sproutings

In the seduction department, of course, there's nothing quite so effective as that slight, all-male touch of five o'clock shadow Don wears so wonderfully and so insinuatingly — a treat to see compared with those splotches of darkness, stubble and otherwise ghastly sproutings on all those male faces on TV these days.

Seductive 'Mad'-ness 2009

Stephen's reasonable doubts about the reality of green economic sproutings aside, it is undeniable that any such stirrings thrust the case against a referendum into a difficult position.

SNP result makes referendum more likely Jeff 2009

One can only hope that eventually-embarrassing pictures are being taken of these insistently unhygeinic-looking sproutings.

Just Say No, Beardo Slimbolala 2005

Anti-gravity, which would change the face of the earth in ways which would make the effects of steam, electricity, even nuclear power, mere sproutings of technology in the orchard this device would grow.

More Than Human Sturgeon, Theodore, 1918-1985 1953

In his desire for clean culture he treats any sproutings of the faculty divine as mere weeds, if they come up between the rows.

By the Christmas Fire Samuel McChord Crothers

Certain sproutings of his imagination must be repressed -- push 'em down, Matron.

Tell England A Study in a Generation Ernest Raymond 1931

Another was, no doubt, that I always nipped his sentimental sproutings religiously in the bud.

Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1907 to 1908 1908

It was like dropping into a cool, shadowy bowl, the first shoots and sproutings of baby leaves from the branches casting a delicate tracery of shadow on the golden-green shimmer of the grass.

Stubble George Looms 1906

Any of us who have watched the first sproutings of an oak tree from the heart of a decaying acorn will understand what this means.

The God of All Comfort 1905

Always in the daylight it had been to him abhorred and abominable, and its grey houses and purlieus had been fungus-like sproutings, an efflorescence of horrible decay.

The Hill of Dreams Arthur Machen 1905