dynamic
toggle menu
menu
vocabulary
1000+ books

pensive
in a sentence

show 189 more with this conextual meaning
  • Nowadays it seemed to take in more than Almondine could possibly express, and it gave her a sad, pensive look.†   (source)
  • Or perhaps she had opted to walk down Tverskaya Street, where Pushkin's statue stood pensive but undaunted in the freshly fallen snow.†   (source)
  • Paul pushed back a light-brown lock of hair and gazed pensively at the music box that he kept in a glass case above the workbench.†   (source)
  • In Mariam's lap, she sucked her thumb cheerlessly and watched Rasheed in a sullen, pensive way.†   (source)
  • I don't know," said Hermione pensively.†   (source)
  • Her lips tense; she is pensive.†   (source)
  • Inside, where a boy with an attractive, pensive look was emptying ashtrays into a bucket, last night's air still had a bluish look.†   (source)
  • He has a pensive look on his face.†   (source)
  • I'd arrive home in high spirits, chatting nineteen to the dozen, until the events of the morning would repeat themselves and I'd leave the room with my schoolbag in my hand and a pensive look on my face.†   (source)
  • Nothing dramatic, my mother is too sensible to sing dirges, but she would get pensive, she would remove herself, and I would have none of it, needful thing that I was.†   (source)
  • Pensive, he rolled a twig between his fingers.†   (source)
  • On Old Earth, my poetry was composed on a Sadu-Dekenar cornlog thought processor while I lounged in a padded chaise 1ongue or floated in my EM barge above dark lagoons or walked pensively through scented bowers.†   (source)
  • As Chronicler gathered his paper and quills, Kvothe studied the angle of the sun through the window, a pensive look on his face.†   (source)
  • He is a sturdily built child, with full cheeks but already pensive features.†   (source)
  • I design with a view to a passage of quietly composed, soft, subdued pensive character, shape the ground, screen out discordant elements and get suitable vegetation growing.†   (source)
  • Meyer leaned back and stared at the ceiling pensively.†   (source)
  • He gave me a pensive look.†   (source)
  • Langdon was pensive.†   (source)
  • The two girls rowed pensively across to the other side.†   (source)
  • He was pensive, suspicious, drew close to me constantly to ask where Claudia was, where she'd gone, and what she was doing.†   (source)
  • I sighed and started to fill out the repetitive information: name, address, social...After a few minutes I glanced up, but Edward was now staring pensively out the window.†   (source)
  • It was Friday night and Tommy (who was looking pensively out the back window with his pants still down around his ankles; the effect was comic but oddly endearing) had taken her bowling.†   (source)
  • It was enough for Fermina Daza to see her cousin's expression of radiant malice for the pensive scent of white gardenias to grow again in her heart's memory, and then she tore the red sealing wax with her teeth and drenched the eleven forbidden telegrams in a shower of tears until dawn.†   (source)
  • "Martin Vanger built his house in the seventies," Salander said pensively.†   (source)
  • I must have fallen asleep because when I woke up Rafa was looking at me pensively and it was dark outside and nobody else in the house was awake.†   (source)
  • Other looks, less pensive and less guilty, indicated greater time spans, deeper seas of inattention.†   (source)
  • Hazel twirled her hair pensively.†   (source)
  • The bookshelves are crowded with pictures of her: Ally dressed up like an octopus for Halloween in first grade, Ally wearing a green velvet dress and smiling in front of an enormous Christmas tree absolutely collapsing with ornaments, Ally squinting in a bikini, Ally laughing, Ally frowning, Ally looking pensive.†   (source)
  • The tension dispelled as the two couples took small, pensive bites of their different servings.†   (source)
  • A framed picture of Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, handsome and pensive, one finger on his cheek, hung opposite Ghosh's chair.†   (source)
  • Afterward, as he crossed the darkening courthouse square, pensively scuffing through dry mounds of un-raked leaves, Dewey wondered at his lack of elation.†   (source)
  • I glanced into the living room, which was empty except for Jennifer Anne, already dressed for the dinner, sitting on the couch reading a book entitled Making Plans, Making Dreams, which had a picture of a woman looking pensive on its cover.†   (source)
  • In his late afternoon classes he finds himself slipping into a pensiveness that, these days, makes him uncomfortable.†   (source)
