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Widen   Listen
verb
Widen  v. t.  (past & past part. widened; pres. part. widening)  To make wide or wider; to extend in breadth; to increase the width of; as, to widen a field; to widen a breach; to widen a stocking.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Widen" Quotes from Famous Books



... steamer chairs, to the brass railings, to the person who stood next to them. They no longer listened to the protestations of the brave boatswain's mate; that last long roll had terrified them. The sense of a great catastrophe began to spread and widen all about like the rising of some fearful invisible mist. "What had happened? What ...
— Vandover and the Brute • Frank Norris

... prayers; our lives are worship. And when we laugh, with human joy at human things, —then do we most sound great Oro's praise, and prove the merit of sweet Alma's love! Our love in Alma makes us glad, not sad. Ye speak of temples;—behold! 'tis by not building them, that we widen charity among us. The treasures which, in the islands round about, are lavished on a thousand fanes;—with these we every day relieve the Master's suffering disciples. In Mardi, Alma preached in open fields, —and must his ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. II (of 2) • Herman Melville

... Swedish history, Swedish culture, Swedish art; and as, besides the many other things this congress has done for us, it has most specially taught us to love the Swedish women, we can express no better wish for our future conventions than that every new country which receives us may in the same way widen our hearts ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume VI • Various

... Heaven! yet higher o'er my head; Back, back, horizon! widen out my world; Rush in, O infinite sea of the Unknown! For, though he slay me, I ...
— A Hidden Life and Other Poems • George MacDonald

... for having been built by that general, in 1430 and the two subsequent years, is connected with the keep by means, of a long passage with lancet windows, that widen greatly inwards. It is more than one hundred feet high, and is a beautiful piece of masonry, as perfect, apparently, as on the day when it was erected, and as firm as the rock on which it stands. This tower is ascended ...
— Account of a Tour in Normandy, Vol. II. (of 2) • Dawson Turner

... public and private; but the town is still much farther back in its chrysalis stage than Melbourne. Time alone can, and is rapidly making away with the old tumble-down buildings which spoil the appearance of their neighbours. But time cannot easily widen the streets of Sydney, nor rectify their crookedness. They were originally dug out by cart-ruts, whereas those of nearly every other town in Australia were mapped out long before they were inhabited. But if they were not so ill-kept, and the ...
— Town Life in Australia - 1883 • R. E. N. (Richard) Twopeny

... desperate thought of his friend, he strove, with all the energy he possessed, to widen the space between himself and his pursuers. Less fleet of foot than they, it took but a few seconds to show him ...
— The Young Ranchers - or Fighting the Sioux • Edward S. Ellis

... first. This did not produce the effect expected, as it burst out at the side, carrying part of the wall along with it, yet did little or no harm upwards, which was the point aimed at, on purpose to widen the former breach. Yet it encouraged the Persian general to try another assault, with at least 2000 soldiers. They ran up the breach with great resolution, into part of a bulwark or bastion, which they might easily have gained, had ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume IX. • Robert Kerr

... Necessary.—If women only understood better how easy a matter it is for these ulcerations to widen and deepen until some incurable and terrible disease results, they would be more prompt in taking treatment, especially when this is sure to be ...
— Treatise on the Diseases of Women • Lydia E. Pinkham

... fast, the features pale, he feels cold but sweats, the hair rises, the secretion of saliva stops, hence follows frequent swallowing, the voice becomes hoarse, yawning begins, the nostrils tremble, the pupils widen, the constrictor muscles relax. Wild and very primitive people show this much more clearly and tremble quite uncontrolled. The last may often be seen and may indeed be established as a standard of culture and ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden

... somewhat more, by the simple expedient of putting on her religious experiences an arbitrary interpretation of your own, which she would indignantly and justly deny, it will enable her to understand you all the less, and widen the gulf between ...
— Phaethon • Charles Kingsley

... walk over the mangled bodies of the wounded calling for death. I would say to that Royal child, Worship God by loving peace—it is not your humanity to pity a beggar by giving him food or raiment—I can do that; that is the charity of the humble and the unknown—widen you your heart for the more expanded miseries of mankind—pity the mothers of the peasantry who see their sons torn away from their families—pity your poor subjects crowded into hospitals, and calling in their last breath upon their distant country and their young ...
— Sydney Smith • George W. E. Russell

... in the copper mine was always going to widen out into a six-foot lead; never by any possibility could it grow any smaller. The trust shares were going up—"not a point or two at a time, gentlemen, but with the spring of a panther, suh." Of course the ...
— Colonel Carter of Cartersville • F. Hopkinson Smith

... recently in a most practical way by the Pennsylvania Railroad, which at its own expense installed five hundred and twenty-five telephones in the homes of its workmen in Altoona. In the same way, it is clearly the social duty of the telephone company to widen out its system until every point is covered, and then to distribute its gross charges as fairly as it can. The whole must carry the whole—that is the philosophy of rates which must finally be recognized by legislatures and telephone companies alike. ...
— The History of the Telephone • Herbert N. Casson

... of our race so that it may be, as of old, a medium of transmission and understanding. Let that come to pass, and the living warmth will spread to the weak extremities of Israel, and superstition will vanish, not in the lawlessness of the renegade, but in the illumination of great facts which widen feeling, and make all knowledge alive as the young ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot

... villainous, yet all were saleable. I said so; and the next moment saw myself, the figure of a miserable renegade, bearing arms in the wrong camp. I was to look at pictures thenceforward, not with the eye of the artist, but the dealer; and I saw the stream widen that divided me from ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... duty to lay before your Lordship the proceedings of the force lately employed on the right bank of the Mississippi River. Preparations had been made on our side to clear out and widen the canal that led from the bayou to the river, by which our boats had been brought up to the point of disembarkation, and to open it to the Mississippi, by which our troops could be got over to the right bank, and ...
— The Battle of New Orleans • Zachary F. Smith

