toggle menu
menu
vocabulary
1000+ books

ornate
in a sentence

show 188 more with this conextual meaning
  • Beyond the gate, the ornate lettering of the "Blumenthal & Sons" sign could be seen from afar.†   (source)
  • Shoto took the sword and drew its ornate blade a few inches from the scabbard.†   (source)
  • The polished wooden box was about the size of a shoebox and had ornate hinges.†   (source)
  • I stared at a vase of ornate flowers—none of which I knew the names of—and bit away at one of my perfectly manicured nails.†   (source)
  • As an American with limited experience outside the United States, I was dazzled by the age of the buildings and marveled at their ornate architecture.†   (source)
  • The woman had an ornate chain around her neck.†   (source)
  • He was carrying the sconces—ornate brass fixtures with tall hurricane lamps.†   (source)
  • We move into a formal living room with ornate molding and green velvet settees, so full of heavy furniture I can hardly see the floor.†   (source)
  • She was clad not in her usual white gown, but rather in a dark tunic and loose trousers, and she clutched an ornately carved wooden staff in one hand.†   (source)
  • While the rector read, the kings bowed to the Baby Jesus and presented him with the usual gifts—ornate boxes and tins, and shiny trinkets, difficult to distinguish from the distance of the congregation but somehow regal in appearance.†   (source)
  • Here's a large ornate room crammed with trinkets and crates and books and mechanical parts.†   (source)
  • As my mom reached the ornate fountain that marks the entryway into our Princeville community, they heard the wail of sirens approaching.†   (source)
  • Its little painted Chinese figures gathered formally in a garden around a table, with ornate plants and implausible birds, seemed fussy and oppressive.†   (source)
  • To me, the whole effect looked wrong: too large, too green, too garishly ornate.†   (source)
  • The Glass Terrace is as ornate as Blonos's classroom was bare and lives up to its name.†   (source)
  • The 1700s-era stone inn that sold ornate ceramic vases; the black cows staring dumbly at their car from behind a wooden roadside fence; the New England village-style mall that had sprung up since they'd been gone.†   (source)
  • On the mantelpiece an ornate gold clock with a domed glass front ticks loudly.†   (source)
  • The letter was handwritten on fine, unlined paper in looping script so ornate it was almost calligraphy, the black ink varying in tone like that of an old fountain pen.†   (source)
  • An ornate shield had been embroidered on the prince's padded surcoat.†   (source)
  • The sidewalks are crowded with students and tourists, and they're lined with identical benches and ornate lampposts, bushy trees ringed in metal grates, Gothic cathedrals and tiny creperies, postcard racks, and curlicue wrought iron balconies.†   (source)
  • The ornate gables, the tiered pavilions that teetered dangerously close to the cliff's edge, the rounded temples stretching to the heavens.†   (source)
  • Maybe he was my several times great grandfather, but still vaguely alive in the memory of my family because his daughter had bought a large Bible in an ornately carved, wooden chest and had begun keeping family records in it.†   (source)
  • Instead there was a polished table on which a single wooden bowl sat between two ornate silver candlesticks.†   (source)
  • Turning away (so that I missed the rest of the sentence) he sidestepped a book face-down on the carpet and a teacup ringed with brown on the inside, and ushered me instead to an ornate upholstered chair, tucked and shirred, with fringe and a complicated button-studded seat — a Turkish chair, as I later learned; he was one of the few people in New York who still knew how to upholster them.†   (source)
  • As I sipped sweet tea and fidgeted, his Holiness rooted around in an adjacent cabinet, brought out a large, ornately decorated book, and handed it to me.†   (source)
  • Mulch rubbed his finger along an ornate banister.†   (source)
  • The cutlery is antique French and ornate.†   (source)
  • It was ornately scrolled in copper and brass, but it settled appreciably before Ullman pulled the gate across.†   (source)
  • The houses were clean, ornate, and large.†   (source)
  • Her yellow pagne is double-wrapped and her ornate bodice cut low on her large bosom.†   (source)
  • Sad King Billy joined us that night and I remember that he looked at me before he solemnly reentered his ornate coach to return to the safety of Keats.†   (source)
  • Reflexively, his eyes flickered to another picture — the most colorful of them all, the most ornately framed, and the largest; it was twice as wide as the door it hung next to.†   (source)
  • The ornate sign reaching to the sky like an electric peacock feather.†   (source)
  • In Calumet a thousand ornate streetlamps stood in a swamp, where they did nothing but ignite the fog and summon auras of mosquitoes.†   (source)
