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Use onlooker in a sentence

Definition of onlooker:

  • (noun) someone who looks on

Sentence Examples:

Tossing is not the sort of pastime any fellow would choose for fun, not if he were the party to be tossed, though it is a beanfeast for the onlookers.

A running fire of contemptuous remarks and aggressive satire accompanied each move, and the mere record of the conversation would have given an uninitiated onlooker the puzzling impression that an easy and crushing victory was assured to both the players.

There was enough of passive heroism displayed during the time of strife to fill the onlooker with admiration for the courage as well as the patriotism of American womanhood, and these things are more pleasant to look upon than is professional espionage.

Charles himself was elevated on a high throne covered with cloth of gold, whence he pompously pronounced judgments and heard and answered petitions, a process that sometimes lasted two or three hours and was exceedingly tiresome to the onlookers.

A pun, digression, or out-of-the-way allusion may occasionally provoke readers, but onlookers have frequently noticed that few wrinkle their brows while reading his critical essays, and that a pleased expression, such as photographers like, is almost certain to appear.

It bore no resemblance to an implacable duel between two powerful wills; but, judging solely from their attitude and the tone of their voices, an onlooker would have supposed their conversation to be nothing more serious than a courteous argument over some impersonal subject.

The onlookers laughed merrily at his humorous reference to the frigid temperature, although many cast sympathetic looks at his thin threadbare garments and registered a kindly thought for this brave boy who so philosophically accepted the buffets of fate.

As onlookers, such a novel exhibition afforded a fine field for the study of Icelandic physiognomy, the expressions of anxiety, pleasure, or disappointment being depicted on their faces when the coveted goods were knocked down to the would-be purchaser, or not.

The undercurrent of suppressed antagonism that existed between them communicated itself to the onlookers with a subtle, yet potent power; while to those who could read the writing between the lines, the situations assumed a potential gravity and significance.

The scene is a remarkable one, conceived in an absolutely unique way; Solomon is here posed as a Roman Praetor giving judgment in the Atrium, supported on each side by onlookers attired in fanciful costume of the Venetian period, or suggestive of classical models.

She was boyishly slender, and a natural grace kept on breaking through the somewhat rigid deportment, which she always tried to impose upon herself, in little beautiful gestures and movements that made the onlooker catch his breath with astonished pleasure.

Swooping, climbing, diving, the planes pursued their deadly purpose, while exclamations of admiration came from the lips of the fascinated onlookers as some specially daring maneuver promised to give the advantage first to one and then to the other of the antagonists.

Who has not felt that among the astral bodies there is a malign power, a kind of Court Dramatist, who arranges sinister coincidences and mischievous surprises for us humble denizens below, in order to divert the privileged onlookers sitting in heaven?

The consequences of a defeat in this quarter or in that, may offer too great temptations to the cupidity of onlookers; while diplomacy, though it may have bungled in the beginning, is sure to have many opportunities of recovering its influence as the situation develops.

Yet with the veil immediately darkening again the onlooker soon became subject to the illusion that for his recognition of mathematics as a means of describing nature he was in need of nothing but what was accessible to him on the near side of the veil.

Eighty yards away lay the object under discussion, the gaunt skeleton of a mammoth, the steel ribs of which were being attacked by a swarm of workmen, who gave the onlooker the impression that they were Lilliputians clambering over Gulliver's recumbent form.

This apparently useless product was discarded and thrown in a nearby stream, when, to the astonishment of onlookers, a large volume of gas was immediately liberated, which, when ignited, burned with a bright and smoky flame and gave off quantities of soot.

And as it is thus impossible for the onlooker to accept from adherents of a creed a definition of what they really believe, so it is impossible for him to acknowledge the forms and ceremonies of which they speak as the real manifestations of their creed.

The sympathetic interest is even greater in witnessing a fight between two combatants; indeed, it can be playful only when the onlooker can restrain his emotions and regard the struggle going on before him as a theatrical representation, as is often enough the case.

He landed lightly upon his feet, without the least difficulty; and, before the onlookers could recover from their amazement, this extraordinary personage had shot like a catapult, straight up the path along which he had travelled so precariously half an hour before.

With nostrils distended, his breath coming in choking gasps, his eyes bulging, and the voice of his adored mistress ringing in his ears, the gallant animal with a burst of speed that made the onlookers marvel, ranged himself alongside his laboring rivals.

