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Wriggling

adjective
1.
Moving in a twisting or snake-like or wormlike fashion.  Synonyms: wiggly, wriggly, writhing.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Wriggling" Quotes from Famous Books



... soon as I knew you were on your way. Dwight McKenzie is still writing the Committee's business calendar, of course, and he didn't like it a bit, but he couldn't find any solid reason why it shouldn't be set ahead. And I think our good friend Senator Rinehart is probably wriggling on the stick about now, just on the shock value of the switch. Always figure in the shock value of everything you do, my boy—it pays off more than ...
— Martyr • Alan Edward Nourse

... anyone who had watched the bird's manner of digging for its food in the ooze. The long bill is exceedingly sensitive at the tip, and in all probability, by the aid of a tactile sense more highly developed than any other in our acquaintance, this organ conveys to its owner the whereabouts of worms wriggling silently down out of harm's way. On first reaching Britain, the woodcock remains for a few days on the seashore to recover from its crossing, and at this time of rest it trips over the wet sand, generally in the gloaming, and picks up shrimps ...
— Birds in the Calendar • Frederick G. Aflalo

... rocks, saying to my men that I would be back in a few minutes, when a huge cachorra, or dog-fish, weighing some thirty pounds, leapt out of the water and fell on the rocks, wriggling and bounding convulsively. I called the men, who hastily arrived, and with the butts of their rifles killed the fish. While they were busy dissecting it, Alcides, who had not taken part in the quarrel, but had gone to the forest some little way off, hearing the noise, reappeared ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor

... cod of about ten pounds weight was wriggling on the iron hook which Ruby handed up to Dumsby, who mounted with his prize ...
— The Lighthouse • Robert Ballantyne

... which did not turn up again until an hour before departure, when he found it in one of the spare rooms. This one he left loose, and brought the other one to Washington, there being a variety of exciting adventures on the way; the snake wriggling out of his box once, and being upset on the floor once. The first day home Quentin was allowed not to go to school but to go about and renew all his friendships. Among other places that he visited ...
— Letters to His Children • Theodore Roosevelt

... moments the big cheerful room seemed full of wriggling, twisting boys as great coats were pulled off and hung up carefully on pegs at the far end of the room. It was a rule here at The Chief's home that things should always be shipshape. Then the "line up" came. This was ...
— The Library of Work and Play: Gardening and Farming. • Ellen Eddy Shaw

... the Tarrong Hotel we will not linger. The dirty water, peopled by wriggling animalculae, that she poured out of the bedroom jug; the damp, cloudy, unhealthy-smelling towel on which she dried her face; the broken window through which she could hear herself being discussed by loafers in the yard; ...
— An Outback Marriage • Andrew Barton Paterson

... green hat and strode away, too much of a gentleman to embarrass her by looking back. If he had done so he would have seen her grubbing stealthily in the grass, not with her brown little hands, but with the wriggling toes of a bare foot on which the mud, perhaps of yesterday, had caked. She was too proud ...
— Green Fancy • George Barr McCutcheon

... was bound at elbows and wrists, the young lieutenant's fingers were free. Wriggling slightly nearer, Hal fingered at the cords that bound Simm's wrists. That soldier felt and understood. Wriggling slightly nearer, and doing it so easily and gradually as not to attract the attention of the Mexican guard, Simms waited to see what would come of ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys as Lieutenants - or, Serving Old Glory as Line Officers • H. Irving Hancock

... have been well, indeed, had Harry kept his eyes turned oftener toward the shore end of the wall. In that case he might more speedily have detected the wriggling, snake-like movement of the big negro moving ...
— The Young Engineers on the Gulf - The Dread Mystery of the Million Dollar Breakwater • H. Irving Hancock

... Beard pointed to an imaginary door halfway between them and where Virgie sat on the steps, wriggling with delight. "You kin look in ev'ry room in de house—castle, I means—'cept in des dat one. Orn'estan me? Des dat one! But ef yo' looks in dar,—Gawd he'p you. I gwine cut yo' haid off," and the fearful sword whizzed ...
— The Littlest Rebel • Edward Peple

... and I caught sight of two or more panthers springing over the ground at a speed which would secure their safety. Here and there small game scampered along, frequently meeting the death they were trying to avoid, from the feet of the larger animals; snakes went wriggling among the grass, owls hooted, wolves yelped, and other animals added their cries to the terror-prompted chorus. Our chance of escaping with our baggage-mules seemed small indeed. The hot air struck ...
— Adventures in the Far West • W.H.G. Kingston

... she hardly expected that the second portion of the contract would be fulfilled. She knew quite well that the conspirators hoped to turn her presence in the Kosnovian capital to their own account, and when their scheme was balked they would devise some means of wriggling out of the bargain. But she laughed at the notion that she, an unknown student, should have suddenly become a pawn in the game of empire. There was an element of daring, almost of peril, in the adventure that fascinated her. It savored of those ...
— A Son of the Immortals • Louis Tracy

... broader, deeper lines which were the shadows marking the timber uprights that supported the scaffold at its nearer corners; and also there appeared, midway between the framing shadows, down at the lower end of the slender line of the cord, an exaggerated, wriggling manifestation like the reflection of a huge and misshapen jumping-jack, which first would lengthen itself grotesquely, and then abruptly would shorten up, as the tremors running through the dying man's frame altered ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb

... Mimms on all sides were mostly young men and women accompanied by energetic, wriggling children of varying ages. It saddened Mrs. Mimms to see the premature lines forming in the youthful mothers' foreheads, and the gray settling too quickly into the men's hair. Mrs. Mimms, who ...
— The Amazing Mrs. Mimms • David C. Knight

... not,' exclaimed Mr. Daffy, panting and wriggling, 'it's as plain as plain could be that there's no other course for a man who respects himself. I couldn't live a day with such a burden as that on my mind. A bookmaker! A blackguard bookmaker! To think my son should come to that! You know very well, Mr. Lott, that there's nothing I hate and ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing

... he went, now reaching like a monkey, now wriggling like a snake. Now he loosed one hand to sweep back the hair which fell over his forehead. Again, unable to release his hold, he threw his head back to shake away the annoying locks. Tom Slade, stolid though he was, watched him, thrilled ...
— Tom Slade on Mystery Trail • Percy Keese Fitzhugh

... is by keeping their muscles as tense as possible during the tying, so that when relaxed there shall be some slack. Most "committees" know so little about tying, that anybody, by a little pulling, slipping, and wriggling, could slip his hands out of ...
— The Humbugs of the World • P. T. Barnum

... she would say. And I obediently would watch her wriggling beguilements, and the man's smirking ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al

... diverted from himself, it would with all the quickness of an elastic bow rebound to his favourite theme. Out of the sphere of his own "poor body," as he used to call it, he was no more at home in conversation than a fish wriggling ...
— Talkers - With Illustrations • John Bate

... the rags tight on him for fear he'd screech. (He goes back to their camp.) Hurry with the things, Sarah Casey. The peelers aren't coming this way, and maybe we'll get off from them now. [They bundle the things together in wild haste, the priest wriggling and struggling about on the ground, with old Mary trying to keep him quiet. MARY — patting his head. — Be quiet, your reverence. What is it ails you, with your wrigglings now? Is it choking maybe? ...
— The Tinker's Wedding • J. M. Synge

... where the serpent appears. Old divines imagined that the creature whose shape Satan borrowed for the temptation had originally no malignant aspect; neither the poisoned fangs, nor eyes of fire, nor cold, scaly, wriggling form which man and beast recoil from with instinctive horror. They fancied that the curse, "Upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat," was followed by a sudden metamorphosis, and that till then the appearance of the serpent was as lovely as it is now ...
— The Angels' Song • Thomas Guthrie

... the lettuce leaves in front of their wriggling noses, he coaxed them over to the summer-house, and when they got there, he placed a leaf in one of the dishes, saving the ...
— Half-Past Seven Stories • Robert Gordon Anderson

... thing happened. Four "ushers" moved silently down the side-aisle, halted at the end of the sixth row from the rear, laid hands upon an angry and wriggling little man who screamed to high heaven that he hadn't done nothing, and dropped him out of the open window, which was just five feet ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison

... what seemed a death struggle between one of the giant soldiers and an inoffensive-looking worker. The drab, comparatively feeble body of the worker was wriggling right in the center of the great claws which, with a twitch, could have sliced it in two endwise. Yet the jaws did not twitch; and in a few moments the worker drew unconcernedly out ...
— The Raid on the Termites • Paul Ernst

... Madge," remarked Mr. Evringham, half smiling. "No use wriggling, no use staying away from the mother. Might as well yield gracefully. I think Ballard might ...
— Jewel - A Chapter In Her Life • Clara Louise Burnham

... for his glass of pop and a careless squint at the toiling Titan. Puny Philistines eating peanuts and watching Samson at his Gaza stunt! I like it not. Rather would I see the Muse Clio pealing potatoes or Persephone busy with a banana cart! Encleadus wriggling under a mountain is well enough; but Enceladus composedly turning a crank for little men—he seemed too heavy ...
— The River and I • John G. Neihardt

... for the first time, saw them together in anything like numbers, and was struck with the queerness and inequality of the whole. They were of all sorts and sizes, from the solemn towering calf-like fox-hound down to the little wriggling harrier. They seemed, too, to be troubled with various complaints and infirmities. Some had the mange; some had blear eyes; some had but one; many were out at the elbows; and not a few down at the toes. However, they had killed a fox, and 'Handsome is that handsome does,' said Mr. Sponge, ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees

... cliffs is enchanting. I had never seen a live sea-lion before, and here were thousands of them, barking, diving in the water and wriggling out of it, and basking in the sun on ...
— The Sunny Side of Diplomatic Life, 1875-1912 • Lillie DeHegermann-Lindencrone

... The branch was just as high as I could reach with my hands—even when held up in the arms of the tall sailor—and it was no easy matter to raise my body up to it; but during the voyage I had learned to climb like a monkey, and, after some twisting and wriggling, I succeeded in gaining a lodgment among ...
— Ran Away to Sea • Mayne Reid

... "Laws of Verse," with more words than wit, described him as "a microscopic creature wriggling on the learned page, which, when discovered, stiffens out into the resemblance of a ...
— Enemies of Books • William Blades

... he spoken these words when his wife beheld, to her great astonishment, a long black pudding which, issuing from a corner of the hearth, came winding and wriggling towards her. She uttered a cry of fear, and then again exclaimed in dismay, when she perceived that this strange occurrence was due to the wish which her husband had so rashly and foolishly spoken. Turning upon him, in her anger and disappointment she called the poor man ...
— The Fairy Tales of Charles Perrault • Charles Perrault

... approached the little house where Clark lived, the humming of a crowd came to my ears, and I saw with astonishment that the street was blocked. It appeared that the whole of the inhabitants of Kaskaskia were packed in front of the place. Wriggling my way through the people, I had barely reached the gate when I saw Monsieur Vigo and the priest, three Creole gentlemen in uniform, and several others coming out of the door. They stopped, and Monsieur Vigo, raising his hand for ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... the flames. They lapped and lapped, and the more they lapped the more the fire sank away and died. Then with their flickering finger-tips they stirred the hot logs and coals, burrowing after the thin tapes and swirls of vanishing flame, and fetching them out like small blue eels still wriggling ...
— The Field of Clover • Laurence Housman

... facing outboard, and strip! Stand by to swim for it!" Seven hundred men—bluejackets, stokers, and marines—hurriedly formed up and began to divest themselves of their clothes. They were drawn up regardless of class or rating, and a burly Marine Artilleryman, wriggling out of his cholera belt, laughed in the blackened face of a stoker fresh ...
— A Tall Ship - On Other Naval Occasions • Sir Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie

... placed upon the right side. Micronuclei are numerous and scattered along the macronucleus. The anus is terminal and dorsal. Food consists of large and small particles. Movement rapid, free swimming, alternating with resting periods; in some cases an undulating or wriggling movement is seen, showing clearly the flexibility of the body. ...
— Marine Protozoa from Woods Hole - Bulletin of the United States Fish Commission 21:415-468, 1901 • Gary N. Galkins

... exclaimed the visitor, turning at the moment and seeing a pair of wriggling legs above ...
— Idle Ideas in 1905 • Jerome K. Jerome

... who, it was evident, would, if they attempted it, clear a passage for themselves through the meshes. Desmond had fixed upon two, and down he went upon hands and knees, endeavouring to kill the creatures leaping, wriggling, and struggling to get free. As he did so, one of them, making a bolt between his legs, toppled him over on his nose, where he lay kicking and plunging, scarcely to be distinguished from the fish surrounding him. He quickly, however, got his ...
— The Three Commanders • W.H.G. Kingston

... month her husband, as a surprise, brought her some sunfish alive, placing them in a pail of water in the porch. She stumbled against the pail and the shock caused the fish to flap over the pail and come in violent contact with her leg. The cold wriggling fish produced a nervous shock, but she attached no importance to this. The child (a girl) had at birth a mark of bronze pigment resembling a fish with the head uppermost (photograph given) on the corresponding part of the same leg. Daughter's ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 5 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... the oily consistence of the sea. Here a nail, there a block or lever, shaped out mentally by the touch, theorized, studied upon and thrown down. Now a hatchet, monkey-wrench, monkey's-tail, or gliding fish or wriggling eel, companions of his imprisonment. At last the cold touch of iron: the hand encloses and lifts it; its weight betrays its length; he feels it to the end—blunt, square, useless. He tries the other end—an edge or spike. That will do. Standing under the hatch, guided by the ladder to the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI. • Various

