passion by time and absence, promises to return it on condition of his performing a distant and perilous adventure. He performs the adventure; and the husband ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Vol. 2 • Leigh Hunt

... backwoodsman. Even as a boy the gravity of his character and his mental and physical vigor commended him to those about him, and responsibility and military command were put in his hands at an age when most young men are just leaving college. As the times grew threatening on the frontier, he was sent on a perilous mission to the Indians, in which, after passing through many hardships and dangers, he achieved success. When the troubles came with France it was by the soldiers under his command that the first shots were fired in ...
— Hero Tales From American History • Henry Cabot Lodge, and Theodore Roosevelt

... an idiot,—but he made no reply. And then, for a whole hour, begging, threatening, and promising by turns, the magistrate tried in vain to obtain one word from him. Not even the name of the Countess Claudieuse had the slightest effect. At last, utterly ...
— Within an Inch of His Life • Emile Gaboriau

... are first closed to protect the eyes from the sudden approach of a threatening body in the seventh or eighth week, although, as already observed, they will close against a strong light as early as the second day. The explanation of their beginning to close against the approach of a threatening body is supposed to be that an uncomfortable ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 358, November 11, 1882 • Various

... far from being a fool. A fight with any one of these men meant that somebody would be killed, and no one could tell just who, Elpaso shrewdly reckoned, until the roll-call at the end of it. He therefore met truculence with diplomacy, threatening looks with flattery, and hard words with a long story. Moreover, all Calabasas knew that Elpaso, if he had to, would fight, and that the eccentric guard was not actually to be cornered with impunity. Even ...
— Nan of Music Mountain • Frank H. Spearman

... left unfinished arise from their meeting in those places with strata too harsh, hard, and solid, for their purpose, which they relinquish, and go to a fresh spot that works more freely ? Or may they not in other places fall in with a soil as much too loose and mouldering, liable to flounder, and threatening to overwhelm them and ...
— The Natural History of Selborne • Gilbert White

... every turn, torments him, lest some incautious word be repeated, lest he say or do the wrong thing. And so long as there are cowards to employ, bully employers will exist. Nay, the cowardice seems to call out bullying qualities. Just as a cur will follow you with barkings and threatening growls if you run from him, and yet turn tail and run when you boldly face him, so with most men, with society, with the world—flee from them, show your fear of them, and they will harry you, but boldly face them, ...
— Quit Your Worrying! • George Wharton James

... years looked in vain for an opportunity for infamous distinction, but whom no litigant thought worth bribing, sat one day upon the Bench, lamenting his hard lot, and threatening to put an end to his life if business did not improve. Suddenly he found himself confronted by a dreadful figure clad in a shroud, whose pallor and stony eyes smote him ...
— Fantastic Fables • Ambrose Bierce

... is at present extremely injurious and destructive to hickory trees in and around New York City, and has already destroyed and is threatening the destruction of thousands ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association, Report of the Proceedings at the Third Annual Meeting • Northern Nut Growers Association

... suicide. Adam Liszt attributed it to the sad English climate, which Hein-rich Heine cursed with such unlimited bitterness, and took his boy back again to sunnier France. But the dejection darkened and deepened, threatening even to pass into epilepsy. It assumed the form of religious enthusiasm, alternating with fits of remorse as of one who had committed the unpardonable sin, and sometimes expressed itself in a species of frenzy for the monastic life. These strange experiences alarmed ...
— Great Violinists And Pianists • George T. Ferris

... bridges, etc., not managing them all directly, but reserving the right to regulate them at will. Even hunting and fishing come within the jurisdiction of the central government, this constitutional power having been used to preserve the chamois in certain mountain ranges where they were threatening to disappear completely, but where, thanks to timely interference, they are ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 20, July, 1891 • Various

... He realized this. Her cries came as an inspiration to action. In the twilight I lost him, but the lamp-light disclosed him standing over Henry Holmes, who had been driven into a corner and was held prisoner there by a threatening finger. There was a whispered parley that ended only when the old man surrendered and, stepping to the centre of the room, rapped long and loud on ...
— The Soldier of the Valley • Nelson Lloyd