Her involuntary cry was succeeded by a peal of laughter which attracted the attention of every one within earshot, and in a moment my brother-in-law found himself the object of much interested amusement, which the majority of onlookers made no attempt to conceal.

The quarrel seemed a harmless affair, and they were about to pass on, when suddenly one of the disputants lunged at his antagonist with a knife, conjured from nowhere, and the two came tumbling out into the street, nearly colliding with the onlookers.

Counsel, bowing, thanked his lordship, and, tying up his brief, left the Court, accompanied by the captain, while the onlookers stirred uneasily in their seats, whispered among each other, and then sat eager to be regaled with another story of domestic woe.

A glance of mutual understanding flashed between the girl and himself, then Roland raised her hand to his lips, and although the onlookers saw the gallant salutation, they knew nothing of the gentle pressure with which the fingers exchanged their confidences.

Anything mechanical, anything perfunctory, would have worn out with the first gratification of curiosity; but a point which struck the onlooker was that enthusiasm grew instead of cooling off, as the Prince's visit to each place continued and as acquaintance with him ripened.

And even allowing for the deplorable fact that most of these nations are suffering from a pitiable mental malady, it still is astounding to the terrestrial onlooker that this ability to manipulate the facial muscles is among the Martians regarded as a highly meritorious attainment.

As a matter of fact, Creed aged materially during his journey to the door, but to the onlookers his exit seemed a miracle of frantic haste as he clawed and scrambled the length of the room on hands and knees in a maudlin panic of terror.

When two good-looking young people meet as these two met, and betray such surprising emotion, it goes without saying that at least one episode in their joint history deserves the undivided attention of the onlooker, who, in this case, happens to be you, kind reader.

Yet it is hard to speak of these days as days of mourning, for music, dancing before the bier, and the feasting in the home would cause the onlooker at a Burmese funeral to believe that he was witnessing a wedding-festival instead of a scene of sorrow.

King Ferdinand of Bulgaria has kept for years the center of the Balkan stage to the European onlooker; and is still a great enough figure to give pause to those Bulgarian Nationalists who would exact from him reprisal for the terrible misfortunes of their country.

He had perhaps a vague notion that a Roman soldier should wear a kilt; but in the main he was content that the onlookers at the Crucifixion should be costumed according to the period of William the Conqueror, or Maximilian, in which he himself happened to live.

We are compelled to be mere onlookers at the present-day baseball or football game, or track meet, to watch the players with mingled feelings of awe and admiration, much as the Romans of old sat about the amphitheater and marveled at the exploits of the gladiators.

Generally speaking, the onlooker, with his wider field of vision, regards the ultimate outcome of an activity as what it is more really doing; and the most previous agent ascertainable, being the first source of action, he regards as the most real agent in the field.

Heading his horse to the north, bending forward in his saddle, his long, dark hair flying out behind him, he went, in a mad gallop, up the half-deserted street, and, before the astonished onlookers had fairly caught breath, he had vanished into the night.

There are young men who mistake arrogance of manners for self-possession, and who conduct themselves, when in society with lifted chin and a haughty air that may accord very well with their own estimate of themselves, but seem rather out of place to onlookers.

The necessity of caution in permitting innovations is well brought out in, "Once a use then ever a custom"; and the fact that there is more skill in even the simplest art than the onlooker quite realizes is very effectively brought out in, "There is craft in daubing."

"The water is cold," he said apologetically, and his trembling voice and chattering teeth were accounted for; but when the long hair was disentangled, and the clutching fingers loosened from their frantic grasp, there were ejaculations of horror and astonishment from the sympathizing onlookers.

His followers fell upon them afterwards with their whips and drove them still farther back, relentlessly, until they were absorbed and lost in the ranks of the crowd of onlookers which in its turn fell back before the continued menace of those impetuous grooms.

On one of these occasions she was so sickened with horror at the evidence of recent executions which she saw in the streets that she began boldly denouncing the perpetrators of such savagery, and had to be hurried away for her life by some sympathetic onlookers.

In both cases the ocular evidence was enough to convince the onlookers of the truth of the explanation, for the persons concerned were clearly changed and were not themselves. Plato played with the idea that poetry even might be, as poets said, a matter of inspiration.