... been passed, and the Governor-General would not have had to refuse his assent. But so he did, and so he would if these gentlemen, whose numbers we propose to increase and whose powers we propose to widen, chose to pass wild-cat Bills. And it must be remembered that the range of subjects within the sphere of Provincial Legislative Councils is rigorously limited by statutory exclusions. I will not labour the point now. Anybody who cares, in a short compass, ...
— Indian speeches (1907-1909) • John Morley (AKA Viscount Morley)

... that his individual needs are common needs, that is, public needs, and that they can only be legitimately supplied for him when they are supplied for all. If we believe that the individual struggle for life may widen into a struggle for the lives of all, surely the demand of an individual for decency and comfort, for a chance to work and obtain the fulness of life may be widened until it gradually embraces ...
— Democracy and Social Ethics • Jane Addams

... directly back to Greenstream he followed the way that led to his new house. The evening was silvery with a full brilliant moon, and the fresh paint and bright woodwork were striking against the dark elevated background of trees. The truck patch would be dug on the right, the clearing widen rod by rod. From Alderwith's meadows came the soft blowing of a steer's nostrils, while the persistent piping of the frogs in the hollows fluctuated in his ...
— The Happy End • Joseph Hergesheimer

... issues, as being, in fact, the effort to understand the world in which they live. But they have naturally tended to confine those issues within the limits of their own domestic interests and experience. They are called upon now to widen their horizon, and to apply the democratic conception of education to the new problems which have arisen owing to the part which Great Britain is now playing in the affairs ...
— The War and Democracy • R.W. Seton-Watson, J. Dover Wilson, Alfred E. Zimmern,

... and ranks widen out for a few minutes, and fill a large portion of the sky; then they close up again, and look like one long banner of red ...
— The Wonders of the Jungle - Book One • Prince Sarath Ghosh

... regards the barrancos as having been formed during the upheaval of the island, according to his theory of the formation of such mountains (the elevation-theory); but unfortunately for his views, these ravines widen outwards from the centre, or at least do not become narrower in that direction, as would be the case were the elevation-theory sound. The maps which accompany Von Buch's work are remarkably good, and were ...
— Volcanoes: Past and Present • Edward Hull

... bridle among the slippery boulders. The sun was well out of sight, and the chirping of crickets among the herbage announced that soon the evening shades would prevail. Evidently, camping was to be my portion, so I kept my eyes open for a good spot for the purpose. The canon appeared to widen out a little way ahead: there I should probably find good grazing for the horse (though not, I ruefully reflected, for myself). Arriving at the opening, I found, as I expected, grassy slopes rising from the creek, and resolved to ...
— The Penance of Magdalena & Other Tales of the California Missions • J. Smeaton Chase

... the Emperor Go-Murakami differed radically in their counsels, but it was finally decided that every effort should be made to widen the rift in the Ashikaga lute, and the Court commissioned Tadayoshi to attack Takauji and recover Kyoto. Thus was presented the spectacle of a father (Takauji) fighting against his son (Tadafuyu), ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi

... taking up the underhalf of a stitch on the right, then the underhalf of a stitch on the left side usually called "ball stitch." Continue alternating from right to left, taking up one stitch at a time except when it is necessary to widen; then sew two stitches of the web into ...
— Spool Knitting • Mary A. McCormack

... put it by. South of the Mason-Dixon Line, self- help is half-scandal. At last, quite dubiously, he did pick up the bell and gave it a gentle ring, so if old Rose chose not to hear it, she probably wouldn't: thus he could believe her and not lose his temper and so widen an ...
— Birthright - A Novel • T.S. Stribling

... of view of the best men on different sides, and to bring out the full sense of opposing arguments. All these gifts or qualities are never in a high degree united, but they are all essential to a great historian, and a true school of history should widen instead of narrowing our conception ...
— Historical and Political Essays • William Edward Hartpole Lecky

... in the moonlight and the world seemed to widen infinitely, like life at the coming of love. The country lay below like a vast white mere, and the hill sloped vaguely to a silver sky. Vessons walked up the batch to ease the cob, and Edward looked ...
— Gone to Earth • Mary Webb

... Supreme Court. He wished to put an end to the interminable lawsuits so prejudicial to the development of the Colony. Therefore the President and Magistrates were replaced by Justices of the Peace, and the former returned to Mexico in 1591. This measure served only to widen the breach between the Bishop and the Civil Government. Dasmarinas compelled him to keep within the sphere of his sacerdotal functions, and tolerated no rival in State concerns. There was no appeal on the spot against the Governor's authority. This restraint irritated and disgusted the Bishop to ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman

... English into Chinese; the hymns he wrote for others to sing, although he himself could not sing at all (he and I monopolising the musical incapacity of a family in which all the rest could sing well); the missionary stations he planted; the life he lived, will widen out and deepen and intensify through all time and ...
— T. De Witt Talmage - As I Knew Him • T. De Witt Talmage

... not shout, for spite of all my efforts the space between me and the pig seemed to widen. Yet I kept on, determined to win, till, at the end of a short half-mile, we reached the Waccamaw—the swine still a hundred yards ahead! There his pigship halted, turned coolly around, eyed me for a moment, then with a quiet, deliberate trot, ...
— Among the Pines - or, South in Secession Time • James R. Gilmore

... The attack is begun by a storming party of picked men: they are preceded, as before, by a body of sappers, provided with necessary means for removing obstacles, and followed by a second detachment of engineers, who will widen the passages, and render them more accessible to the main body of troops who now advance to the assistance of the storming party. If the assailants should be arrested at the counterscarp by obstacles which must be removed before any farther progress can be made, ...
— Elements of Military Art and Science • Henry Wager Halleck

