Definitions
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun Alternative spelling of
hoarfrost .
Etymologies
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Examples
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When the oaks are clothed in a delicate tracery of snow and hoar-frost, they sometimes look quite orange-coloured in the sunshine against the sky, and yet the hoar-frost scarcely drips ...
Archive 2007-07-01 Linda 2007
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When the oaks are clothed in a delicate tracery of snow and hoar-frost, they sometimes look quite orange-coloured in the sunshine against the sky, and yet the hoar-frost scarcely drips ...
Thinking About Colors Linda 2007
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As for her toilette, that aerial toilette of muslin and ribbons, which seemed made of mirth, of folly, and of music, full of bells, and perfumed with lilacs had vanished like that beautiful and dazzling hoar-frost which is mistaken for diamonds in the sunlight; it melts and leaves the branch quite black.
Les Miserables 2008
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As for thee, O blonde, thy colour is that of leprosy and thine embrace is suffocation; 368 and it is of report that hoar-frost and icy cold369 are in Gehenna for the torment of the wicked.
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“And now,” said the Abbot, “let his garments be changed, or rather let him be carried to the infirmary; for it will prejudice our health, should we hear his narrative while he stands there, steaming like a rising hoar-frost.”
The Monastery 2008
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Then the peaks fade, and when morning is no longer “spread upon the mountains,” the pines are mirrored in my lake almost as solid objects, and the glory steals downwards, and a red flush warms the clear atmosphere of the park, and the hoar-frost sparkles and the crested blue-jays step forth daintily on the jewelled grass.
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A clear day and the beautiful autumnal sun common to the banks of the Loire was beginning to melt the hoar-frost which the night had laid on these picturesque objects, on the walls, and on the plants which swathed the court-yard.
Eug�nie Grandet 2007
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It looks as if a soft, blue, silver powder had fallen on its deep-green needles, or as if a bluish hoar-frost, which must melt at noon, were resting upon it.
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They retraced their steps, the tender hoar-frost taking the imprint of their feet, while two stars in the Twins looked down upon their two persons through the trees, as if those two persons could bear some sort of comparison with them.
Two on a Tower 2006
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He smiled and the thick hoar-frost on his lip stirred and the skin of ice cracked over his cheeks.
knitandpurl commented on the word hoar-frost
"The windows of our respective bathrooms, so that their occupants might not be visible from without, were not smooth and transparent but crinkled with an artificial and transparent hoar-frost. All of a sudden, the sun would colour this muslin glass, gild it, and, gently disclosing in my person an earlier young man whom habit had long concealed, would intoxicate me with memories, as though I were in the heart of the country amidst golden foliage in which even a bird was not lacking."
--The Captive & The Fugitive by Marcel Proust, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, revised by D.J. Enright, p 3 of the Modern Library paperback edition
December 23, 2009
yarb commented on the word hoar-frost
I thought you'd finished ISoLT!
I'm due to start The Captive myself one day soon. Maybe I'll read it in concert with you, since my original Proust-buddy TaciturnYetProlix seems to have gone AWOL.
December 23, 2009
knitandpurl commented on the word hoar-frost
yarb, excellent! I started The Captive in September but didn't get very far, then kept getting distracted by library books. Now I'm on vacation, which means lots of reading time.
December 25, 2009