Then, as the onlookers from the ships kept their gaze fixed upon the shore, the column suddenly subsided, and when they looked again there were the batteries, surrounded by trees and green fields, while there was no sign of damage produced by the shells.

If the ignorant onlooker could be beguiled to strike one himself before he saw any of its fellows at work, he furnished you pleasanter thrills by dropping his match in a panic at the first pop and jumping about delightfully as it finished its performance on the floor.

Struggling to repress a shout of laughter, they continued to observe the new arrival, who had not yet discovered them, and who kept turning back to make sure his enemy was not following, in a state of trepidation that was intensely diverting to the onlookers.

I have seen him a score of times, at table, insulting this hunter or that, with cool and level eyes and, withal, a certain air of interest, pondering their actions or replies or petty rages with a curiosity almost laughable to me who stood onlooker and who understood.

The two wrestlers thereupon shake hands, and then in the usual manner both warily move backwards and forwards, till amid cries from the onlookers, the blacksmith makes a sudden dash at the practiced old player, and in a moment has him round the waist.

Another sharp-eyed onlooker shouted exultantly; for although they knew nothing of the tie that bound the stranger to the crippled girl he had gone to save, they could appreciate the heroism at its true value, and were ready to honor the other for his brave deed.

To the casual or the curious onlooker, the little party seemed to have every intention of remaining overnight, more particularly as the sky was overcast, and the rude leather shanty which they had been busily erecting showed that they expected rain, and had prepared a shelter.

The onlookers gazed at this awesome resurrection in paralyzed silence, and it was only when Adrian opened his eyes, and languidly tried to rise, that the spell broke, and Olive fell on the floor, while the three men rushed forward in a state of uncontrollable agitation.

They were, both of them, melancholy survivals, but he applauded their bravery in surviving at all, and he had almost a personal feeling for them in that he would have liked them to know that there was, at least, one onlooker who appreciated their being there.

Irony enjoys an exuberant life, whether the second person so attacked is universal and the third as restricted as can be; or whether the second person so attacked is particular and singular, and the third person, the onlooker and the audience, comprehends the whole world.

To the onlooker, both Individualism and Socialism are, in the absolute, absurdities; the one would make men the slaves of the violent or rich, the other the slaves of the State official, and the way of sanity runs, perhaps even sinuously, down the intervening valley.

Almost before the onlookers could realize what was happening, the airplane was in action, and while they were still discussing the extraordinary nature of this means of locomotion, it had soared into the air, flown humming away from them, and become a mere speck in the eastern sky.

Cried Ram, dashing at his late prisoner again, dodging the blow struck at him, closing with his adversary; and then began a struggle which would have made the blood of an onlooker curdle, so terribly narrow and dangerous was the place where the encounter took place.

Oddly enough, he had no intimate friends, and all of us, partly out of resentment against his pose of onlooker, and more from the love of torture which links the schoolboy to the savage, performed our duty of silent punishment with a zeal which deserved a better inspiration.

The interval was filled up by the shouts of the onlookers, who now made up for their previous silence by loudly criticizing the deeds of their respective champion, and vociferously calling out their particular favorite worthless instructions how to proceed when the conflict was continued.

At last, as the birds flew right over the vessel, the surprised onlookers saw that floating beneath their wings was a wonderful chair, all white and gold, more dazzling even than the one they had dreamed the Emperor himself sat in on the Dragon Throne.

To an onlooker I would have been a strange, weird sight as, tattered and torn, half naked, with one foot bandaged in old rags, I jumped and hopped about on my rude crutch, yelling like an Indian, brandishing my spear, and crying taunts at the dead monster beside me.

From every spike it grew on the right and the left exultant buds that made of each candle a little cross of pale bloom, lighting the little lonely tree in the level waste with a glorification and chaste beauty that made the worshipful onlooker forget all else.

She had always done her duty to the boy, and loved him as though he had been her own; but she reminded onlookers rather of a conscientious elderly cat with limited views of natural history condemned by circumstances to take care of a very irresponsible young eaglet.

To the casual onlooker the child seems to be learning exactitude and grace of action, to be refining his senses, to be learning how to read and write; but much more profoundly he is learning how to become his own master, how to be a man of prompt and resolute will.

The police, who had lost their wits, were idle onlookers, but standing on a brick wall forty feet high was a fine muscular man wielding a massive beam, with which he was beating the roof of the burning building, with what object it was impossible to say.

