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Girdle   /gˈərdəl/   Listen
Girdle

noun
1.
An encircling or ringlike structure.
2.
A band of material around the waist that strengthens a skirt or trousers.  Synonyms: cincture, sash, waistband, waistcloth.
3.
A woman's close-fitting foundation garment.  Synonyms: corset, stays.



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"Girdle" Quotes from Famous Books



... new comers—such as small husbandmen turned shiftless and hungry upon the world because their farms were taken from them to be changed to sheep ranges. They begged, and were whipped at the cart's tail, naked from the girdle up, till the blood ran; then set in the stocks to be pelted; they begged again, were whipped again, and deprived of an ear; they begged a third time—poor devils, what else could they do?—and were branded on the cheek with a red-hot iron, then sold for slaves; they ran away, were ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... and fell, Glaring upon the water out of reach, And praying succour in a silent speech, So piteous were its eyes. Which, when she saw, This woman from her foot her shoe did draw, Albeit death-sorrowful, and, looping up The long silk of her girdle, made a cup Of the heel's hollow, and thus let it sink Until it touched the cool black water's brink; So filled th' embroidered shoe, and gave a draught To the spent beast, which whined, and fawned, and quaffed Her kind gift to the dregs; next licked her hand, With such glad looks that ...
— The Dog's Book of Verse • Various

... images of the Apocalypse, in a coloured window at Bourges. Such symbolism cares a great deal for the hair of Temperance, discreetly bound, for some subtler likeness to the colour of the sky in the girdle of Hope, for the inwoven flames in the red garment of Charity. And what was specially peculiar to the temper of the old Florentine painter, Giotto, to the temper of his age in general, doubtless, more ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater

... cart-oil about him. His beard began just below the eyes, while the eyebrows fell in little cascades to meet it. He was called Perfishka, and was extremely slow in his movements. It took him at least five minutes to take a pinch of snuff, two minutes to fasten the whip in his girdle, and two whole hours to harness the Immovable alone. If when out driving in their carriage the Subotchevs were ever compelled to go the least bit up or down hill, they would become quite terrified, would cling to the straps, and both cry aloud, "Oh ...
— Virgin Soil • Ivan S. Turgenev

... Brahman'; just as according to the Purva Mimamsa the compound 'Nishada-sthapati' denotes a sthapati who is a Nishada (not a sthapati of the Nishadas). A thing even which is known as one only may be designated by a plural form, as in a mantra one girdle is spoken of as 'the fetters of Aditi.' And as to the case under discussion, we know on the authority of Scripture, Smriti, Itihasa, and Purana, that the wonderful worlds springing from the mere will of a perfect and omnipresent being cannot be ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Ramanuja - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 48 • Trans. George Thibaut

... their betters of the honour of their womenfolk. Already Don Rodrigo in imagination saw his clean red Christian blood bespattering that Hebrew floor, for he had no weapon save the heavy Toledo dagger at his girdle, and Diego de ...
— The Historical Nights Entertainment, Second Series • Rafael Sabatini

... allowed his upper garments to slip down to his girdle, and remained naked to the waist. Carefully, according to custom, he tucked his sleeves under his knees to prevent himself from falling backward; for a noble Japanese gentleman should die falling forwards. Deliberately, with a steady ...
— Bushido, the Soul of Japan • Inazo Nitobe

... race of strong women who followed the occupations of men. From their children they selected only such as were girls. United in an army, they waged great wars. Their queen, Hippolyta, wore, as a sign of her leadership, a girdle which the goddess of war had given ...
— Famous Tales of Fact and Fancy - Myths and Legends of the Nations of the World Retold for Boys and Girls • Various

... with me, mistress of all woe? Say, wilt thou bear me to another land Where thou hast other lovers? Rise and go Where dark the pine trees upon Ida stand, For there did one unloose thy girdle band; Or seek the forest where Adonis bled, Or wander, wander on the yellow sand, Where thy first lover strew'd ...
— Helen of Troy • Andrew Lang

... which they played almost without ceasing. The governor was a lean man, of good stature, dressed in a linen shirt down to his heels, over which he wore a long gown of Mecca velvet, having a cap of silk of many colours, trimmed with gold, on his head, at his girdle he wore a sword and dagger, and had silk shoes. The general received him on entering the ship, and led him to an awning, trimmed up in the best manner they were able. The general then begged him ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. II • Robert Kerr

... doubts—or perhaps I ought rather to call them questionings and shrinkings—has not this vision of the dead body of our Lord something in it to charm away our fears? Does it not say to us: "I have passed on before; I that speak in righteousness, Mighty to save. I have trodden the winepress alone. At My girdle hang the keys of life and death; I, even I, was dead; yes, really, cruelly dead; but I am ...
— Our Master • Bramwell Booth

... men-at-arms, each of whom was attended by three bold followers; and his archers, with their crossbows to shoot bolts, and longbows to shoot arrows of a yard long, so that it used to be said that each went into battle with three men's lives under his girdle, namely, the three arrows he kept there ready to his hand. With the King was his son, Edward, Prince of Wales, who had just won the golden spurs of knighthood so gallantly at Crecy, when only in his seventeenth year, and likewise ...
— A Book of Golden Deeds • Charlotte M. Yonge

... These revolve about her without ever coming any nearer. Next is the inner ring of attraction. Those who come within its irresistible influence are drawn so close that it seems as if they must become one with her sooner or later. But within this ring is another,—an atmospheric girdle, one of repulsion, which love, no matter how enterprising, no matter how prevailing or how insinuating, has never passed, and, if we judge of what is to be by what has been, never will. Perhaps Nature loved Number Five so well ...
— Over the Teacups • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... feudalism, at least on the surface. Japan rapidly became Westernized, and at the same time entered on an imperialist policy. Her aims from 1868 onward were clear, and remained unaltered until the end of the second World War: she was to be surrounded by a wide girdle of territories under Japanese domination, in order to prevent the approach of any enemy to the Japanese homeland. This girdle was divided into several zones—(1) the inner zone with the Kurile Islands, Sakhalin, Korea, the Ryukyu archipelago, and Formosa; (2) ...
— A history of China., [3d ed. rev. and enl.] • Wolfram Eberhard

... repast was over, the door leading to the courtyard opened: and there entered the rogue who had been left outside, his hat pressed over his eyes, and in his hand one of his pistols that he had taken from his girdle. ...
— Debts of Honor • Maurus Jokai

... night, an Iris fair Trembled midway in air. The blending of its elfin hues Was as the pure enamel on The early morning dews; And gloriously they shone, Waving everyone his wing, Like a young aerial thing! That Iris came Over the shells of gold, beside The blue and waveless tide; Its girdle, of resplendent flame, Met shore and sea, afar, Like angel that shall stand On flood and land, ...
— The Death-Wake - or Lunacy; a Necromaunt in Three Chimeras • Thomas T Stoddart

... brae, in Scotland and England, as teugh and birnie as a very deil wi' me. It's true, she's as poor's a sang-maker and as hard's a kirk, and tipper-taipers when she taks the gate, first like a lady's gentlewoman in a minuwae, or a hen on a het girdle; but she's a yauld, poutherie Girran for a' that, and has a stomack like Willie Stalker's meere that wad hae disgeested tumbler-wheels, for she'll whip me aff her five stimparts o' the best aits at ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns

... falling out among themselves about the prey, let slip the great prize. Neither was their greediness prejudicial to Lucullus in this only, but also they slew Callistratus, the king's confidential attendant, under suspicion of having five hundred pieces of gold in his girdle; whereas Lucullus had specially ordered that he should be conveyed safe into the camp. Notwithstanding all which, he gave them leave ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough

... they made a friend of toil. They said: "We saved the Nation's life, and what is life without honor?" They-worked and wrought with all of labor's royal sons that every pledge the Nation gave might be redeemed. And their great leader, having put a shining band of friendship—a girdle of clasped and happy hands—around the globe, comes home and finds that every promise made in war has now the ring ...
— The Ghosts - And Other Lectures • Robert G. Ingersoll

... [taking a tuning-fork from her girdle and holding it to her ear; then speaking into space on one note, like a chorister intoning a psalm] Burrin Pier Galway please send someone to take charge of a discouraged shortliver who has escaped from his nurse male harmless babbles unintelligibly ...
— Back to Methuselah • George Bernard Shaw

... written about the year 890, wherein hen observes: "An agraffe (a clasp) of gold fastens the upper part of your dress; to keep off the cold you cover yourselves with the purple of Tyre, you will have no other cloak than a chlamyde embroidered with gold, your girdle must be ornamented with precious stones, and gold must sparkle even upon your shoes, and on the cane which you carry. O France! if you do not abandon such luxurious extravagance, you will lose your courage and your country." Hugh Capet, ...
— How to Enjoy Paris in 1842 • F. Herve

... made, or taught me, Lord, to care For times and seasons—but this one glad day Is the blue sapphire clasping all the lights That flash in the girdle of the year so fair— When thou wast born a man, because alway Thou wast and art a man, through all the flights Of thought, and time, and ...
— A Book of Strife in the Form of The Diary of an Old Soul • George MacDonald

... maintain, it is only just that the poorer classes (3) and the People of Athens should be better off than the men of birth and wealth, seeing that it is the people who man the fleet, (4) and put round the city her girdle of power. The steersman, (5) the boatswain, the lieutenant, (6) the look-out-man at the prow, the shipright—these are the people who engird the city with power far rather than her heavy infantry (7) and men of birth of quality. This being the case, it seems only just that offices of ...
— The Polity of the Athenians and the Lacedaemonians • Xenophon

... were provided, chiefly from those stored in the Town-Hall for the use of the militia. The two principal leaders next to the Duke were Lord Grey of Wark, who had landed with a musket on his shoulder, a pair of pistols in his girdle, and, far more important to the cause, a Scotch gentleman, a soldier of experience, Fletcher of Salton, who, taking command of the men, at once ordered some to take possession of the forts, others to guard the avenues, and the remainder to get the arms and ammunition from ...
— Roger Willoughby - A Story of the Times of Benbow • William H. G. Kingston

... diverse dainty arms, A purple girdle and a coat of mail? And yet to win the maid of peerless charms For whom thou dar'st ...
— Poems • Denis Florence MacCarthy

... horses, and drawing the bow with horse at full gallop; Libyans with black skins, armed with pikes; Iberians from Spain in white garments adorned with red, armed with a long pointed sword; Gauls, naked to the girdle, bearing enormous shields and a rounded sword which they held in both hands; natives of the Balearic Islands, trained from infancy to sling with stones or balls of lead. The generals were Carthaginians; the government ...
— History Of Ancient Civilization • Charles Seignobos

... took this animal up with a pair of pincers. As soon as he held it fast, those sharp prickles fell off, of themselves. I found that I easily entered into a place, which before had seemed inaccessible. And although the mire was up to my girdle, in my way to a deserted church, I went over it without getting any dirt. It will be easy to see in the ...
— The Autobiography of Madame Guyon • Jeanne Marie Bouvier de La Motte Guyon

... in the city, and people were removing their goods—the thoughtful Mr Pepys making a girdle to carry 300 pounds in gold about his body. The alarm is further increased when a neighbour comes up from Chatham, and tells him that that afternoon he "saw the Royal James, the Oake, and London burnt by ...
— How Britannia Came to Rule the Waves - Updated to 1900 • W.H.G. Kingston

... Iola, "a nation building up a great material prosperity, founding magnificent cities, grasping the commerce of the world, or excelling in literature, art, and science, but a nation wearing sobriety as a crown and righteousness as the girdle ...
— Iola Leroy - Shadows Uplifted • Frances E.W. Harper

... of Berkeley Nightly I watch the West. There lies new San Francisco, Sea-maid in purple dressed, Wearing a dancer's girdle All to inflame desire: Scorning her days of sackcloth, ...
— General William Booth enters into Heaven and other Poems • Vachel Lindsay

... my coat down from the stove. I'm going with the master,' he said, as he ran into the hut and took down his girdle from the nail on which ...
— Master and Man • Leo Tolstoy

... the white cotton night-cap and the blouse of the craft, was the work of a few seconds, and then, with a great knife in my girdle, and a capacious pocket slung at my side, I looked ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various

... memories that she could go abroad upon the winds, when she heard the sobbing of litanies or the thundering of organs, and when she beheld the mustering of summer clouds. This sister, the elder, it is that carries keys more than Papal at her girdle, which open every cottage and every palace. She, to my knowledge, sate all last summer by the bedside of the blind beggar, him that so often and so gladly I talked with, whose pious daughter, eight years old, with the sunny countenance, resisted the temptations ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various

... France? or may we cram Within this wooden O the very casques That did affright the air at Agincourt? O pardon! since a crooked figure may Attest in little place a million, And let us, ciphers to this great accompt, On your imaginary forces work. Suppose within the girdle of these walls Are now confined two mighty monarchies, Whose high upreared and abutting fronts The perilous narrow ocean parts asunder: Piece out our imperfections with your thoughts; Into a thousand parts divide one man, ...
— Lyra Heroica - A Book of Verse for Boys • Various

... of its length the lake is divided nearly in two, and the southern portion is sometimes called Lake Pskov. It may have been across the narrow part between the two ends of the lake that the hero is supposed to have waded, when, even during a great storm, the water reached only to his girdle. ...
— The Hero of Esthonia and Other Studies in the Romantic Literature of That Country • William Forsell Kirby

... level barley fields new cut with the media luna. Brilliant poppies and irises stained the meadows on all sides, and orchards whose cactus hedges, planted for defence, were now aflame with blood-red flowers, became a girdle of beauty as well as strength. The khalifa rode a swiftly-ambling mule, a beast of price, his yellow slippers were ostentatiously new, and his ample girth proclaimed the wealthy man in a land where all the poor are thin. "Peace," was his salutation to M'Barak, who led the ...
— Morocco • S.L. Bensusan

... Buzz cooked the girdle-cakes, and the soldier's son ate three of them and a handful of sweets; but the one-span mannikin gobbled up all the rest, saying at each mouthful, 'You men have ...
— Tales Of The Punjab • Flora Annie Steel

... works, flanked on the north by the fortified position of Tolmino, and on the south by the formidable Carso Plateau, while Gorizia constitutes the central Austrian point d'appui, having been converted into a modern fortress with a girdle of exterior forts supplemented by advanced batteries provided by armored cars on which the latest types of howitzers are mounted. All that military science could do to render this iron barrier impregnable had been done, ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume IV (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)

... Countries for the future! [Hildebrandt, Anekdoten, i. 1-7. Pandour proper is a FOOT-soldier (tall raw-boned ill-washed biped, in copious Turk breeches, rather barish in the top parts of him; carries a very long musket, and has several pistols and butcher's-knives stuck in his girdle): specifically a footman; but readers will permit me to use him withal, as here, in the generic sense.]—Which story, as to the body of it, is all myth; though, as is oftenest the case, there lies ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... supported by nine ponderous stone columns, to which rings and rusty chains were attached, still retaining the mouldering bones of those they had held captive in life. Amongst others was a gigantic skeleton, quite entire, with an iron girdle round the middle. Fragments of mortality were elsewhere scattered about, showing the numbers who had perished in the place. On either side were cells closed by massive doors, secured by bolts and locks. At one end were three immense coffers made of oak, hooped ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth

... but manifestly not surrounding it, was a girdle of jewels. A wondrous girdle, which shone and glowed with all the forms and phases ...
— The Jewel of Seven Stars • Bram Stoker

... hose, both of which had been fashioned by the fingers of his buxom mother, Herfrida. A pair of neatly formed shoes of untanned hide—his own workmanship—protected his feet, and his waist was encircled by a broad leathern girdle, from one side of which depended a short hunting-knife, and from the other a flap, with a slit in it, to support his sword. The latter weapon—a heavy double-edged blade—stood leaning against the forge chimney, along with a huge battle-axe, within reach ...
— Erling the Bold • R.M. Ballantyne

... seen travelling on the Cape, who was supposed to have been one of Bellamy's crew. The presumption is that he went to some place where money had been secreted by the pirates, to get such a supply as his exigencies required. When he died, many pieces of gold were found in a girdle which he constantly wore." Thoreau, Cape Cod, ed. 1914, p. 192. On one of Southack's maps, a narrow waterway across Cape Cod is marked with the legend, "The Place where I came through with a Whale Boat, being ...
— Privateering and Piracy in the Colonial Period - Illustrative Documents • Various

... to crack. I suppose he is welcome to take it—when he can; but he knows better than to try. It is the gate of the Mediterranean. Logically, it is an injustice that a stranger should sit in the porter's lodge and swing the key at his girdle; but it is as well that the porter is one who is too surly to barter his trust for gold. So Gabriel Tar will remain intact, until the porter grows feeble ...
— Romantic Spain - A Record of Personal Experiences (Vol. II) • John Augustus O'Shea

... the close of the ceremony. Having previously observed where the handsomest girl was seated among the spectators on the house terraces, he ran up the ladder as if to offer her a prayer emblem, but instead he drew out a sharp flint knife from his girdle and cut her throat. He threw the body down where all could see it, and ran along the adjoining terraces till he cleared the village. A little way up the mesa was a large flat rock, upon which he sprang and took off his dancer's mask ...
— A Study of Pueblo Architecture: Tusayan and Cibola • Victor Mindeleff and Cosmos Mindeleff

... with much satisfaction of some of her recent adventures, she suddenly conceived a little plot, which was more consistent with the character of Skipping Rabbit than herself, and rose at once to put it into execution. With a knife which she carried in her girdle she cut and broke down the underwood at the side of the track, and tramped about so as to make a great many footmarks. Then, between that point and the thicket where her steed was concealed, she walked to and fro several times, cutting and breaking the branches ...
— The Prairie Chief • R.M. Ballantyne

... of green or blue silk, with an abundance of silver buttons, which are intended more for show than use, as the vest is seldom buttoned. Then there are wide trousers, something after the Turkish fashion; around the waist is a crimson faja or girdle, and about the head is tied a gaudily coloured handkerchief from the loom of Barcelona; light pumps and silk stockings complete the robber's array. This dress is picturesque enough, and well adapted to the fine sunshiny weather of the Peninsula; there is a dash of effeminacy about it, however, ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow

... that he had almost the effect of an apparition; and certainly a less appropriate one (taking into view the dim woodland solitude about us) than if the salvage man of antiquity, hirsute and cinctured with a leafy girdle, had started out of a thicket. He was still young, seemingly a little under thirty, of a tall and well-developed figure, and as handsome a man as ever I beheld. The style of his beauty, however, though a masculine style, did not at all commend ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... to herself that a timid little freshman might infinitely prefer staying at home from the sophomore reception to going in Eleanor's company, if she happened to be in a bad mood. And furthermore, as Betty lost her temper over Helen's girdle, which would go up in front and down behind, completely spoiling the effect of an otherwise pretty evening dress, she was in a position to realize that trying to help is by no means the soul-inspiring thing that it sometimes seems ...
— Betty Wales, Sophomore • Margaret Warde

... the rising frenzy, with convulsive shiverings and tremblings tears of his skin garments so that he is quite naked save for a girdle of eagle-claws about his thighs. His long black hair flies about his face. With an abruptness that is startling, he ceases all movement and stands erect, rigid. This is greeted with a low moaning that ...
— The Acorn-Planter - A California Forest Play (1916) • Jack London

... first of a very wonderful young man, probably a chief's son. He carried a long bright spear, wore a short sword thrust through a girdle, had his hair done in three wrapped queues, one over each temple and one behind, and was generally brought to a high state of polish by means of red earth and oil. About his knee he wore a little bell that jingled pleasingly at every step. From one shoulder hung a goat-skin cloak embroidered ...
— The Land of Footprints • Stewart Edward White

... handkerchiefs; of their ear-rings, so heavy with jewels that they hang down to their shoulders; of the upper parts of their bodies exposed, but the lower portions enveloped in silks and rich cloths, secured by an embroidered girdle. He describes their language as a mixture of Arabic and Malabar, and states that numbers of their co-religionists from the Indian coast resorted constantly to Ceylon, and established themselves there as traders, attracted by the delights ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent

... think that that great tree was killed by a lot of little bugs, would you? They girdle the trees and ...
— The Young Forester • Zane Grey

... mountain, with the fairest of women; no more pursue the dark brown wolf: arise from the mossy bank of the falling waters: let thy garments be stained in blood, and the streams of life discolor thy girdle. . . Cealwulf of the high mountain, who viewed the first rays of the morning star, swift as the flying deer, strong as a young oak, fiery as an evening wolf, drew his sword; glittering like the blue vapors in the valley of Horso; terrible as the red ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers

... which thus forms a girdle to the coast, the country suddenly begins to improve. The soil changes to a thin layer of vegetable mould, resting on a stratum of yellow clay, which is again supported by a deep bed of schistus. The trees of the forest ...
— Statistical, Historical and Political Description of the Colony of New South Wales and its Dependent Settlements in Van Diemen's Land • William Charles Wentworth

... leitmotif in an opera. The costume was a creation of white satin, the folds caught here and there with strings of pearls. There was a single large rose of pink velvet among the draperies of the skirt; a looped girdle of blue velvet was the only other splash of color. But the full-leaved, expanded and matured rose became the vivid epitome and illustration of the woman herself. A rope of pearls that hung down to her waist added the touch of soft luster essential to preserve ...
— The Cruise of the Jasper B. • Don Marquis

... were treating the wounded, and upon the wounded themselves. Hard and bitter fighting occurred; whole villages had to be destroyed in order to break the resistance, before our brave troops penetrated the girdle of forts and took possession of the city. It is true that a part of the forts still held out, but they no longer fired. The Kaiser did not want to waste a drop of blood in storming the forts, which no ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War from the Beginning to March 1915, Vol 1, No. 2 - Who Began the War, and Why? • Various