  • "Mr. Stoddard is a mighty good man," agreed Johnnie with sudden pensiveness.†   (source)
  • 'I wish you'd put your uniform on instead of going around naked that way,' he confided pensively before he climbed back down again and hurried away.†   (source)
  • He was pensive, sad.†   (source)
  • "When will you leave?" asked Isabella, staring pensively into the fire.†   (source)
  • Bobby has sped back from Virginia and now steps into the Oval Office to find his older brother in a pensive mood.†   (source)
  • Hazel, however, returned and sat pensive at the lip of the hole, looking out at the silent, rippling veils of rain that drifted across and across the little valley between the two copses.†   (source)
  • I mimic the boy's pensive tone.†   (source)
  • Pensively she tried to brush away the crease between his brows.†   (source)
  • Pensive, he bit at the inside of his thumb.†   (source)
  • There's also a pensiveness that seems painful for you, yet you rarely give vent to the anger that pain must provoke.†   (source)
  • The fat man grew pensive.†   (source)
  • Hunter turned his head, to see his daughter looking pensively through the windshield.†   (source)
  • As he looked around, he was laughing one moment, pensive the next.†   (source)
  • As the major hardy knew what to think, he pulled a cigarette from his dull aluminum military cigarette case, offered one to Alessandro to no avail, lit his trench-lighter, and pensively stared at the ceiling of the bunker.†   (source)
  • For a moment she stayed very still, staring pensively at nothing.†   (source)
  • They would turn pensive.†   (source)
  • The Gem Fittich who had emerged from the chrysalis of the cheerful salesman was not merely harder edged and edgier; he also had peculiar eyes—eyes different from what they had been, full of not anger but an unnerving pensiveness.†   (source)
  • "If it's work on the Troy ..." the admiral said, looking pensive.†   (source)
  • He took a lengthy, pensive drag from his pipe.†   (source)
  • As I approached her, a pensive expression replaced the smile on her face.†   (source)
  • "Every goddam one of them," Mrs. Gervais hissed at the same time as she caught me staring rather pensively at her.†   (source)
  • Rapunzel-like role of a pensive girl somehow, magically, prisoner among the pines and salt fogs of Kinneret, looking for somebody to say hey, let down your hair.†   (source)
  • She was silent for a moment, her face pensive and lovely.†   (source)
  • "It's too bad," the bearded man said pensively.†   (source)
  • You're very pensive?†   (source)
  • He had never examined a fiddle at all, and when she began to play it she frightened and dismayed him by her almost insect-like motions, the pensive antennae of her arms, her mask of a countenance.†   (source)
  • I don't know," said Hermione, looking pensive.†   (source)
  • "Spectacles," he repeated pensively, as if the idea of spectacles had just occurred to him.†   (source)
  • Pensive and lonely, Eragon asked, "Where is Saphira?"†   (source)
  • Upstairs, when they returned, they found Mama sitting in the kitchen, alone and pensive.†   (source)
  • Dr. Fisch folded his hands on the desk and sat in a pensive silence for several long moments.†   (source)
  • Not surprisingly, she was pensive today.†   (source)
  • Today he'd been less impetuous, more pensive.†   (source)
  • Various bridges, various well-worn angels, grave and pensive.†   (source)
  • Hermann ran a hand pensively over his thinning hair.†   (source)
  • She stopped and looked up at the apartment building pensively.†   (source)
  • Arya tightened her arms around her legs, her gaze pensive.†   (source)
  • "Millennium and Milton Security," Clinton said pensively.†   (source)
  • She smiles a pensive, reminiscent smile.†   (source)
  • He counted to twenty-three before she came back, her face drawn and pensive.†   (source)
  • You're wrong, Alex," he said at last, his voice pensive, floating.†   (source)
  • He grew pensive, and I could read his mind.†   (source)
  • D'Anjou sipped his double brandy, his voice low, pensive.†   (source)
  • I can't put my finger on exactly what it is..." my mother said, looking pensive.†   (source)
  • Cedric looks on, pensively, wondering, Why is he telling me this?†   (source)
  • She is less pensive than Sarah, more stubborn.†   (source)
  • To his surprise, he sensed a similar strain of pensive melancholy from Saphira.†   (source)
  • The Soviet leader is uncharacteristically pensive.†   (source)
  • Orr asked with a pretense of pensive curiosity.†   (source)
  • Conklin paused again, and when he spoke his voice was pensive.†   (source)
