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Leaden   /lˈɛdən/   Listen
Leaden

adjective
1.
Darkened with overcast.  Synonym: dull.  "A dull sky" , "The sky was leaden and thick"
2.
Made heavy or weighted down with weariness.  Synonym: weighted.  "Weighted eyelids"
3.
Made of lead.
4.
(of movement) slow and laborious.  Synonym: plodding.
5.
Lacking lightness or liveliness.  Synonym: heavy.  "A leaden conversation"






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Leaden" Quotes from Famous Books



... By its means men can descend beneath the waters and remain there a certain time without the action of the lungs being in any way injured. The diver is clothed in a waterproof suit of India rubber, and his feet are attached to leaden shoes, which allow him to retain his upright position beneath the surface. At the collar of the dress, and about the height of the neck, there is fitted a collar of copper, on which is screwed a metal globe with a glass front. In this globe the diver places ...
— Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon • Jules Verne

... Young tried his skill on the same theme in a poetical epistle to Tickell, but his lines are leaden and his praise absurd. Addison's glory was so great, he says, as a ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis

... Miss Maxwell flushed and the others laughed. But, in actual fact, he was not far wrong in his curious choice of an adjective that morning. Dr. Christobal's dismal foreboding had been justified on the second day out. Leaden clouds, a sullen sea, and occasional puffs of a stinging breeze from the southwest, offered a sorry exchange for the ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy

... was leaden-grey—the sun not being visible—and with no guide in the heavens, we knew that we might easily diverge from a direct course. To provide against this, my companions had recourse to a compass of their ...
— The War Trail - The Hunt of the Wild Horse • Mayne Reid

... ran beside his dogs; Ralph was close behind. They were home once more in their own silent valley, and were pushing on to avoid the coming snow-storm which the leaden hue of the sky portended. So the dogs were rushed along at a great pace, for the dugout was beyond, ...
— In the Brooding Wild • Ridgwell Cullum

... leaden-footed. At every sound on the stairs Madame started like a frightened bird. That infamous Laporte usually paid his visits at about eight o'clock in the evening, and after it became quite dark, Madame sat at the tiny window, and I felt that she was counting the minutes which still lay between her ...
— The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy

... a pale, yellow-leafed vine clambering over the verdureless lilac, and far down in the garden might be seen a shrub covered with bright scarlet berries. But the warm south wind was sweet and fragrant, as if it had strayed through bowers of roses and eglantines. Deep-leaden and snow-white clouds blended together, floated lazily through the sky, and the sun coquetted all day with the earth, though his glance was not, for once, more than half averted, while his smile was bright ...
— Friends and Neighbors - or Two Ways of Living in the World • Anonymous

... web fell into her lap, and deep dissatisfaction spread its sombre leaden banners ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson

... late afternoon sun fell slanting through Ernest's window. He was lying on his couch, in a leaden, death-like slumber that, for the moment at least, was not even perturbed by the presence of ...
— The House of the Vampire • George Sylvester Viereck

... recollect cases in which the saint performs even miracles on behalf of the condemned. Mediaeval tales are full of instances of the same feeling which prompted the Italian brigands, even in our own times, to carry a leaden saint's image in his hat as a safeguard. In an old French fabliau, for instance, we read how a certain highway-robber was always careful to address his prayers to the Blessed Virgin, before going out to murder and steal; ...
— The Roman and the Teuton - A Series of Lectures delivered before the University of Cambridge • Charles Kingsley

... side like an electric shock. A few minutes of this furious paddling brought him to the bow of the dugout. Seizing its rawhide painter, he fastened the end to a seat in his own boat. Then taking the paddle again, he headed back to the point. The leaden hail fell as thickly as ever, but by crouching low he was shielded somewhat by the high sides of his tow. His return progress was now slow, but gradually he worked the two crafts out of the ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely

... he took down a leaden platter from a shelf by the door, and, opening a cupboard, he took out a little glass bottle full of a clear amber-coloured liquid, which glowed like melted fire. Setting down the platter on a little round table in the middle of the room, he dropped ...
— Tales From Scottish Ballads • Elizabeth W. Grierson

... if you can vse them wel, you may shew an hundred feats, but whether you seeme to throw the Ball into the ayre, or into your mouth, or into your left hand, or as you list, it must be kept still in your right hand: if you practise first with the leaden bullet, you shall the sooner, and better do it with balls of Corke: the first place at your first learning, where you are to bestow a great ball, is in the palme of your hand, with your ring finger, but a small ball is to be placed with your thumbe betwixt your ring finger and middle ...
— The Art of Iugling or Legerdemaine • Samuel Rid