... would not be uninteresting to add to the records of the "Snail-charm" (Vol. iii, p. 132.), that in the south of Ireland, also, the same charm, with a more fanciful and less threatening burden, was used amongst us children to win from its reserve the startled and offended ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 71, March 8, 1851 • Various

... I said, as I threw myself in a chair which resented the rough usage by creaking violently and threatening to break one leg. "Nobody likes me. I'm always getting into trouble, and every one will be glad when I am gone to Calcutta, ...
— Gil the Gunner - The Youngest Officer in the East • George Manville Fenn

... with earth at strife, Signs make thy soul afraid, The dead return to life, Rivers are dried, winds stay'd; Scarce can one think in calm, so threatening ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold

... am drawing a picture that is overwrought. No man who has spent the last week in the city of Washington will believe that I have done justice to it. You have all the elements of the French Revolution surrounding the capital now, and threatening it with its terrors. Not only is our constitutional Government to be stricken down; not only is our flag to be blotted out; but the very foundations of social order are to be undermined and destroyed; the demon of destruction is to be let loose over the face of the land, a reign ...
— Fifty Years of Public Service • Shelby M. Cullom

... Lamartine has now by his eloquence conquered the whole armed crowd of citizens threatening to kill him if he did not immediately proclaim the Republic and red flag. He said he could not yield to the citizens of Paris alone, that the whole country must be consulted, that he chose the tricolour, for it had followed and accompanied the triumphs ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson

... certain sections, however, was not reduced to heathenism. Although often threatening to execute the reactionary laws, many of which were never intended to be rigidly enforced, the southerners did not at once eliminate the Negro as a religious instructor.[1] It was fortunate that a few Negroes who had learned the importance of early Christian ...
— The Education Of The Negro Prior To 1861 • Carter Godwin Woodson

... immense furnace. The tavern-keeper would have paused and returned so soon as he became conscious of this fearful change, portending the approach of a wild storm; but his conductors seemed to know his thoughts; and turning, each fixed upon him a stern and threatening look, whose strange power he could neither resist ...
— The Lights and Shadows of Real Life • T.S. Arthur

... described as "a naked sword, whose hilt is at Rome, and whose point is everywhere." It is an undisputed historical fact that Loyola's consuming passion was to accomplish the ruin of Protestantism, which had twenty years the start of him and was threatening the very existence of the Roman hierarchy. It has already been shown that the destruction of heresy was the chief aim of the Dominicans. What the friars failed to attain, Loyola attempted. The principal object of the Jesuits was the maintenance of ...
— A Short History of Monks and Monasteries • Alfred Wesley Wishart

... to pacify the natives. He promised payment for all that he required for the construction of his fort, and would not allow a tree to be felled without their sanction. Finally, he had the butcher of the Endeavour mast-headed and flogged, for threatening the wife of one ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part 2. The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century • Jules Verne

... here and there into a little sea; the rain came down in torrents, while the river rose rapidly, bearing down on its swollen stream trunks of trees, and similar waifs and strays, which it tossed about like a giant in sport, threatening to snag us with its playthings every moment. And when we came to a sheltered reach, and found that the little fleet of boats which had preceded us had laid to there, I came to the conclusion that, stiff, tired, and hungry, I should have to pass a night upon the river Chagres. ...
— Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands • Mary Seacole

... commonly known as the Trentino. And that savage beak, you will note, is buried deep in the shoulder of Italy, holding between its jaws, as it were, the Lake of Garda. To continue the simile, it will be seen that the talons of the bird, formed by the Istrian Peninsula, reach out over the Adriatic in threatening proximity to Venice and the other Italian coast towns. It is to end the intolerable menace of that beak and those claws that Italy is fighting. There you have it ...
— Italy at War and the Allies in the West • E. Alexander Powell