  • Oromis leaned back in his chair, his angled face grave and pensive.†   (source)
  • She was staring at the wall, a strange pensive serenity having come over her.†   (source)
  • The retired Conklin studied Charles Casset's pensive sharp-featured face.†   (source)
  • The lady pasdar grew pensive and empathetic.†   (source)
  • Colonel Cathcart rubbed his cheek pensively.†   (source)
  • Whitney paused to study a shot of Elinor in her white dress, looking pensive.†   (source)
  • " 'Alpha, Bravo, Charlie ...Delta,' " said Bergeron pensively in English.†   (source)
  • "The Kubinka," said Jason, now pensive as he studied the map.†   (source)
  • 'A girl, Marchese?' said Luigi, scratching his face pensively.†   (source)
  • The lines in the middle-aged Lavier's face cracked with a brief pensive smile.†   (source)
  • "It's funny, isn't it?" said Conklin slowly, pensively.†   (source)
  • I continued to writhe inwardly, gazing at Sophie's pensive and downcast face.†   (source)
  • A variety of expressions traveled over her face-pensive, eager, wounded, sad, and businesslike.†   (source)
  • Masooma watched from her corner of the room with a pensive, helpless expression, as though she pitied her mother this predicament.†   (source)
  • He was linear, solemn, and had a pensive air and the sadness of a Saracen and a mournful glow on his face that was the color of autumn.†   (source)
  • Jose Arcadio Segundo was sitting on the edge of the cot, ready to go, more solemn and pensive than ever.†   (source)
  • There are nights when she has been woken by her husband's muffled screams, times they have ridden the subway together and the rhythm of the wheels on the tracks makes him suddenly pensive, aloof.†   (source)
  • On the sea terrace, sitting on his private ring, was a cockatoo from Malaya, with unbelievable white plumage and a pensive tranquillity that gave one much to think about: it was the most beautiful animal that Florentino Ariza had ever seen.†   (source)
  • For a time there was quiet, until Mr. Kinnear asked Nancy if the cat had got her tongue, and why was she so pensive.†   (source)
  • Next to him, I caught Mother watching me pensively, her face clouded over, but when our eyes met her features cleared quickly and she smiled—a stealthy, private smile—and I dug inward and willed myself to smile back.†   (source)
  • Aziza had turned into a calm, pensive little girl, with a demeanor that to Laila seemed beyond her six years.†   (source)
  • Weeks might pass without a sign, and then a night would come, when, lying nose to tail beneath the window in the kitchen corner, listening to the murmur of conversation and the slosh and clink of dishes being washed, she felt it in the house again and she whisked her tail across the baseboards in long, pensive strokes and silently collected her feet beneath her and waited.†   (source)
  • On many occasions he was pensive about the thought of his son fighting in Stalingrad, but he hoped that some of his luck was in the boy's blood.†   (source)
  • Arya pursed her lips pensively.†   (source)
  • At seven in the morning, when Colonel Gerineldo Marquez came to fetch him, in the company of a group of rebel officers, he found him more taciturn than ever, more pensive and solitary.†   (source)
  • Laila didn't remember him saying this before, this word indeed, and this pensive gesture, the fingers making a tent in his lap, the nodding, it was new too.†   (source)
  • Right now he's smiling, a pensive smile: he's considering his latest amour, with the plump wife of a minor civil servant.†   (source)
  • I picked a small bunch of yellow and pink snapdragons from the front garden and took them to the cemetery, to place them at the family tomb for the two pensive angels on their white cube: it would be something different for them, I thought.†   (source)
  • He was a tall guy with white hair pulled back in a ponytail, striking a pensive pose by a reflecting pond.†   (source)
  • 'I see,' said McAllister pensively.†   (source)
  • Richter, stirring hers pensively.†   (source)
  • "Pensive," says the statman.†   (source)
  • Conklin stared pensively at the surface of the table, absently gripping his cane, then raised his eyes.†   (source)
  • He looked at it pensively.†   (source)
  • There were a few more of Mallory as well, doing a full range of looks: pensive, dreamy, and, perhaps due to something Owen had just said, annoyed.†   (source)
  • I am perplexed, and nearly in a state, some moments giddy, some pensive, some nearly in tears, clothed in my wedding gown, a garment at once both splendid and lush, yet fetching (or so I hope).†   (source)