... the season returned, when the nights grow colder and longer, And the retreating sun the sign of the Scorpion enters. Birds of passage sailed through the leaden air, from the ice-bound, Desolate northern bays to the shores of tropical islands, Harvests were gathered in; and wild with the winds of September Wrestled the trees of the forest, as Jacob of old ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

... Thirty-nine years later Sir Gilbert Scott and Mr. Ralph Nevill did their best to repair the injury and show the Norman pillars as they should be, but some of the injury done was final. Still, the church within and without is a noble building, and the leaden spire which soars up from the tower is the finest in the county. The church has had at least three famous vicars. One was Owen Manning, famous perhaps against his will, for he asked that no monument for him should be added to the church. ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker

... were fixed upon the poles which were set up on the scaffold, where they remained until past three in the afternoon, when they were taken down, and, with the two bodies, placed in leaden coffins and deposited in ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller

... Admirals-Casinos; translating you in terms of your purposely spurious Victorias, your Riche Cafes, your Fledermauses. As well render the spirit of Vienna in the key of the Kaerntnerstrasse at eleven of the Austrian night; as well play the spirit of Paris in the discords of its Montmartre, in the leaden pitch of its Pre Catelan at sunrise. Sing of London from the Astor Club; sing of New York from its Bryant Park at moontide, its Rector's, its ridiculous Cafe San Souci and its ...
— Europe After 8:15 • H. L. Mencken, George Jean Nathan and Willard Huntington Wright

... followed by his trumpeter, rode ahead of the troopers, chafing at their leaden-footed progress. A hand-gallop would have been too slow for the speed of his thoughts, tormented as he was by anxious wondering what had become of the Boy; while his ears were strained to catch the first sounds of contest from the heights, ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver

... in the earth and coals in the air," as some one says. It has rained all day, is foggy and altogether British, unlike anything I have seen for a long time. I can understand how our colonials come home and curse our leaden skies. ...
— The Incomparable 29th and the "River Clyde" • George Davidson

... in infinite space. Above, below, on all sides, was a leaden atmosphere. Neither sun, nor moon, nor stars illumined it, but only some dull, phosphorescent light, which seemed to be born of the murky, stagnant air. It was such a strange, sickly, wavering gleam as she had seen above decaying wood, fish, and other substances. ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton

... terrestrial—shrank in comparison with the waste void beyond, where sky and ocean weltered together after the wrestle of a two days' storm; and in comparison with the thought that this rolling sky and heaving water stretched all the way to Europe. Not a sail showed, not a wing anywhere under the leaden clouds that still dropped their rain in patches, smurring out the horizon. The wind had died down, but the ships kept their harbours and the sea-birds their inland shelters. Alone of animate things, Captain ...
— Lady Good-for-Nothing • A. T. Quiller-Couch

... gazed into the future as children might look across an unknown sea, seeing in fancy its stately galleons, its tall treasure ships, its white-winged pleasure craft, its wondrous, palm-fringed islands, where summer abode always; but they had no eyes for leaden skies and sullen shouldering swells spouting on hidden reefs, the great, gray bergs fog-hidden in the ship track, the drifting derelicts whose hopes were once as fair as their own. For God has mercifully arranged that ...
— Desert Conquest - or, Precious Waters • A. M. Chisholm

... turned it over, I found what Joshua had meant—a hole as clean and round as a gimlet-bore in the bulge at the back of the head. And when, remembering the faint, chambered impact I had felt in shaking the unknown treasure on the beach, I peeped in through the round hole, I made out the shape of a leaden slug nested loosely between two points of bone behind the nose—a bullet, I should say, from an old, single-ball dueling pistol—such a pistol as Joshua Blake had played with in the shadow of apple-trees on that distant afternoon, and carried ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... twenty leaden-winged years from the time in which a fixed purpose was formed in me to visit the Orient, the realization came. The year that saw the fulfillment of my cherished ambition was definitely determined upon eight summers before it took its place in the calendar of history. ...
— My Three Days in Gilead • Elmer Ulysses Hoenshal

... hear of will put both bows down; for these with a pinch of black dust, and a leaden ball, and a child's finger, shall slay you Mars and Goliath, ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade

... gasped, and calling upon his uttermost atom of strength, quickened the strides of his leaden legs. Skinner had fallen! ...
— Going Some • Rex Beach