  • It was a large table model with an ornate shell-shaped speaker and it brought us many years of joy.†   (source)
  • Big ornate sign above the main gate: WHITE PEOPLE ONLY.†   (source)
  • Much of Plauen was never rebuilt; parking lots and empty lots occupied land where ornate buildings had once stood.†   (source)
  • I visited the Resurrection Cemetery, passing through the large, ornate gates, and parked.†   (source)
  • They were ornate, barely legible, and always the same.†   (source)
  • We turned a corner and passed an ornate building carved out of black rock.†   (source)
  • She rooted through her bag and pulled out a set of nunchaku two twelve-inch lengths of ornately carved wood linked by four and a half inches of chain.†   (source)
  • Behind it loomed an ornate gold screen, etched with the figures of saints and martyrs, each with a flat gold disk behind his head representing a halo.†   (source)
  • The Anthem of the Society plays in the background, ornate higher notes crying across a strong bass line that pounds the feelings home.†   (source)
  • It was the same ornate handwriting as in his earlier letters, the same will to lyricism, but applied to a simple paragraph of gratitude for the courtesy of her greeting in the Cathedral.†   (source)
  • She ran her finger carefully over the carving in the back, knowing without having to look that it was an ornate cursive G. "Are you sure you don't mind spending your birthday on Walden?"†   (source)
  • Flanking the doorway in which he stood were broad laving basins of ornate yellow and green tile.†   (source)
  • This had all helped get me fascinated, and I was soon longing to become engrossed myself in those ornate pieces.†   (source)
  • Each had knotted, carefully combed tassels, fleur-de-lis borders, ornate medallion designs, and minute scalloping amid a motif of connected eight-spoked wheels, all in rust and fire orange.†   (source)
  • Baroque buildings were typified by a lot of ornate nooks and crannies.†   (source)
  • Their small flat was in a once handsome building, with an ornate though now crumbling facade that dated back to the colonial era, in a once upscale, presently crowded and commercial, part of town.†   (source)
  • I'm sure the Doctor felt grand to have two such ornately dressed women kneeling at his feet that way.†   (source)
  • El Jefe sat down in an ornate chair on a raised platform and spoke directly to the families of the prisoners to be released.†   (source)
  • Tomsk was a city of about half a million, partially filled with Soviet constructions of steel and glass and cement block, and also with old wooden houses heaved into lopsidedness by many long winters, houses covered with fantastically ornate window casings and cornices.†   (source)
  • Each step was perhaps a foot in width, so he was six feet from Fezzik, six feet from the large, ornate green-handled door that opened onto the final level.†   (source)
  • Framed documents commemorating milestones in his career gleamed against the walnut walls of his office: a college diploma, a map of River Valley Farm, agricultural awards, an ornate certificate bearing the signatures of Dwight D. Eisenhower and John Foster Dulles, which cited his services to the Federal Farm Credit Board.†   (source)
  • For my birthday he gave me a delicate music box with an ornate sculpture of a mother cradling a baby in her arms.†   (source)
  • When we entered the ornate, high-ceilinged courtroom, we each turned to the crowd and made a clenched fist ANC salute.†   (source)
  • We stop before the ornate iron gate of a slaver's home, and the Tribesman checks my manacles, his tan robes swishing softly as he moves around me.†   (source)
  • Caroline drove across the city she had come to love, this tough, gritty, strikingly beautiful city with its soaring buildings and ornate bridges and vast parks, its neighborhoods tucked into every emerald hill.†   (source)
  • (Emerging grandly from the doorway so that we can see her thoroughly robed in the costume Asagai brought) You are looking at what a well-dressed Nigerian woman wears—(She parades for RUTH, her hair completely hidden by the headdress; she is coquettishly fanning herself with an ornate oriental fan, mistakenly more like Butterfly than any Nigerian that ever was) Isn't it beautiful?†   (source)
  • Each uniform had an ornate design embroidered in gold or silver on either its jacket breast pocket or blouse pocket.†   (source)
  • He pulled a tasseled chain and lit an ornate tin chandelier suspended from the ceiling.†   (source)
  • The city boasted having 59,500 buildings, many of them — such as the Courthouse and the Tribune Building — large and ornately decorated.†   (source)
  • On West Harrison Street in Chicago, two miles west of the city's downtown, there is an ornate, block-long building designed and built in the early part of the last century.†   (source)
  • The ornate antique contained a small bar, complete with an ice bucket which was stocked every afternoon.†   (source)
  • He sees himself staring up at the clock and the roof balustrade and the ornate stone cupola.†   (source)
  • The first thing everyone noticed was the spectacular cowboy garb: ten-gallon spanking-white cowboy hats blocked porkpie style, weighty signet rings, smoked eyeglasses, fringed leather jackets, ornate breeches, gabardine shirts tailored to his powerful shoulders and dyed in a confusion of color, and hand-tooled cowboy boots embossed with animal images in real silver.†   (source)
  • I'm thinking of those mothers today in their ornate dresses and their vacant lives.†   (source)
  • Inside was an ornate, heart-shaped locket supported by a gold chain.†   (source)
  • His walled compound sat next to an ornate mosque he had helped to build on land his father had donated.†   (source)
  • Ornate and understated at the same time.†   (source)
  • "ra>"Now there's a question, if ever I heard one," said the first witch, who wore dozens of ornate necklaces and had bright eyes that flashed with intelligence.†   (source)
  • My hand is poised at the round wooden knob carved into the ornate drawer, my fingers feeling around the smooth curves.†   (source)
  • Huge Corinthian columns soared above me, capped with ornate heroic carvings.†   (source)
  • I could see an old house beyond the trees, dark, the paint peeling, the ornate iron railings of its long upper and lower galleries caked with orange rust.†   (source)
  • Colonel Cathcart was a very large, pouting, broadshouldered man with close-cropped curly dark hair that was graying at the tips and an ornate cigarette holder that he purchased the day before he arrived in Pianosa to take command of his group.†   (source)
  • Men's shoes were not ornate, so I could do them quickly.†   (source)
  • The book was ornately bound, heavy in her hands, and sent a cloud of gray dust exploding out in every direction.†   (source)
  • Four students-one black, one white, one Asian, one Hispanic; two boys, two girls-hoist a large "Class of 1999" banner, brown with red piping, and lead a snaking line of chatting, mostly backpacked students through the ornate iron Van Wickle Gates, the uphill entryway to campus from downtown Providence.†   (source)
  • The elevator doors opened and D'Ablo led them down the hall wordlessly, stopping only to pull open a large, ornate metal door.†   (source)
  • A pair of scissors, a bone knife, and crude forceps were the only things of use within that ornate box.†   (source)
  • No ornate desks or candlesticks here, just books, many more than Thomas had imagined.†   (source)
  • I stooped and starting replacing the articles: a bent Masonic emblem, a set of tarnished cuff links, three brass rings, a dime pierced with a nail hole so as to be worn about the ankle on a string for luck, an ornate greeting card with the message "Grandma, I love you" in childish scrawl; another card with a picture of what looked like a white man in black-face seated in the door of a cabin strumming a banjo beneath a bar of music and the lyric "Going back to my old cabin home"; a…†   (source)
  • Bourne suddenly walked over to an ornate brass-topped coffee table, the sort so common in the bazaars of India and the Middle East.†   (source)
  • But his handwriting, an ornate script he learned in another century, revealed his decay.†   (source)
  • The ornate lobby was full of San Francisco policemen—uniformed officers and plainclothes detectives.†   (source)
  • The front door of the two-story house had a large window covered by an ornate grate.†   (source)
  • Straggling behind, Max noticed that each door had a large, ornate keyhole and a shiny silver numeral in its center.†   (source)
  • An absence so decorative, so ornate, it was difficult for her to understand how she had ever endured, without falling dead or being consumed, his magnificent presence.†   (source)
  • …bearing, gave him the air of a superlative aristocrat, so the crudeness of the room gave it the appearance of the most patrician retreat; a single royal touch was added to the crudeness: two ancient silver goblets stood in a small niche cut in a wall of bare logs; their ornate design had required the luxury of some craftsman's long and costly labor, more labor than had gone to build the shanty, a design dimmed by the polish of more centuries than had gone to grow the log wall's pines.†   (source)
  • There was no urgency in the effortless, classical preference for the simple over the ornate and showy.†   (source)
  • I could make out ornate mosaic tile work on the walls that must have been beautiful when new, but was now a mess of grimy cracks that looked like a giant, dirty spiderweb.†   (source)
  • His feet rested on an equally ornate footstool.†   (source)
  • A young woman soon enters with a tray of ornately sliced fruit and a bucket of ice.†   (source)
