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Zigzag   Listen
verb
Zigzag  v. t.  (past & past part. zigzagged; pres. part. zigzagging)  To form with short turns.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Zigzag" Quotes from Famous Books



... not so bad as it looked. Canaris picked his way with great skill, winding along the face of the cliff in a zigzag manner. Had it been daylight dizziness would have caused them to lose their heads, for the gulf below grew deeper every moment, and at places the path was but a ...
— The River of Darkness - Under Africa • William Murray Graydon

... hundred feet above the gulf. A dense cloud of vapour, which can be seen at a great distance in clear weather, hangs over the spot. From the fall to the foot of the rapid—a distance of thirty miles—the zigzag course of the river presents such sharp angles, that you see nothing of it until within a few yards of its banks. Might not this circumstance lead the geologist to the conclusion that the fall had receded this ...
— Notes of a Twenty-Five Years' Service in the Hudson's Bay Territory - Volume II. (of 2) • John M'lean

... gorge of the Visp. Switzerland may not have so much population to the square mile as some countries; but she has a population to some of her square miles that would astonish some parts of the earth's surface elsewhere. Farther on we saw a faint, zigzag footpath, that we conjectured led to Emd; but it might lead up to heaven. All day we had been solicited for charity by squalid little children, who kiss their nasty little paws at us, and ask for centimes. The children of Emd, however, did not trouble us. It must be a serious affair if they ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... the zigzag panels of the rail fence crept behind him, and he felt the freedom of the morning beginning to act upon his well-trained blood, the mechanical manner of the old man's mind gave place to a mild exuberance. A weight seemed to be lifting from it ...
— The Best American Humorous Short Stories • Various

... Those who excused it with her on these grounds conjectured arrears of wages as another reason for her patience. His outbreaks of bad temper had the Celtic uncertainty; the most innocent touch excited them, as sometimes the broadest snub failed to do so; and no one could foretell what direction his zigzag fury would take. He had disliked Lemuel from the first, and had chafed at the subordination into which he had necessarily fallen. He was now yelling after Mrs. Harmon, to know if she was not satisfied with wan gutther-snoipe, ...
— The Minister's Charge • William D. Howells

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

... were gone and he was left restless and miserable. He was so restless that he could not sleep but wandered down toward the spring. He stopped at the exact point at which he had stopped on the night of his arrival—at the top of the zigzag little path leading down the rocky incline. He stopped because he heard a sound of passionate sobbing. He descended slowly. He knew the sound—angry, fierce, uncontrollable—because he had heard it before. It checked itself the instant he reached the ground. Lodusky leaning against a ...
— Lodusky • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... engaged in fighting live in underground quarters. Some of these quarters, called "funk-holes" are quite elaborate and comfortable and contain many conveniences not found in the trenches on the firing line. They communicate with the firing line by zigzag approach ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol 1, Issue 4, January 23, 1915 • Various

... coming down the descent was made in gradients, the train first running a mile or so one way, then stopping, when the engines were shunted to the other end, when we ran about a mile in the opposite direction, and so on, so that we described a perfect zigzag. A tunnel through this range of hills is being bored, and a colony of 150 Italian mechanics, together with their wives, has been imported to do it. Boukhedou is already quite a large place with numbers of substantial Russian ...
— Through Siberia and Manchuria By Rail • Oliver George Ready

... slashed, as on Hawaii, by gulches opening out on natural lawns on the sea level. The place chosen for the centralization and segregation of leprosy is a most singular plain of about 20,000 acres, hemmed in between the sea and a precipice 2000 feet high, passable only where a zigzag bridle track swings over its face, so narrow and difficult that it has been found impossible to get cattle down over it, so that the leper settlement below has depended for its supplies of fresh meat upon vessels. The settlement is accessible also by a very difficult ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird

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

... settlement at Woollya. We did not see many natives until we were near Ponsonby Sound, where we were followed by ten or twelve canoes. The natives did not at all understand the reason of our tacking, and, instead of meeting us at each tack, vainly strove to follow us in our zigzag course. I was amused at finding what a difference the circumstance of being quite superior in force made, in the interest of beholding these savages. While in the boats I got to hate the very sound of their voices, so much trouble did they give us. The first and last word was "yammerschooner." When, ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin

... sure than those of men would be. I have seen them put both their fore feet out together, and let them slip, then drag their hind feet up to them, and repeat this process on descending the vitrified, and almost perpendicular roads of Madeira, taking a zigzag direction across the road each time. Mules do the same, and perhaps derive the ...
— Anecdotes of the Habits and Instinct of Animals • R. Lee

... show the lines of fighting to be rather wavy, one must go to the front really to appreciate the irregular zigzag, snakelike line that it really is. The particular bit of trenches we visited cover a front of twelve miles, but so irregular is the line, so intricate and vast the system of intrenchments, that they measure 200 miles on ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various

... not open the door without first closing the closet door, and vice versa. It was impossible for him anywhere to traverse the room in a straight line. To go from the door to the head of the bed was a zigzag course that he was never quite able to accomplish in the dark without collisions. Having settled the difficulty of the conflicting doors, he had to steer sharply to the right to avoid the kitchen. ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London

... the country) passes through it, but it would prove indifferent, I should think, to any but the pedestrian; and there is also the mountain-path, of three hours' ascent, which leads into Montenegro, and issues up from the gates of the town in a zigzag form, till it appears lost in the clouds. Any one wishing to quit Cattaro, has indeed, like the country waiter in England, but "three desperate alternatives." He must wait for the next steamer, a whole month if in winter, and return the way he came. Or he may attempt to pass through ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various

... worn now—almost a thoroughfare, in fact. It came to the creek at the very head of the chasm, skirting the mysterious circle of sacred stones, then crossing the swift water on a new bridge of logs, then climbing the farther side of the ravine by a steep zigzag course which hung dangerously close to the precipitous wall of dark rocks. I remarked at the time, as we made our way up, that there ought to be a chain, or outer guard of some sort, for safety. Mr. Stewart said he would speak to Philip about it, and added the information ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic

... walking along the edge of the green mound on which the Montmartre telegraph stands. Below me, along one of the zigzag paths which wind up the hill, a man and a girl were coming up, and arrested my attention. The man wore a shaggy coat, which gave him some resemblance to a wild beast; and he held a thick stick in his hand, with which he described various strange figures ...
— An "Attic" Philosopher, Complete • Emile Souvestre