... which I undertake to give you." I waited for a moment, but she maintained an altogether obstinate silence. "Very well," I resumed, "that is understood so far. You conceive it your duty to separate Violet and myself, and to attempt to widen any possible separation between us by suppressing my letters to her and hers to me. You must permit me to point out to you that you are adopting a very dangerous course, and I must warn you that I shall do my best to frustrate a design which seems to me so ureasonable and so ...
— In Direst Peril • David Christie Murray

... behind the neighboring firs, his reddening light fell on a bright blue streak, which seemed to glow like a stream of quicksilver between two heavy bodies of "piled ice." With the ebb, the narrow, glittering canal began to widen, piercing nearer to the islet, until, heading towards the westward, it lay little more than four miles from the interested spectators. The shadowy pinions of many flocks of water-fowl were seen exploring its course, and the neighboring geese, ...
— Adrift in the Ice-Fields • Charles W. Hall

... meditations somewhat discomposed by the recurring question:—Would she go home and tell her grandmother what she had said to me? And, if she did, would it not widen the breach upon the opposite side of which I seemed to see Ethelwyn stand, out of the reach ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald

... of them as trustees of schools, but especially in elevating the qualifications of men proposed as candidates for school-boards, and also in stimulating greater interest in the management of schools generally. The effect of these new experiences is to widen the influence ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various

... them knots of people were eagerly talking, all looking northward as though drawn by the same magnetic force. And as Smith and his companion raised their eyes, they saw in the northern sky an ugly crimson glare that seemed to widen and grow brighter even in the moment as they watched it. From far up Tremont Street, carried by the wind, came an odd murmur of confused noises, and nearer by the sharper sounds of clanging bells ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble

... time that Mr. Telford was engaged upon the tunnel at Harecastle, he was employed to improve and widen the Birmingham Canal, another of Brindley's works. Though the accommodation provided by it had been sufficient for the traffic when originally constructed, the expansion of the trade of Birmingham and the neighbourhood, accelerated ...
— The Life of Thomas Telford by Smiles • Samuel Smiles

... glimpses of this man in the back room when he wasn't looking. Of evenings he sat with his door opened and his eyes fastened on the portieres. He would sit like that for hours and his leathery face would become gray. His little eyes would widen and his body would hunch up as if he ...
— A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago • Ben Hecht

... this village? Courage, my child! that is a good sign. Once, as you read the papers, you thought nothing of those who lost friends; now you notice and feel. Take the sorrows of others to your heart; they shall widen and deepen it. Ours is a religion of sorrow. The Captain of our salvation was made perfect through suffering; our Father is the God of all consolation; our Teacher is named the Comforter; and all other mysteries are swallowed up in the mystery of the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various

... widen the margin by lying in bed when I write. My bed lies on the wrong side for me, so that I am forced often to write when I am up. Manley, you must know, has had people putting in for his place already; and has been complained of for opening letters. Remember that last Sunday, September ...
— The Journal to Stella • Jonathan Swift

... white,—it was Gregg being married. And at the same moment, the eyes of Vic lifted, wandered, fell upon the face which stood there framed in the dark of the doorway. Dan saw the flush die out, saw the narrow, single-purposed face of Gregg turn white, saw his eyes widen, and his own hand closed on his gun. Another instant; the minister turned his head, seemed to be waiting, and then Gregg spoke ...
— The Seventh Man • Max Brand

... bifurcation of future possibilities. Whether it fail or succeed, its declaration must be the starting-point of new policies. Just so does a revolution, or any great civic precedent, become a deflecting influence, whose operations widen with the course of time. Communities obey their ideals; and an accidental success fixes an ideal, as an ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James

... so widen the horizon around us! open to us fresh regions for question and answer, for possibility and delight! They are so many kernels of knowledge closed in the hard nuts of seeming contradiction.—You know, my lady, there are stories ...
— Donal Grant • George MacDonald

... advance beyond her Venetian territory, the French would take the field against her; but on the other hand, Austria declared that if the King of Piedmont moved a single soldier into these States she would fight at once, and Napoleon, while he threatened Austria, did not wish Victor Emmanuel to widen his borders. Cavour was now again at the head of the Piedmontese Government, and the problem of British diplomacy was to propose terms so favourable to Italian liberty that Cavour would not be tempted to provoke another war as a desperate bid for a united ...
— Lady John Russell • Desmond MacCarthy and Agatha Russell

... nervousness at long intervals developed here and there in the mass—eddies that not impossibly might widen at any time with perilous quickness to the maelstrom of a stampede. So as he rode Bunt sang to these great brutes, literally to put them to sleep—sang an old grandmother's song, with all the quaint modulations of sixty, seventy, a ...
— A Deal in Wheat - And Other Stories of the New and Old West • Frank Norris

... A tree having a long straight stem was felled, and the desired length of trunk cut off. The outside was then shaped to take the desired form of the canoe. Then the inside was hollowed out. The next thing to do was to widen the inside of this canoe. This was done by filling the boat with water and making a fire under it, and by fastening large stone weights on each side. When the shell had been sufficiently opened out, thwarts were placed inside, about two feet from each other, to prevent the boat getting out of ...
— Children of Borneo • Edwin Herbert Gomes

... and ation!" What does that describe? Exactly the Latin part of our language. Now, those very terminations speak for themselves:—All high abstractions end in ation; that is, they are Latin; and, just in proportion as the abstracting power extends and widens, do the circles of thought widen, and the horizon or boundary (contradicting its own Grecian name) melts into the infinite. On this account it was that Coleridge (Biographia Literaria) remarks on Wordsworth's philosophical poetry, that, in proportion as it goes into ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey

... of that steep road cut out of the cliff appeared to be the worst. It began to widen, with descents less precipitous. Tips of trees rose level with her gaze, obstructing sight of the blue depths. Then brush appeared on each side of the road. Gradually Carley's strain relaxed, and also the muscular contraction by which she had braced herself in ...
— The Call of the Canyon • Zane Grey

... we can do is to ask for light to guide our steps, and to exercise the reason with which He has endowed us. I have good ground to believe that any approach to tenderness, on the part of the children, would widen the breach between the fathers. And were such the case, the consummation of your plan would give only a new and horrible feature to the present discord, by severing the bond between child and parent. For, ...
— The Truce of God - A Tale of the Eleventh Century • George Henry Miles

... the leather easily," suggested another man. "Then with a hand inserted carefully through the slit, so as not to widen it more than needful, a man could soon discover the contents. And later, the bag might be dropped or pushed violently against some sharp ...
— King—of the Khyber Rifles • Talbot Mundy

... doubt, To put eyes in, as put them out. But, argument apart, which tends To embitter foes and separate friends, (Nor, turn'd apostate from the Nine, Would I, though bred up a divine, 210 And foe, of course, to Reason's Weal, Widen that breach I cannot heal) By his own sense and feelings taught, In speech as liberal as in thought, Let every man enjoy his whim; What's he to me, or I to him? Might I, though never robed in ermine, A matter of this weight determine, No penalties should ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill

... her own brother; but as she questioned and he answered, she gradually began to understand, to enter into his feelings, and to obtain a clearer comprehension of the situation of affairs. Her intercourse with the Trevlyns of the Chase had done something to widen her knowledge of life, and Cuthbert found that her mind had matured and expanded in a fashion he had hardly expected. He wondered where she had picked up some of the bits of experience that fell from her lips from time to time, and he looked somewhat ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green

... procure public measures; they were therefore handed to other public persons, who might be influenced by them to produce those measures. Their tendency was to incense the mother country against her colonies, and, by the steps recommended, to widen the breach which they effected. The chief caution expressed with regard to privacy was, to keep their contents from the colony agents, who, the writers apprehended, might return them, or copies of them, to America. That apprehension ...
— Benjamin Franklin • John Torrey Morse, Jr.

... reports of Menocal there is no reason why the United States should not assume and execute this great work without ultimate loss, and with enormous benefit to the commerce of the world. It will be a monument to our republic and will tend to widen its influence with all the nations ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman

... Dean Estate was thus rendered as easy and convenient to reach as any of the level streets of Edinburgh. The construction of the bridge was superintended by the late James Jardine, C.E. Mr Telford was afterwards called upon to widen the bridge. He threw out parapets on each side, but they did not improve the ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth

... them, Cried exulting from the caverns: "O ye sea-gulls! O my brothers! I have slain the sturgeon, Nahma; Make the rifts a little larger, With your claws the openings widen, Set me free from this dark prison, And henceforward and forever Men shall speak of your achievements, Calling you Kayoshk, the sea-gulls, ...
— The Song Of Hiawatha • Henry W. Longfellow

... and a portion of the infantry at once continued their way down the valley, while the rest of the infantry remained behind to widen the road sufficiently for the elephants to pass along. Although the work was pressed on with the greatest vigour it needed three days of labour in all before the elephants could be passed through. The animals were by this time weak with hunger, for from the time when ...
— The Young Carthaginian - A Story of The Times of Hannibal • G.A. Henty

... stride, and the sound of his breath. And for some clear moments he knew that his only concern was, to sustain his speed regardless of pain and distress, to deny with every nerve he had her power to outstrip him or to widen the space between them, till the stars crept up to midnight. Then out again would come that crowd invisible, humming and hustling behind, dense and dark enough, he knew, to blot out the stars at his back, yet ever skipping and ...
— The Were-Wolf • Clemence Housman

... fishery they are intended) to hang in them because, when this is the case it gives us a good deal of trouble at the busy hurrying season to disengage the seine, and often is the means of tearing it. But the meshes may widen as they approach the ends: the corks to be no more than two feet and a half asunder and fixed on flatways that they may swim and bear the seine up better with a float right in the middle to show ...
— The Bounty of the Chesapeake - Fishing in Colonial Virginia • James Wharton

... had of anything wrong was a cry from the girl, and he saw a strip of water widen between the canoe and the bank. He ran his hardest, but made little headway, for thorny bushes and fern formed thickets along the bank, while when he reached the boulders he felt that he had come too late, because no swimmer could then overtake the canoe, even if he ...
— Lorimer of the Northwest • Harold Bindloss

... care to escape. Elizabeth heard on all sides of her the whispered, "Yes, how could she do it, how could she consent to do it?" Suddenly she found herself, and herself alone, as it seemed, made responsible for this disaster; for the feeling beginning with Katie seemed to grow, and widen, and widen, like the circles of water into which a stone is thrown, and she was condemned by her friends, by the people who had known her and her father, condemned as false to her friendship, as unwomanly. ...
— Bay State Monthly, Volume II. No. 4, January, 1885 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various

... He stood before her, and hesitated, for it seemed cruel to wake her, even to tell her the good news. He would go back and widen the breach, and when there was room to get out, he could come and fetch her. She had put out the lamp. He lighted it again quietly, and was going to place it where it could not shine in her eyes and perhaps wake her, when he paused ...
— The Heart of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford

... by weight. The quantity is relatively greater at Cairo, a fact which shows that the river receives more earth from the erosion of its banks than it deposits at its own bottom, and it must consequently widen its channel unless we suppose a secular depression of the coast at the mouth of the Nile which produces an increased inclination of the bed of the river, and consequently an augmented velocity of flow sufficient to sweep out earth from the bottom and mix ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh

... press, in memory, its grass-grown borders, and in delight and liberty I am a child again. Its narrow limits were once my whole known world. Even then it seemed to me as if it might lead everywhere; and it was indeed but the beginning of a road which must lengthen and widen beneath my ...
— A New England Girlhood • Lucy Larcom

... ideal friend, ready to sacrifice to the uttermost on the altar of friendship. It was this trait of character which made him throw himself with enthusiasm into Freemasonry, whose affiliations he sought to widen by drafting the constitution of a community which he called "The Grotto." He probably hated only one man in the world,—the Archbishop of ...
— Mozart: The Man and the Artist, as Revealed in his own Words • Friedrich Kerst and Henry Edward Krehbiel

... might come and continue our 'stimulating' conversation, and as Lady Baird was standing by I could hardly say no. I am sure of one thing: that before I finish with him I will widen his horizon so that he will be able to see something beside Scotland and his little insignificant Fifeshire parish! I told him our country parishes in America were ten times as large as his. He said he had heard that they covered a good deal of territory, and that the ministers' salaries ...
— Penelope's Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... been removed to one end of the hall, and the chairs ranged about in rows and in clusters. Each little family group had had its say and exchanged its domestic gossip earlier in the evening. There was now an apparent disposition to relax; to widen the circle of confidences and give a more general ...
— The Awakening and Selected Short Stories • Kate Chopin

... has been fastened and made firm, perhaps some new change of temperature may occur, and the rock begin to contract again. Then the old vein must open wider; or else another open elsewhere. If the old vein widen, it may do so at its centre; but it constantly happens, with well filled veins, that the cross stitches are too strong to break; the walls of the vein, instead, are torn away by them; and another little supplementary vein—often ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin

... emphatically; "and I don't see why we all should not camp out aloft. We could easily widen the platform, rig up the waterproof sheets as a tent, and haul up some ...
— In Search of the Okapi - A Story of Adventure in Central Africa • Ernest Glanville

... Lord L'Estrange must now be returned. I will go back to the house. You, meanwhile, return to the town, I beseech you. I will come to you afterwards at your inn. Your very appearance in these grounds, even the brief words that have passed between Helen and you, might only widen the breach between yourself and your benefactor. I cannot bear to anticipate this. Go back, I entreat you. I will explain all, and Lord L'Estrange shall right you! That is,—that must be ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... this university. The funds of the university will not be tied up in expensive buildings and equipment, but, like the great German universities, employed in paying enthusiastic professors of the broadest scholarship and culture to instruct graduate students in every department of learning, and to widen the horizon of knowledge. This is certainly one of the most magnificent opportunities in the history of the Christian Church to establish a powerful and comprehensive agency to help uphold and expand and organize a Christian civilization. It will gain an increasing ...
— Colleges in America • John Marshall Barker

... living in the flat a fortnight then—a year it seemed to Forrester. And he wondered, as he looked at his wife, why it was that, with each day, the gulf between them seemed to widen. ...
— The Beggar Man • Ruby Mildred Ayres

... to an ell or two of good books often means mental salvation. Nothing is so melancholy as to find a countryman of brains who has never had the opportunity of cultivating his mind in such a way as to eliminate prejudice and widen the range of interest. ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes

... A sudden great fear seemed to widen around and inclose the two men. Once their water gone, the ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris

... and minors the right to make and enforce contracts. The grammatical structure of a portion of the bill was such as to enable a corrupt, passionate, or prejudiced judge to take advantage of it in order to widen the jurisdiction of the United States courts, and drag into them all the business which had heretofore occupied the State courts. This would be enough in this nineteenth century to make a man tremble for the fate of constitutional government. ...
— History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States • Wiliam H. Barnes

... organizations were coming into their field. The question was what they would do. The Opposition of 1889-90, though not without Conservative elements—the remnants of a former coalition—was mainly Radical. It had always supported Sir George Grey in his efforts to widen the franchise, efforts which in 1889 were finally crowned by the gain of one-man-one-vote. And in 1889 it choose as its head, John Ballance, perhaps the only man who could head with success a Liberal-Labour fusion. A journalist, ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves

... that some at least of the railway companies will hasten to replace their flanged rolling stock by carriages with rubber tyres, remove their rails, broaden their cuttings and embankments, raise their bridges, and take to the new ways of traffic. Or they may find it answer to cut fares, widen their gauges, reduce their gradients, modify their points and curves, and woo the passenger back with carriages beautifully hung and sumptuously furnished, and all the convenience and luxury of a ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells

... of the company's operations the whole region between Lake Athabaska and the northern sea. Alexander Mackenzie's object was, in name at least, commercial—the extension of the trade of the North-West Company. But in reality, his incentive was that instinctive desire to widen the bounds of geographical knowledge, and to roll back the {75} mystery of unknown lands and seas which had already raised Hearne to eminence, and which later on was to lead ...
— Adventurers of the Far North - A Chronicle of the Frozen Seas • Stephen Leacock

... first list of twenty-seven names of bodies recovered was made public. It contained that of Frederick Sutton, a well-known member of the Union League of Philadelphia. It did not contain the name of any other prominent man who perished, although it was thought that the name "George W. Widen" might refer to George D. Widener, son of P. A. B. Widener, of Philadelphia. The original passenger lists of the Titanic did not mention "Widen," which apparently established the identity of the body as that of Mr. Widener, who, together with his ...
— Sinking of the Titanic - and Great Sea Disasters • Various

