fadings

Both wall and sage were compounded of like materials, — lime and dust; both, too, were old; but while the rude earth of the wall had no painted lustre to shed off all fadings and tarnish, and still keep fresh without, though with long eld its core decayed: the living lime and dust of the sage was frescoed with defensive bloom of his soul.

Herman Melville, Fantasy Novelist 2008

Shelley a power, "an 'invisible influence,'" causing all these "fadings and changings."

Shelley's Golden Wind: Zen Harmonics in _A Defence of Poetry_ and 'Ode to the WestWind' 2007

In a 1997 appreciation, practically a CAT scan, of Joan Didion's novels and essays in these pages, Elizabeth Hardwick spoke of "a carefully designed frieze of the fracture and splinter in her characters 'comprehension of the world," "a structure for the fadings and erasures of experience," and, to accommodate "the extreme fluidity of the fictional landscape," a narrative method of "peculiar restlessness and unease."

The Black Album Leonard, John 2005

To design a structure for the fadings and erasures of experience is an aesthetic challenge she tries to meet in a quite striking manner; the placement of sentences on the page, abrupt closures rather like hanging up the phone without notice, and an ear for the rhythms and tags of current speech that is altogether remarkable.

In the Wasteland Hardwick, Elizabeth 1996

He drank beer and sat in the cold room, autumn light reaching him after impoverishments and fadings, from gray clouds, off courtyard walls and drainpipes, through grease-darkened curtains, bled of all hope by the time it reached where he sat shivering and crying.

Gravity's Rainbow Pynchon, Thomas 1978

He has the prettiest _love-songs_ for maids; so without bawdry, which is strange; with such _delicate burdens_ of "dildos" and "fadings," "jump her and thump her"; ...

Shakespeare and Music With Illustrations from the Music of the 16th and 17th centuries 1900

The 'delicate burdens,' 'dildos and fadings,' 'jump her and thump her,' are to be found in examples of the period.

Shakespeare and Music With Illustrations from the Music of the 16th and 17th centuries 1900

These wastings and pinings and fadings away are produced by mental influence, in the sense that they cannot be cured by medicines or relieved at once by the best of hygienic advice; but it is idle to deny that they have also a broad and substantial physical basis, in the extent to which states of emotional agony, despair, or worry interfere with appetite, sleep, and proper exercise and recreation in the open air.

Preventable Diseases Woods Hutchinson 1896

The period of each had lengthened by some seconds in 1883, while sudden displacements, associated with the recovery of lustre after recurrent fadings, were observed in the position of the white spot, [1072] recalling the leap forward of a reviving sun-spot.

A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century Fourth Edition 1874

Both wall and sage were compounded of like materials, -- lime and dust; both, too, were old; but while the rude earth of the wall had no painted lustre to shed off all fadings and tarnish, and still keep fresh without, though with long eld its core decayed: the living lime and dust of the sage was frescoed with defensive bloom of his soul.

Israel Potter Herman Melville 1855