The Describer's Dictionary: A Treasury of Terms & Literary Quotations by David Grambs Read Free Book Online Page A

blobularly, it collects itself and moves. It shoves apart layers of rock. It mounds upon itself, and, breaking its way upward, rises in mushroom shape—salt dome. Still rising into more shales and sandstones, it bends them into graceful arches and then bursts through them like a bullet shooting upward through a splintering floor. The shape becomes a reverse teardrop.
    JOHN MC PHEE , Basi n and Range
     
     
    In the pool of light shed onto her lap, an exquisitely manicured hand guides a slender gold-plated propelling pencil across the lines of print, occasionally pausing to underline a sentence or make a marginal note. The long, spear-shaped finger-nails on the hand are lacquered with terracotta varnish. The hand itself, long and white and slender, looks almost weighed down with three antique rings in which are set ruby, sapphire, and emerald stones.
    DAVID LODGE, Small World
     
    stem-like
cauliform
    stirrup-shaped
stapediform
    stone-like (small stone)
lapilliform
    strap-shaped
ligulate, lorate
    string-of beads-like
moniliform, monilioid
    sword-shaped
gladiate, ensate, ensiform, xiphoid, xiphiiform
     
    tail-like
caudiform
    teardrop-shaped
guttiform, lachrymiform, stilliform
    tendril-like
pampiniform
    tent-shaped
tentiform
    thorn- or spine-shaped
aculeiform, spiniform
    thread-like
filiform, fililose, filariform
    tongue-shaped
linguiform
    toothed or comb-shaped
pectinate
    tooth-like
odontoid, dentiform
    top-shaped (inversely conical)
trochiform, turbinate
    torpedo-shaped
terete
     
     
The stub of a candle, barely two inches long, lit at first attempt. The shadows of the switchboard cupboard bobbed against the wall at my approach. It looked different. The little wooden handle on its door was longer, more ornate, and set at a new angle. I was two feet away when the ornamentation resolved itself into the form of a scorpion, fat and yellow, its pincers curved about the axis of the diagonal and its chunkily segmented tail just obscuring the handle beneath.
    IAN MC EWAN, Black Dogs
     
     
... I could imagine how, in our absence, June’s spirit, her many ghosts, might stealthily reassert possession, recapturing not just her furniture and kitchenware and pictures but the curl of a magazine cover, the ancient Australia-shaped stain on the bathroom wall, and the latent body shape of her old gardening jacket, still hanging behind a door because no one could bear to throw it out. IAN MC EWAN , Black Dogs
     
     
Kayerts stood still. He looked upwards; the fog rolled low over his head. He looked round like a man who has lost his way; and he saw a dark smudge, a cross-shaped stain, upon the shifting purity of the mist.
    JOSEPH CONRAD. “An Outpost of Progress”
     
     
The room’s one window, too high for a woman not standing on a stool to peer out of, had lozenge panes of leaded glass, thick glass bubbled and warped like bottle bottoms.
    JOHN UPDIKE, The Witches of Eastwick
     
    tower-shaped
turriform, pyrgoidal, turrical, turricular
    tree-shaped
arboriform, dendritic, dendriform, dendroid, dendritifonn
    triangle-shaped or delta (Δ)-shaped
triangular, sphenic, cuneate, cuneiform
    trumpet-shaped
buccinal
    tube- or pipe-shaped
tubular, tubiform, fistulous, fistular, fistuliform
    turnip-shaped
napiform, rapaceous
    turret-shaped
turriculate, turriculated
    two- or double-faced
Janiform
     
    U-shaped
hyoid, oxbow-like, hippocrepiform, parabolic
    upsilon (Υ)- or Y-shaped
hypsiloid, ypsiliform, hypsiliform
     
    valve-shaped
valviform
    violin- or fiddle-shaped
pandurate
    vortex-like
vorticiform
     
    wedge-shaped or delta (Δ)-shaped
triangular, sphenic, cuneate, cuneiform, deltoid
    wedge-shaped inversely
obcuneate, obdeltoid
    wheel-shaped
rotiform, rotate
     
     
Sometimes a young man appears, bearing the twin drums, the tablas, to help her with the necessary percussion which otherwise she provides herself with sharp little flicks of her supple fingers on the onion-shaped tamboura.
    PAUL SCOTT, The Jewel in