... it; no one shall hear of it!" screamed the horrorstruck woman. The Indian calmly replaced the knife in his girdle, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various

... them again. They hurried downstairs, and then out by the back entrance into a narrow lane. Philip carried a heavy hammer on his shoulder. Pierre had a large butcher's knife stuck conspicuously in his girdle. He was bare headed and had dipped his head in water, so that his hair fell matted across his face, which ...
— Saint Bartholomew's Eve - A Tale of the Huguenot WarS • G. A. Henty

... almost dead. She is not beautiful. She has a dark face, burned as if she had travelled much under hot suns. Her long black hair is in disorder and flies all about her in the wind. Her dress is in disorder too, and it is fastened around the waist by a girdle of snake skin, with long ends that hang down to the ground. Everything about her looks wild and terrible. She is a woman whom you would not care to meet on a lonely road after dark and on a horse like this. Yet if you looked at her face more closely you would not find anything cruel in it, but ...
— The Wagner Story Book • Henry Frost

... and an army advancing from the north. Labienus having learnt that Caesar was in a tight place, owing to a check at Clermont and the defection of the Eduans, by a masterly piece of engineering recrossed the Seine by night at the Point du Jour, where the double viaduct of the girdle railway crosses to-day, and when the Gauls awoke in the morning they beheld the bannered host of the Roman legions in battle array on the plain of Grenelle beneath. They made a desperate attempt to drive them against the river, but they lost their ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey

... being unencumbered with any infirmity, and in every respect lighter and more active. His dress was rich and grave, as became his age and rank, and, like his royal brother, he wore no arms of any kind, a case of small knives supplying at his girdle the place usually occupied by a dagger in ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott

... industry and the marts of a commerce which extends over all the regions of civilization, from the rising to the setting sun; those innumerable towns of the great corn-growing districts; those pleasant hamlets and pastoral homes which fringe the forest, and girdle the mountains as with the arms of human affection and the passion of love; those mills on the far-off rivers, whose creaking machinery and revolving wheels are the prelude of a yet unborn, but rapidly approaching civility, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, October, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... at the coronation of her Majesty the Empress, and which consisted of a crown, a diadem, and a girdle, came from the establishment of M. Margueritte. The crown had eight branches, which supported a golden globe surmounted by a cross, each branch set with diamonds, four being in the shape of palm and four of myrtle leaves. Around the ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton

... reside here for years. The revolters were joined by one of these. He was a large, tall, full-blooded Negro, with a stern and savage countenance; the marks on his face showed that he was from one of the barbarous tribes in Africa, and claimed that country as his native land; his only covering was a girdle around his loins, made of skins of wild beasts which he had killed; his only token of authority among those that he led, was a pair of epaulettes made from the tail of a fox, and tied to his shoulder by a cord. Brought from the coast of Africa when only fifteen ...
— Clotel; or, The President's Daughter • William Wells Brown

... thus sauntering he met a hermit, whose white and venerable beard hung down to his girdle. He held a book in his hand, which he read with great attention. Zadig stopped, and made him a profound obeisance. The hermit returned the compliment with such a noble and engaging air, that Zadig had the curiosity to enter into conversation with ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne

... painfully and heavily under the stress of his emotion, he could not help thinking how noble and fierce a warrior the Baggara looked, with his simple white robe, and how dangerous an enemy with the curved dagger in his girdle, and long, keen, crusader-like sword hanging from a kind of baldric from his ...
— In the Mahdi's Grasp • George Manville Fenn

... that the lady had obtained her receipt from the bank of deposit, left the tassels of his girdle in the king's hand, making a start as if he had forgotten to say his prayers, and made ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac

... were now filled quickly, as if by a stroke of magic. Remarkable costumes were on exhibition. There were bodices three inches wide, with skirts of as many yards. Voluptuous bosoms hovered between chin and girdle. Scanty sleevelets did not know whether they were to cover arms or shoulders. The ladies wore kid gloves reaching to their armpits, and on their heads were turbans and flower-gardens. The uniforms of the gentlemen were even more conspicuous. Those shakos! The enemy would have run ...
— Walter Pieterse - A Story of Holland • Multatuli

... her husband, who come; and I did deliver them my chest of writings about Brampton, and my brother Tom's papers, and my journalls, which I value much: and did send my two silver flagons to Kate Joyce's: that so being scattered what I have, something might be saved. I have also made a girdle, by which with some trouble I do carry about me 300l. in gold about my body, that I may not be without something in case I should be surprised; for I think, in any nation but our's, people that appear (for we ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys

... shone forth, the rosy-fingered, anon Odysseus put on him a mantle and doublet, and the nymph clad her in a great shining robe, light of woof and gracious, and about her waist she cast a fair golden girdle, and a veil withal upon her head. Then she considered of the sending of Odysseus, the great-hearted. She gave him a great axe, fitted to his grasp, an axe of bronze double-edged, and with a goodly handle of olive wood fastened well. Next she gave him a polished ...
— DONE INTO ENGLISH PROSE • S. H. BUTCHER, M.A.

... looks from his windows, as from those of an anchored vessel, he sees a boundless level plain, which inspires him with just such sentiments of freedom and solemnity as are awakened by the sea. The trees that surround his house like a green girdle allow only a delicate broken light to enter it; boats freighted with merchandise glide noiselessly past his door; he does not hear the trampling of horses or the cracking of whips, or songs or street-cries; all the activities of the life that surrounds ...
— Holland, v. 1 (of 2) • Edmondo de Amicis

... were sent forth in a galiot to take a Greek carmosel, which came into Arabia to steal negroes, and went out of Tripolis unto that place which was two hundred and forty leagues thence; but we were chained three and three to an oar, and we rowed naked above the girdle, and the boatswain of the galley walked abaft the mast, and his mate afore the mast, and each of them a whip in their hands, and when their devilish choler rose they would strike the Christians for no cause, and they allowed us but half a pound of bread a man in a ...
— Voyager's Tales • Richard Hakluyt

... and Paul kissed it with that passion which inspires a pilgrim at the shrine, and the odd something superadded which has made fools of men since Eve plucked her first girdle of fig-leaves. He wept above the hand, and he fondled the hand, and he kissed it with protesting murmurs of undying affection and esteem, and whilst this storm was in danger of playing itself out, and the unsuing suitor was likely to make an end of the business and go, the disengaged hand ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray

... the wonderful nights rarely experienced save under the equator, or very close to the middle girdle of the globe. The luxuriant growths of the jungle seemed to be breathing in long, steady pulsations, so uniform was the lifting and falling ...
— Boy Scouts in the Canal Zone - The Plot Against Uncle Sam • G. Harvey Ralphson

... Sunne, and so sit downe. [Sidenote: The apparell of their priests.] The Tallipoies go very strangly apparelled with one cambaline or thinne cloth next to their body of a browne colour, another of yellow doubled many times vpon their shoulder: and those two be girded to them with a broad girdle: and they haue a skinne of leather hanging on a string about their necks, whereupon they sit, bare headed and bare footed: for none of them weareth shoes; with their right armes bare and a great broad sombrero or shadow in their hands to defend them ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, - and Discoveries of The English Nation, Volume 10 - Asia, Part III • Richard Hakluyt