... who appears to be somewhat of a "handful" (St. Angelo I mean, not WEBB, who is very slight), and evinces a strong desire to run in any direction but the one desired of him! I think Mr. MILNER should have him trained on a zigzag method, when his natural wilfulness would cause him to run straight when racing! This is an excellent idea, and I have others equally good (applicable to all styles of horses), which I intend to suggest to different trainers on my next ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, July 23, 1892 • Various

... finally went up in smoke as the rest. You could not look in any direction in the city but what mass after mass of flame stared you in the face. To get about one had to dodge from one street to another, back and forth in zigzag fashion, and half an hour after going through a street, it would be impassable. One after another of the magnificent business blocks went down. The newer buildings seemed to have withstood the shock better than any ...
— The San Francisco Calamity • Various

... examine the practical work, its methods and its results, its possibilities and its limitations. We shall inquire finally into the place which it has to take, looking back upon its history, criticising the present status and outlining the development which has to set in for the future, if a haphazard zigzag movement is not to destroy this great agency for human welfare by transforming it into a source ...
— Psychotherapy • Hugo Muensterberg

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

... din there now, but great single cries of "Zuleika!"—leapt figures innumerable through rain to river. The arrested boats of the other crews drifted zigzag hither and thither. The dropped oars rocked and clashed, sank and rebounded, as the men plunged across them ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm

... rather good-natured, and at almost all times very easily humbugged) and a man (who is what Trim never is, both insolent and indecent)—is at least partially the same. But the most constant and the most unfortunate imitation is of Sterne's literally eccentric, or rather zigzag and pillar-to-post, fashion of narration. In the Englishman's own hands, by some prestidigitation of genius, this never becomes boring, though it probably would have become so if either book had been finished; for ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury

... like one bewildered, shook his head and glided past; Huddling whispers hurried after, hissing in the howling blast! Now a sheet of lurid splendour swept athwart the mountain spire, And a midnight squall came trumping down on zigzag paths of fire! Through the tumult dashed a torrent flanking out in foaming streams, Whilst the woodlands groaned and muttered like a monster vexed with dreams. Then I swooned away in horror. Oh! that shriek which rent the air, Like ...
— The Poems of Henry Kendall • Henry Kendall

... Cartier take months to make voyages from Europe and up the St. Lawrence when Champlain made them in weeks? Because Champlain could tack and Jacques Cartier could not. Columbus, Cabot, and Cartier could no more zigzag towards a place from which the wind was blowing dead against them than could the ships of Hiram, King of Tyre, who brought so many goods by sea for Solomon. But Champlain, who lived a century later, did know how to tack the Don de Dieu against the prevailing south-west ...
— Flag and Fleet - How the British Navy Won the Freedom of the Seas • William Wood

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

... ruin'd shrine he stept And in the moon athwart the place of tombs, Where lay the mighty bones of ancient men, Old knights, and over them the sea-wind sang Shrill, chill, with flakes of foam. He, stepping down By zigzag paths, and juts of pointed rock, Came on the shining levels of ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall

... perhaps but stalking-horses and willing or unwilling dupes,—it might have seemed wonderful how Herr Heuschrecke should be named a Rath, or Councillor, and Counsellor, even in Weissnichtwo. What counsel to any man, or to any woman, could this particular Hofrath give; in whose loose, zigzag figure; in whose thin visage, as it went jerking to and fro, in minute incessant fluctuation,—you traced rather confusion worse confounded; at most, Timidity and physical Cold? Some indeed said withal, he was "the very Spirit of Love ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle

... misstep and knock a man over the cliffs with him. Now and then we start the loose rocks under our feet, and over the cliffs they go, thundering down, down, the echoes rolling through distant canyons. At last we pass along a level shelf for some distance, then we turn to the right and zigzag down a steep slope to the bottom. Now we pass along this lower canyon for two or three miles, to where it terminates in the Grand Canyon, as the other ended in this, only the river is 1,800 feet ...
— Canyons of the Colorado • J. W. Powell

... zigzag excavations are made toward the front to cover the passage of men who proceed to dig the second parallel. Meanwhile the batteries have commenced to play, and riflemen have been advanced in trenches at convenient places, whose fire annoys the gunners of the enemy. The second ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... after making a leisurely circuit of the two sides of the principal square, was now beginning the ascent of the steep zigzag road to the Palace, which stood on the terraced height of the plateau that commanded the city. The party in the coach caught glimpses of its massive but ornate towers with fantastic spires and turrets, and its great arched and columned ...
— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey

... solitary rock, steep, conical-shaped, and about 300 feet high. On the side of it a Buddhist temple, perched like a nest. The hills on the left were crowned by walls and fortifications built some time ago by the Rebels, and running over them in all manner of zigzag and fantastic directions. I have seldom seen a more striking bit of scenery. When we had passed through we found more hills, with intervals of plains, in one of which lay the district city of Tongtze, enclosed by walls which run along the top of the hills surrounding it. ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin

... What endless undulations in the various declivities and ascents,—here a slant, there a zigzag! With what majestic disdain yon roof rises up to the left! Doubtless a palace of Genii, or Gin (which last is the proper Arabic word for those builders of halls out of nothing, employed by Aladdin). Seeing only the roof of ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... that project many miles from the main axis of the mountains. The road they were following scarcely deserved the name; being a pack-road, or mere bridle-path; and so sleep was the ascent, that it was necessary to zigzag nearly a dozen times, before the summit of the ridge could ...
— Bruin - The Grand Bear Hunt • Mayne Reid

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

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

... is gone!' In about a quarter of an hour Algarotti too slipped out; and vanished by extra post"—straight towards Wesel; but could not overtake the King (whose road, in the latter part of it, went zigzag, on business as is likely), nor see him again till they met in that Town. [From Helden-Geschichte (i. ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... speed ahead on a zigzag course. We were in the most deadly submarine infested zone of the ocean. Only yesterday the Susquehanna had been torpedoed in these very waters, and, no doubt, the same evil periscopes were watching us now from beyond yonder kopje of a ...
— The Greater Love • George T. McCarthy

... beauty it was impossible to gaze shoreward without a feeling of awe. For there had been that trembling of the earth; there were here and there openings in the trees through which vast blackened roads of rock seemed to come down to the sea, zigzag tracks which it was plain enough were the cooled-down and hardened streams of lava which had made their way to the sea during some eruption of the calmly beautiful mountain which rose so peacefully toward the clouds, one of which seemed to have remained ...
— Mother Carey's Chicken - Her Voyage to the Unknown Isle • George Manville Fenn