  • Mr. Hickock, between pensive hesitations, listed several: Dick was sulky and restless, he ran around with older men, drank and gambled.†   (source)
  • Yes'm, I do that," conceded Johnnie dutifully, those changeful eyes of hers full of pensive, denied desire, as they swept the dainty gowns of the women before her.†   (source)
  • Saint-Saens, piano works, gentle and pensive, a change of pace from the gorgeous torment of Bronzini's operas, the tabloid sensation that shatters teacups.†   (source)
  • She bit her lower lip pensively.†   (source)
  • Blomkvist nodded pensively.†   (source)
  • But I catch a glimpse of myself, without expecting it, in the smoked-mirror wall of the elevator as we go up, and I see for an instant what Josef sees: a slim woman with cloudy hair, pensive eyes in a thin white face.†   (source)
  • extending itself ever outward, the tone of agreement or treaty, the tone of repose, the sense of mollifying silence, the tone of hail and farewell, a word that carries the sunlit ardor of an object deep in drenching noon, the argument of binding touch, but it's only a sequence of pulses on a dullish screen and all it can do is make you pensive—a word that spreads a longing through the raw sprawl of the city and out across the dreaming bourns and orchards to the solitary hills.†   (source)
  • His mother seemed glum and pensive.†   (source)
  • He looks both ways, pensive.†   (source)
  • His heavy eyes pensive, he worked his makeshift toothpick around one of his fangs and then said, "We take logs, and we carve them with faces of the animals of the mountains, and these we bury upright by our houses so they will frighten away the spirits of the wild.†   (source)
  • With a pensive expression on his oblong, rather pale face, he allowed his gaze to settle on several of the high bushels filled with red plum tomatoes that stood in rows against each of the walls.†   (source)
  • They were in their mid-thirties and spoke French softly, rapidly, the woman glancing alternately at both men, alternately smiling and looking pensive.†   (source)
  • He was walking down a side aisle pensively glancing at the succession of icons and the higher majestic stained-glass windows.†   (source)
  • "Trade off," said Conklin pensively.†   (source)
  • The chairman of the Federal Trade Commission leaned back in the booth, his expression pensively disagreeable.†   (source)
  • She had the surface attributes of that precarious profession-striking features, a commanding presence, the sine qua non that forced both men and women to fall silent and pensively appraise her when she walked down a street or entered a room.†   (source)
  • Miss Theo pressed her cheeks with her palms and showed her pressed, pensive smile as she looked back over her shoulder.†   (source)
  • The gentle Haydn, murmurous with longing, filled the abandoned room nearby with its sweet, symmetrical, pensive cadences, adding to my feeling of some absolute void, and of irretrievable loss.†   (source)
  • It was not the old serenity, the pensiveness that was recollection.†   (source)
  • "No," she said, and in her sudden pensiveness she could have been mistaken for beautiful.†   (source)
  • The nose is straight, the mouth dainty, the expression conventionally soulful — the vapid pensiveness of a Magdalene, with the large eyes gazing at nothing.†   (source)
  • Bernard meanwhile lay pensive and wide-eyed in the dark.†   (source)
  • "If not better," added the philosopher pensively.†   (source)
  • "It is eighteen years since I have been after it," said the King pensively.†   (source)
  • The Savage winced; but Helmholtz, who was staring pensively at the floor, saw nothing.†   (source)
  • 'I don't even know what they are saying to her,' he thought, thinking I don't even know that what they are saying to her is something that men do not say to a passing child; believing, I do not know yet that in the instant of sleep the eyelid closing prisons within the eye's self her face demure, pensive; tragic, sad, and young; waiting, colored with all the vague and formless magic of young desire.†   (source)
  • There's an old, singular, beautiful Netherlands picture I once saw in an Italian gallery, of a wise old man walking in empty fields, pensive, while a thief behind cuts the string of his purse.†   (source)
  • There was in his eyes a pensive, brooding amusement, as of a man who had been long confronted and tantalized by a riddle whose answer seemed always just on the verge of escaping him, but prodding him irresistibly on to seek its solution.†   (source)
  • He let a paper knife hang between two fingers and tapped it pensively against the edge of a desk calendar.†   (source)