  • The graceful prow that rose high till it ended in an ornate carving of a dragon's head.†   (source)
  • And out of the blur stepped two hideous trolls, each bearing an ornate mirror.†   (source)
  • Under the blood and gore it was a glossy silver, perhaps an inch thick with an ornate handle in the shape of a grinning wolf.†   (source)
  • One of the foreigners, the one with the silver helmet like an ornate chamber pot, waved an intoxicated greeting.†   (source)
  • I took a deep breath, sat in the ornate Victorian chair, the throne we'd always called it, by the telephone table.†   (source)
  • The minister was waiting in his ornate office, along with the chief of the DGSI and Alain Lambert, the minister's aide-de-camp, note taker, food taster, and general factotum.†   (source)
  • In about three minutes they pulled up before an ornate facade resembling, of all things, the front of a tomb.†   (source)
  • From its fittings—its badly worn but still comfortable seats, the ornate and now tarnished chandeliers—Sophie could tell that the venerable coach had once carried people first-class; save for a singular difference, it might have been one of those cars of her girlhood in which her father—always the stylish voyager—had taken the family to Vienna or Bozen or Berlin.†   (source)
  • In the window was the most beautiful saddle he had ever seen, ornately tooled and polished till it shone.†   (source)
  • As the orator is maneuvered into position, he seems almost to be an inanimate object, like a huge ornate vase which must be precisely centered on a mantel.†   (source)
  • They hadn't yet turned the lamps on, if they still worked, but the arched window facing to the east drew enough sun from the mostly shaded lawn to raise a glitter on the silver vases that once had held flowers, and to glint on the dim prisms of the lamps, the highly polished walnut of the mantelpiece, the ornate legs of tables and chairs.†   (source)
  • Heavy lace curtains hung at the window, ornately frilled and draped.†   (source)
  • And you traversed the stunted, beggared, Denuded, quaking scrubwood of the alders And entered the cemetery coppice Of flaring red and ornate as a ginger bunny.†   (source)
  • Carried low on a fancy belt he wore two razor guns, each in a silver-chased holster that matched the ornate silver of his bridle and saddle.†   (source)
  • On a slightly raised platform, Maxon, Kriss, and I sat at an ornate table.†   (source)
  • He stared at the ornate lettering in disbelief.†   (source)
  • Pollux weeps against the mantel of an ornate fireplace.†   (source)
  • An ornate opal necklace was visible, poking out of the paper.†   (source)
  • The drawing room was full of silent people, sitting at a long and ornate table.†   (source)
  • He flipped back to the title page, where an ornately printed plate bore three words.†   (source)
  • He studied the ornate hand etching of the cover, his vision blurring in the lack of humidity.†   (source)
  • The hall was ornamented with dozens of ornate stone statues—gods and goddesses long forgotten.†   (source)
  • Written in ornate penmanship was another four-line verse.†   (source)
  • The Shrike Temple was an ornate, free-stranding structure now less than half a klick away.†   (source)
  • Behind heron the wall was an amateurish painting of an old lady, set in an ornate antique frame.†   (source)
  • On an ornate redwood throne sat a handsome young man.†   (source)
  • An ornate gold-framed mirror adorned the far wall, between two oil portraits in heavy frames.†   (source)
  • They walked around the palace, looking at the gated, ornate houses that surrounded it.†   (source)
  • Slowly the edge of an ornate picture frame came into sight.†   (source)
  • Bookcases were shattered, shelves snapped in half, ornate prints and maps lay crushed on the floor.†   (source)
  • The ring bore some kind of ornate seal with a two-headed bird and the number 33.†   (source)
  • Ornate bows adorned the backs of chairs.†   (source)
  • Just ornate lamps and an embroidered sofa and the swarming rococo wallpaper.†   (source)
  • It had multiple decks with ornate railings painted black and green.†   (source)
  • The medallions were pure gold, massive and ornate, each one as large as a man's hand.†   (source)
  • She found herself torn between the hunting daggers and a lovely rapier with an ornate bell-guard.†   (source)
  • The ornate engraving on the face carried a promising message: The secret hides within The Order.†   (source)
  • It had a red brick facade, an ornate balustrade, and sat framed by sculpted symmetrical hedges.†   (source)
  • They carefully hang the ornate silver nozzles on a rack built into the neck of the mega-bong.†   (source)
  • These hallways were captivating, each one more ornate than my entire house.†   (source)
  • On a low, ornate altar in the center of the circle lay a man.†   (source)
  • Beside the door swung an ornate oil lamp on a heavy chain, with a globe of leaded red glass.†   (source)