... forbidden and forbidding threshold we rode on through a poor quarter which leads to the great gate of Bab F'touh. Beyond the gate rises a dusty rocky slope extending to the outer walls—one of those grim intramural deserts that girdle Fez with desolation. This one is strewn with gravestones, not enclosed, but, as in most Moroccan cemeteries, simply cropping up like nettles between the rocks and out of the flaming dust. Here and there ...
— In Morocco • Edith Wharton

... news was brought to Dom Manuel that his redemption of Poictesme was completed, then Dom Manuel unarmed, and made himself presentable in a tunic of white damask and a girdle adorned with garnets and sapphires. He slipped over his left shoulder a baldric set with diamonds and emeralds, to sustain the unbloodied sword with which he had conquered here as upon Vraidex. Over all he put on a ...
— Figures of Earth • James Branch Cabell

... hills, and then threw it upon the ground. It dilated immediately, took the shape of a galley with masts and yards, although no larger than the moon's disk as we see it from the earth. In the same instant the elf sat in the little vessel, which trembled at every step, drew a rush from his girdle, and steered ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various

... to gaze at the gigantic fossils of a fabulous race, long since extinct, that in its life had made the whole earth ring with the tramp of its armies,—the race whose helmet was the dome of the Invalides, whose girdle was the Louvre, the thousand arms of whose cathedrals had clutched at the heavens, who traversed the whole world with the triumphant stride of the Arch of Napoleon, under whose ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland

... an injury in the region of the shoulder the patient should be seated on a low stool or chair. After inspecting the parts from the front, the surgeon stands behind the patient and systematically examines by palpation the shoulder girdle and upper end of the humerus. The uninjured side should be examined along with the other for ...
— Manual of Surgery Volume Second: Extremities—Head—Neck. Sixth Edition. • Alexander Miles

... nations around them, to the living and true God. The heart of God was set upon them. His love was freely poured out upon them, and He had bound them to Himself, closely as a man bound around him his valued girdle. They were the descendants of faithful Abraham, of Isaac, and Jacob. They had become great, and mighty, and powerful, spreading themselves out like the cedars of Lebanon, and flourishing like the stately palms. All the surrounding nations looked upon them as the favoured ...
— Little Folks (July 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various

... evening followed discussion and instruction. It was forbidden to accept gold and silver but the order might possess parks and monasteries and receive offerings of food and clothes. The personal possessions allowed to a monk were only the three robes, a girdle, an alms bowl, a razor, a needle and a water strainer[541]. Everything else which might be given to an individual had to be handed over to the confraternity and held in common and the Vinaya shows clearly how a band of ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot

... around the town like an azure girdle, gliding along the surface and reflecting in its deep blue waters the rustling tule which fringed the margin. An occasional pecan or live-oak flung a majestic shadow athwart its azure bosom. Now ...
— Literary Hearthstones of Dixie • La Salle Corbell Pickett

... the axe caught the low beams of the ceiling, and it flew from his hand. His opponent sprang upon him. Paolo caught the man's right wrist as he struck at him with his knife, and drew his own from his girdle. His assailant threw his other arm round him, and, grappling, they fell on to the ground. Hector could do nothing to assist him, for the other two men were trying to circle round him, keeping beyond the swing of his axe but watching for an opportunity to spring upon him. Keeping his back ...
— Won by the Sword - A Story of the Thirty Years' War • G.A. Henty

... has a girdle with seven knots, and when travelling hard takes in, as the sailors would say, a reef every day; if after seven days he find nothing to eat, he is considered hungry and unfortunate. The three Tuaricks who followed us from the well ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 2 • James Richardson

... spread over Cairo that Mahmoud and Abdullah were to run a race, the winner to receive a costly girdle of rich embroidery, finished with a clasp set with gems. Great was the interest, and on the day appointed crowds assembled to see the race, gathering long before ...
— Harper's Young People, April 27, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... the broad daylight of the nineteenth century, the figure of the goddess Kali is carried through the streets of her own city, Calcutta, her wild disheveled hair reaching to her feet, with a necklace of human heads, her tongue protruded from her mouth, her girdle stained with blood. All this is true; but ask any Hindu who can read and write and think, whether these are the gods he believes in, and he will smile at your credulity. How long this living death of national religion in India may last, no one can tell: for our purposes, however, for gaining ...
— Chips from a German Workshop - Volume IV - Essays chiefly on the Science of Language • Max Muller

... returned to the divan, and while pipes and coffee were handed round, a noise in the court yard denoted a visiter, and a middle-aged man, with embroidered clothes, and silver-mounted pistols in his girdle, entered. This was the Natchalnik, or local governor, who had come from his own village, two hours off, to pay his visit; he was accompanied by the two captains under his command, one of whom was a military dandy. His ample girdle was richly embroidered, out of which projected silver-mounted ...
— Servia, Youngest Member of the European Family • Andrew Archibald Paton

... male line, dating from 1616, are popularly known as Yellow Girdles, from a sash of that colour which they habitually wear. Each generation becomes a degree lower in rank, until they are mere members of the family with no rank whatever, although they still wear the girdle and receive a trifling allowance from the government. Thus, beggars and even thieves are occasionally seen with this badge of relationship to the throne. Members of the collateral branches of the Imperial family wear a red girdle, ...
— China and the Manchus • Herbert A. Giles

... from the circumstance that there still appeared something of his shadow in the former place. He then came to those who were naked. They were seen walking together by twos, husband and wife, girt with a girdle about the loins, and some sort of covering around the head. That spirit, when he was with them, was led into the state in which he had been in the world when he was disposed to preach, and then he said he would preach before them the Lord crucified; but they said they would not hear such a thing, ...
— Earths In Our Solar System Which Are Called Planets, and Earths In The Starry Heaven Their Inhabitants, And The Spirits And Angels There • Emanuel Swedenborg

... sett his foot into the stirrup, And awaye then he did ride; She tuckt her girdle about her middle, And ...
— Book of Old Ballads • Selected by Beverly Nichols

... also blisters on the surface of the body, in different places, in the vicinity of which, tumid glands and inflammatory boils, surrounded by discoloured and black streaks, arose, and thus indicated the reception of the poison. These streaked spots were called, by an apt comparison, the girdle, and this appearance was justly considered ...
— The Black Death, and The Dancing Mania • Justus Friedrich Karl Hecker

... heavy blows (see J.H. Krause, Gymnastik und Agonistik der Hellenen, 1841). The caestus is to be distinguished from cestus (embroidered, from [Greek: kentein]), an adjective used as a noun in the sense of "girdle," especially the girdle of Aphrodite, which was supposed to have the ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various

... adorned with a wreath or band of water lilies, embroidered in seed pearls. A white lace overdress of filmiest texture fell over the velvet, almost touching the wreath of lilies, and looked as though it was made of sea foam. A girdle of large pink pearls confined the robe at the waist. Natural flowers were on her ...
— Mizora: A Prophecy - A MSS. Found Among the Private Papers of the Princess Vera Zarovitch • Mary E. Bradley

... indiscriminately use the terms knives and swords; indeed, the arms granted to the London Cutlers' Company in the sixteenth year of the reign of Edward IV are two swords, crossed; later a crest, consisting of an elephant bearing a castle, was added. Homer tells us of knives carried at the girdle in his day, and describes them as of triangular form. The Anglo-Saxons and the Normans carried about with them met-soex or eating knives, but it was not until the end of the fifteenth century that knives were used at ...
— Chats on Household Curios • Fred W. Burgess

... for their sins. The ruler of this girdle of storms was Pooh, the overseer of souls in penance. Such a notion is found in some of the later Greek philosophers, and in the writings of the Alexandrian Jews, who undoubtedly drew it from the priestly science of Egypt. Every ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger

... expeditions. Just at sunset a shout arose from the tribesmen on the north side of the village, and Boadicea, with her daughters and chief councillors, drove into the village. Her mien was proud and lofty. She carried a spear in her hand and a sword in her girdle. She had resumed her royal ornaments, and a fillet of gold surrounded her head. Her garments were belted in with a broad girdle of the same metal, and she wore heavy gold armlets and bracelets. She looked with pride ...
— Beric the Briton - A Story of the Roman Invasion • G. A. Henty

... are as useful as of old. But how much wider is the field of electricity as it creates the telegraph and the telephone! In the telegraph we have all that a pencil of light could be were it as long as an equatorial girdle and as flexible as a silken thread. In the telephone for nearly two thousand miles the pulsations of the speaker's voice are not only audible, but ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - Invention and Discovery • Various

... barefoot. He was, of course, unprovided with weapon of any kind—it was moral force that he relied on. Over his shoulder was slung a bag from which projected his opium-pipe; a tobacco pipe and tobacco box hung at his girdle; a green glass bottle of crude opium he ...
— An Australian in China - Being the Narrative of a Quiet Journey Across China to Burma • George Ernest Morrison

... was curled, asleep, a comfortable white cat. Three little kittens played with the knotted ends of his girdle, swarming up and down the gray gown of the reader. On his shoulder perched a squirrel, busily eating a nut which he held in his little paws. Close by, a brown and white deer grazed about the door of the little hut. A great black raven hopped gravely about the old man's ...
— John of the Woods • Abbie Farwell Brown

... with light regard, I read aright that gifted bard, —Him whose school above the rest His loveliest elfin queen has blest;— One, only one, unrival'd[20] fair, 5 Might hope the magic girdle wear, At solemn turney hung on high, The ...
— The Poetical Works of William Collins - With a Memoir • William Collins

... relics of the olden time in the Museum of the Yorkshire Philosophical Society, York, is another specimen, equally simple in its construction. It was presented by Lady Thornton to the Society in 1880, and near it may be seen thumb-screws from York Castle; leg bar, waist girdle, and wrist shackles, worn by the notorious highwayman, Dick Turpin, executed April 17th, 1739; and a leg bar, worn by another notorious highwayman, named Nevison, who suffered death on the gallows, ...
— Bygone Punishments • William Andrews

... rider and horse—did you see them? They are in California, leaping over its golden sands, treading its busy streets. The courser has unrolled to us the great American panorama, allowed us to glance at the homes of one million people, and has put a girdle around the earth in forty minutes. Verily the riding is like the riding of Jehu, the son of Nimshi for he rideth furiously. Take out your watch. We are eight days from New York, eighteen from London. The race is ...
— The Story of the Pony Express • Glenn D. Bradley

... glittering prize Attracts the younger Hero's wandering eyes; The gilded harness Rhamnes' coursers felt, The gems which stud the monarch's golden belt: 290 This from the pallid corse was quickly torn, Once by a line of former chieftains worn. Th' exulting boy the studded girdle wears, Messapus' helm his head, in triumph, bears; Then from the tents their cautious steps they bend, To seek the ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron

... motto which was emblazoned on their standard when they went forth as Christian warriors to overcome the heresies of Christendom and the superstitions of idolaters. "The Jesuit missionary," says Stephen, "with his breviary under his arm, his beads at his girdle, and his crucifix in his hands, went forth without fear, to encounter the most dreaded dangers. Martyrdom was nothing to him; he knew that the altar which might stream with his blood, and the mound which might be raised over his remains, would become a cherished object of his fame ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VI • John Lord

... greediness; he had given his men orders to bring to him Kallistratus, who had the charge of all the king's secrets; but those who were taking him to Lucullus, finding that he had five hundred gold pieces in his girdle, put him to death. However, Lucullus allowed his men to plunder ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume II • Aubrey Stewart & George Long

... robbers, from some unknown cause, liberated him, and he soon reached home in safety, having sustained no injury, save the loss of the small purse of gold that he had carried in his girdle. ...
— Sanders' Union Fourth Reader • Charles W. Sanders

... that he had preserved uninjured the flower of his early life, and that under the calm influences of his home in the country, and the studies of philosophy, he had learnt to value chastity as the sacred girdle of youth, to be retained and honoured to his latest years. "Surely," says Mr. Carlyle, "a day is coming when it will be known again what virtue is in purity and continence of life; how divine is the ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar

... a huge man, dressed in the universal costume, saving only a scarlet sash in place of the cord-girdle which the others wore round their waists. The vehicle stopped near the air-ship, over which the Astronef was hanging, and, as the figure dismounted, a door opened in the side of the vessel and three other figures, similar both ...
— A Honeymoon in Space • George Griffith

... I, like her, in happy play caressing Thee, my dolorous heart awhile deliver! 10 . . . . . . . . I would joy, as of old the maid rejoiced Racing fleetly, the golden apple eyeing, Late-won loosener of the wary girdle. ...
— The Poems and Fragments of Catullus • Catullus

... Field-mice often girdle young trees, especially during the winter, working beneath the snow. Unless heaps of rubbish are left here and there as shelter for these little pests, one or two good cats will keep the acre free of them. ...
— The Home Acre • E. P. Roe

... to find Zilla in the room. She wore a black streaky gown which she had tried to brighten with a girdle of crimson ribbon. The ribbon had been torn and patiently mended. He noted this carefully, because he did not wish to look at her shoulders. One shoulder was lower than the other; one arm she carried in contorted fashion, as though it were paralyzed; and behind a high collar of ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis

... where the ordinary cartoon of commerce or the tiny cachinnation of a machine-made Chesterton paradox will not ring entirely hollow. As for his voice, it can at times be more musical than Melba's or Caruso's. Without being raised above a whisper, it can girdle the globe. It can barely breathe some delicious new melody; yet the thing will float forth not only undiminished, but gathering beauty, significance, and incisiveness in every land ...
— The Joyful Heart • Robert Haven Schauffler

... as I can hitch up, cousin;" and Saul pitched in his last log, looking ready to put a girdle round the earth ...
— Kitty's Class Day And Other Stories • Louisa M. Alcott

... and made to resemble a frame, entirely surrounding the bouquet; his effort remains the same. To be effective in a frame, balance and unity are just as necessary. The eye finds repose and delight in the perfect equipoise of elements, brought into combination and bound together by the girdle of ...
— Pictorial Composition and the Critical Judgment of Pictures • Henry Rankin Poore

... Tom Thurnall to himself, as Frank left the room, "to begin life again with an old penknife and a pound of honeydew. I wonder which of them got my girdle. I'll stick here till I find out that one thing, and stop the notes by to-day's post if I can but recollect them all;—if I could but ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley

... food-supplying hinterland, no navigable river—a dangerous river, indeed, a perpetual menace to the place—every drawback, or nearly so, which a town may conceivably possess, and all of them huddled into a fatally unhealthy environment, compressed in a girdle of fire and poison. Human ingenuity has obviated them so effectually, so triumphantly that, were green pastures not needful to me as light and air, I, for one, would nevermore stray beyond ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas

... exclamation of the Queen, as she hurriedly snatched the scroll from the table, and forming it into a roll, thrust it into her girdle; "are you here, Cardinale?" ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe

... island of Tahita or Otaheite,—as fair a gem as the sun ever looked down upon. The soft and balmy air,—the undulating surface, rising to mountains and sinking into deep valleys, luxuriant with tropical verdure,—the distant girdle of coral reefs, which holds the island set in a circlet of tranquil blue waters,—the gentle and indolent temper of the natives,—have all conspired to throw an air of romance around the very name Otaheite. The Christian ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 73, November, 1863 • Various

... June, 261, Vitale in his retirement was cheered by a visit from Neofito and Aquila, who brought to him, as tokens of the martyrdom of his three sons, the mantle of Alfio, the girdle of Filiberto and the veil of ...
— Castellinaria - and Other Sicilian Diversions • Henry Festing Jones

... the gates of Thy mercy!" "O, Allah! Bless the last of Prophets with blessings in number as the stars of heaven!" "Live for ever, O most excellent of Prophets!" Such were the exclamations that burst from our party as the Holy City, the burial place of Mohammed, lay before us in its fertile girdle of gardens ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume 19 - Travel and Adventure • Various

... shop; but before opening it he sat down on one of the low stools, and was at once served by one of the waiters with an "argille," or hubble-bubble, and a cup of coffee. He wore a suit of dark green cloth, a crimson satin vest, silk girdle of many colors, and a red tarboosh. Another gentleman came up, dressed in a similar costume, only of a bluish-gray. Before seating himself he saluted the other by a graceful wave of the hand, saying, "Issalaam alek," or ...
— Harper's Young People, July 6, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... hillock near their yurts, the round brush-and-hide shelters—not too different from the wickiups of Travis' own people—was a crude drum, a hide stretched taut over a hollowed section of log. And next to that stood a man wearing a tall pointed cap, a red robe, and a girdle from which swung a fringe of small bones, tiny animal skulls, and polished bits of stone and ...
— The Defiant Agents • Andre Alice Norton

... relieved with a stomacher of fine Brussels lace. Down the edges are rows of small, unpolished pearls, running into points. A skirt of orange-colored brocade, trimmed with tulle, and surrounded with three flounces, falls, cloud-like, from her girdle, which is set with cameos and unpolished pearls. With her left hand she raises slightly her skirts, revealing the embroidered gimps of a white taffeta underskirt, flashing in the moonlight. Small, unpolished pearls ornament ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams

... Little Fellow's forefinger pointed towards a big creature, who was ordering the others about. 'Twas a woman of giant, bronzed form, with the bold stride of a conquering warrior and a trophy-decked belt about her waist. The fire shone against her girdle and the stones in the leather strap glowed back blood-red. Father Holland breathed only one word in my ear, "Agates;" and the fire of the red stones flashed like some mystic flame through my being till brain and heart were hot with vengeance and my hands burned as if every nerve ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut

... procreation and an enemie to health: but rather like a wastcoate, with little plightes and gathers vnder her rounde and pretty bearing out breasts, vpon her slender and small waste, ouer her large proportioned flanckes and little round belly, fast girded about with a girdle of golde: and ouer the same, a gowne or garment side to the ground, ...
— Hypnerotomachia - The Strife of Loue in a Dreame • Francesco Colonna

... a mean and plain subject, will appear most poor and humble in a high argument. Would you not laugh to meet a great councillor of State in a flat cap, with his trunk hose, and a hobbyhorse cloak, his gloves under his girdle, and yond haberdasher in a velvet gown, furred with sables? There is a certain latitude in these things, by which we ...
— Discoveries and Some Poems • Ben Jonson

... will give assurance that instead of a reward blame will not fall on the hapless Chilo? He, the poor sage, has attached himself to the noble Vinicius as Aristotle to Alexander of Macedon. If the noble lord should give him at least that purse which he had thrust into his girdle before leaving home, there would be something with which to invoke aid in case of need, or to influence the Christians. Oh, why not listen to the counsels of an old man, counsels ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz

... that could be, so that nowhere was there a better one to be found, nor so good; and precious stones, sapphires and rubies and emeralds; he had with him a casket of pure gold full of these things; and in his girdle he had hidden a string of precious stones and of pearls, such that no King had so rich and precious a thing as that carkanet. They say that in former times it had belonged to Queen Seleyda, who was wife to Abanarrexit King of Belcab, which is beyond sea; and afterwards it had come to the ...
— Chronicle Of The Cid • Various

... dreamed a dream. I fought dar come to my cabin, an' stood aside ob my bed, a great white angel, wid feet dat touch de 'arth, but wid head dat reach unto de heabens. He wore raiment shinin' like silver, an' on his head wus a girdle ob stars. His face wus dazzlin' as de sun, an' his eyes war like flamin' fire. He look at me, an' he say: 'Joseph, come up hither!' He reach out his hand an' he lift me up—above de 'arth—above de clouds—above de stars—'way up to de high heabens, whar am ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3 No 2, February 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... father, and my young brother, the Big Pine,"—for so the Delaware had named March—"want to see Huron scalps at their belts," said Chingachgook to his friend. "There is room for some on the girdle of the Sarpent, and his people will look for them when he goes back to his village. Their eyes must not be left long in a fog, but they must see what they look for. I know that my brother has a white hand; he will not strike even the dead. He will wait for ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper

... rectitude in the reason. Now these vices are opposed to right reason, i.e. to prudence. Therefore they arise chiefly from lust; especially since the Philosopher says (Ethic. vii, 6) that "Venus is full of guile and her girdle is many colored" and that "he who is incontinent in ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas

... scene is repeated at each of the seven gates; the keeper at each strips Ishtar of some article of her attire—her earrings, her necklace, her jewelled girdle, the bracelets on her arms and the bangles at her ankles, and lastly her long flowing garment. On each occasion the same words are repeated by both. When Ishtar entered the presence of Allat, the queen looked at her and taunted her to her ...
— Chaldea - From the Earliest Times to the Rise of Assyria • Znade A. Ragozin

... pillar-stone, the grave of a warrior slain there in some ancient war. With difficulty he reached it and he leaned awhile against the pillar, for his mind wandered, and he knew nothing for a space. After that he took off his brooch, and removing the torn bratta [girdle], he passed it round the top of the pillar, where there was an indentation in the stone, and passed the ends under his arms and around his breast, tying with languid hands a loose knot, which soon was made fast by the weight of the dying hero; thus they beheld him ...
— Edward MacDowell • Lawrence Gilman

... show side; she listened as to an account of private theatricals, and in spite of Mrs Norton's visible grief, she was amused when John described himself walking at the head of his monks with tonsured head and a great rosary hanging from a leather girdle. Her innocent gaiety attracted her to him. As they walked about the grounds after breakfast, he spoke to her about pictures and statues, of a trip he intended to take to Italy and Spain, and he did not seem to care to be reminded that this jarred with ...
— A Mere Accident • George Moore

... Having tied a girdle over his coat and pulled his cap low on his head, Pierre went down the corridor, trying to avoid making a noise or meeting the captain, and passed ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy

... throbbed and radiated from his person, and not from the stormy heavens above them. The lightning had rent the wall of his prison, and released the iron staple of his chain, which he had wound about him like a girdle. In his hand he carried an iron fetter-bar, which he had found on the floor of the vault. More terrified at his aspect than at all the violence of the storm, the visitors, with many a shriek and cry, rushed out into the tempestuous ...
— The Portent & Other Stories • George MacDonald

... quiver of arrows, tipped with flint or jasper. He carried a sack or wallet, provided with a small quantity of parched and pounded corn, mixed with pemmican or maple sugar. He was furnished with a Puggamaugun, or war-club of hard wood, fastened to a girdle of deer skin, and a stone or copper knife. In addition to this, some carried the ancient shemagun, or lance, a smooth pole about a fathom in length, with a javelin of flint, firmly tied on with deer's sinews. Thus equipped, and each warrior painted in a manner to suit his fancy, ...
— The Myth of Hiawatha, and Other Oral Legends, Mythologic and Allegoric, of the North American Indians • Henry R. Schoolcraft

... sire, at last, how he might bear His son's long absence, so awaken'd care, Needs must he back to Leon: vainly here Sues fond Nogiva's interdicting tear. "Sad leave reluctantly I yield!" she cries, "Yet take this girdle, knit with mystick ties, Wed never dame till first this secret spell Her dextrous hands have loosen'd:—so farewell!" "Never, I swear, my sweet! so weal betide!" With heavy heart Sir Gugemer replied; Then hied him to ...
— The Lay of Marie • Matilda Betham

... Clergy not Enarean (Vol. ix., p.101.).—A. C. M. has no other authority for calling the cassock and girdle of the clergy "effeminate," or "a relique of the ancient priestly predilection for female attire," than the contrast to the close-fitting skin-tight fashion adopted by modern European tailors; the same might be said of any ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 232, April 8, 1854 • Various

... on board the several steamers that they employed—to every person with whom he had so much as a nodding acquaintance, he gave an orange every morning. And they lasted him right round the girdle of this mighty globe of ours. When they were at North Cape, even, he saw on the horizon, poor dear thin man that he was, a lighthouse. "Hello," says he to himself, "these fellows must be very lonely. ...
— The Good Soldier • Ford Madox Ford

... velvet camora, with the pattern of the links worked in massive gold and green and white enamel, about six inches deep on the front and back of my bodice, and on both sleeves. The camora was lined with cloth of gold, and with it I wore a girdle of St. Francis made of large pearls, with a beautiful clear-cut ruby for clasp. On the other side of the chariot were Madonna Fiordelisa"—an illegitimate daughter of Duke Francesco Sforza, who occupied rooms in the Castello,—"Madonna ...
— Beatrice d'Este, Duchess of Milan, 1475-1497 • Julia Mary Cartwright

... flesh-tint, following, perhaps, an Egyptian precedent, is of a deep reddish-brown. The limbs are finely moulded, though the waist, as usual in Mycenaean fashions, is tightly drawn in by a silver-mounted girdle, giving great relief to the hips. The profile of the face is pure and almost classically Greek.... The lips are somewhat full, but the physiognomy has certainly no Semitic cast.... There was something very impressive in this vision of brilliant youth and of male beauty, recalled ...
— The Sea-Kings of Crete • James Baikie

... principally of various pairs of scissors, and the ACIAL, two short sticks tied together with whipcord at the end, by means of which the lower lip of the horse, should he prove restive, is twisted, and the animal reduced to speedy subjection. In the girdle of the esquilador are stuck the large scissors called in Spanish TIJERAS, and in the Gypsy tongue CACHAS, with which he principally works. He operates upon the backs, ears, and tails of mules and borricos, which are invariably sheared quite bare, that if the animals are galled, ...
— The Zincali - An Account of the Gypsies of Spain • George Borrow

... heads, and embellished with the seven lucky circles which bring the blessings of prosperity to womenkind. Thou knowest what these circles are, oh Padishah! They are the ishtifan or diadem, the necklace, the ear-ring, the finger-ring, the girdle, the bracelet, and the mantle-ring-clasp—the seven gifts of felicity, oh Padishah, that the bridegroom giveth to the bride. Beside these pavilions, moreover, were a countless multitude of other tents—of three different hues of blue and three different hues of green—and in these tents ...
— Halil the Pedlar - A Tale of Old Stambul • Mr Jkai

... before her. She saw herself as Artemis—a la Madame de Longueville—in a hunting-dress of white silk, descending to the ankles, embroidered from top to toe in crescents of seed pearls and silver, and held at the waist by a silver girdle. Her throat was covered with magnificent pearls, a Tranmore family possession, lent by Lady Tranmore for the occasion. The slim ankles and feet were cased in white silk, cross-gartered with silver and shod with silver sandals. Her belt held ...
— The Marriage of William Ashe • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... brother looked at her, and saw that she was a woman far advanced in years: though he knew her not, he granted what she required, and then sat down again, being still full of his new adventure. He put his gold into a long strait purse, proper to carry at his girdle. The old woman, in the mean time, said her prayers, and, when she had done, came to my brother, and bowed twice to the ground, so low that she almost touched it with her forehead; then raising herself up, she wished my brother all manner of happiness, and thanked him for his ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Volume 1 • Anonymous

... Ocean cannot sever. And if we come nearer home, we shall find a project matured which will carry a fiery cordon around the entire coast of our country, linking fortress to fortress, and providing that last, desperate resource of unity, an outer girdle and jointed chain of force, to bind together and save a nation whose inner bonds of peace and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various

... Grisell at the table, and implored her to eat. The wheaten bread and the fowl were, it seemed, provided in her honour, and she could not but take her little knife from the sheath in her girdle, turn back her nun-like veil, and prepare to try to drive back her sobs, and swallow the milk of ...
— Grisly Grisell • Charlotte M. Yonge

... Would you believe it? even after the diamonds were declared, the people out there had so little foresight that they allowed me to buy land all round Port Elizabeth, Natal, and Cape Town, the three ports through which the world get at the diamonds, and the diamonds get at the world. I have got a girdle of land round those three outlets, bought by the acre; in two years I shall sell it by the yard. Believe me, sir, English fortunes, even the largest, are mere child's play, compared with the colossal wealth a man can accumulate, if he looks ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade

... concerned, Mendel had only one hope left in the world—to die in Jerusalem. His feeling for Jerusalem was unique. All the hunted Jew in him combined with all the battered man to transfigure Zion with the splendor of sacred dreams and girdle it with the rainbows that are builded of bitter tears. And with it all a dread that if he were buried elsewhere, when the last trump sounded he would have to roll under the earth and under the sea to Jerusalem, ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill

... Parents are uneasy until their children are vaccinated, and yet leave them to incur a risk as great and almost as easily averted. The barbarian mother, who, lowering her baby into the water by her girdle, teaches it to swim ere it can walk, is before us in this duty. Swimming, moreover, is not one of those arts in which a little learning is a dangerous thing; on the contrary, a little may be as useful in an emergency as a great deal, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various



Words linked to "Girdle" :   pelvic arch, surround, foundation, plant, plant life, border, foundation garment, flora, hip, incise, skirt, gird, environ, pelvis, skeletal structure, band, cummerbund, ring, pelvic girdle



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