Only the sharp call of a discordant trumpet broke the solitude and dumbness of the hills.

At that, I could have screamed, had I been in less terror; for the great eyes, so big as crown pieces, the bill like to an inverted parrot's, and the slug-like undulating of its white and slimy body, bred in me the dumbness of one mortally stricken.

Aphony N. aphony^, aphonia^; dumbness &c adj.; obmutescence^; absence of voice, want of voice; dysphony^; cacoepy^; silence &c (taciturnity) 585; raucity^; harsh voice &c 410, unmusical voice &c 414; falsetto, childish treble mute; dummy.

Bewildered to the point of dumbness, he backed slowly, holding the door open, and there entered the one person in all the world whom he wished most to seeshe who had become so strangely a part of his life since that first night at Prince Albert, and whose sweet face was holding a deeper meaning for him with every hour that he lived.

For at Aigma and on the hill of Nisos twice ere now I say that I have sung Kyrene's praise, and by my act have shunned the reproach of helpless dumbness.

And at the passion of her dumbness she cried out, with arms stretched wide apart, "O Woman, thou art sister of mine!"

Lesbia and Mary were not by any means sympathetic; yet, after all, blood is thicker than water; and Lesbia was intelligent, and could talk of the things Mary loved, which was better than total dumbness, even if she generally took an antagonistic view of them.

The spirit of dumbness seemed to have smitten the assembly.

He might have confirmed the relation between dumbness and darkness from the acutest metaphysician among poets, in Dante's ove il sol tace.

bravo, Keats!"and then he went on in a dilation upon, the dumbness of all Nature during the season's suspension and torpidity.

Everything about this woman showed an ardent soul, repressed by timidity and by a certain dumbness in the faculties of outward expression; but her eyes had, at times, that earnest, appealing language which is so pathetic in the silence of inferior animals.

How, mournful then is the silence of the innumerable, gray stones and monstrous rocks which try to speak to us like creatures once eloquent and possessing the knowledge of wondrous changes, and the key to problems that everlastingly distress the human mind, but on which the curse of dumbness has lain for ages!

He had had no aids to overcome his natal infirmity of deafness and consequent dumbness, none of the educational assistance modern science lends these unfortunates, no finger alphabet, or even another inarticulate for sympathy.

Dumbness sets the brute below the man: Silence elevates the man above the brute.

And the intensest form of hatred is that rooted in fear, which compels to silence and drives vehemence into a constructive vindictiveness, an imaginary annihilation of the deserted object, something like the hidden rites of vengeance with which the persecuted have made a dark vent for their rage, and soothed their suffering into dumbness.

More and more weird waxed the grisly dumbness of five-sided Morgan and the spectral silence of the oncoming league-long fleet.

In this strait the idea suddenly crossed his mind that his greatest security would be in feigning dumbness.

Note 5, page 280.Green's attempt to discredit sensations by reminding us of their 'dumbness,' in that they do not come already named, as concepts may be said to do, only shows how intellectualism is dominated by verbality.

"I can lick you with one hand tied behind me!" He drew back his fist as if to strike me, and I wonder that I did not run from the cabin and jump ashore, but I stood my ground, more from stupor and what we Dutch call dumbness than anything else.

Something had taken place which struck her with a sort of dumbness; and I really believe she could not then have spoken the name Gowdy if she had tried.

She is driven to extremes by her dumbness.

The excuse for it lies, as I have said, in the way I am organized; in the bovine dumbness of my life, bursting forth in a few crises in storms of the deepest bodily and spiritual tempest.

Either her powers of articulation had disappeared in that region of universal dumbness, or the dead atmosphere was waveless, and could vibrate to no sound.

And I am never one for brooding with private dumbness over my woes.

I asked in a trembling voice, afraid that having delivered herself once, she might lapse into dumbness.