This concession provided for at least a hundred more onlookers and listeners, who stood forgetful of any ache in their shanks throughout the long and dragging proceedings well satisfied, believing that the coming sensations would repay them for any pangs of inconvenience they might suffer.

Then he took the reptile from his mouth and gently threw it upon the ground, where it lay motionless in a state of catalepsy, and, marching round while the onlookers prostrated themselves, murmuring strange incantations, he again reached the hut, and took another of the writhing reptiles.

However, I managed to get through by not allowing the amused faces of the onlookers to trouble me, and although I discovered afterwards that I had called "The Damnation of Faust" an oratorio and had mixed my genders in the most ludicrous fashion, I was successfully "passed."

It is not hard to picture the rush of the assassins, the screams of onlookers aroused from sleep, the hiss of arrows shot at windows where eyes were seeing what was meant to be hid, and the final ordering away of the ruffians by a tall man in command.

Nor was this renunciation any great hardship, for I had been writing a book about the Realities of War, and had just found that all the horrors that ever might have happened had already been set down by one who saw most of the game, being an onlooker.

And then two big policemen took a hand and dragged out of the furious mob of onlookers a crushed and trampled thing, with a wedding ring in its vest pocket and a shredded and hysterical woman beating her way to the carpet's edge, ragged, bruised and obstreperous.

I have known very peculiar physical habits to appear, in one instance in three, in another in four, generations, with the avowal of satisfaction in their practice on the part of the persons subject to them, although neither they could explain, nor onlookers comprehend, the pleasure derived from them.

In the culminating point of this sham fight he sees his enemy among the crowd of onlookers, and, urged by his excited feelings, he directs insulting remarks full at this man, who, running out into the clear space in front of the fighters, returns these with interest.

Onlookers were in their places two hours before the fight began, and the rigging of vessels lying in the Severn, which flowed beside the course, was full of those who could not raise the five shillings, which was the smallest price for a place on the stands.

A wise physician, to an ignorant onlooker, might seem to be acting in contradictory fashions when in the one moment he slashes into a limb, with a sharp, gleaming knife, and in the next sedulously binds the wounds, and closes the arteries, but the purpose of both acts is one.

There were so many closely wedged together as to obstruct my vision of what was occurring, yet I felt no doubt but that they watched a game of cards; a desperate struggle of chance, involving no small sum to account for such intense feeling on the part of mere onlookers.

The man ahead of us, presenting in every respect the appearance of a gentleman, had suddenly stooped to the curb and was washing his hands in the snow, furtively, but with a vigor and purpose which could not fail to arouse the strangest conjectures in any chance onlooker.

Pursuing what seems to the onlooker to be the most adventurous and exhilarating of all forms of military service, they have been chary of telling their experiences and singularly set upon treating them as all in the day's work and eliminating all that is picturesque from their narratives.

Only now and then, when the work of some particular individual shows up decidedly better or worse than that of his fellows, and when the foreman or superintendent, or other onlooker, happens to observe this is the individual appreciated, and then only in the most inexact, unsystematic manner.

After a few words in a low tone with its companions, this figure clambered lightly into the airplane, leaned forward, adjusted some levers, and the next instant, amidst a shout from several hastily gathered onlookers, the Golden Butterfly skyrocketed upward, her engine roaring like an angry giant hornet.

Charles, where, in the seclusion of a private parlor, they enjoyed freedom from the neck-craning gaze of onlookers, and freedom also from that bane of the genuine lover of a game of draw, the chap who stands behind one's chair and keeps up a running commentary of approval or disapproval.

They sang the songs and danced the dances that contribute so much poetry to the life of the city, while onlookers marveled at the temperamental qualities which made it possible for foreigners to reproduce with unconscious realism historical scenes of a city and a country not their own!

She herself would have told you, had you asked her, that she knew that her gray gown was of rather dowdy make, although she might not have realized as clearly as the onlooker just where the seams were crooked, or in what particular places the skirt hung unevenly.

This, however, was not the intention, for those bearing the torches marched and counter-marched in apparently aimless fashion, weaving a thousand threads of fire into a glowing web that dazzled the eyes of the onlookers, while cheer after cheer rent the air, as if to encourage the actual besiegers.

