gaspings

There was poor Mr. Black flapping about helplessly in his chair, emitting the most awful gaspings and groanings, like a man in the last stages of drowning.

"Reverse Phylogeny" by Amelia Reynolds Long, part 2 Johnny Pez 2010

There was poor Mr. Black flapping about helplessly in his chair, emitting the most awful gaspings and groanings, like a man in the last stages of drowning.

Archive 2010-01-01 Johnny Pez 2010

With the most soothing goodness he led me to my desk, and withdrew to attend the dear baby himself — to see his last gaspings, poor little lamb, I make no doubt!

Pamela 2006

But when he begins to feel that the shore is receding from him, that his strength is going, that the footing for which he pants is still far beneath his feet, — that there is peril where before he had contemplated no danger, — then he begins to beat the water with strokes rapid but impotent, and to waste in anxious gaspings the breath on which his very life must depend.

The Way We Live Now 2004

The darkness was interrupted only at intervals, by the broad expanse of vivid lightnings, which quivered upon the waters, and disclosing the horrible gaspings of the waves, served to render the succeeding darkness more awful.

A Sicilian Romance 2004

And hear his breath its own swift gaspings smother

The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley 2003

What under the heavens he did it for, I cannot tell, but his next movement was to crush himself — boots in hand, and hat on — under the bed; when, from sundry violent gaspings and strainings, I inferred he was hard at work booting himself; though by no law of propriety that I ever heard of, is any man required to be private when putting on his boots.

Moby Dick; or the Whale 2002

And all became pain after that and frenzied pushing and great gaspings for air in the brief moments of respite.

Heartless Balogh, Mary 1995

Although I've seen plenty of copulation scenes before, in the tridim shows, on the beaches, occasionally at parties, this was the first time I had ever witnessed myself in the act, and I was shattered by the grotesqueness of it, the idiot gaspings, the contorted features, the sweaty humpings.

Up The Line Silverberg, Robert 1969

They would move about in as unnatural a manner as possible; and when they left the room, they would do so with gaspings and much waste of breath.

Famous Affinities of History — Volume 3 Lyndon Orr