... emigration of the Cimbrians and other kindred tribes from their native seats was gradual and by no means sudden.[131] The traditions of the Delaware Indians show their advance from their early home in central Canada southward to the Delaware River and Chesapeake Bay to have been a slow zigzag movement, interrupted by frequent long halts, leaving behind one laggard group here and sending out an offshoot there, who formed new tribes and thereby diversified the stock.[132] It was an aimless wandering, without ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple

... and open. I soon found that the edges of the bare ground were the most likely places. Apparently the birds worked slowly through the cover ahead of us, but hesitated to cross the open spots, and so bunched at the edge. By walking in a zigzag along some of these borders, we gathered in many scattered birds and small bunches. Why the zigzag? Naturally it covers a trifle more ground than a straight course, but principally it seems to confuse the game. If you walk in a straight line, so the quail can foretell your ...
— The Killer • Stewart Edward White

... and German mythology, Dr. Schwarz, of Berlin, has shown that the meaning which is paramount to all others in this emblem is the lightning; a meaning drawn from the close analogy which the serpent in its motion, its quick spring, and mortal bite, has to the zigzag course, the rapid flash, and sudden stroke of the electric discharge. He even goes so far as to imagine that by this resemblance the serpent first acquired the veneration of men. But this is an extravagance not ...
— The Myths of the New World - A Treatise on the Symbolism and Mythology of the Red Race of America • Daniel G. Brinton

... Louis, were recently making the drive from Jackson to the Cape, when their attention was suddenly attracted at the Spooks' Hollow by a white and airy object which arose in its peculiar form so as to be plainly visible and then maneuvered in every imaginable manner, finally taking a zigzag wayward journey through the low dismal-looking surroundings, disappearing suddenly into the mysterious region from whence ...
— The Best Ghost Stories • Various

... a Hospiz each of those present may name the lady of his choice, and if two name the same lady they have a drinking bout to determine which is entitled to claim her. The one who first admits that he can drink no more—usually signified by a hasty and zigzag retreat from the room—is declared the loser. If a guest comes late to the Hospiz he must drink fast so as to catch up with earlier arrivals, unless he has been drinking elsewhere, when he is let off ...
— William of Germany • Stanley Shaw

... branch lay across the path we had just passed. Nothing now was required to expedite our steps. The wind roared, the mighty trees rocked to and fro as if they had been reeds, the thunder rattled in deafening peals, and the lightning, in zigzag form, rushed down the stems of the trees, running like serpents along the ground, and flashed vividly in every direction. The storm I had witnessed in the Cordilleras was grander, but it was scarcely so terrific in its effects. We got under shelter in ...
— Manco, the Peruvian Chief - An Englishman's Adventures in the Country of the Incas • W.H.G. Kingston

... prairies. We were both pretty confident we could run sixteen miles in two hours. But we dared not run straight. We knew that if they found we were keeping a line, they would let the dog go their best pace and gallop alongside; so we had to zigzag, sometimes going almost back upon our own track. We did not do this so often as we should have done if we ...
— Out on the Pampas - The Young Settlers • G. A. Henty

... long windings by which the road ascended to the place where that day's stage was to end, and found himself alone in the twilight, far behind the rest of his travelling-companions. Would the last zigzag, round and round those dark masses, half natural rock, half artificial substructure, ever bring him within the circuit of the walls above? It was now that a startling incident turned those misgivings almost into actual fear. From the steep slope a heavy mass of stone ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume One • Walter Horatio Pater

... of the huge, brutal giant of Russian force, flash on the world like a zigzag meteor, lighting up his imperial dominions with ...
— Shakspere, Personal Recollections • John A. Joyce

... changes to a vivid glare,— Dimly in the center I descry a lonely pair; Ah, two women,—stern the one and gloomy as the night,— And the other gentle, like the evening in its flight. How familiar to my eyes the two lone figures seemed! With her smiling countenance the one upon me beamed; Like the zigzag lightning flashed the other's piercing eye; Terror seized my soul,—yet on I gazed in ecstasy. Proudly upright stands the one, the other leans in weariness On the solitary table, where they play a game of chess. Pawns they barter, or they move them ...
— Early Plays - Catiline, The Warrior's Barrow, Olaf Liljekrans • Henrik Ibsen

... consisted of one row of miserable huts, sunk beneath the side of the road, the mud walls crooked in every direction; some of them opening in wide cracks, or zigzag fissures, from top to bottom, as if there had just been an earthquake—all the roofs sunk in various places—thatch off, or overgrown with grass—no chimneys, the smoke making its way through a hole in the roof, or rising in clouds from the top of the open door—dunghills ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. 6 • Maria Edgeworth

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

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

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

... reached the south-west of these isles; and on the limit of another flora also—of that of Italy and Greece. For as we descend into the glen, every lane-bank and low tree is entwined, not with ivy, but with a still more beautiful evergreen, the Smilax of South-eastern Europe, with its zigzag stems, and curving heart-shaped leaves, and hooked thorns; the very oak- scrub is of species unknown to Britain. And what are these tall lilies, which fill every glade breast-high with their sword-like leaves, and spires of white flowers, lilac-pencilled? They are the classic ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley

... all night, the thunder roared, the lightning, darting forth from the dark sky, flashed ever and anon, in a zigzag course, from side to side of the cliffs around the bay, and the howling wind threatened frequently to tear off the sail and carry it away. Still the weary seamen slept, although Harry and young Bass did not for a long time close ...
— The Voyage of the "Steadfast" - The Young Missionaries in the Pacific • W.H.G. Kingston

... the sun burned down upon the yellowish gray wall of cliff into which the promenade of Nervi is hewn, and which slopes down to the sea in a zigzag of ...
— The Indian Lily and Other Stories • Hermann Sudermann

... truthfully than can be done by a line that zigzags along the exact measurements; because it is less influenced by temporary and extraordinary causes that may obscure the operation of those that are being investigated. On the other hand, the abrupt deviations of a punctilious zigzag may have their own logical value, as will appear in the ...
— Logic - Deductive and Inductive • Carveth Read

... across the window panes, and one watches, absently, the curious behaviour of the drops. They hang bulging and pendulous, in one spot for some seconds. Then, as they swell, suddenly they break loose and zigzag swiftly down the pane, following the slippery pathway that previous drops have made. It is like a little puzzle game where you manoeuvre a weighted capsule among pegs toward a narrow opening. "Pigs in clover," they sometimes call it, but who knows why? The conduct of raindrops on a smoking-car ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley

... This bird's breeding range extends from the plains to the timber-line; and he dwells on both sides of the mountains, for I met with him at Glenwood. About a half mile above Malta a western nighthawk was seen, hurtling in his eccentric, zigzag flight overhead, uttering his strident call, and "hawking for flies," as White of Selborne would phrase it. A western grassfinch flew over to some bushes with a morsel in its bill, but I could not discover its nest or young, search as I ...
— Birds of the Rockies • Leander Sylvester Keyser

... the waste-basket; yet her eye caught the words in large head-lines as she picked it up idly, "Miss Geraldine Loring's Wedding to Be an Elaborate Affair." There was nothing more readable. The paper was torn in a zigzag line just beneath. Yet that was enough. It reminded her ...
— The Girl from Montana • Grace Livingston Hill

... upon their course, until they came to the brow of a steep descent, down which the path ran in a zigzag manner, through a dark, gloomy ravine, now rendered intensely so to our travelers, by the hour, their thoughts, the wildness of the scenery around, and the dense growth of cedars covering the hollow, whose untrimmed branches, growing even to the ground, overreached and partly obstructed ...
— Ella Barnwell - A Historical Romance of Border Life • Emerson Bennett

... presently admiring British tars would be congratulating us upon our notable capture; and just about then the merchant steamer must have sighted us, for she veered suddenly toward the north, and a moment later dense volumes of smoke issued from her funnels. Then, steering a zigzag course, she fled from us as though we had been the bubonic plague. I altered the course of the submarine and set off in chase; but the steamer was faster than we, and ...
— The Land That Time Forgot • Edgar Rice Burroughs

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

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

... sunset light The gray day darkened into night, A night made hoary with the swarm And whirl-dance of the blinding storm, A zigzag wavering to and fro Crossed and recrossed the winged snow: And ere the early bed-time came The white drift piled the window-frame, And, through the glass, the clothes-line posts Looked in like tall ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin

... L. had attained the castle heights, and was lost in a sort of extacy at the surrounding scene. On entering the outer walls, and directing your steps towards the summit, you are enchanted with a beautiful architectural specimen—in the character of a zigzag early Norman arch—which had originally belonged to a small church, recently taken down: The arch alone stands insulated ... beyond which, a new, and apparently a very handsome, church is erecting, chiefly under the care and at the expence of the present Duke of Orleans;—as a mausoleum for ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume One • Thomas Frognall Dibdin

... finding the trail plain over solid rock and hard-packed debris, sometimes slipping and scrambling among stones and sand, but always drawing nearer and nearer in a zigzag course, now easy and then difficult, to the green vale below. There were moments when Trixy was on her knees, moments when she was on her haunches, moments when she stood swaying above the pit, and moments when all traces of the trail ...
— The Heart of Thunder Mountain • Edfrid A. Bingham

... man of God coming over the narrow zigzag path that led across a Shetland peat moss. Swiftly and surely he stepped. Bottomless bogs of black peat-water were on each side of him, but he had neither fear nor hesitation. He walked like one who knew his way was ordered, ...
— The Measure of a Man • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr

... two miles' distance, and a fine landscape of the country both ways. From thence, an excellent road, judiciously conducted, through very romantic scenes. In one part, descending the face of a hill, it is laid out in serpentine, and not zigzag, to ease the descent. In others, it passes through a winding meadow, from fifty to one hundred yards wide, walled, as it were, on both sides, by hills of rock; and at length issues into plain country. The waste hills are covered with thyme, box, and chene-vert. ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson

... over the Nek, and was retreating westward towards the positions near the right bank of the Tugela, but no attempt was made to pursue him. The motto of Buller's Army was festina lente and its track towards Ladysmith was in zigzag. ...
— A Handbook of the Boer War • Gale and Polden, Limited

... or less at one and the same time. Cellette giggled and squirmed. Then the boy got angry and cried, 'Will you keep still? and grabbed her by the shoulders and shook her! Shook Cellette till her little head went zig-zag-zigzag. It took her the sixteenth part of a second to get to her feet, and when she slapped him I myself saw stars. At the same time I saw her face, and I yelled, 'Run, boy! Run!' For a second he stood paralyzed with wonder,—just long enough ...
— Through stained glass • George Agnew Chamberlain

... less. Tobacco, cotton, rice, hemp, indigo, the improvement in Indian corn, and many other important products, are all the result of African skill and labor in this country. And the introduction of the zigzag, or "Virginia Worm Fence," is purely of African origin. Nor was their skill as herdsmen inferior to their other attainments, being among the most accomplished trainers and horsemen in the world. Indeed, to this class of men may be indebted the entire ...
— The Condition, Elevation, Emigration, and Destiny of the Colored People of the United States • Martin R. Delany

... scene the winter sun sank like a molten metal ball behind the smoke-stack forest, to set blood-red an hour later beyond the zigzag ...
— The Land of Deepening Shadow - Germany-at-War • D. Thomas Curtin

... marrows are very nice stuffed. They should be first peeled very slightly and then cut, long-ways, into three zigzag slices; the pips should be removed and the interior filled with either mushroom forcemeat (see MUSHROOM FORCEMEAT) or sage-and-onion stuffing made with rather an extra quantity of bread-crumbs. The vegetable marrow should be tied up with two separate loops of tape about ...
— Cassell's Vegetarian Cookery - A Manual Of Cheap And Wholesome Diet • A. G. Payne

... moment they gazed at a rickety old wooden stairway that, at this point in the unbroken line of cliffs, climbs zigzag up the face of the rock-buttressed wall. Then, as if moved by a common impulse, they faced each other. The quick fire of adventure kindled in the eyes of the boy as he met the girl's look ...
— Helen of the Old House • Harold Bell Wright

... came a flat bit with long grass at the sides and more flowers. They felt the grass flicking wet against their stockings, and the invisible flowers were everywhere. Then up again through trees, along a zigzag path with the smell all the way of the flowers they could not see. The warm rain was bringing out all the sweetness. Higher and higher they went in this sweet darkness, and the red light on the jetty dropped ...
— The Enchanted April • Elizabeth von Arnim