... which is the child of vanity and weakness; and the noble, which is the unassuaged thirst for perfection. The present result of the last forty years in Oxford is a discontent which is constantly trying to improve the working, and to widen the intellectual influence, of the University. There are more ways than one in which this feeling gets vent. The simplest, and perhaps the most honest and worthy impulse, is that which makes the best of the present arrangements. Great religious excitement and religious ...
— Oxford • Andrew Lang

... tied to this or that circumstance. Especially when there are in the hearts of the godly, different persuasions about it; then it becometh them in the wisdom of God, to take more care for their peace and unity; than to widen or ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... sir," said Dodge after a careful survey. "I should clear the stream which runs muddy in this place by throwing pebbles to the bottom; widen it twenty feet more; make a pretty little egg-shaped island in the centre, upon which I should plant a few shrubs and perhaps a weeping willow, which would thrive ...
— Bertie and the Gardeners - or, The Way to be Happy • Madeline Leslie

... spring-tide, now for the first time fully alive and awake. A transition line has been passed, and the study of history, like everything else, enters upon a new phase. The elementary teaching which has been sufficient up to this, which has in fact been the only possible teaching, must widen out in the third period, and the relative importance of aims is the line on which the change to ...
— The Education of Catholic Girls • Janet Erskine Stuart

... windpipe was severed, the bear made a louder noise than ever, but not knowing the cause, I thought he was nearer me and I strained every nerve and fibre of my body to widen the distance between us, as I almost imagined his teeth clashing down on me, while Johnnie West was yelling: "Run, Willie; run ...
— Thirty-One Years on the Plains and In the Mountains • William F. Drannan

... and extensive, except in case of retaliation. These, I should have hoped, would have dictated a more tender treatment of those individuals whom chance or war had put in your power. Nor can I forbear suggesting its fatal tendency to widen that unhappy breach which you, and those ministers under whom you act, have repeatedly declared your wish is to see ...
— George Washington, Vol. I • Henry Cabot Lodge

... worse, I knew. It would gradually spread and widen. The Erentz circulation would fail. All our power would be drained struggling to maintain it. This brigand who had unwittingly committed suicide by his daring act had accomplished more than he had perhaps realized. I could envisage our weapons, useless from the lack ...
— Brigands of the Moon • Ray Cummings

... soon to leave Florence, to visit the chief courts of Europe, and to widen my acquaintance with the men of letters in the various universities. I shall go first to the court of Hungary, where scholars are eminently welcome; and I shall probably start in a week or ten days. I have not concealed from you, father, that I am no religious enthusiast; ...
— Romola • George Eliot

... a wife and settled in Paradise Valley. He prospered in a small way considered handsome thereabouts. In a few years he had cleared the rich acres of his farm to the sugar bush that was the north vestibule of the big forest; he had seen the clearing widen until he could discern the bare summits of the distant hills, and, far as he could see, were the neat white houses of the settlers. Children had come, three of them—the eldest a son who had left home and died in a far country long before we came to ...
— Eben Holden - A Tale of the North Country • Irving Bacheller

... sky to the southwest had given us hopes of finding a westerly passage to the south of the ice along which we were now sailing; more especially as the inlet began to widen considerably as we advanced in that direction: but at three A.M. on the morning of the 8th, we perceived that the ice ran close in with a point of land bearing S.b.E. from us, which appeared to form the southern extremity ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry

... as Europe for the great extensions, definitions, the strengthening and modification of international law. America stands forth as the apostle of arbitration, to widen the area within which disputed points may be determined amicably. America stands also as the chief signatory of the great world conventions which have settled new rules for the conduct of war, to mitigate ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915 - What Americans Say to Europe • Various

... table, and who, after the duke's death, had made himself indispensable to his mistress. The liaison had created a coolness between the duchess and her prime minister, of which Beatrice d'Este and some of the Sforza party cleverly availed themselves to widen the breach. They deplored the growing arrogance of Simonetta, and lamented the success of his intrigues against Lodovico, who was his sister-in-law's nearest relative and rightful protector. Acting on their suggestion, Bona took ...
— Beatrice d'Este, Duchess of Milan, 1475-1497 • Julia Mary Cartwright

... innumerable passages from almost all the poetical writings, even of Milton himself. To illustrate the subject in a general manner, I will here adduce a short composition of Gray, who was at the head of those who, by their reasonings, have attempted to widen the space of separation betwixt Prose and Metrical composition, and was more than any other man curiously elaborate in the structure of his own ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various

... to his telephone, and presently the beam began to widen and spread out. As it did so the dark cloud became more dense than it had been before. The earth below us was hidden and we could see the red only as a dim murky glow through the falling soot. Carpenter inquired of the laboratory and found ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science July 1930 • Various

... channels it would be the first aim of our Labor Bureau to pour the labor supply of the country. And experience would probably enable us to widen, deepen and lengthen these channels in such a manner as would prove profitable to both employers and employed, as well as to ...
— Darkest India - A Supplement to General Booth's "In Darkest England, and the Way Out" • Commissioner Booth-Tucker

... "we could not throw down that great stone and widen the crack in the ice, so that the deer could not leap over it! We should then have it ...
— The Plant Hunters - Adventures Among the Himalaya Mountains • Mayne Reid

... fleece-like floor By the midnight breezes strewn; And wherever the beat of her unseen feet, Which only the angels hear, May have broken the woof of my tent's thin roof, The Stars peep behind her and peer. And I laugh to see them whirl and flee Like a swarm of golden bees, When I widen the rent in my wind-built tent,— Till the calm rivers, lakes, and seas, Like strips of the sky fallen through me on high, Are each pav'd with the ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education

... Gregory for assistance, he had met a final failure. Brushed with sleepiness they were slipping away from him. He was reluctant to have them go, leave him; the distance between them and himself appeared to widen immeasurably as he stood watching them settle for the night. He wanted to call them back, "Helena and Gregory, Gregory!" But he remained quiet, his head a little bent, his heart heavy. The tide of sleep, silent, mystical, recompensing! It wasn't ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer

... on a burst of speed, as if attempting to outrace their pursuer. But he was careful to gauge his knots by reports from the sonarscope, in order not to widen the gap between the two craft. There seemed no danger that this would happen, although the Swiftsure raced ahead faster and faster. Still the enemy sub continued to close in like a marauding shark, finally ...
— Tom Swift and The Visitor from Planet X • Victor Appleton

... the shop without the constable. During his walk of a few yards he had had time and calmness enough to widen his view of consequences, and he saw that to get Jacob taken to the workhouse or to the lock-up house as an offensive stranger might have awkward effects if his family took the trouble of inquiring after him. He must resign himself ...
— Brother Jacob • George Eliot

... that the "discords" of a Beethoven suddenly blared forth would have scared Count Morzin and all his pigtail court. Haydn was supposed to write the same kind of music as other musicians of the period were writing, and, if possible, to do it better; Count Morzin did not pay him to widen the horizons of an art. Consider his musical position also. He was born twenty-seven years before the death of Handel, eighteen before that of the greatest Bach; Bach was writing gigantic works in the contrapuntal style and forms; Handel had not ...
— Haydn • John F. Runciman

... of those mouths that look small in repose, but widen surprisingly with laughter. Betty, who had only seen her smile slightly at rare intervals, happened to glance up. Harriet's mouth had stretched itself into a grin revealing nearly every tooth in her head. And it was the fatuous grin of the negro, and again Betty saw her black. She gasped ...
— Senator North • Gertrude Atherton

... echoes in the silence, and Garry saw the girl's eyes widen as she turned them upon the black one, who had spoken. He saw her face lose its color and go dead white, and plainly her wide eyes showed the fears that swept in upon her ...
— Astounding Stories, March, 1931 • Various

... begins to widen its banks and the theory that the waters once extended from side to side of the valley seems tenable as we view the wide expanse of sedgy swamp through which the present channel has been artificially cut. Cuckmere Haven is ...
— Seaward Sussex - The South Downs from End to End • Edric Holmes

... unaccountable, as there was no trait more unlovable than innocency, about her character; but this very gentleness of nature, in contrast with the iciness, seldom found in woman's heart, would, as an unavoidable result, serve to widen the two extremes. ...
— Natalie - A Gem Among the Sea-Weeds • Ferna Vale

... now entering Irving's rich domain, and Tappan Zee lapping the threshold of "Sunnyside," seems almost a part of his very dooryard. The river, which has averaged about a mile in breadth, begins to gradually widen at Hastings, and almost seems like ...
— The Hudson - Three Centuries of History, Romance and Invention • Wallace Bruce

... who had brought him thither that they had little thought for him. He defended him so well with his mighty blows that none might come at him to harm him; he felled them by twos and by threes, some under their horses, some beside them. The space began to widen round Sir Gawain and Morien; for all there deemed that he came forth from hell, and was hight Devil, in that he so quelled them and felled them underfoot that many hereafter spake thereof. That men thrust and smote at him troubled him little, therein was he like to his ...
— The Romance of Morien • Jessie L. Weston

... materially lower itself, and immediately the substitutions of gold for other metals, or for other decorative materials (as ivory, etc.), would begin to extend; and commensurately with such extensions the regular gold market would widen. This is the prevailing conceit. Now let us ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. II (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey

... citizenship." To many this means, perhaps, "woman and suffrage." Woman in politics is already an accomplished fact in fourteen western states. Suffrage has been granted her in the state of New York. That her political influence will widen seems a foregone conclusion. She must therefore be prepared for real service in civic concerns. Women have already applied their housecleaning knowledge and skill to the smaller near-by problems of civic life. As time goes on they must render the same service ...
— Vocational Guidance for Girls • Marguerite Stockman Dickson

... native stream Are glancing in the sun's warm beam; From sail-urged keel and flashing oar The circles widen to its shore; And cultured field and peopled town Slope to its willowed margin down. Yet, while this morning breeze is bringing The home-life sound of school-bells ringing, And rolling wheel, and rapid jar Of the fire-winged and steedless car, And voices from the wayside near Come quick ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier

... years ago, of course, he wouldn't have considered the notion either. But since then a great many things had happened, and his horizons had widened. After all, capturing a double handful of totally insane, if perfectly genuine telepaths, from asylums all over the country, was enough by itself to widen quite a few stunned horizons. And then, later, there had been the gang of juvenile delinquents. They had been perfectly normal juvenile delinquents, stealing cars and bopping a stray policeman or two. It just happened, though, that they had solved the secret of instantaneous ...
— Occasion for Disaster • Gordon Randall Garrett

... made, as we shall see, by the application of the blood to the altar; but the possibility of the victim's blood atoning for the offerer depended on his having laid his hands on its head. We may perhaps go farther than 'transference of sins.' Might we not widen the expression, and say 'identification,' or, to use a word which has become so worn by religious controversy that it slips through our fingers unnoticed, 'substitution'? Did not the offerer say in effect, by that ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren

... my friends, in such a way as to permit the testator to see you all," continued the vice-admiral, motioning with his hand to widen the circle around the bed, which had been contracted a little by curiosity and interest; "stand more this way, Lieutenant Wycherly Wychecombe, that the ladies may see and be seen; and you, too, Mr. Thomas Wychecombe, ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper

... the legislature of Carolina, served to widen the difference. The Yamassees being expelled from Indian land, the assembly passed two acts to appropriate those lands gained by conquest for the use and encouragement of such of his majesty's subjects as should come over and settle upon them. Extracts of these acts being sent to England ...
— An Historical Account Of The Rise And Progress Of The Colonies Of South Carolina And Georgia, Volume 1 • Alexander Hewatt