... the pulse beating in the bowels of a ship, only that it stopped and began at odd intervals, intermittently. At the fourth recurrence, he sat up, to find that it was early morning, and that the sea lay; gray and leaden, under the pearly haze of dawn. Thump-thump! He rubbed his eyes, and laughed. It could be no less a person than the old sailor in the summer-yachting toggery. Drat 'em! These sailors were always trying to beat sun-up. At length, the peg left the room above, ...
— A Splendid Hazard • Harold MacGrath

... with it passed Its ruddy rich delights, and winds blew high, And shriveled Winter, limping, came at last, And leaden clouds flew o'er the dreary sky; Yet still our cheerful heroines did defy, As all of them accustomed were to do, The weather's threatening inclemency, And long their old enjoyments did pursue, They walked as they had done the happy ...
— The Minstrel - A Collection of Poems • Lennox Amott

... stamped with armorial designs. Thieves, to remind them of their sneaking trade, are repeatedly transformed from men into snakes, hissing and creeping. Hypocrites march in slow procession with faces painted and with leaden cloaks all glittering with gold on the outside. With such realism does Dante declare the nature of ...
— Dante: "The Central Man of All the World" • John T. Slattery

... the design of his new lamps—the first paraffin lamps to be seen so far north. They were splendid things, with a heavy leaden base, and he lit them himself every evening—to prevent any accident. He spoke once or twice of ...
— Pan • Knut Hamsun

... met the white wig, all over the flabby cheeks, hanging in big loose folds upon the short, loose-folded red neck; massive features, but coarsened and drawn; and dull, thick, silent-looking lips, of purplish red scarce redder than the red skin; pale blue eyes tending to a watery greyness, leaden, vague, sad, but with angry streakings of red; something inexpressibly sad, gloomy, helpless, vacant and debased in the whole face: such was the man who awaited Louise of Stolberg in the Compagnoni-Marefoschi palace at Macerata, and who, on Good Friday the 17th of April 1772, ...
— The Countess of Albany • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)

... Barnaby's sight coming back to him again in the darkness, he beheld that dark and motionless figure still standing exactly where it had stood before, and so knew either that he had missed it or else that it was of so supernatural a sort that a leaden bullet might do it no harm. Though if it was indeed an apparition that Barnaby beheld in that moment, there is this to say, that he saw it as plain as ever he saw a living man ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard Pyle

... end the white-haired commodore had taken his seat, with senator, judge, squire, general, and the seventeen-year-old Hayle boy nearest him on his right and left. The bishop was not there. He was at the ladies' table, paired with the judge's sister"—a leaden load even for ...
— Gideon's Band - A Tale of the Mississippi • George W. Cable

... unextinguished; these they gladly fanned up into a blaze, at which they dried their wet clothes, and warmed themselves. The air was now cool almost to chilliness; for some days the weather remained unsettled, and the sky overcast with clouds, while the lake presented a leaden hue, crested with white ...
— Lost in the Backwoods • Catharine Parr Traill

... himself back in boyhood again with this stifling and leaden atmosphere of authority and disapproval to breathe. He knew that Francis in his place would have done somehow differently; he could almost hear Aunt Barbara laughing at the pomposity of the situation that had suddenly erected itself monstrously ...
— Michael • E. F. Benson

... the home ranch broke stormy. Gray, leaden skies and low scudding, drab clouds drifted over the foothills and obscured the view of the peaks. A nasty drizzle dampened the face of the world and laid its clammy touch on all living things. This condition prevailed all through the day and shortly ...
— The Settling of the Sage • Hal G. Evarts

... tresses, and tied them with a rag torn from her frayed skirt. Hampton noted silently how heavy and sunken her eyes were; he felt a dull pity, yet could not sufficiently arouse himself from the lethargy of exhaustion to speak. His body seemed a leaden weight, his brain a dull, inert mass; nothing was left him but an unreasoning purpose, the iron will to press on across that desolate plain, which already reeled and writhed before ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish

... above revived him, but the deck was wet and cheerless and the air chill. Land had disappeared, and a tumbling waste of grey seas and a leaden sky was all that met his gaze. Nevertheless, he spoke warmly of the view to Captain Brisket, rather than miss which he preferred to miss his breakfast, contenting himself with half a biscuit and a small cup of tea on deck. The smell of fried bacon and the clatter of cups and saucers ...
— Dialstone Lane, Complete • W.W. Jacobs

... September or earlier until May or later, Paris has about the vilest climate that curses a civilized city. It is one of the bitterest ironies of fate that a people so passionately fond of the sun, of the outdoors, should be doomed for two-thirds of the year to live under leaden, icily leaking skies with rarely a ray of real sunshine. And nothing so well illustrates the exuberant vitality, the dauntless spirit of the French people, as the way they have built in preparation for the enjoyment of every bit of the light and warmth of any chance ray of sunshine. That year it ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips

... written by Tommy and the Poilu at the front, celebrate the glories of camp life in such vivid colors they could not be reproduced in cold, black, leaden type." ...
— Woman as Decoration • Emily Burbank

... Clerk of the Works at the royal palace hard by, and a dweller beneath the shadow of the old Lady Chapel; his burial in the adjoining church followed as a matter of course, simply because he resided within the precincts. For nearly a hundred and fifty years the only record of his grave was a leaden plate, with a Latin inscription by an Italian poet, which hung upon the pillar near. At last one Brigham, himself with a turn for verse-making, procured an ancient marble {52} tomb, and got permission to put it up against this wall. It has been called by ...
— Westminster Abbey • Mrs. A. Murray Smith

... voyagers" that day on the edge of the gulf planted the cross, inscribed the arms of France upon a tree, buried a leaden plate of possession in the earth and sang to the skies "The banners of heaven's king advance," La Salle in a loud voice read the proclamation which I have in part repeated. Thus "a feeble human voice, inaudible at half a mile," [Footnote: Parkman, "La Salle," p. 308.] in fact ...
— The French in the Heart of America • John Finley

... that has the charm of being novel, and certain depraved minds fasten to it like leeches. They brood over and revolve it—the idea grows up, a horrid phantasmalian monomania; and all of a sudden, in a hundred different places, the one seed sown by the leaden types ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 3 • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... mile away, but that honest "Long Tom" sent its leaden missiles whistling about their ears, and kicking up the dust around their ponies' heels, until, after a few defiant shouts and such insulting and contemptuous gestures as they could think of, the two had ducked suddenly out of sight behind ...
— Starlight Ranch - and Other Stories of Army Life on the Frontier • Charles King

... families. He had to accustom himself to the atmosphere of the abnormal, so as to state the psychological case in its numberless ramifications. This he had done. His head was clear. His unalterable decision made. Now the minutes dragged with leaden feet ...
— Viviette • William J. Locke

... misfortune of Ishullanu, we may compare the story in the Abrabian Nights of the Fisherman and the Genie shut up in the leaden bottle. The king of the Black Islands was transformed into a statue from the waist to the feet by the sorceress, whom he had married and afterwards offended; he remained lying on a bed, from which he could not ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 3 (of 12) • G. Maspero

... Last night it rained steadily nearly all night; and it has just recommenced. It is quite an agreeable change to see a leaden sky and hear the rain softly pattering on the tent roof, after many days of sweltering, dazzling heat, when one is in a comfortable tent. But it makes me think of and wish for a comfortable room at home, a ...
— A Yeoman's Letters - Third Edition • P. T. Ross

... fact'ry—build you a car while you change yer shirt—course I ain't changed them gaskets." Harry clumped sullenly out of the door and down the street, keeping close to the wall, in the shade. Harry was an old married man and his feet were leaden. Joe chuckled as he gazed after him speculatively. And then he passed through the door back ...
— Stubble • George Looms

... Leaden clogs held back the hands of the Tyro's watch after luncheon. Full half an hour before the appointed time he was on deck, a forehandedness which was like to have proved his undoing, for Judge Enderby, who had taken a ...
— Little Miss Grouch - A Narrative Based on the Log of Alexander Forsyth Smith's - Maiden Transatlantic Voyage • Samuel Hopkins Adams

... of the surface. The sea, as far as the eye could reach, was a sparkling light green, from the snow—white sand at the bottom, as if a level desert had been suddenly submerged under a few feet of crystal clear water, which formed a cheery spectacle, when compared with the customary leaden, or dark blue—colour of the rolling fathomless ocean. It was now dead calm.—"Fishing lines there—Idlers, fishing lines," said I; and in a minute there were forty of them ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott

... ninth of April, they were all assembled on a ridge slightly elevated, for the celebration of this all-important ceremony. First, they raised a massive column, at the foot of which they buried a leaden plate, bearing an inscription in Latin, to ...
— The Adventures of the Chevalier De La Salle and His Companions, in Their Explorations of the Prairies, Forests, Lakes, and Rivers, of the New World, and Their Interviews with the Savage Tribes, Two Hu • John S. C. Abbott

... distract her attention so that I might seize her hands or her waist, made a deep impression on her. She fled to the other end of the hall, and tried to force open the window; but her little hands could not even move the heavy leaden sash in the rusty ironwork. Her efforts made me laugh. She clasped her hands in terror, and remained motionless. Then all at once the expression of her face changed. She seemed to have resolved how to act, and came toward me smiling and with outstretched hand. So beautiful was she thus that a ...
— Mauprat • George Sand