... Powers needed was a foothold from which to spring. Hardly had the little timber dipped before he had jumped to the next and the next after. Behind him the logs, bobbing up and down, churned the water white. Jimmy moved rapidly across the enclosure on an irregular zigzag. The smaller logs he passed over as quickly as possible; on the larger he paused appreciably. Bobby was interested to see how he left behind him a wake of motion on what had possessed the appearance of rigid immobility. The little logs bobbed furiously; the larger bowed in more stately fashion ...
— The Adventures of Bobby Orde • Stewart Edward White

... by a rocky zigzag up out of the ravine again and on over rough and hilly going. Here I fell into conversation with an Indian finca laborer, a slow, patient, ox-like fellow, to whom it had plainly never occurred to ask himself why he should live in misery and his employers in luxury. ...
— Tramping Through Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras - Being the Random Notes of an Incurable Vagabond • Harry A. Franck

... I liked and admired Firm, I had my own ideas as to what was unbecoming, and now in my lonely little walks I began to think about it. My father's resting-place had not been invaded by the imperious flood, although a line of driftage, in a zigzag swath, lay near the mound. This was my favorite spot for thinking, when I felt perplexed and downcast in my young unaided mind. For although I have not spoken of my musings very copiously, any one would do me wrong who fancied that I was indifferent. Through the great ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore

... Eleanor waits on the verandah, with widely-opened eyes, staring along the zigzag path by which Carol rode away. She remembers he turned back to look at her three times, kissing his hand twice. What can have detained him? Surely he knows ...
— When the Birds Begin to Sing • Winifred Graham

... cemetery and incorporated two years ago, and is now the finest burying place in this section of Pennsylvania. It is situated on the summit of Kernville hill, between six hundred and seven hundred feet above the town. It is approached by a zigzag roadway about one mile and a half in length, and a magnificent view of the valley is obtained from the grounds, making it well worth a visit under any circumstances. Here those whose relatives did not hold lots are to be buried in trenches four feet deep, sixty bodies to a trench. At ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker

... Omsk, the end of our journey, having passed in a zigzag direction almost round the world. A few miles to the Urals and Europe again—so near ...
— With the "Die-Hards" in Siberia • John Ward

... think it prudent to spend the night upon the sides of the cone. We continued our zigzag climb. The fifteen hundred remaining feet took us five hours to clear; the circuitous route, the diagonal and the counter marches, must have measured at least three leagues. I could stand it no longer. I was yielding to the effects of hunger and ...
— A Journey to the Interior of the Earth • Jules Verne

... a match he had to lean over the legless man to light his cigarette for him. He could not help glancing down the man's tunic at the drab trousers that hung limply from the chair. A cold shudder went through him; he was thinking of the zigzag scars on ...
— Three Soldiers • John Dos Passos

... terrible "porcupine grass" of the Australian interior), we were bound to follow the tracks made by kangaroos or natives, otherwise we should have made no progress whatever. These tracks at times wandered about zigzag fashion, and led us considerable distances out of our course, but, all the same, we dare not leave them. Not only was water all but unobtainable here, but our skin was torn with thorns at almost every step. Yamba ...
— The Adventures of Louis de Rougemont - as told by Himself • Louis de Rougemont

... threatened to sue the Mordaunt Estate's tenant. To the credit side of the house's account it must be set down that MacLachan, the tailor, having started one of his disastrous drunks within the precincts of his Home of Fashion, was on his way to finish it in the gutter via the zigzag route from corner saloon to corner saloon, when the Twelve Apostles clock in the basement window lifted up its voice and (presumably through the influence of Peter) thrice denied the hour, which was actually ...
— From a Bench in Our Square • Samuel Hopkins Adams

... of the work, expose it to the danger of being worn by friction more than other parts, and soon betray the damage by their threadbare, dingy look, as is the case in the example just cited. The method for grounding the quatrefoils is remarkable for being done in a long zigzag diaper ...
— Needlework As Art • Marian Alford

... farming, though he hated it, to pay for her subsistence. He vindicated the honour of Warbeach by drinking a match against a Yorkshire skipper till four o'clock in the morning, when it was a gallant sight, my boys, to see Hampshire steadying the defeated North-countryman on his astonished zigzag to his flattish-bottomed billyboy, all in the cheery sunrise ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... appropriate to this land as the chalet to the Alps) is built beside the calling ripples of the river, while saddled horses, laden burros in long lines, and now and then a vast yellow or red ore-wagon creaking dolefully as it descends, still give evidence of the mining which goes on far up the zigzag trails towards the soaring, shining ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland

... gate in five minutes," said Cary, looking back and down longingly as his horse climbed the opposite hill; but a turn of the zigzag road hid the cottage, and the next thought was, how to effect an entrance into Stow at three in the morning without being eaten by the ban-dogs, who were already howling and growling at the ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley

... 54. TRIFOLIUM medium. ZIGZAG, or MOUNTAIN-CLOVER.—Is in some degree like the preceeding; it produces a purple flower, and the foliage is much the same in appearance: but this is a much stronger perennial, and calculated from ...
— The Botanist's Companion, Vol. II • William Salisbury

... passed became every day more and more rugged, until at length it assumed the character of a wild mountainous district. Sometimes they wound their way in a zigzag manner up the mountain sides, by paths so narrow that they could scarcely find a foot-hold. At other times they descended into narrow valleys where they saw great numbers of wild animals of various kinds, some of which the Indians killed for food. After ...
— Martin Rattler • Robert Michael Ballantyne

... forward, and the lightning, happening just then to dart in zigzag lines across the inky heavens as if to assist them, they saw that sure enough the missing tent was caught in the tree, about fifteen feet from ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts on a Tour - The Mystery of Rattlesnake Mountain • George A. Warren

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

... Hall, or rather what was once the site of that ancient house, tradition points through the dim vista of past ages as the scene of an unnatural and cruel tragedy. Not that this picturesque and stately pile, with its gable and zigzag terminations, the subject of our present engraving, was the very place where the murder was perpetrated; but a low, dark, and wooden-walled tenement, such as our forefathers were wont to construct in times anterior ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby

... he resumed, "we will start off early and come down into Kandersteg and up these zigzags and here and here, and so past this Daubensee to a tiny inn—it won't be busy yet, though; we may get it all to ourselves—on the brim of the steepest zigzag you can imagine, thousands of feet of zigzag; and you will sit and eat lunch with me and look out across the Rhone Valley and over blue distances beyond blue distances to the Matterhorn and Monte Rosa and a long regiment of sunny, snowy ...
— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells

... travel under the moonless sky as sure-footed as under broad sunlight. But to guide a blundering Dalgard through unknown country was not practical. However, they could take to cover and that they did as speedily as possible, using a zigzag tactic which delayed their advance but took them from one bit of protecting brush or grove of trees to the next, keeping to the fields ...
— Star Born • Andre Norton

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

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

... day of our voyage, we reached a point where the Gulf of Serocasfe divides, a sharp jutting cape or peninsula parting its waters. We took the northern branch, about fifteen miles in width, and here, rising to the surface and steering a zigzag course from coast to coast, I was enabled to see something of the character of this most extraordinary strait. Its walls at first were no less than 2000 feet in height, so that at all times we were in sight, so to speak, of land. A road had been cut along the sea-level, and ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg

... to the axis of the spike, raceme and panicle, whether the axis is the main one or of the branch. The rachis of the inflorescence is usually cylindrical. In some grasses it is zigzag as in Pennisetum cenchroides. It is very much flattened in Paspalum scrobiculatum, but somewhat trigonous in Digitaria sanguinalis. In very many grasses the rachis is continuous, but in a few cases it consists of internodes or joints which disarticulate at maturity. Many species ...
— A Handbook of Some South Indian Grasses • Rai Bahadur K. Ranga Achariyar

... twenty-five miles from Epi, I was five days on the way, so zigzag a route did the steamer pursue. But if one is not in a hurry, life on board is quite entertaining. The first day we anchored near the volcano of Lopevi, a lofty peak that rises from a base six kilometres in diameter to a height of 1440 metres, ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser

... Universe, carrying their festoons of wild roses. They bring to the great festival joy and love of life - a telling addition to all that has been expressed in the court. They savor of old Greek days, these maidens of archaic hair and zigzag draperies. Paul Manship loves the classic which brings with it much of free expression, and he has adopted the archaic style that recalls the figures such as are seen on old Greek vases. No one is more joyous among the sculptors ...
— Sculpture of the Exposition Palaces and Courts • Juliet James

... promontory, the old part at the bottom, very dingy and mouldy, the new part at the top, very showy and elegant. Nothing can be more exquisite in its way than the grande place in the very heart of the city, surrounded with those toppling, zigzag, ten-storied buildings bedizened all over with ornaments and emblems so peculiar to the Netherlands, with the brocaded Hotel de Ville on one side, with its impossible spire rising some three hundred and seventy feet into the air and embroidered ...
— Memoir of John Lothrop Motley, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

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

... the Master Thief, the stealing of bed, horse, and priest, occur as early as Straparola, i., 2, who also has a somewhat similar story of the "Scholar in Magic," viii., 5, which contains the zigzag transformation of the Arabian Nights. Both forms occur in Grimm, 68, 192. While the three tests are fairly uniform throughout Europe, the introduction by which the lad becomes a thief and proves himself a Master Thief varies considerably; and I have ...
— Europa's Fairy Book • Joseph Jacobs

... Shakta join the Kali, was Dubart (3700 feet), and from thence one gradually rose to 4120 feet at the Relegar River, also a tributary of the larger stream. Having crossed the Rankuti River I ascended still higher by zigzag walking, slowly leaving behind me range after range of mountains beyond the valley of the river; while on the Nepal side, beyond the three nearer ranges, snow peaks of great height and beauty stood out against the sky-line. The highest point on the road was 5450 feet, after which we descended ...
— In the Forbidden Land • Arnold Henry Savage Landor

... went farther; found a fourth monkey, then a fifth, then a sixth; and as I proceeded I left one monkey only to find another farther on, all about fifteen feet one from the other, some perched on rocks, some on trees, forming a zigzag line down the mountain, all busily catching and throwing the cocoa-nuts in the most remarkably systematic fashion, There must have been sixty monkeys or more engaged in ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, January 1878, No. 3 • Various

... indentations on the handle, one smith held the article on the anvil while the other applied the point of the shank of a file—previously rounded—and struck the file with a hammer. The other figures were made with the sharpened point of a file, pushed forward with a zigzag motion of the hand. When the chasing was done the silver was blanched by the process before referred to, being occasionally taken from the boiling solution of almogen to be rubbed with ashes and sand. For about five hours both of the smiths worked together on this ...
— Navajo Silversmiths • Washington Matthews

... it. Besides, it took me such a devil of a time to write. It was good of you to keep things to yourself although I laid down no conditions of secrecy. I might have known it." He stared at the hill-side opposite, with its zigzag path through the vines marked by the figures of zealous pedestrians, and then he said suddenly: "If I asked you not to come and see our show you would set me down ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke

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

... soon left boots, shoes, and all behind, and deposited us at the door of the uncle's villa, where a friendly hand welcomed us to its hospitalities. It was very prettily situated upon a cliff overlooking Massachusetts Bay, in which said cliff a zigzag stepway was cut down to the water, for the convenience of bathing. The grounds were nicely laid out and planted, and promised in time to be well wooded, if the ocean breeze driving upon them did not lay an embargo upon their growth, in the same heartless manner as it ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray

... a narrow zigzag path that ran up the bank beside the house until it stopped at a small picketed gate on the level of the road ...
— A First Family of Tasajara • Bret Harte

... else you thought,—the murmuring noon He turns it to a lyric sweeter, With birds that gossip in the tune, And windy bough-swing in the metre; Or else the zigzag fruit-tree arms Recall some dream of harp-prest bosoms, Round singing mouths, and chanted charms, ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie

... stand at eight o'clock, P.M.; wind ahead, and little of it, performing a zigzag march between Eleuthera and Abaco. On deck, the pretty widow lies in an easy chair, surrounded by her countrymen, who discourse about sugar, molasses, chocolate, and other local topics, together with the relative ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca

... pale-faced Mother ere she sleep, Looks out upon the zigzag-lighted square, The beautiful bare trees, the blue night-air, The revelation of the star-strewn deep, World above world, and heaven over heaven. Between the tree-tops and the skies, her sight Rests on a steadfast, ruddy-shining light, High in the tower, an earthly star of even. Hers is the ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. I (of II.), Narrative, Lyric, and Dramatic • Emma Lazarus

... would have said the same), was the worthier person of the two. And even if neither of them had lived there, if my sentiment had been all wasted (but there was no question of tears), the place itself was sightly, the house was old, and the way thither a pleasant one—first down the hill in a zigzag course to the vicinity of the railway station, then by a winding country road through the valley past a few negro cabins, and up the slope on the farther side. Prince Murat, or no Prince Murat, I should love to travel that road to-day, instead ...
— A Florida Sketch-Book • Bradford Torrey