... charge as too heavy on the Province? This was the case in a political sense with both England and Holland. The fences raised to keep out superstition and tyranny were all giving way; those dreadful evils were threatening, with their whole accumulated force, to break in upon us and overwhelm our ecclesiastical and civil constitutions. In such circumstances to object to a necessary expense is folly ...
— Dialogues of the Dead • Lord Lyttelton

... resident in England is reported as saying that the English have an atmosphere but no climate. The reverse of this remark would apply pretty accurately to our own case. We certainly have a climate, a two-edged one that cuts both ways, threatening us with sun-stroke on the one hand and with frost-stroke on the other; but we have no atmosphere to speak of in New York and New England, except now and then during the dog-days, or the fitful and uncertain Indian Summer. An atmosphere, ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs

... from the heart; With good will doing service, as to the Lord, and not to men: Knowing that whatsoever good thing any man doeth, the same shall he receive of the Lord, whether he be bond or free. And ye masters, do the same things unto them, forbearing threatening; knowing that your Master also is in heaven; neither is there respect of persons with ...
— A Review of Uncle Tom's Cabin - or, An Essay on Slavery • A. Woodward

... Both saw the peril threatening the swimmer. The light skiff at the end of the long painter whipped around when the line tautened. As Betty cried out in echo to Louise's wail, the gunnel of the skiff crashed down upon ...
— Cap'n Abe, Storekeeper • James A. Cooper

... a second exhibition when a ship's officer seized him, threatening to lock him up if he did ...
— Story of Chester Lawrence • Nephi Anderson

... departure from the academy at Newington Green; Crusoe's early period on the island (south side) with the years Defoe lived at Tooting; Crusoe's visit to the other side of the island with a journey of Defoe's into Scotland; the footprint and the arrival of the savages with the threatening letters received by Defoe, and the physical assaults made on him after the Sacheverell trial; while Friday stands for a collaborator who helped ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... were rather a tight squeeze for the cabin, but they managed to get them in, and the skipper, with a threatening look at his mate, who was exchanging glances of exquisite humour with the watchman, gave his hand to Mrs. ...
— Many Cargoes • W.W. Jacobs

... Sometimes Sisily was under the impression that her father for some reason or other, feared Thalassa. She could recall a chance collision, witnessed unseen, through a half-open door. There had been loud voices, and she had seen a fiery threatening eye—Thalassa's—and her; ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees

... precedes a miscarriage, but the threatening symptoms vary greatly in severity and duration. If appropriate measures are taken promptly, these symptoms may disappear with no harmful result Everyone concedes that bleeding and pain are the chief indications of impending miscarriage, although an occasional patient, profiting by former experience, ...
— The Prospective Mother - A Handbook for Women During Pregnancy • J. Morris Slemons

... of such a union, for Telramund was a rough warrior, as much hated for his cruelty as he was feared for his strength. To make matters worse he was now at the court of the chosen King Henry of Saxony, threatening her with war and ...
— Myths and Legends of All Nations • Various

... city, and fled to the home of a neighboring white friend who kept him in his own house for several days until escape was possible, and in the meantime, summoned his white neighbors to guard the black man's family-threatening to shoot down the first member of the mob who should enter the gate, because, as he said, "you have no right to frighten that woman and her children to death." Such acts as this assures to the Negroes in places where feeling ...
— History of Negro Soldiers in the Spanish-American War, and Other Items of Interest • Edward A. Johnson

... marquis sat his mother, buried in an arm-chair, and with her eyes immediately fixing themselves upon Newman. He felt, as soon as he entered the room, that he was in the presence of something evil; he was startled and pained, as he would have been by a threatening cry in the stillness of the night. He walked straight to Madame de Cintre and seized her by ...
— The American • Henry James

... became more and more threatening. There were conspicuous signs of a hurricane on the way. The atmosphere was turning white and milky. Slender sheaves of cirrus clouds were followed on the horizon by layers of nimbocumulus. Other low clouds fled swiftly. The sea ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne

... known—a man of reverend aspect, upright carriage and a strong distinguishing mark, like an old-time scar, running straight down between his eyebrows. This had been my thought when I first saw it. It was doubly so on seeing it again after the doubts expressed by Miss Graham of a threatening old man who possessed ...
— The Millionaire Baby • Anna Katharine Green

... representative man, he is the representative not of the lower but of the higher elements of the nation. There is a better (as well as a worse) public opinion of which he seeks to lay hold; as there is also a deeper current of human affairs in which he is borne up when the waves nearer the shore are threatening him. He acknowledges that he cannot take the world by force—two or three moves on the political chess board are all that he can fore see—two or three weeks moves on the political chessboard are all that he can foresee—two or three weeks or months are granted to him in which he can provide ...
— Gorgias • Plato

... sense of his right and the feeling of his wrongs, his honour and his misfortune. As I have seen men waking and running to arms at a sudden trumpet; before emergency a manly heart leaps up resolute; meets the threatening danger with undaunted countenance; and, whether conquered or conquering, faces it always. Ah! no man knows his strength or his weakness, till occasion proves them. If there be some thoughts and actions of his life from the memory of which a man shrinks with shame, sure there are some ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray

... months the lofty peaks of this mighty chain of mountains are covered with white caps of snow. It affords a contrast to the elements, of the grandest conception, to stand in the shade of some verdant valley wiping the perspiration from the brow, and at the same time to look upon a darkly threatening storm-cloud powdering the heads of the hoary monster mountains from its freight ...
— Christopher Carson • John S. C. Abbott

... unsuccessful attack on Dover castle. Meanwhile in the obedient shires men were making ready for revolt; in the unsubdued lands they were making ready for more active defence. Many went beyond sea to ask for foreign help, specially in the kindred lands of Denmark and Northern Germany. Against this threatening movement William's strength lay in the incapacity of his enemies for combined action. The whole land never rose at once, and Danish help did not come at the times or in the shape when it could have ...
— William the Conqueror • E. A. Freeman

... see; but the Morning Chronicle and the Daily News, of which I have only seen one article for a long time back, appeared to be maintaining what I hold. That we ought to be strictly neutral (not armed and threatening neutrals) seems to be an axiom; but at the same time I look at the crisis with much hope and little or no fear. To declaim against L. N.'s treachery is only a way of playing into the wrong hands, i.e. supporting Austria. He has pledged himself to expel her from Italy and ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking

... roof of the house that he was informing them that hostages had been given to the Europeans for the due observance of the treaty, and doubted not he was telling them that their lives would be endangered by any movement. Then he pointed to the batteries, as if threatening that if any attack was made the guns would be turned upon them. At any rate, after a time they moved away, and gradually the Sepoys could be seen ...
— Rujub, the Juggler • G. A. Henty

... past and study what will be best to preserve and advance our future greatness From the fall of Adam for his transgression to the present day no nation has ever been free from threatened danger to its prosperity and happiness. We should look to the dangers threatening us, and remedy them so far as lies in our power. We are a republic whereof one man is as good as another before the law. Under such a form of government it is of the greatest importance that all should ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... not levy taxes. It advised the States to pay, but they were too jealous of Congress to heed its requests. "We are," said Washington, "one nation to-day, and thirteen to-morrow." In New England, large bodies of men assembled, refusing to pay their taxes and openly threatening to overturn the government. This insurrection, known as Shays's Rebellion, from the name of its leader, was put down by ...
— A Brief History of the United States • Barnes & Co.