  • Watching him, Anne stood there with her head bowed forward a little, almost pensively, and her shoulders hunched and her arms crossed over her insignificant breasts, hugging herself as though she were just about to shiver, and her knees tight together and slightly bent.†   (source)
  • But maybe I was wrong in that surmise, and maybe I could not have hurried the massive deliberation of that current in which we were caught and suspended, or hurried Anne Stanton's pensive and scholarly assimilation of each minute variation which had to be slowly absorbed into the body of our experience before another could be permitted.†   (source)
  • Or on the gallery she would be laughing and jabbering with all the others while the phonograph worked away, and then I would catch sight of her suddenly still and pensive, just for a moment it might be, with her eyes fixed off beyond the gallery and the yard, and again, just for that moment, it would be as though Adam and the others weren't there.†   (source)
  • There was a faint bluish furrow down each side of his nose, and this led up to the eye-sockets, and surrounded them in a pensive shade.†   (source)
  • And little girls sit on hassocks and lean their cheeks pensively against the dear father's knee while his hand toys with the silken locks and his voice reads beautiful words.†   (source)
  • That was Anne Stanton and it was Sunday and she was going to church to sit still as a mouse and rub her tonguetip pensively at the place where she had just lost the tooth.†   (source)
  • "She's not the only idiot in this business," said Moncharmin pensively.†   (source)
  • The glow was warm on her handsome, pensive face as she kneeled there like a devotee.†   (source)
  • "'Leonora,'" he read, "'sat pensive and alone.†   (source)
  • She walked pensively along an abandoned road.†   (source)
  • This he did by raising his hand vaguely and pensively changing the angle of position of his hat.†   (source)
  • Mrs. Lynde laughed comfortably over her mild joke, but Anne remained pensive.†   (source)
  • Tess saw her three chamber-mates in a row against the wall, pensively inclining their heads.†   (source)
  • She was too wrought up to care to go down to eat, too pensive to do aught but rock and sing.†   (source)
  • I left him drumming pensively on his desk and muttering, "Es ist ein' Idee.†   (source)
  • Tom was standing in the centre of the room, pensively relighting a cigar-stub.†   (source)
  • There she remained—sad, pensive, a worshipper.†   (source)
  • "She's rather old for that," said Margaret pensively.†   (source)
  • Her face soon began a pensive smile, which lasted till, having descended a little way, he met her.†   (source)
  • "Why should you care so much for Christminster?" she said pensively.†   (source)
  • Her face beneath was still and pensive, golden-brown and ruddy.†   (source)
  • As I walked home in a pensive mood, my vanity got the better of my pity.†   (source)
  • "Yet you're not a lady correspondent," said Henrietta pensively.†   (source)
  • There was a brief silence; the abbe rose and paced up and down pensively, and then resumed his seat.†   (source)
  • Seryozha looked pensively at the lamp, touched the lamp-shade with his finger, and heaved a sigh.†   (source)
  • But now Thou hast seen these "free" men,' the old man adds suddenly, with a pensive smile.†   (source)
  • With a sad and pensive air, he retraced his steps homewards.†   (source)
  • His visit to M. de Treville being paid, the pensive d'Artagnan took the longest way homeward.†   (source)
  • I presume," she said, pensively, "that I've had greater trials than ever she had.†   (source)
  • He puckered his face, screwed up his eyes, and pensively swayed his head.†   (source)
  • "We shall see," replied Aouda, becoming suddenly pensive.†   (source)
  • Mahiette shook her head with a pensive air.†   (source)
  • Ned, getting sentimental, warbled a serenade with the pensive refrain... Alone, alone, ah!†   (source)
  • He remained motionless and pensive, his eyes fixed on the gloomy aperture that was open at his feet.†   (source)
  • All three looked at each other, and all three smiled — a dreary, pensive smile enough.†   (source)
  • This was no infidelity to Cosette; it was a gentle and pensive farewell to an unhappy soul.†   (source)
  • "Yes," Kitty answered, a pensive smile in her eyes.†   (source)
  • He felt as if suddenly shaken out of a pensive dream and found it impossible to go to sleep again.†   (source)
  • Then he remained pensive for three days, and uttered not a word.†   (source)
  • You understand what I mean?" she said, lifting her fine pensive eyes.†   (source)
  • She became pensive and silent once more.†   (source)
▲ show less (of above)