... come out of eggs, which the old ones lay in the sand. Some beasts eat the eggs, or else there would be too many crocodiles. The crocodile can run fast if he runs straight, and those who wish to get out of his way run zigzag, and he takes some time to turn; the poor black men know this, and can get out of his way; but some of them can fight and kill him on the land or in the water. I think the crocodile is mentioned in Scripture. Ask your teacher what Scripture means. ...
— The Infant System - For Developing the Intellectual and Moral Powers of all Children, - from One to Seven years of Age • Samuel Wilderspin

... to say to your impertinent remarks on my zigzag progress to my various engagements, neither any observation to make about Emily's information upon the subject of my white ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble

... guttural chirps, to resume his stand. Meanwhile the female is invisible, keeping closely concealed under the long grass. But at length, attracted perhaps by the bright bosom and aerial music of the male, she occasionally exhibits herself for a few moments, starting up with a wild zigzag flight, and, darting this way and that, presently drops into the grass once more. The moment she appears above the grass the male gives chase, and they vanish ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 3 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... are stiff in their motions; they throw their bodies forward, and hold themselves very straight, looking as though they were starched, and keeping their eyes fixed on the goal. The Dutch skate with a zigzag movement, swaying from left to right and from right to left with an undulating motion of the body. The Frieslander is an arrow, ...
— Holland, v. 1 (of 2) • Edmondo de Amicis

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

... both of my hands tightly round one of the upper rungs, before lifting my feet from the unsteady prow of the boat. But the ladder once climbed, the rest of the ascent was easy. I walked on up a zigzag path, cut in the face of the cliff, until I gained the summit, and sat down to wait for Tardif and his comrade. I could not have fled to a securer hiding-place. So long as my money held out, I might live as peacefully and safely as any ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • Hesba Stretton

... the last high line of roof against the dark starlit sky; and upon the spaces in between lay the soft glow from the tens of thousands of torches that the crowds carried beneath. Above the grotto the precipitous face of the cliff showed black and sombre, except where the zigzag paths shone out in liquid wandering lines, where the folks stood packed together, unseeing, yet content to be present. In front, at the foot, over the lake of fire where the main body of worshippers stood, glowed softly the cavern where Mary's feet had once ...
— Dawn of All • Robert Hugh Benson

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

... not to be caught napping by any Hun making seemingly friendly proposals. Before the German had more than half executed the maneuver, Bangs was already shooting upwards in a zigzag course and by the time the other had gotten into position, Buck was swinging round far above, from whence, to outdo the other, he pointed his Nieuport downward pointblank at the fuselage of the ...
— Our Pilots in the Air • Captain William B. Perry

... to the south the Beacon-terrace, a green road more than two miles long, leads to a high hill, where the Alderman commenced, but never finished, a triangular tower. This road, or rather avenue, has a most charming effect; the trees that bound its sides are planted in a zigzag direction, so as to destroy the appearance of formality, whilst in reality it is a straight road, and you walk at once in a direct line, without losing the time you would if the road were more tortuous. On the south side the ...
— Recollections of the late William Beckford - of Fonthill, Wilts and Lansdown, Bath • Henry Venn Lansdown

... lumbered slowly on, eyes and ears and nostrils keyed for the hunt. He descended until he was not more than a hundred yards above the creek, and he no longer sought out the easiest trail, but the rough and broken places. He travelled slowly and in a zigzag fashion, stealing cautiously around great masses of boulders, sniffing up each coulee that he came to, and investigating the timber clumps ...
— The Grizzly King • James Oliver Curwood

... fitfully trying some strain of which they were not certain. Then they stopped playing and talked, and their voices sounded goblin-like in their dark recess, where candles were carried about in an uncertain wavering manner, reminding Ruth of the flickering zigzag motion of the will-o'-the-wisp. ...
— Ruth • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

... inasmuch as it utterly abhors water. Although it is not spiny like the triodia, it is almost as annoying, both to horse and man, as it grows too high for either to step over without stretching, and it is too strong to be easily moved aside; hence, horse-tracks in this region go zigzag. ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles

... melody all its own, it made its zigzag way between birches, and alders, maples, and elderblow, carrying on its shining surface stray leaves, and water spiders that struggled to see which first should reach the ...
— Princess Polly's Playmates • Amy Brooks

... there by slender javelins of rain. They came faster and faster, striking on and over one another; now they turned to drops; she stopped thinking, absorbed in watching a drop roll down the glass—pause, lurch forward, touch another drop; then a third; then zigzag rapidly down the pane. She found herself following the racing drops with fascinated eyes; she even speculated as to which would reach the bottom first; she had a sense of luxury in being able, in the fortress of her berth, ...
— The Iron Woman • Margaret Deland

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

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

... current very considerably, while there would be no timber upon the banks to obstruct its navigation in future; and being nearly straight, the timber which might float in at the head, would be apt to go clear through. There are also many places above this where the river, in its zigzag course, forms such complete peninsulas, as to be easier cut through at the necks than to remove the obstructions from the bends—which if done, would also lessen ...
— Lincoln's Inaugurals, Addresses and Letters (Selections) • Abraham Lincoln

... before we identified this mysterious wing-singer as the little brown jack snipe that we knew so well and had so often watched as he silently probed the mud around the edges of our meadow stream and spring-holes, and made short zigzag flights over the grass uttering only little ...
— The Story of My Boyhood and Youth • John Muir

... followed the yellow and blue flashes of lightning that clove the dark stormy sky in zigzag, and poured a dazzling magic light over the world, with sparkling eyes. Oh, to be able to rush along like that flash of lightning. It rushed out of the clouds down to the earth, tore her lap open and buried ...
— The Son of His Mother • Clara Viebig

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

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

... force exerted by what might now be called the propelling part of the engines against the mountain masses which they crossed to right and left and behind, Redgrave was able to take a zigzag course that carried them over many of the walled plains which were wholly or partially lit up by the sun, and in nearly all of the deepest their telescopes revealed something like what they had found within the crater of Tycho. At length, pointing to a gigantic ...
— A Honeymoon in Space • George Griffith