... tied with red, white, and blue ribbon, when it occurred to her that she was not just to him, that she was not giving him a fair chance. He had said he would go and think it over, and she was not waiting. She was pushing, threatening, compelling. That was not a woman's part. She must leave him free, free, free. She could not accept for her country or herself a ...
— Between The Dark And The Daylight • William Dean Howells

... yellow kind," was the laughing response, "but it looks as though we might meet some white ones before long. They say that the 'Greys' and 'Maroons' are flying the skull and crossbones and threatening to give no quarter, when they stack up ...
— Bert Wilson on the Gridiron • J. W. Duffield

... black, who guessed d'Artagnan's meaning, darted at him a glance which might have been thought threatening; but d'Artagnan took ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... you and my father, all that first day of October, wishing to write, only there was much to disturb me that day, as the police were threatening to send us away. It is only since I have had my own child that I have known how much I always failed to do what I might have done for the happiness of you both; only since I have seen so much of men and their trials, that I have learned to prize my father as he deserved; only since I ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. II • Margaret Fuller Ossoli

... was curious. From two sides, from landlord and white laborer, came renewed oppression of black men. The laborers found that their political power gave them little economic advantage as long as the threatening cloud of Negro competition loomed ahead. There was some talk of a strike, but Colton, the new sheriff, ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois

... heavy clouds still hung overhead, threatening another deluge, and the aspect of the abbey remained gloomy as ever. The bell continued to toll; drums were beaten; and trumpets sounded from the outer and inner gateway, and from the three quadrangles. The ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth

... at the bungalow, boisterously threatening the arrest of the entire camp if Durga Ram's ...
— The Adventures of Kathlyn • Harold MacGrath

... brought us to the eve of our landing in Hiva-oa in the Marquesas. Thirty-seven monotonous days, varied only by rain-squalls and sun, by calm or threatening seas, by the changing sky. Rarely a passing schooner lifted its sail above the far circle of the horizon. It was as though we journeyed through ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien

... in her own heart—and Corrigan, older, more ponderous, less addicted to impulse, grew distant in her thoughts and vision. The day before yesterday her sympathies had been with Corrigan—she had thought. But as she rode she knew that they were threatening to desert him. For this man of heroic mold who rode beside her was disquietingly captivating in the bold recklessness of ...
— 'Firebrand' Trevison • Charles Alden Seltzer

... this time, the sun, which had been so friendly all day, became overcast with clouds, and the sky assumed a threatening appearance; but, notwithstanding the wise head-shakings of those who know the country (The Delineator and The Jehu in particular), the party refused to be downhearted, and asserted that rain was the most unlikely event, and, in any case, ...
— Argentina From A British Point Of View • Various

... below,—clouds, fringed ominously with lurid green and white, drifted heavily yet swiftly across the jagged peaks where, looming largely out of the mist, the snow-capped crest of Mount Kazbek rose coldly white against the darkness of the threatening sky. Night was approaching, though away to the west a road gash of crimson, a seeming wound in the breast of heaven, showed where the sun had set an hour since. Now and again the rising wind moaned sobbingly through the tall and spectral pines that, with knotted roots fast clenched in the reluctant ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli

... outlet for some passing emotion. He caught himself watching for the occasional glimpses of her small white teeth between the rose of her lips. He saw in her eyes the violet sparks of smouldering fires, kindled by the volcanic heart sometimes throbbing and threatening so close to the surface. When the eruption came!—Fascinated he watched the rise and sweep of her white arm. Every line and curve of her body was full of suggestion of the ardent and restless and impulsive temperament with which nature had so lavishly endowed her. She was alive with ...
— One Day - A sequel to 'Three Weeks' • Anonymous

... opening of the campaign of 1633, had made himself master of the town and territory of Bamberg, and was now threatening Wurtzburg. But on receiving the summons of General Horn, without delay he began his march towards the Danube, defeated on his way a Bavarian army under John de Werth, and joined the Swedes near Donauwerth. This numerous force, commanded by excellent generals, now threatened Bavaria ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller

... threatening that he {will} also {do} that which is usually done to ravishers; a thing that I never ...
— The Comedies of Terence - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Notes • Publius Terentius Afer, (AKA) Terence



Words linked to "Threatening" :   cloudy, alarming



Copyright © 2024 Free-Translator.com