... less frequent and less frank in regard to his own circumstances and doings. There came a letter at last from Sir Galahad—a letter of eight pages of soul stress and sorrow, as he would have called it, and of disingenuous wriggling, as the world would call it—in which he explained as delicately as was possible under the circumstances that his love for Miss Willis had become the love of a brother for a sister, and that he was engaged to be married to Miss Virginia Crumb, ...
— The Law-Breakers and Other Stories • Robert Grant

... the imperial pencil. Over the five-roomed main hall was suspended a tablet, inlaid with green, representing wriggling ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin

... corporal," answered the man, as lying flat on the boat, he peered intently into the water. "The bottom is covered with weeds, and I can just see the tails of two large pikes wriggling among them. By Gemini, I think if I had my rod here, I ...
— Hardscrabble - The Fall of Chicago: A Tale of Indian Warfare • John Richardson

... under the blazing sunshine, and where they could under the shade of trees, starting crabs running in all directions, fish which had been basking on the wet sand by the water's edge wriggling and flopping back into the lagoon, and birds of brilliant colours from the trees they passed; all of which excited a desire in Jack to begin trying his skill with his double gun; but it was an understood thing that shooting was not to commence that day, but every ...
— Jack at Sea - All Work and no Play made him a Dull Boy • George Manville Fenn

... mothers argue, at twilight time, when the little dusty legs in overalls were still, and stubbed toes did their last wriggling for the day, that the boy who moved the trunk could not possibly see the rest of the procession. The candidates, to a boy, rejected ...
— Tiverton Tales • Alice Brown

... fool. Hang Morabita and her voice and the golden houses of the gods, and beastly, showy omnipotence to which her voice carries one away! To talk sense—mother—just brutal common sense. My fate is fixed, you know. There's no earthly use in wriggling. I am condemned to live a cow's life and die a cow's death. The pride of life may call, but I can't answer. The great prizes are not for me. I'm too heavily handicapped. I was looking at that young fellow, Decies, to-night and considering ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet

... he calls it) in the slime of vinegar. He relates with great care and accuracy the life-history of the common gnat, from its aquatic larva, the little red 'blood-worm' of our pools; he describes them wriggling about like tiny bits of red weed, in the water of some half-empty well; and he explains, finally, the change by which they become stiff and motionless and hard, until a husk breaks away and the little gnat is seen sitting upon it; and by and by the sun's heat or a puff of wind starts it off, ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various

... and troubles; no time was free from them. The lice worried us by day and tormented us by night; the maggot-flies fouled our food, and laid in sores and wounds larvae that speedily became masses of wriggling worms. The N'Yaarkers were human vermin that preyed upon and ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy

... balcony, and I was quite happy sitting there looking at the people pass. The whole world was represented, and it was interesting to see the different types—Southerners, small, slight, dark, impatient, wriggling through the crowd—the Anglo-Saxons, big, broad, calm, squaring their shoulders when there came a sudden rush, and waiting quite patiently a chance to get a little ahead. Some of the women too pushed well—evidently determined to see ...
— My First Years As A Frenchwoman, 1876-1879 • Mary King Waddington

... they wandered off, to join those outcasts who had broken His laws, and had been sent to the smaller land of this world, where it is always warm, and where there are great trees thick with moss, and the earth underfoot steams, and brings forth wriggling life. Neen, we call that land, as this larger ...
— The God in the Box • Sewell Peaslee Wright

... crotch where Philip had put her, and it was Heaven's mercy that she had not fallen. But her frock was a stout blue gingham, fortunately, and a projecting branch-stump was thrust through it, holding her in a horizontal position along the bough. She was crying and wriggling, and in another minute or so she might have fallen to the ground. There was a slight chance that she would have ...
— The Wishing-Ring Man • Margaret Widdemer

... however, were among the seven "deadly sins" under the regime of Czar Brench. Dropping a book or a slate, wriggling about in your seat, whispering to a seatmate, sitting idly without seeming to study and not knowing your lesson reasonably well were other ...
— A Busy Year at the Old Squire's • Charles Asbury Stephens

... each took one, It did seem such excellent fun! Susan fed hers on milk and bread, Jem got wriggling worms for his instead. I gave mine meat, For, you know, I thought, "Poor darling pet! why shouldn't it have roast beef to eat?" But, oh dear! oh dear! oh dear! how we cried When in spite of milk and bread and worms and roast beef, the little birds died! It's ...
— Verses for Children - and Songs for Music • Juliana Horatia Ewing

... almost unimaginable splendour. Right before me were a number of these labourers, hauling up a heavy beam from the river; others were apparently crossing, laden with materials no less bulky and intractable. All were in motion, wriggling along like so many ants on a hillock. The party just before me stayed immediately below where I sat, watching their proceedings with no little curiosity and amazement. They threw down their load,—then pausing, appeared to view with some ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby

... him pull at something that clung to my coat-sleeve, and then I saw he held a little, wriggling red demon by the tail—the little creature bit and fought and tried to get at his hand—and in a moment he tossed it carelessly behind a counter. No doubt the thing was only an image of twisted indiarubber, but for the moment—! And his gesture ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells

... the following delicate matter. Mr. Enoch Soames, whose poems you may or may not know—" Was there NO way of helping him, saving him? A bargain was a bargain, and I was the last man to aid or abet any one in wriggling out of a reasonable obligation. I wouldn't have lifted a little finger to save Faust. But poor Soames! Doomed to pay without respite an eternal price for nothing but a fruitless search and ...
— Enoch Soames - A Memory of the Eighteen-nineties • Max Beerbohm

... from shore, we ran in round the Elba to try and help them, letting go the anchor in the shallowest possible water; this was about sunset. Suddenly some one calls out he sees the cable at the bottom: there it was, sure enough, apparently wriggling about as the waves rippled. Great excitement; still greater when we find our own anchor is foul of it and it has been the means of bringing it to light. We let go a grapnel, get the cable clear of the anchor on ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson

... cross, is not civil, and has the true Westphalian grace and accents. The four Mesdames, who are clumsy plump old wenches, with a bad likeness to their father, stand in a bedchamber in a row, with black cloaks and knotting-bags, looking good-humoured, not knowing what to say, and wriggling as if they wanted to make water. This ceremony too is very short; then you are carried to the Dauphin's three boys, who you may be sure only bow and stare. The Duke of Berry[1] looks weak and weak-eyed: the Count de Provence is a fine boy; the Count d'Artois ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume II • Horace Walpole

... windows carried their roofs to the sea. In Charles Town, the capital since the submergence of James Town in 1680, are the remains of large town houses and fine old stone walls, which one can hardly see from the roadstead, so thick are the royal palms and the cocoanut trees among the ruins, wriggling their slender bodies through every crevice and flaunting their glittering luxuriance above ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton

... I didn't this morning, as it happens. All the time I felt that strength was slowly returning to me, for I continually worked my fingers and toes, and now feeling seemed to be coming up to my wrists and arms. Then I remembered that the vent was in the middle of the bath-tub; so, wriggling my fingers around, I got hold of the ring, and pulled up the plug. In the dense silence that was around me, I could not tell whether the water was running out or not; but gazing up towards the ceiling I thought I saw the surface gradually sinking down and down and down. Of course it couldn't ...
— In a Steamer Chair And Other Stories • Robert Barr