... there it exactly was: and a moment's reflection showed me how easily, and with what instinctive fitness, the Norman builders, looking to the Greeks as their absolute masters in sculpture, and recognizing also, during the Crusades, the hieroglyphic use of the zigzag, for water, by the Egyptians, might have adopted this easily attained decoration at once as the sign of the element over which they reigned, and of the power of the Greek goddess who ruled both it ...
— The Pleasures of England - Lectures given in Oxford • John Ruskin

... in which the dredge is operated during the work. It turns alternately about two spuds which are thrust successively into the bottom and about which the dredge describes a series of arcs in a zigzag fashion. These spuds are ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 822 - Volume XXXII, Number 822. Issue Date October 3, 1891 • Various

... and you see a Scallop rising to the top of the water with zigzag jerks, and immediately sinking to the sand again, on the side opposite that whence it started. There it rests with expanded branchiae and moving cilia; a rude passer-by jostles it, and with startled sensitiveness it shrinks ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various

... heart: To these be helpful—yea, to one of these!" And lo, the wrathful thoughts, like routed fiends, Left me, and came no more!' Discoursing thus, The friends a moment halted in a space Where stood a flowering thorn. Adown it trailed In zigzag curves erratic here and there Long lines of milky bloom, like rills of foam Furrowing the green back of some huge sea wave Refluent from cliffs. Ecstatic minstrelsy Swelled from its branches. Birds as thick as leaves Thronged them; and whether joy was theirs that hour Because ...
— Legends of the Saxon Saints • Aubrey de Vere

... replied that it was feasible to provide a road for his Majesty directly from his barrack to the beach; but that in view of the great height of the cliff it would be necessary to moderate the rapidity of the descent by making the road zigzag. "Make it as you wish," said the Emperor, "only let it be ready for use in three days." The skillful engineer went to work, and in three days and three nights the road was constructed of stone, bound together with iron clamps; and the Emperor, charmed with so much diligence and ingenuity, had the ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton

... each man's right hand As the galley spent on our decks... And amazed and bloodied we reared half up And fought askew with the left hand shackled... But a zigzag fire leapt in our sockets And knotted our thews like string... Our thews grown stiff as a crooked ...
— The Ghetto and Other Poems • Lola Ridge

... with zigzag arrangement is used, having been found very economical in potash. It is most convenient to take readings by counterbalancing the column of potash solution and reading off the volume of gas at atmospheric pressure. For this ...
— Nitro-Explosives: A Practical Treatise • P. Gerald Sanford

... library fund. Mr. Barrows, principal of the Brown School, writes: "Our library contains the usual school reference-books. Recently we have added quite a number of books especially adapted to interest and instruct children, such as The Boy Travellers, Miss Yonge's Histories, Butterworth's Zigzag Journeys, Forbes's Fairy Geography, etc. The children are not permitted to take these books away from the building. Pupils are invited to bring such additional facts in geography, or history, as they may obtain by reading. Topics are assigned. Should spices be the ...
— Library Work with Children • Alice I. Hazeltine

... people and, while running forward to join them again, a brilliant flash of lightning illumined the bay, Mount Baal-zephon, and every surrounding object. The thunder was somewhat long in following, but the storm soon came nearer, and at last the lightning no longer flashed through the darkness in zigzag lines, but in shapeless sheets of flame, and ere they faded the deafening crash of the thunder pealed forth, reverberating in wild uproar amid the hard, rocky precipices of the rugged mountain, ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... in the morning of the 8th when Levis marched in; and they went on working like ants till the battle began, though all day the heat was terrific. Some of the trees cut down were piled up like the wall of a log-cabin, only not straight but zigzag, like a 'snake' fence, so that the enemy should be caught between two fires at every angle. This zigzag wooden wall was, of course, well loopholed. In front of it was its zigzag ditch; and in front of the ditch were fallen trees, with their branches ...
— The Passing of New France - A Chronicle of Montcalm • William Wood

... Ohio is a river with lofty banks. Those continuous hills, around which this river winds and curls and bends and loops, are simply the hills of the country through which the river had to find its way. We were astonished, in getting to the top of Cincinnati, after a panting walk up a zigzag road, to discover that we had only mounted to the summit of one billow in ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 118, August, 1867 • Various

... elbowed, with equal indifference, the honest miner, the less honest saloon-keeper, and the capitalist, the degree of whose claim to that laudatory adjective was not to be so easily fixed. No one seemed out of place in the crazy, zigzag streets, no sound seemed foreign to this new, conglomerate atmosphere. The fluent profanity of the mule-driver, the shrill laugh of the dance-hall; the prolonged rattle and final roar of the ore-chute, the steady pick of the laborer at the prospect-hole;—each played its part to ...
— Peak and Prairie - From a Colorado Sketch-book • Anna Fuller

... is composed of a ribbon of iron or nickel, bent into a continuous zigzag. This form has the advantage of presenting, in the cool part of the distributor, an almost direct road for the lines of force between the poles and the armature, thus diminishing the magnetic resistance as far as possible. At the same time the Foucault currents ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 633, February 18, 1888 • Various

... fellow was feeling pretty stiff and sore about the time we overtake them on the way home. Besides, most of them had zigzag scratches on face and hands by which to remember the wonderfully successful expedition for several days. Then there was Julius Hobson with a soiled handkerchief bound around his left thumb, which he solicitously examined every little while. He had, somehow, managed to catch a frisky little squirrel, ...
— The Chums of Scranton High on the Cinder Path • Donald Ferguson

... light time watching the Hebron road. They constructed a track over the mountains to get the Division to Dharahiyeh when it should be ordered to take part in the attack on the Jerusalem defences, and while they were waiting at Dilbeih they did much to improve the main road. The famous zigzag on the steep ridge between Dharahiyeh and Dilbeih was in good condition, and you saw German thoroughness in the gradients, in the well-banked bends, and in the masonry walls which held up the road where it had been ...
— How Jerusalem Was Won - Being the Record of Allenby's Campaign in Palestine • W.T. Massey

... sort of writing but on this particular occasion such was my state of feeling, that I began to fancy myself inspired; so I took pen in hand, and as usual I went ahead. When I had got fairly through, my poetry looked as zigzag as a worm-fence; the lines wouldn't tally no how; so I showed them to Peleg Longfellow, who has a first-rate reputation with us for that sort of writing, having some years ago made a carrier's address for the Nashville Banner; and Peleg lopped of some lines, ...
— David Crockett: His Life and Adventures • John S. C. Abbott



Words linked to "Zigzag" :   locomote, angular shape, zag, go, angularity, zig-zag, zig, move, crank, zigzag goldenrod, crooked



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