... dress was the dress of a clergyman. For the first time in my life, I hailed the appearance of a priest with a feeling of relief. The reason was this. From the moment when I had read Mrs. Finch's letter until now, a horrid doubt, which a priest was just the man to solve, had laid its leaden weight on my mind—and, I firmly believe, on Oscar's mind as well. Had time enough passed, since Lucilla had left Ramsgate, to allow of Nugent's marrying her, under ...
— Poor Miss Finch • Wilkie Collins

... November, 1674, and was buried, near his father, in the chancel of St. Giles's, Cripplegate. The funeral was attended, Toland says, "by all his learned and great friends in London, not without a friendly concourse of the vulgar." The disgusting profanation of the leaden coffin, and dispersion of the poet's bones by the parochial authorities, during the repair of the church in August, 1790, has been denied, but it is to be feared the fact is ...
— Milton • Mark Pattison

... offered no reply, nor did she open her eyes. She rested on him and on the bed like a leaden weight. He kissed her fondly, a great agony ...
— The Mansion of Mystery - Being a Certain Case of Importance, Taken from the Note-book of Adam Adams, Investigator and Detective • Chester K. Steele

... noise, through the encumbered avenues of London towards the centre, now shooting forward like a star, now stopping with gentle suddenness, now swerving in a swift curve round a vehicle earthy and leaden-wheeled, Priam grew more and more uncomfortable. He had sunk into a groove at Putney. He never left Putney, save occasionally to refresh himself at the National Gallery, and thither he invariably went by train and tube, because the tube always ...
— Buried Alive: A Tale of These Days • Arnold Bennett

... shone upon San Francisco Bay, and again gone down in red gleam over the far-spreading Pacific, leaving the sky of a leaden colour, moonless ...
— The Flag of Distress - A Story of the South Sea • Mayne Reid

... were, in the most astonishing manner, on a leaden roof of the Signal offices. High factory chimneys rose over the horizon of slates on every side, blowing thick smoke into the general murk of the afternoon sky, and crossing the western crimson with long pennons of black. And out of the murk there came from afar a blue-and-white pigeon ...
— The Matador of the Five Towns and Other Stories • Arnold Bennett

... with a gray and murky sky, and an atmosphere filled with mist in which there seemed no promise of relenting; yet neither the leaden sky, nor the mist-drenched air dampened our spirits in the least, and we started on our morning journey with the lines of Riley ringing in ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand

... that the moment I heard Dinky-Dunk come into the house. I knew it by the way he let the storm-door swing shut, by the way he crossed the hall as far as the living-room door and then turned back, by the way he slowly mounted the stairs and passed leaden-footed on to his study. And I knew that this time there'd be no "Are you there, Little Mother?" or ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer

... meeting was March 11, and the rendezvous was a retired spot in the Bois de Boulogne. A bitterly cold morning, with snow on the ground and heavy clouds in a leaden sky. As the clock struck the appointed hour, Dujarier, accompanied by his seconds, and M. de Guise, a medical man, drove up in a cab. They were ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham

... by her hours in that black despair of which only youth is capable. In older years men suffer more dull pain, as each sorrow that comes drops its leaden weight into the past, and, similar features of character bringing similar results, draws up a heavy burden buried in those depths. But only youth has energy, with fixed unwinking gaze, to contemplate grief, to hold ...
— Summer on the Lakes, in 1843 • S.M. Fuller

... the air even on the shore seemed full of the presence of decaying leaves and damp earth. He sat down in the mouth of the cave, and looked out on the still, half waking world of ocean and sky before him—a leaden ocean, and a dull misty sky; and as he gazed, a sadness came stealing over him, and a sense of the endlessness of labour—labour ever returning on itself and making no progress. The mad laird was always lamenting his ignorance of his origin: Malcolm thought ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald

... He leaned his leaden throbbing head against the wall, and wave after wave of sickness even unto death shuddered over him. Michael had tried to kill him. His stiff wrenched throat throbbed together with his head. For a long time he ...
— Prisoners - Fast Bound In Misery And Iron • Mary Cholmondeley

... anything,' said Britain, with a leaden eye and an immovable visage. 'I don't care for anything. I don't make out anything. I don't believe anything. And ...
— The Battle of Life • Charles Dickens