Presently horsemen appeared advancing past the southern end of the village, numbering, perhaps, two score, then there was an interval, and all onlookers knew at once it was the Emperor in his glittering armor who rode the prancing white horse, with but one attendant by his side.

The red wheels with gold stripes were the first thing to be adjusted, and the eyes of the onlookers who happened to be strolling up and down the quay opened to large dimensions as the covering was stripped from the nickel-plated boiler and the process of establishment went on.

If he makes a picture of the future, that picture is a mere extension of his own tiny and ephemeral experience, and the more confidently certain he is of that future the more rigidly is it seen by the critical onlooker to be a puppet dressed up in the clothes of the present.

Mingled with such familiar creatures as sheep, cows, dogs, and barn-yard fowls, were animals of the past, which the majority of the onlookers had only read about or seen pictures of, or perhaps, in a few cases, heard described in childhood, by grandfathers long since sleeping in their graves.

It was full of onlookers drawn nearer than usual to the hoarding by the excitement, and they scattered and fled in all directions, while shriek upon shriek went up from the women all round us as they saw the bull clear the hoarding and come down amongst them.

The city-bred Cecily, accustomed to horse exercise solely as an ornamental and artificial recreation, felt for the first time the fearful joy of a dash across a league-long plain, with no onlookers but the scattered wild horses she might startle up to scurry before her, or race at her side.

The giant, armed from head to foot, marched beside the litter, and looked with hungry eye at the Princess, as if anticipating his share of her when she came to be eaten; the air resounded with sighs and sobs, and the road was flooded with the tears of the onlookers.

They were making use of the conventional signs, consisting of certain pressures of the finger and knuckle joints, each having a recognized value and significance, and by employing them they were effecting business without attracting the notice of the gaping onlookers, who would listen and offer their advice.

While the flutes played, the drums beat, and the eunuch priests slashed themselves with knives, the religious excitement gradually spread like a wave among the crowd of onlookers, and many a one did that which he little thought to do when he came as a holiday spectator to the festival.

And so it is that sometimes there is a wild cry from rider or driver, a confused heap of hoofs, legs, wheels and dust, breathless silence from the thousands of onlookers and then, generally, a loud burst of applause as horse and human struggle to their feet, not seriously damaged.

Then they all turned, and watching an approaching billow, mounted its white crest, and each laying his breast on the short, flat board, came rolling towards the shore, careering on the summit of the mighty wave, while they and the onlookers shouted and yelled with excitement.

Save for the erratic, occasional whizzing of the enemy's bullets, the thud of a hit and the dropping, weltering in his blood, of a man here and there, watched from our firing lines the combat enlisted and fascinated the attention with barely a suggestion of danger to the onlooker.

This was too much for the onlookers, and with one accord they disappeared under the table and fought, while the domestics, perfectly accustomed to such a scene, jumped nimbly round, saving plates and glasses as these came to sight amidst the struggling jumble of arms and legs.

Miles as a ghost was certainly an eerie figure; for by means of a stick strapped to his back the sheet was raised to an abnormal altitude, while a couple of tennis rackets held in either hand made extended wings with which to swoop about, and raise warning signals to the onlookers.

One of these ropes was the thick hawser, the other the whip; but as this whip was an endless or revolving rope, as has been explained, to an onlooker it appeared that there were three ropes stretched between the vessel and the shore, two of them thin and one thick.

Flushed, golden hair in pretty disorder, she sprang back on guard again, and the onlookers watched the movement of her hands, fascinated by their grace and beauty as she defended her side of the table and, finally, snatched the ball from the very jaws of the right corner.

He cantered by with some dignity, amid a good deal of cheering, when suddenly there was a rush, something like a flash of light, a bright chestnut horse, with a jockey in daffodil satin, darted like a fairy thing past the stand, followed by a spontaneous shout from the crowded onlookers.

The carriage stopped, a blue-robed damsel leapt out of either door, and for the next two minutes four female figures were so inextricably mixed together that it would have been difficult to an onlooker to say which was which, or to apportion the waving arms and bobbing heads to their proper owners.

The expression of his face, his blue eyes, his smile and something personal, an emanation compounded of strength and suppleness and healthy gaiety, of confidence in himself and in life, all contributed to give this peculiarly favored young man a power of attraction to whose spell the onlooker readily surrendered.