... flings off all, and after him she flies. 90 And now she fastens on him as he swims, And holds him close, and wraps about his limbs. The more the boy resisted, and was coy, The more she clipped and kissed the struggling boy. So when the wriggling snake is snatched on high In eagle's claws, and hisses in the sky, Around the foe his twirling tail he flings, And twists her legs, and writhes about her wings. The restless boy still obstinately strove To free himself, and still refused her love. 100 Amidst his ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville

... fumble. Now she had lost the use of them altogether. She began to feel that she was in master-hands. She was sure of it the next instant. For Adele stood up, and, passing a cord round the upper part of her arms, drew her elbows back. To bring any strength to help her in wriggling her hands free she must be able to raise her elbows. With them trussed in the small of her back she was robbed entirely of her strength. And all the time her strange uneasiness grew. She made a movement of revolt, and at once ...
— At the Villa Rose • A. E. W. Mason

... seem to observe Ashton's deflection. She remained worshipfully downbent over the wriggling, chuckling ...
— Out of the Depths - A Romance of Reclamation • Robert Ames Bennet

... Terence would have pistolled or thrashed him out of his audacious notions; but the creature was so smiling and submissive that he could not, for the life of him, dirty his fingers with such a contemptible wretch. Thus Tibbins continued flattering and wriggling himself into Miss Biddy's good graces, while Terence was fighting and kissing the way to her heart, till the poor girl was fairly bothered ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various

... hush of those brown old monastic aisles, thinking of Harry the Eighth, and the Reformation! How I loved to go a roving with my eye, all along the sculptured walls and buttresses; winding in among the intricacies of the pendent ceiling, and wriggling my fancied way like a wood-worm. I could have sat there all the morning long, through noon, unto night. But at last the benediction would come; and appropriating my share of it, I would slowly move away, ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville

... looped and suspended with all sorts of lobsters, crabs, sea-turtles, octopi, flounders, etc., wriggling thru it, not seen at first, then in strong evidence, making you wonder why you had not seen ...
— Palaces and Courts of the Exposition • Juliet James

... found in the province of Cyrenaica and is not more than 12 fingers long. It has on its head a white spot after the fashion of a diadem. It scares all serpents with its whistling. It resembles a snake, but does not move by wriggling but from the centre forwards to the right. It is ...
— The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, Complete • Leonardo Da Vinci

... first came to this dog-hole, and tried to sleep among the dry seaweed. First, there was that d-d fellow there, with his broken back, sprawling as he did when I hurled the rock over a-top on him, ha, ha! You would have sworn he was lying on the floor where you stand, wriggling like a crushed ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... just what some of my readers will pronounce them, not in the least knowing what they are. She was suddenly roused from her painful reverie by the pulling up of Helen's ponies, with much clatter and wriggling recoil, close beside her, making more fuss with their toy-carriage than the mightiest of tractive steeds with the chariot ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald

... They are all quite transparent and colourless, and move about like galleys by means of a lot of minute oars that stick out all over them. Never a moment's rest. And, presently, one sees that even the green plant threads are wriggling across the field. The dabbler tries to moralise on this in the vein of Charles Kingsley, and infer we have much to learn from these ridiculous creatures; but, so far as I can see, it's a direct incentive to sloth to think how low in the scale of creation these things ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells

... Downing Street for us, or any Ministry or Reform farther, is not known. He, they say, is getting old, does himself recoil from it, and shudder at it; which is possible enough. The clubs and coteries appear to have settled that he surely will not; that this melancholy wriggling seesaw of red-tape Trojans and Protectionist Greeks must continue its course till—what can happen, my friends, ...
— Latter-Day Pamphlets • Thomas Carlyle

... Devore either lost his head or else indignation made him reckless. Still half sitting, he kicked out at the wriggling bulk at his feet, and the toe of his shoe took Mink Satterlee in his chest. It was a puny enough kick; it didn't even shake Mink Satterlee loose from where he clung. He gave a bellow and heaved himself ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb

... mysterious threat; while "I can see with the Gardener's lost eye," was a claim to glory no one could dispute, for no one could deny it. Its chief duty, however, was to watch the "froot and vegebles" at night and to keep all robbers— two-foot, four-foot, winged, or wriggling robbers—from what Aunt Emily called ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood

... a picture of some blood so infected. Notice that worm- like sheath of undulating membrane terminating in a slender whip- like process by which it moves about. That thing wriggling about like a minute electric eel, always in motion, is known ...
— The Dream Doctor • Arthur B. Reeve

... Eights on wriggling, blatting calves for two or three hours at a stretch before yuh talk about the joys uh branding." Park rubbed ...
— The Lure of the Dim Trails • by (AKA B. M. Sinclair) B. M. Bower

... he has a few chances in his favour! The fellow is much more cunning than I thought and quite capable of wriggling out of the trap. On the other hand, however, how uneasy he must be! How the blood must be buzzing in his ears and obscuring his sight! No, I don't think that he will avoid the trap.... He will give in.... He ...
— The Eight Strokes of the Clock • Maurice Leblanc

... supreme advantage that it belonged to him only. The rest of his family did not indulge in cliff-climbing. Generally he was accompanied there by Wanda, his big farm-dog, a jolly, rollicking, idiotically adoring creature who spent her days wriggling and curvetting at his feet, her silly pink tongue dabbing at him, her moist eyes beaming through her tangled fringe. She was not very clever, being one of those amiable fool dogs whose quality of heart is their chief ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse

... kicked it over the tellers' cages into the front window. Then she pressed her uncle down into his chair, grasped his face in her hands, and held him while she kissed him on the nose, the left eye, and the right cheek, choosing the spot in every instance with provoking deliberation as she held his wriggling head. He lost his cigar and his spectacles were knocked awry, but he did not appear to be distressed. Phil set his spectacles straight, struck a match for a fresh cigar, and seated herself ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson

... all those hours had been pouring a torrent of shells on the heights of the Meuse was sufficient to indicate the nature of the German preparations. A thousand guns, directing their missiles on one sector of the long line of trenches wriggling across the north-eastern provinces of France, was no unusual feature of this extraordinary and gigantic warfare, but here there were not one thousand guns alone but many more, many hundreds more, probably even in excess of two thousand; while, moreover, the troops of the Kaiser, ...
— With Joffre at Verdun - A Story of the Western Front • F. S. Brereton

... beasts on a chain. It was a female, somewhat smaller than the ones Kieran had fought with, and having a slash of white on the throat and chest. She howled and sprang up on Bregg, butting her great head into his shoulder, wriggling with delight. He petted her, talking to her, and she laughed ...
— The Stars, My Brothers • Edmond Hamilton