... use among their descendants. In the event of prolonged drought they were obliged to send to the mainland opposite; in time of war they had recourse to a submarine spring, which bubbles up in mid-channel. Their divers let down a leaden bell, to the top of which was fitted a leathern pipe, and applied it to the orifice of the spring; the fresh water coming up through the sand was collected in this bell, and rising in the pipe, reached the surface uncontaminated ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 4 (of 12) • G. Maspero

... a power in the land. Even the dishonest eloquence of Chateaubriand, enforcing the principles of legal and constitutional liberty on behalf of a party which would fain have used every weapon of despotism in its own interest, proved that the leaden weight that had so long crushed thought and expression ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe

... have a deep meaning to those who are willing to read them honestly. The use of water-dressings in surgery completed the series of reforms by which was abolished the "coarse and cruel practice" of the older surgeons, who with their dressings and acrid balsams, their tents and leaden tubes, "absolutely delayed the cure." The doctrine of Broussais, transient as was its empire, reversed the practice of half of Christendom for a season, and taught its hasty disciples to shun their old favorite remedies as mortal poisons. This was not enough permanently to shift the presumption ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... from the leader, and the horde closed in. Both of Powell's guns flamed in a crashing leaden hail that swept the close-packed ranks of furry bodies with murderous effect. But he was doomed by ...
— Devil Crystals of Arret • Hal K. Wells

... His feet rested upon a broad plank embedded in mud, and the tiny glass in which he saw himself hung upon a wall of raw, reeking earth. A sky, somber and leaden, arched above him, and now and then flakes of snow fell in the sodden trench, but John Scott went ...
— The Hosts of the Air • Joseph A. Altsheler

... altar is a great slab, which once bore the effigies, in brass, of a lady and of a knight in armour. When the slab had to be removed, during the erection of the new reredos, a leaden coffin was found, and a female body closely wrapped in lead. The knight here buried was Sir William Arundel, K.G., governor of the city and castle of Rochester, whose will, dated 1st August, 1400, gave directions for his "body ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Rochester - A Description of its Fabric and a Brief History of the Episcopal See • G. H. Palmer

... hopes it," boomed her husband, coming to the rescue with heavy and uncertain cheeriness that rang as false as the ring of a leaden dollar. "And of course all of us hope it, dear Mr. Grimm. With all our hearts. And we wish you many, many ...
— The Return of Peter Grimm - Novelised From the Play • David Belasco

... leaden messengers, That ride upon the violent speed of fire, Fly with false aim; move the still-peering air, That sings with piercing, do not ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 183, April 30, 1853 • Various

... might have intended to make on my pupil's communication, were checked by the plashing of large rain-drops on our faces and on the path, and by the muttering of a distant but coming storm. The warning obvious in stagnant air and leaden sky had already induced me to take the road leading back to Brussels, and now I hastened my own steps and those of my companion, and, as our way lay downhill, we got on rapidly. There was an interval after the fall of the first broad drops before heavy rain came on; ...
— The Professor • (AKA Charlotte Bronte) Currer Bell

... on miles The glittering table bends o'er that first course, and smiles; For, through the wreaths of smoke, the grey Lusts bear aloft The second course, on leaden chargers, large and soft, Bodies of women, steaming in an opal mist, Red-branded here and there where ...
— Collected Poems - Volume Two (of 2) • Alfred Noyes

... indignantly of Malcolm's share in causing her so great a pleasure. She was not yet quite spoiled. She was still such a lover of the visible world and of personal freedom, that the thought of returning to London and its leaden footed hours, would now have been unendurable. At this moment she could have imagined no better thing than thus to go tearing through the water—home to her home. For although she had spent little of her life at Lossie House, she could not but prefer ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald

... mass of tufa rock rising abruptly from the flat, green fields, and not far from the aqueduct, three tiers of brick arches, one above the other, joined by massive masonry, through which fresh water was brought in big leaden pipes to ...
— Virgilia - or, Out of the Lion's Mouth • Felicia Buttz Clark

... seconds crawled, and the minutes barely moved, and the hours seemed to heap up in a blockade and crush us with their leaden weight! Twice I sought relief for pent emotion by piling wood on the fire, though the night was mild, and by breaking the glowing embers into a shower of sparks. The soft, moccasined tread of Mandanes ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut

... and at last his body was interred within it. Its altar was consecrated in 1290, as is recorded in the register of Bishop Oliver Sutton. It is described as having been built of stone and wood, with a leaden roof, and with glass windows. There was a statue of the Virgin, and round the walls, or perhaps in the stained glass in the windows, there were figures of those named in the genealogy, with a compendium of their lives beneath each. The ...
— The Cathedral Church of Peterborough - A Description Of Its Fabric And A Brief History Of The Episcopal See • W.D. Sweeting