  • But I've never seen one so ornate and large.†   (source)
  • He motioned to a particularly ornate funerary across the dome and to the left.†   (source)
  • Some of it was ornate, some plain; not a bit of it matched, or fit as it should.†   (source)
  • Simkins shot a dubious glance at the ornate building.†   (source)
  • Running his finger across the inlaid Rose, he lifted the ornate lid.†   (source)
  • Mr. Thaler produced an ornate key and unlocked the strongbox.†   (source)
  • When she slid Oathkeeper from the ornate scabbard, Brienne's breath caught in her throat.†   (source)
  • I was walking down the wide, ornately papered hallway.†   (source)
  • Behind them, doors ornate with carving and etched glass clicked open and swung back in welcome.†   (source)
  • He flipped the book open to the front page, where the title was printed in ornate script.†   (source)
  • In place of the usual plain leather band, Zar'roc was fastened to an ornate belt.†   (source)
  • A pair of squires buckled the prince into his ornate silver-and-crimson armor.†   (source)
  • Ornate wrought iron staircases spiraled up to catwalks decorated with hanging plants.†   (source)
  • Ornate carvings of Roman gods decorated the roofline.†   (source)
  • Out went the ornate bric-a-brac, the austere furniture carved with the family crest.†   (source)
  • The ornate golden hallway was quiet, empty except for one gorgeous, statuesque woman.†   (source)
  • "Cactus!" he roared, racing out of the ornate living room into the hallway.†   (source)
  • His calligraphy was better than the examples of the ornate and round style in the book.†   (source)
  • She looks at the price tag on an ornate mahogany sideboard.†   (source)
  • They sat on ornately carved marble slabs surrounded by valuables: jewelry, vases, even some shabti.†   (source)
  • After what seemed like an eternity, Vlad's fingers met the ornate doorknob.†   (source)
  • Below me London spreads out like a lady's fan, ornate and delicate.†   (source)
  • Caius raised his hand as she spoke, and in it was a strange metal object, carved and ornate.†   (source)
  • Many have an ornate facade of red brick, with four-or five-step stoops leading to the front door.†   (source)
  • The room was filled with dozens of ornate and strangely shaped mirrors.†   (source)
  • I find it just off the main street, marked only by an ornate iron T hammered into the door.†   (source)
  • Installed into my bedroom, the craftsmanship looks sumptuous, ornate and quite rich!†   (source)
  • Elva glanced around the ornate bedroom, then said, "Do you have any food?†   (source)
  • THE LANDS OF THE TRIDENT, said the ornate script beneath the map.†   (source)
  • Prince Humperdinck's recluse lived behind the ornate green handle on the bottom door.†   (source)
  • His own hands were full; one clutched his tokar, while the other held an ornate whip.†   (source)
  • Hopeful, though it was a plain, enameled box rather than an ornate wooden one, Eve flipped a lid.†   (source)
  • Alexander Conklin limped into the ornate Victorian room as the marine officer closed the door.†   (source)
  • An ornate marble altar sits at one end, and I surmise that this must have been the castle's chapel.†   (source)
  • She and Fereshteh went off to a large ornate casket in an adjoining chamber.†   (source)
  • The old man bent down to smooth the fringe on an ornately woven rug.†   (source)
  • The supports for the porch roof were thick beams, pedestaled and ornate.†   (source)
  • I realized briefly that this corridor was more ornate than any we had seen so far.†   (source)
  • Through the doors was an ornate marble lobby.†   (source)
  • Farther on, they fell in behind a smaller elephant, white as old bone and pulling an ornate cart.†   (source)
  • She gestured at the ornate room where she was staying.†   (source)
  • He took another step down toward the final, ornate green-handled door.†   (source)
  • This person was seated on a large, ornate throne that was decorated with cut pieces of glaze.†   (source)
  • Over the door swung an ornate lamp, a globe of gilded metal and scarlet glass.†   (source)
  • A female voice this time; a girl, short, with a thick waist and heavy bosom, clad in ornate armor.†   (source)
  • A parlor maid holds a serving bowl offering ornate masks—birds, animals, imps, and Harlequins.†   (source)
  • On the edge of the Wall an ornate brass Myrish eye stood on three spindly legs.†   (source)
  • The priest hung the lantern from a hook, slipped a hand inside his robe, and produced an ornate key.†   (source)
  • Joffrey stood in the center of the throng, winding an ornate crossbow.†   (source)
  • In his hand was a long weirwood spear with an ornate bronze head.†   (source)
  • My hands and feet have been painted in ornate patterns, like a bride's.†   (source)
  • An ornate brazier stood to one side, fashioned in the shape of a dragon's head.†   (source)
▲ show less (of above)