... raised her arms, wound the floating tresses into a coronal. I saw Drake enter with the saddlebags; saw them drop from hands relaxing under the shock of this amazing tableau; saw his eyes widen and fill ...
— The Metal Monster • A. Merritt

... dexterity, patience, ingenuity, and power of combination which result are wider and higher possessions which also modify the folkways at later stages of effort. The generalizations of truth and right widen at every stage, and produce a theory of welfare, which must be recognized as such, no matter how rude it may be. It consists in the application of the notions of goblinism as they are prevalent at the time in the group. The art itself is built up by folkways according to their ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner

... line he had drawn—it revealed its true nature in the perspective of days. There was no mistaking what it was. It was The Abyss. It could widen and it could engulf. How much light would a Leadership Star cast in ...
— In the Control Tower • Will Mohler

... of this species, which was sent to me from Ireland, are much elongated, and gradually widen from the footstalk to the bluntly pointed apex. They stand almost erect, and their blades sometimes exceed 1 inch in length, whilst their breadth is only the 1/5 of an inch. The glands of all the tentacles ...
— Insectivorous Plants • Charles Darwin

... and simultaneously with the other two armies, the new army might have served its purpose, but the campaign, it seems, was already too far advanced. The strength of the Russians had been augmented, and after they had driven the wedge in at Tomaszow they retained it in place, and were able to widen the break by means of the operations which followed in the vicinity of Bilgoraj, and by driving back the Austrian forces above Rawa-Russka. In this way the First Austrian Army was left dangling at the extreme ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume II (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various

... till now, of any one's suffering but her own, this sharing of Franklin's was an experience new and overpowering. No tears came, while she held the letter and looked before her intently, and it was not as if her heart softened; but it seemed to widen, as if some greatness, irresistible and grave, forced a way into it. It widened to Franklin, to the thought of Franklin and to Franklin's suffering; its sorrow and its compassion were for Franklin; and as it received and enshrined him, it shut Gerald out. ...
— Franklin Kane • Anne Douglas Sedgwick

... slab of rock started easily enough at their energetic effort. A seam appeared to widen—a crack was disclosed—there followed space sufficient to allow a hand to be inserted and then a dozen willing scouts helped with the lift. In a couple of minutes the big slab was thrown over with a crash, ...
— The Boy Scout Treasure Hunters - The Lost Treasure of Buffalo Hollow • Charles Henry Lerrigo

... gods line the walls of Asgard and watch the race with tremulous eagerness. Youth and immortality are staked upon the winning of Loki. He is weary enough and frightened enough, too, as the eagle sweeps on close behind him; but he makes desperate efforts to widen the distance between them. Little by little the eagle gains on the falcon. The gods grow white with fear; they rush off and prepare great fires upon the walls. With fainting, drooping wing the falcon passes over and drops exhausted by the wall. In ...
— Myths That Every Child Should Know - A Selection Of The Classic Myths Of All Times For Young People • Various

... playing Patience at the small table, raised his head like a war-horse. "Nonsense! widen on one side and you will fall into the river; on the other, and a pretty cliff you'll have to climb! You could as well widen the way between Scylla and Charybdis—or Mahomet's Bridge to Paradise—or Thomas Jefferson's Natural Bridge! Pshaw!" He began to build from ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston

... or it may be just the other way. And you, my dear friend, may be (or may think yourself to be) somewhat strong where he is somewhat weak; an opportunity for many subtle temptations. The days and weeks go on; and if you let "the little rift" of criticism widen, and do not continually take it to your Lord to be examined and mended, other feelings—not born from above—may steal in between you and this good man, your elder and leader in Christ. Petty dislikes and impatience may rise in your heart about some ...
— To My Younger Brethren - Chapters on Pastoral Life and Work • Handley C. G. Moule

... hydrogen-lines imprinted themselves on the plate.[611] Meanwhile M. Deslandres was enabled, by fitting quartz lenses to his spectroscope, and substituting a reflecting for a refracting telescope, to get rid of the obstructive action of glass upon the shorter light-waves, and thus to widen the scope of his inquiry into the peculiarities of those derived from prominences.[612] As the result, not only all the nine white-star lines were photographed from a brilliant sun-flame, but five additional ones were found to continue the series upward. The wave-lengths ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke

... members of these educated churches did a great deal to widen the breach by such remarks as this: "We do not want any head handkerchief people in our churches." They often spoke in a way which gave the impression that they felt themselves better than the commonality of their brethren; and whenever visitors came to these churches, the members did not ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various

... she listened to him, wondered that she was so old. All these things reappearing before her seemed to widen out her life; it was like some sentimental immensity to which she returned; and from time to time she said in a low voice, ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert

... to feel that self-interest itself, when it is fully understood, can be better served by a life which is useful to the community than by one which is harmful. For this purpose it is chiefly necessary to widen his outlook and increase the scope of his desires. At present, when a man suffers from insufficient love for his fellow-creatures, the method of curing him which is commonly adopted seems scarcely designed to succeed, being, indeed, in essentials, the same as his ...
— Proposed Roads To Freedom • Bertrand Russell

... only of Earraid, but of the neighboring part of Mull (which they call the Ross) is nothing but a jumble of granite rocks with heather in among. At first the creek kept narrowing as I had looked to see; but presently to my surprise it began to widen out again. At this I scratched my head, but had still no notion of the truth; until at last I came to a rising ground, and it burst upon me all in a moment that I was cast upon a little, barren isle, and cut off on every side by the ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 6 • Charles H. Sylvester



Words linked to "Widen" :   dilate, broaden, flare out, flare, globalise, let out, expand, stretch, globalize, modify, vary



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