... me, then was still. His scream choked into silence. His suit deflated within my encircling grip. He was dead; my leaden, steel-tipped pellet had punctured the double surface of his Erentz-fabric, penetrated ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, June, 1930 • Various

... was because, knowing my temperament, I felt the necessity of getting angry and giving vent to what was in my heart. If I had not employed this infallible remedy, the annoyance which this note caused me would have disturbed my nerves all night, and when I do not sleep my complexion is more leaden than usual and I have ...
— Gerfaut, Complete • Charles de Bernard

... explain myself without That sad inexplicable beast of prey— That Sphinx, whose words would ever be a doubt, Did not his deeds unriddle them each day— That monstrous hieroglyphic—that long spout Of blood and water—leaden Castlereagh! And here I must an anecdote relate, But luckily of no great ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron

... in the upper jaw and thirty-two in the lower jaw; of a uniform leaden colour, with the lower ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale

... and the fact that it was a lie alarmed Dale quite as much as any of the sinister incidents which had already befallen. For one thing, there was no house into which five men could have gone. On each side of the road were bleak sandhills; to the right was the sea, gray and lowering beneath a leaden-hued sky that seemed to weep above a dead earth. Here, undoubtedly, was the cab, since Dale could swear to both horse and man. Where, then, ...
— Cynthia's Chauffeur • Louis Tracy

... be. He had perfect intrepidity; not to be flurried by any amount of peril or confusion; looked on that English Column, advancing at Fontenoy with its FUE INFERNAL, steadily through his perspective; chewing his leaden bullet: 'Going to beat me, then? Well—!' Nobody needed to be braver. He had great good-nature too, though of hot temper and so full of multifarious veracities; a substratum of inarticulate good sense withal, and much magnanimity run wild, or run to seed. ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVI. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Ten Years of Peace.—1746-1756. • Thomas Carlyle

... I was alone I emptied my pockets, and put the leaden balls into a cupboard. Then I lay down and began to consider whether the good-natured young man would prevent me committing suicide, as he had already ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt

... her feet were leaden, as if she could never traverse the distance between the ragged rocks and the house. The interview with Frederick had been a terrible ordeal, and she was sick with disgust from his odious kisses. Waldstricker's untimely appearance and his ...
— The Secret of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White

... these excursions, by those who come to fish,—which includes nearly all the men,—is to establish a claim somewhere along the railing of the steamer, by attaching to it a strong whip-cord fishing-line, with a leaden sinker and hook of moderate size,—the latter lashed on, in most instances, with a disregard for art which must be intensely disgusting to any man whose piscatorial memories are associated with the wily salmon and the epicurean trout. Triangular ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various

... of Henry were buried in the monastery of St. Maur; and his body embalmed, being put into a leaden coffin, was drawn to St. Denis. Before and behind the corpse were two lamps burning; and two hundred and fifty torches gave light to the procession. The Abbot and Monks of St. Denis came out to meet it, and solemnly preceded it to their church, where they ...
— Henry of Monmouth, Volume 2 - Memoirs of Henry the Fifth • J. Endell Tyler

... magnificence succeeded the unchanging daylight and the blazing rays of the sun; and, from the earliest dawn, the temperature became scorching. At five o'clock in the morning, the doctor gave the signal for departure, and, for a considerable time, the balloon remained immovable in the leaden atmosphere. ...
— Five Weeks in a Balloon • Jules Verne

... a flash of Apollo's sun-crown, Cupid shot the other, the leaden one, into a river cloud he saw floating by. In it he knew Daphne, the daughter of the river, was hidden. The leaden arrow hit her true, but she drifted ...
— Classic Myths • Retold by Mary Catherine Judd

... week was hardly so successful. It was cold and rainy. The gold and crimson glories of the forest disappeared in a night, and the earth looked gloomy and sad under a leaden sky. The inconveniences of the little brown house became more apparent now. It had been declared, at first sight, the very worst house in Merleville, and so it was, even under a clear sky and brilliant ...
— Janet's Love and Service • Margaret M Robertson

... passes much of his time amid such vast resources, and does not aspire to make some small addition to his library, were it only by a critical catalogue, must indeed be not more animated than a leaden Mercury. He must be as indolent as that animal called the Sloth, who perishes on the tree he climbs, after he ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli

... retreating Danes, cut off from their ships, made their last fruitless stand against the Saxon sheriff and the valiant men of Devon. Within that charmed rock, so Torridge boatmen tell, sleeps now the old Norse Viking in his leaden coffin, with all his fairy treasure and his crown of gold; and as the boy looks at the spot, he fancies, and almost hopes, that the day may come when he shall have to do his duty against the invader as boldly as the men of Devon did then. And past him, far below, ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley

... to cloak, And the flame-spurts pale ran down the rail as the sealing-rifles spoke. The bullets bit on bend and butt, the splinter slivered free, (Little they trust to sparrow-dust that stop the seal in his sea!) The thick smoke hung and would not shift, leaden it lay and blue, But three were down on the Baltic's deck and two of the Stralsund's crew. An arm's length out and overside the banked fog held them bound; But, as they heard or groan or word, they fired at the sound. For one cried out on the name of God, and one to have him ...
— The Seven Seas • Rudyard Kipling

... registering this veritable revolution in the secret stronghold of Chinese political thought, a Bastille has been overthrown and the ground left clear for the development of individualism and personal responsibility in a way which was impossible under the leaden formulae of the greatest of the Chinese sages. In defining the relationship which must exist between the Central Government and the provinces even more formidable difficulties have been encountered, the apostles of decentralization and the advocates of centralization refusing for many months ...
— The Fight For The Republic in China • Bertram Lenox Putnam Weale

... conceivable circumstances by four years of vastly varied fighting. Without the slightest hurry they mounted their horses in obedience to Duncan's brief command. He led them at once into the presence of Colonel Cabell, whose battalion of artillery lay nearest to him. As they sat upon their horses in the leaden hailstorm, with countenances as calm as if they had been entering a drawing room, Duncan touched his cap to Colonel Cabell ...
— A Captain in the Ranks - A Romance of Affairs • George Cary Eggleston

... of eighteen and twenty-five he strongly resembled the divine Raffaelle. But his nose, that feature of the human face that changes most, is growing to a point; the countenance is sinking into mysterious depressions, the outlines are thickening; leaden tones predominate in the complexion, giving tokens of weariness, although the fatigues of this young man are not apparent; perhaps some bitter solitude has aged him, or the abuse of his gift of comprehension. He scrutinizes the thought of every one, yet without definite aim or system. ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac

... river, deep still water. 80 Cyprinoid, " In small streams. 81 Macrognathus, " Tenacious of life, belly puffy, common throughout; a good deal like a Gudgeon. 82 Loach, Quettah. 83 Cyprinoides, " A beautiful silvery-leaden backed fish, with a streak of bright-red along the side. Common, very like the preceding: of these Quettah fish No. 83 is the most common, 82 the least so. 84 Cyprinus, curious, " not being a mountainous form. 86 " " ...
— Journals of Travels in Assam, Burma, Bhootan, Afghanistan and The - Neighbouring Countries • William Griffith

... unfortunates whom the fanatic autocrat wished to Russify, that is, compel to see the pure light of Greek Orthodoxy. But they, of course, suffered the most. The slightest laws were enforced by the chinovniks (officials) with the knout and the leaden lash. When the Judeo-Polish gaberdine, the long side-curls (peot), and the wig or turban (knup) fell into disfavor with the Government, the miserable offender caught by an officer seldom saved himself with the mere sacrifice of knup, coat, peot, and beard. And when the time arrived ...
— The Haskalah Movement in Russia • Jacob S. Raisin

... Night came at last, leaden footed, though we were burning with impatience. Very softly we crawled out of the cave, three shadows. Fortunately there was no moon. The great Glacier loomed ominously above us, dimly white. High overhead hovered the green signal lights of the machine planes, their search ...
— Astounding Stories, July, 1931 • Various

... chagrin and disappointment. But it was still worse when she found herself settled for a long season at Norwood Abbey a dull, magnificent residence, with a vast unvaried park, a profusion of sombre trees, and a sheet of stillwater, decorated with leaden deities. Within doors everything was in the same style of vapid, tasteless grandeur, and the society was not such as to dispel the ennui these images served to create. Lady Matilda Sufton, her satellite Mrs. Finch, General ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier

... gray, Making it yet more lonely? Is it not better than to hear Only the sliding of the wave Beneath the plank, and feel so near A cold and lonely grave, A restless grave, where thou shalt lie Even in death unquietly? Look down beneath thy wave-worn bark, 60 Lean over the side and see The leaden eye of the sidelong shark Upturned patiently, Ever waiting there for thee: Look down and see those shapeless forms, Which ever keep their dreamless sleep Far down within the gloomy deep, And only stir themselves in storms, Rising like islands from beneath, And snorting ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell



Words linked to "Leaden" :   weighted, plodding, effortful, lead, heavy, cloudy, dull



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