... storied fisherman of Bagdad, catching enchanted princes disguised as fishes in the sea, ever hooked such a treasure as this defendant hooked when he hooked that basket of eels! [Rustling appreciation of the pun among the jury.] If a squirming, twisting, winding, wriggling eel, gentlemen, can be said at any given moment to have a back, we may distinguish this new-found species as the green-back eel. It is a common saying that no man can hold an eel and remain a Christian. I should like to have viewed the pious equanimity of this ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 9 • Various

... later the knife almost dropped from my hand at the sound of a brisk hurrah from above, and looking up I saw the stalwart form of the Irish corporal wriggling along the branch of a cork-oak which overhung the slope. He carried his rifle, and, anchoring himself in a fork of the ...
— Two Sides of the Face - Midwinter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... bell rang, and the jockeys trooped into the paddock, followed by the roustabouts with the tackle. Old Man Curry, waiting quietly in the far corner of Elisha's stall, saw the Bald-faced Kid wriggling his way through the crowd. He came ...
— Old Man Curry - Race Track Stories • Charles E. (Charles Emmett) Van Loan

... cried the baby, wriggling free of Donald's arms. "Thet man thar air er goin' ter send me er doll baby thet opens an' ...
— 'Smiles' - A Rose of the Cumberlands • Eliot H. Robinson

... pass their early life. The eggs of mosquitoes are laid on standing water. The water may be in an old tomato can, a rain barrel, a cistern, or a large pond. A day or two after the mother lays one or two hundred eggs, they hatch into dark, wriggling objects called wigglers. In from ten to twenty days later they change into flying mosquitoes. These habits of life show that the easiest time to kill them is ...
— Health Lessons - Book 1 • Alvin Davison

... immediately came another by my ear. I struck at this, and caught something threadlike. It was drawn swiftly out of my hand. With a frightful qualm, I turned, and I saw that I had grasped the antenna of another monster crab that stood just behind me. Its evil eyes were wriggling on their stalks, its mouth was all alive with appetite, and its vast ungainly claws, smeared with an algal slime, were descending upon me. In a moment my hand was on the lever, and I had placed a month between myself and these monsters. But I was still on the same beach, ...
— The Time Machine • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells

... Bridge let go of the rope and sprang at him. The fist of the great Russian went out like a battering ram; it struck the steward between the eyes, and he dropped upon the deck. He lay like one dead, the muzzle of the hose wriggling from ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various

... the Hotel-de-Ville, crying: Arms! Orders! The Six-and-twenty Town-Councillors, with their long gowns, have ducked under (into the raging chaos);—shall never emerge more. Besenval is painfully wriggling himself out, to the Champ-de-Mars; he must sit there 'in the cruelest uncertainty:' courier after courier may dash off for Versailles; but will bring back no answer, can hardly bring himself back. ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle

... black-bristled pigs ran at every step between your legs, and young kids, slung across their owners' shoulders with their heads downwards, bleated piteously. The only sights of a private description were a series of deformed beggars, drawn in go-carts, and wriggling with the most hideous contortions; but the fat woman, and the infant with two heads, and the learned dog, whom I had seen in all parts of Europe, were nowhere to be found. There was not even an organ boy or a hurdy-gurdy. ...
— Rome in 1860 • Edward Dicey

... to warm itself on the bishop's hearth no one could say. Mrs Pansey herself did not know in what particular way Mr Cargrim had wriggled himself—so she expressed it—into his present snug position. But, to speak frankly, there was no wriggling in the matter, and had the bishop felt himself called upon to explain his business to anyone, he could have given a very reasonable account of the election of Cargrim to the post of chaplain. The young man was the son of an old schoolfellow, to whom ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume

... understood Frank's strategy. The bed-clothes began to heave; they had piled them all atop Dave as he lay on the floor. Frank began on the chorus. A wriggling leg emerged from beneath the comforts. Jerry joined in, his voice a villainous imitation of Frank's discords. Another ...
— The Boy Scouts of the Air on Lost Island • Gordon Stuart

... be surprised," he retorted, grinning a little. "Honest! I'm trying to go easy, but this infernal bush has sure got a strangle hold on you—and your hair is so fluffy it's a deuce of a job. You keep wriggling and getting it caught in new places. If you could only manage to stand still—but ...
— Good Indian • B. M. Bower

... the hunted man caught a glimpse of uncouth shapes wriggling along a fence ridge several rods away. No more than the barest glimpse, it served: with a mighty heave and wriggle he breasted the lower platform, shifted a hand to the top of its railing, heaved himself up to a foothold, ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance

... And the scorpion you discovered, and so generously gave me! Ach, meine freund, now I can indeed repay you for your so great generosity. See, then!" And with a dramatic gesture he plunged his hand down among the wriggling snakes, and groping among them in a manner that made every hair on Dick's head stand up till he felt like a porcupine, he drew forth a small bundle, and tossed it on ...
— A Rip Van Winkle Of The Kalahari - Seven Tales of South-West Africa • Frederick Cornell

... That's all right," said Lingard, stretching his arms above his head and wriggling his shoulders. "My word! I do wish a breeze would come to let us get away from here. I am rather in a ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad

... Volscian aids, And Metius with the long fair curls, 675 The love of Anxur's maids, And the white head of Vulgo, The great Arician seer, And Nepos of Laurentum, The hunter of the deer; 680 And in the back false Sextus Felt the good Roman steel; And wriggling in the dust he died, Like a worm beneath the wheel: And fliers and pursuers 685 Were mingled in a mass; And far away the battle Went roaring through ...
— Narrative and Lyric Poems (first series) for use in the Lower School • O. J. Stevenson

... people, was the refuge of a murderer whom the gendarmes were afraid to follow underground, because it was believed that he would knock them on the head one after the other while they were wriggling through the passage, and then quietly walk out by a back way unknown to anyone but himself, I felt a strong desire to explore this cave of evil repute. The idea was all the more enticing because I was assured that nobody had entered it but the murderer. I called ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker

... forenoon I chanced to be in the cattle-market of a place about eighty miles from here; there I won the favour of an old gentleman who sold dickeys. He had a very shabby squad of animals, without soul or spirit; nobody would buy them, till I leaped upon their hinder ends, and by merely wriggling in a particular manner, made them caper and bound so to people's liking, that in a few hours every one of them was sold at very sufficient prices. The old gentleman was so pleased with my skill, that ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow

... Mac is jawing about," said Mo Shendish, "but you can take it from me he's a holy terror with the bayonet. One moment he's talking to a Boche through his hat and the next the Boche is wriggling like a worm on ...
— The Rough Road • William John Locke

... Frantically Neale leaped to prevent the escape of the hugest trout he had ever seen. There was a dark flash—a commotion before him. Then he stood staring in bewilderment at Allie, who held the wriggling trout ...
— The U.P. Trail • Zane Grey

... officer with a boat-compass, and we saw her depart into the fog. During her absence the ship's bell was kept tolling. Then the fires were all out, the ship full of water, and gradually breaking up, wriggling with every swell like a willow basket—the sea all round us full of the floating fragments of her sheeting, twisted and torn into a spongy condition. In less than an hour the boat returned, saying that ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan

... an' make Tom Kidd so bloomin' sick 'e can't bugle no more. You 'old 'is 'ands an' I'll kick him,' said Lew, wriggling on ...
— Soldier Stories • Rudyard Kipling

... Cross was "suspect"—treachery being alleged in its relations with Roumania; and hun and Bolshevik became very troublesome—so troublesome, in fact, that Estridge, for example, was having an impossible time of it, arrested every few days, wriggling out of it, only to be ...
— The Crimson Tide • Robert W. Chambers

... various hurrying passengers, including an old lady, tripped over his prone form. The sensation of being kicked and sat upon appealed to Jock's sense of humour. The more people avalanched across him the more comic he thought it. And in a moment there was quite a pile of wriggling bodies on top of him. For though the public managed on the whole to leap over, or circumvent, the obstacle presented by Jock's extremely large body, none of his ...
— Observations of an Orderly - Some Glimpses of Life and Work in an English War Hospital • Ward Muir

... must pick them out right. But all I mean is—for I express myself with violence—that she's in a position to watch me. There's an element of suspense for me, and she can see me wriggle. But my wriggling doesn't matter," he pursued. "I can bear it. Besides, I ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James

... banks, And Tullus of Arpinum, Chief of the Volscian aids, And Metius with the long fair curls, The love of Anxur's maids, And the white head of Vulso, The great Arician seer, And Nepos of Laurentum The hunter of the deer; And in the back false Sextus Felt the good Roman steel, And wriggling in the dust he died, Like a worm beneath the wheel: And fliers and pursuers Were mingled in a mass; And far away the battle Went roaring ...
— Lays of Ancient Rome • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... to meet with the entire approval of those present. Mr. Adair looked grave; he evidently thought it was based on a superficial notion of political economy. Mr. Burke, a very young man with a tiny red moustache and a curious habit of wriggling his long weak neck, feeling his amusements were being unfairly attacked, broke the silence he had till then preserved, ...
— Muslin • George Moore

... of any Cupid-worshiper. And Thomas's physical troubles were not few. Therefore, his soul was less vexed with thoughts of his lost lady's maid than it was by the fancied presence of certain non-existent things that his racked nerves almost convinced him were flying, dancing, crawling, and wriggling on the asphalt and in the air above and around the dismal campus of the Bed Line army. Nearly four weeks of straight whisky and a diet limited to crackers, bologna, and pickles often guarantees a psycho-zoological sequel. Thus desperate, ...
— Strictly Business • O. Henry

... Wriggling in the cave's entrance was the Hunter. He had freed the bonds Vye had put on his legs, but his hands were still tied. His face, grimy, sweat-covered, was turned up to the sunlight, and his eyes were ...
— Star Hunter • Andre Alice Norton

... you'll have to," observed Kingsmead, wriggling a little nearer, "Oh, I say do buck up, or ...
— The Halo • Bettina von Hutten

... though the half cave shielded most of the wind. Drew unrolled the blanket he had carried tied about him, and he squeezed down beside Anse. Their combined body warmth ought to keep them fairly comfortable. Drew doubled his hands inside his coat, wriggling his gloved fingers to keep them ...
— Rebel Spurs • Andre Norton

... injunction and brought the light. Nan was kneeling in the corner before a small crate of slats in which was a beautiful, brown-eyed, silky haired water spaniel—nothing but a puppy—that was licking her hands through his prison bars and wriggling his little body as best he could in the narrow quarters to show his affection ...
— Nan Sherwood's Winter Holidays • Annie Roe Carr

... black head vanished in the turmoil of the waters; then suddenly a loud detonation occurred; an explosion of compressed air within the ship threw up, sky-high, barrels and boards, and among them, to our unbelieving eyes, we saw the wriggling body of the negro. He was projected into the sea, and swam towards us, apparently none the worse after this strange and violent experience. We rescued him and handed him over to his mates, who had ...
— The Journal of Submarine Commander von Forstner • Georg-Guenther von Forstner

... standing very high out of the water. Three small boys were watching a peevish old man tending his fishing lines, fastened to wires with little bells on them. "What do you catch here?" we said. Just then one of the little bells gave a cracked tinkle and the angler pulled up a small fish, wriggling briskly, about three inches long. This seemed to anger him. He seemed to consider himself in some way humiliated by the incident. He grunted. One of the small boys was tactful. "Oh, gee!" he said. "Sometimes you catch fish that long," indicating a length which began ...
— Pipefuls • Christopher Morley

... says he, giving my arm a twist. "You'd best promise, or it will be the worse for you. Now say after me, 'I, Humphrey Bold, adopted brat of John Ellery'—Speak up now!" "Please let me go, Vetch," said I, wriggling ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang

... must protest against the exaggerated estimate of the conscious pain which so many read into these millions of years of struggle. Probably there was no consciousness at all during the greater part of the time. The wriggling of the worm on which you have accidentally trodden is no proof whatever that you have caused conscious pain. The nervous system of an animal has been so evolved as to respond with great disturbance of its tissue to any dangerous or injurious ...
— The Story of Evolution • Joseph McCabe

... Earthman? You were an Earthman! Now you're a grubby little specimen of the genus tsith! You're a miserable, whining little speck of matter wriggling toward the final transfixation! In another year you won't even be that. You'll be dead and forgotten. Don't come crawling to me talking about Earthmen!" The voice scraped across Latham's naked nerve-ends. ...
— One Purple Hope! • Henry Hasse

... was turned into a circus menagerie, and Margaret MacLean and her assistant were turned into keepers. Together they set about the duties for the day with great good-humor. Two seals, a wriggling hippopotamus, a roaring polar bear, a sea-serpent of surprising activities, two teeth-grinding alligators, a walrus, and a baby elephant were bathed with considerable difficulty and excitement. It was Sandy who insisted on being the elephant in spite of a heated argument ...
— The Primrose Ring • Ruth Sawyer

... surprising in such a transition; For many a creature, of humbler position In the scale of creation, can shift its condition. For instance, the wriggling, despised pollywog In time may become a respectable frog; Then, perched on a stump, he may croak his disdain At former companions, who never can gain His present distinguished, sublime elevation, So greatly above ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 1, July, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... professionally practiced under the disguise and in the holy names of Religion and Morality, the effect is loathsome as that spectacle sometimes seen in the East of a wrinkled old eunuch garbed in woman's nautchdress ogling with painted eyes and waving and wriggling like a young Bayadere. ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton

... up and down. Peter clambered down, caught the little struggling animal in his arms, and restored it to its mistress. And now followed an immense deal of kissing and embracing. The dog was buried in red hair and only once and again a wriggling paw might be observed—also these exclamations—"Oh, the umpty-rumpty—was it nearly falling down the great horrid pit, the darling—oh, the little darling, and was it scratched, the pet? But it was a wicked little dog—yes, ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole

... shame felt by a South American native, and of the ridicule which he excited, when he sold his tembeta,—the large coloured piece of wood which is passed through the hole. In Central Africa the women perforate the lower lip and wear a crystal, which, from the movement of the tongue, has "a wriggling motion, indescribably ludicrous during conversation." The wife of the chief of Latooka told Sir S. Baker (49. 'The Albert N'yanza,' 1866, vol. i. p. 217.) that Lady Baker "would be much improved if she would extract her four front teeth from the lower jaw, and wear the long pointed ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin

... poked her finger through the hole and rubbed the snout of what must have been a full-sized boa-constrictor. Instantly to their horror, the black obstruction, went through a process of splitting, and several deadly fangs were revealed. Once more the wriggling black tongue darted out to ...
— Anderson Crow, Detective • George Barr McCutcheon

... side, as if it were a hatchet-faced baby. A pretty pickle, truly, thought I; abed here in a strange house in the broad day, with a cannibal and a tomahawk! Queequeg! —in the name of goodness, Queequeg, wake! At length, by dint of much wriggling, and loud and incessant expostulations upon the unbecomingness of his hugging a fellow male in that matrimonial sort of style, I succeeded in extracting a grunt; and presently, he drew back his arm, shook ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville

... Angela writing romances and Vera illustrating them and between times doing a bit of writing herself. Can't you see the pencils flying? Can't you see three little pink tongues sticking out from between three pairs of purposeful lips and wriggling in time to the pencils? Can't you see the small brows furrowed with thought? And the proud parents? And the ...
— Daisy Ashford: Her Book • Daisy Ashford

... and infamy go any further, Rebecca wondered, and her soul filling with righteous wrath, she cast discretion to the winds and spoke a little more plainly, bending her great swimming eyes on the now embarrassed Abner, who looked like an angle-worm, wriggling ...
— New Chronicles of Rebecca • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... our reserve trenches ran around there, and that it would be a good thing to know all about them, I decided to ask the Colonel for permission to creep off one afternoon and explore the whole thing; incidentally I might by good luck find a table. It was possible, by wriggling up a mud valley and crawling over a few scattered remnants of houses and bygone trenches to reach the Colonel's headquarter dug-out in daytime. So I did it, and asked leave to go off back to have a look at the chateau and the land about it. He gave ...
— Bullets & Billets • Bruce Bairnsfather

... destruction, in thirty days it would form a mass a million times larger than the sun. The conger-eel lays fifteen million eggs, and if they all grew up, and reproduced themselves on the same scale, in two years the whole sea would become a wriggling mass of fish. As we approach the higher forms of life reproduction gradually dies down. The animals nearest to man produce few offspring, but they surround them with parental care, until they are able to lead independent lives with a fair ...
— Essays in War-Time - Further Studies In The Task Of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis

... tell Charles Cheviot that he was quite right, and Mary that I'm ready to be trampled on by all my brothers-in-law in a row! Well, there won't be any more. You'll never give me one—that's one comfort!' said Gertrude, wriggling herself up, and flinging an arm round Ethel's neck. 'As long as you don't do that, I'll do anything ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge

... descriptive phrases taken at random: "Two great, grand blue eyes, as blue as the sea itself"; "his little whirl-about of a head"; "long curls floating behind her like a golden cloud, and long robes floating all round her like a silver one"; "came paddling and wriggling back to her like so many tadpoles"; "the shadows of the clouds ran races over the bright blue sky"; "the river widened to the shining sea"; "such enormous trees that the blue ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester

... plain," declared the officer wriggling his nasal organ which, I was vastly relieved to observe, retained its original hue. "Wouldn't you say, Dominie, it ...
— From a Bench in Our Square • Samuel Hopkins Adams

... reverence, addressed her with admiration, tempered by the tenderness due to her sex and age. Burke, Windham, Gibbon, Reynolds, Sheridan, were among her most ardent eulogists. Cumberland(15) acknowledged her merit, after his fashion, by biting his lips and wriggling in his chair whenever her name was mentioned. But it was at Streatham that she tasted, in the highest perfection, the sweets of flattery mingled with the sweets of friendship. Mrs. Thrale, then at the height of prosperity and popularity-with gay spirits, quick ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay

... the point of my knife in between two of his coils twice over, gave a sharp push, and he dropped down wriggling at once." ...
— The Peril Finders • George Manville Fenn

... Pete chuckled and after wriggling round to where he could see without being seen, and clearing his throat several times, took up the strain again; this time in a louder key, and with the swaying of the whole body, where before it had only been the ...
— 'Our guy' - or, The elder brother • Mrs. E. E. Boyd

... shepherd with a sheep crook in his hand rose up on a distant hill. He might be a sacred figure in the red chancel of the western sky. In a moment he was gone, leaving one doubtful if he had not been an illusion. A long army of starlings trailed rapidly across the horizon, a wriggling motion marking their course like the motion in the body of a gigantic snake. Everything on the hills seemed, as the light reddened and failed, to grow vast, grotesque. The silence which reigned ...
— Waysiders • Seumas O'Kelly

... beast. But Jake is such a—" She felt Abbie wriggling ominously and changed to: "He's so unworthy of you. These are such terrible times, and the world is in such horrible need of everybody's help and especially of ships. It breaks my heart to see anybody wasting his time and strength interfering with the builders instead of joining them. It's ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes

... its own peculiar stare, but always hungry and bloody-fanged, which follows the delinquent’s feet whithersoever they go, gliding through the dewy grass on the brightest morning, dodging round the trees on the calmest eve, wriggling across the brook where the wrongdoer would fain linger on the stepping-stones to soothe his soul with the sight of the happy minnows shooting between the water-weeds—following him everywhere, in short, till at last, in sheer desperation, he must needs stop and ...
— Old Familiar Faces • Theodore Watts-Dunton

... her arms, two small boys with toy spades, and a stout gentleman in flannels all got to the trailing rope at about the same time, and began to dance over it in their attempts to secure it. Bert came up to this wriggling, elusive serpent and got his foot on it, went down on all fours and achieved a grip. In half a dozen seconds the whole diffused population of the beach had, as it were, crystallised on the rope, and ...
— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells

... Wriggling out of his tightly-fitting red serge he carelessly flung that article onto the next cot; then, filling and lighting a pipe, he stretched out comfortably upon his own. With hands clasped behind his ...
— The Luck of the Mounted - A Tale of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • Ralph S. Kendall

... was the not altogether passive spectator of a curious scene in natural history. My feet encased in stout "tackety" boots, I had waded down two of Waster Lunny's fields to the glen burn: in summer the never-failing larder from which, with wriggling worm or garish fly, I can any morning whip a savoury breakfast; in the winter-time the only thing in the valley that defies the ice-king's chloroform. I watched the water twisting black and solemn ...
— Auld Licht Idylls • J. M. Barrie

... flight, and lifting-power is lifting-power. Gulo, even Gulo, could not get over that. He could not stop those vast vans from flapping; and as they flapped they rose, the eagle rose, he—though it was like the skinning of his back alive—rose too, wriggling ignominiously, raging, foaming, snapping, ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars

... fit was over, for some time the man's muscles and nerves twitched and quivered in an extraordinary way. He was naked except for his breech-clout, and on his naked breast little snakes seemed to be wriggling for a moment or two beneath his skin, disappearing and then suddenly reappearing in another part of his chest. When the mbete (which we may translate 'priest' for want of a better word) is seized by the possession, the god within him calls out his own name ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer

... had been killed H. O. reached out for its corpse, and the next moment the body of our little brother was seen wriggling conclusively on the boat's edge. This exciting spectacle was not of a lasting nature. He went right in. Father clawed him out. He is very ...
— The Wouldbegoods • E. Nesbit

... is thy sin! It is not that one wants to deprive the savant of his knowledge; one only wants a little common-sense and imaginative sympathy. How can a little boy guess that some of the most beautiful stories in the world lie hid among a mass of wriggling consonants, or what a garden lurks behind the iron gate, with [Greek: blosko] and [Greek: moloumai] to ...
— Joyous Gard • Arthur Christopher Benson

... better than the other two did, and twice they 'ad to speak to 'im about stopping in the street and trying to make 'imself more comfortable by wriggling. ...
— Deep Waters, The Entire Collection • W.W. Jacobs

... Larkyns, you're choking me," I gasped out, wriggling violently and kicking out behind. "I'll hurt you if you don't loose me; ...
— Crown and Anchor - Under the Pen'ant • John Conroy Hutcheson

... raise her eyes, however, at the querulous whistle of a striped creeper that was wriggling through the intertwined branches of the trumpet-vine in search of insects. Ruth Fielding was always interested in those busy, ...
— Ruth Fielding Down East - Or, The Hermit of Beach Plum Point • Alice B. Emerson

... midst of yells, cheers and war-whoops. Both men endeavored to catch it in the air; but alas! each interfered with the other; then the guards on each side rushed upon them. For a time, a hundred lacrosse sticks vied with each other, and the wriggling human flesh and paint were all one could see through the cloud of dust. Suddenly there shot swiftly through the air toward the south, toward the Kaposias' goal, the ball. There was a general cheer from their adherents, which echoed back from the ...
— Indian Boyhood • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman

... things here in Tuscany is infamous and cruel. The old serpent, the Pope, is wriggling his venom into the heart of all possibilities of free thought and action. It is a dreadful state of things. Austria the hand, the papal power the brain! and no energy in the victim for resistance—only for hatred. They do hate here, I am ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning

... our positions again. They've got our range now," directed Tad, and the boys, wriggling along on their stomachs, to the left, dutifully ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in the Rockies • Frank Gee Patchin

... knee to his victim with precision and power. The fat man's teeth seemed to rattle under the pounding shocks. The words came joggling out of him, and they were not pretty words. He struck backward with his arms and feet, wriggling to get his plump shoulders free; but he was helpless as a baby in the arms of ...
— Boy Woodburn - A Story of the Sussex Downs • Alfred Ollivant

... because it was not long enough to go round a pile. Then they produced their knives, and, proceeding to the place where the young birches grew, cut down two famous rods, to which they attached lines with white and green floats and small hooks with gut attachments. The lobster can was produced, and wriggling worms fixed on the hooks. "A worm at one end and a fool at the other," said the lawyer. "Speak for yourself, sir," replied the dominie. The next thing was to get into the canoe, which was safely effected. Then, the ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell

... to know just who had ordered the oil in the first place and whether the propertyowners had given their consent to its application. The attorney general's square face, softened and rounded by fat, shone on the wriggling chief like a klieglight; his lips, irresistibly suggesting twin slices of underdone steak, parting into a pleasant smile when his question had concluded. The other two members of the committee seemed ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore

... was sounded, and Polly and Dilsey pounced upon Tot, who had become tired of lying still, and was wriggling about so that she had been discovered; and now all the travellers were captured except Diddie. The injuns looked everywhere for ...
— Diddie, Dumps, and Tot • Louise-Clarke Pyrnelle

... little thin, wispy hair on its head where no baby of the age that this one was supposed to be has a right to have any. Its arms and hands were thin and bony. It looked weak and sick, but it was rolling and wriggling about in the liveliest way. It would give a spring as if it were going straight off the bed upon the floor, and when poor Ellen caught at it to save it, it would roll back toward her, stop its crying for a second, and seem to be laughing ...
— Fairies and Folk of Ireland • William Henry Frost

... The Natal Volunteer, however, was too much interested in the proceedings to forego his view. 'Deah, deah, they've fixed bayonets! Why, they're coming back. They've had someone hurt.' I looked again for a moment. The line of riflemen was certainly retiring, wriggling backwards slowly on their bellies. Two brown forms lay still and hunched in the abandoned position. Then suddenly the retiring Riflemen sprang up and ran for shelter in our donga. One lad jumped right in among us laughing and panting, and the ...
— London to Ladysmith via Pretoria • Winston Spencer Churchill

... right, left, and centre; then his eyes fell upon his companion wriggling back into the open, a shallow, oblong box in his arms, its polish dimmed and dusted with the mould, as though ...
— Stingaree • E. W. (Ernest William) Hornung

... seconds later he had the trapdoor open and was peering down into the narrow pit in which wooden steps rested. The spaniel began to bark wildly, whereupon Kerry grasped him, tucked him under his arm, and ran up to the room above, where he deposited the furiously wriggling animal. He stepped quickly back again and closed the upper door. By this act he plunged the cellar into complete darkness, and accordingly he took out from the pocket of his rain-drenched overall the electric ...
— Dope • Sax Rohmer

... head of Moussa Isa across the beam and willing bodies sat upon him, that he might not waste time, and something more precious, by thoughtless wriggling, delaying breakfast. The Leading Gentleman crawled to an advantageous position, and having bowed in ...
— Driftwood Spars - The Stories of a Man, a Boy, a Woman, and Certain Other People Who - Strangely Met Upon the Sea of Life • Percival Christopher Wren

... so, and felt the wriggling form underneath him, it began to melt and slip away like air or water. The wood of the arm-chair somehow disentangled itself from between his own arms and those of Mudge. The phenomenon known as the passage of matter through matter took place. The ...
— Three More John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood

... body was swollen, green, the belly inflated to the point of bursting. The decaying flesh was gnawed away in places by hungry little fishes, some of which, loath to let go their prey, were still clinging to it by their teeth, wriggling their tails and giving an appearance of disgusting life to the horrible mass. The bold sailor's fate was clear. He had been hurled through the hatchway by a lunge of the deck before the boat had been lost. Inside there he ...
— Mayflower (Flor de mayo) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... made out a brown form wriggling away behind a clump of cactus that shut off the view of Slade and the Navahos. At the second bullet from the high-power rifle the creeping Apache rolled over. There was no need for ...
— Bloom of Cactus • Robert Ames Bennet



Words linked to "Wriggling" :   writhing, wriggly, moving



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