headforemost

• “And even then, with his own mount stumbling and nearly pitching him headforemost at each lurch, he was forced to admire the mare's goatlike agility, for she descended into the gorge in running leaps, never setting a wrong foot.”

  Fictionaut: In The Time Of Light

• “The anabaptist, being upon deck, lent a helping hand as well as the rest, when a brutish sailor gave him a blow and laid him speechless; but, with the violence of the blow the tar himself tumbled headforemost overboard, and fell upon a piece of the broken mast, which he immediately grasped.”

  Candide

• “Plunging into this happy conception headforemost, Mr. Goodchild immediately referred to the county-map, and ardently discovered that the most delicious piece of sea-coast to be found within the limits of”

  The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices

• “Pick out one particular spot in that imaginary scene, and sketch me in it, with outstretched arms, curved back, and heels in the air, plunging headforemost into a black patch of water and mud.”

  The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices

• “Otherwise he would have done so — aye, would have thrown himself, headforemost, from the steeple – top, rather than have seen them watching him with eyes that would have waked and watched although the pupils had been taken out.”

  The Chimes

• “In going down a steep incline the rider must throw himself right back and hold in the horse with the bit, to prevent himself being hurled headforemost down the slope himself if not his horse.”

  On Horsemanship

• “Occasionally, he shot himself out of his equipage headforemost over the apron; and I saw him on one occasion deliver himself at the door of the Grove in this unintentional way — like coals.”

  Great Expectations

• “And the son has seen and known all this — he is a ruined man, and his fear has taught him to knock ambition and passion headforemost from his bosom's throne; humbled by poverty he takes to money-making, and by mean and miserly savings and hard work gets”

  The Republic by Plato ; translated by Benjamin Jowett

• “It was to Foret that the colonel had given up his sword, after he had been dragged headforemost through a window, had had his head cut open with a brick-bat, and his sheath and sword-belt literally torn from his side.”

  La Vend�e

• “The Moor had hardly heard these words when with marvellous quickness he flung himself headforemost into the sea, where no doubt he would have been drowned had not the long and full dress he wore held him up for a little on the surface of the water.”

  Don Quixote

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