more searches
13 wordies list

anfractuosity

Leave a comment, citation, or private note
about 1 month ago knitandpurl said:

"Within the boundaries of their domain, however, the radiant daughters of the sea were constantly turning round to smile up at the bearded tritons who clung to the anfractuosities of the cliff, or towards some aquatic demi-god whose skull was a polished stone on to which the tide had washed a smooth covering of seaweed, and his gaze a disc of rock crystal."
--The Guermantes Way by Marcel Proust, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, Revised by D.J. Enright, pp 44-45 of the Modern Library paperback edition

5 months ago chained_bear said:

Plural anfractuosities. "...and he had suffered much from the inherent malignity of things—no rope, pulled over hte most innocent surface, that did not succeed in twisting upon itself or catching in some minute anfractuosity or protrusion; no saw that did not deviate from its line; no mallet that did not strike his already bruised and purple-swollen hand..."
--Patrick O'Brian, The Nutmeg of Consolation, 12

7 months ago knitandpurl said:

"Whereas upon that pestilential but longed-for staircase to the old dressmaker's, since there was no other, no service stair in the building, one saw in the evening outside every door-mat in readiness for the morning round, on the splendid but despised staircase which Swann was now climbing, on either side of him, at different levels, before each anfractuosity made in its walls by the window of the porter's lodge or the entrance to a set of rooms, representing the departments of indoor service which they controlled and doing homage for them to the guests, a concierge, a major-domo, a steward (worthy men who spent the rest of the week in semi-independence in their own domains, dined there by themselves like small shop-keepers, and might to-morrow lapse to the bourgeois service of some successful doctor or industrial magnate), scrupulous in observing to the letter all the instructions they had been given before being allowed to don the brilliant livery which they wore only at rare intervals and in which they did not feel altogether at their ease, stood each in the arcade of his doorway with a pompous splendour tempered by democratic good-fellowship, like saints in their niches, while a gigantic usher, dressed in Swiss Guard fashion like the beadle in a church, struck the floor with his staff as each fresh arrival passed him."
-- Swann's Way by Marcel Proust, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, p 354 of the Vintage International paperback edition

about 1 year ago knitandpurl said: From Roderick Hudson by Henry James:

(though I came across it in a footnote to James's Italian Hours)
"There are chance anfractuosities of ruin in the upper portions of the Coliseum which offer a very fair imitation of the rugged face of an Alpine cliff."

Register or login to leave a comment.
first listed by:
adoarns (858 words)
appears in these lists: