"aatra" hidden in books

and across the road and

And all about him—in the rooms below, in the houses on each side and across the road, and behind in the Park Terraces and in the hundred other streets of that part of Marylebone, and the Westbourne Park district and St. Pancras, and westward and northward in Kilburn and St. John’s Wood and Hampstead, and eastward in Shoreditch and Highbury and Haggerston and Hoxton, and, indeed, through all the vastness of London from Ealing to East Ham—people were rubbing their eyes, and opening windows to stare out and ask aimless questions, dressing hastily as the first breath of the coming storm of Fear blew through the streets.
— from The War of the Worlds by H. G. (Herbert George) Wells

Arethusa and the river Alpheus

Bochart tells us that the story of the fountain Arethusa and the river Alpheus, her lover, who traversed so many countries in pursuit of her, has no other foundation than an equivocal expression in the language of the first inhabitants of Sicily.
— from The Metamorphoses of Ovid, Books I-VII by Ovid

and amongst the rest apples

Laurentius approves of many fruits, in his Tract of Melancholy, which others disallow, and amongst the rest apples, which some likewise commend, sweetings, pearmains, pippins, as good against melancholy; but to him that is any way inclined to, or touched with this malady,
— from The Anatomy of Melancholy by Robert Burton

astonishment at the rubbish and

At first he nearly lost his eyes in astonishment at the rubbish and mockery brought forward to represent the beautiful; but he kept his eyes, and soon found full employment for them.
— from Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen by H. C. (Hans Christian) Andersen

Along all the roads also

Along all the roads also vast numbers of dead bodies lay in heaps, and even many of those that were so zealous in deserting at length chose rather to perish within the city; for the hopes of burial made death in their own city appear of the two less terrible to them.
— from The Wars of the Jews; Or, The History of the Destruction of Jerusalem by Flavius Josephus

at another time raise an

Bolgolam, the admiral, could not preserve his temper, but, rising up in fury, said, he wondered how the secretary durst presume to give his opinion for preserving the life of a traitor; that the services you had performed were, by all true reasons of state, the great aggravation of your crimes; that you, who were able to extinguish the fire by discharge of urine in her majesty’s apartment (which he mentioned with horror), might, at another time, raise an inundation by the same means, to drown the whole palace; and the same strength which enabled you to bring over the enemy’s fleet, might serve, upon the first discontent, to carry it back; that he had good reasons to think you were a Big-endian in your heart; and, as treason begins in the heart, before it appears in overt-acts, so he accused you as a traitor on that account, and therefore insisted you should be put to death.
— from Gulliver's Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World by Jonathan Swift

an author there results a

These, by some occult process of nature, are penetrated and suffused with various degrees of the bird's intellectual energies and emotional character, so that when inked and drawn mechanically across paper by a person called an "author," there results a very fair and accurate transcript of the fowl's thought and feeling.
— from The Devil's Dictionary by Ambrose Bierce

and amongst the rest a

In Ravenna, a very ancient city of Romagna, there were aforetime many noblemen and gentlemen, and amongst the rest a young man called Nastagio degli Onesti, who had, by the death of his father and an uncle of his, been left rich beyond all estimation and who, as it happeneth often with young men, being without a wife, fell in love with a daughter of Messer Paolo Traversari, a young lady of much greater family than his own, hoping by his fashions to bring her to love him in return.
— from The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio by Giovanni Boccaccio

also and the roadside alehouse

Not only was John Lawe's of the Dragon full, but the Chequers, and the Swan also, and the roadside alehouse to boot.
— from The Lancashire Witches: A Romance of Pendle Forest by William Harrison Ainsworth

and a thousand respectively and

They were familiar with the use of numbers, their language possessing the words signifying ten, a hundred, and a thousand respectively, and, like that of the Romans, stopping at that number.
— from Spanish and Portuguese South America during the Colonial Period; Vol. 1 of 2 by Robert Grant Watson

and afterwards to return and

When Bonaparte's bell rung it was usually for the purpose of making some inquiry of me respecting a paper, a name, a date, or some matter of that sort; and then Landoire had to pass through the cabinet and salon to answer the bell and afterwards to return and to tell me I was wanted.
— from Complete Project Gutenberg Collection of Memoirs of Napoleon by Various

and all the reasons against

We know now, if we know anything, that all the reasons for doing right, and all the reasons against doing wrong, are here in this world.
— from The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Complete Contents Dresden Edition—Twelve Volumes by Robert Green Ingersoll

as a typical recessive after

28 Chart showing descent of feeble-mindedness as a typical recessive (after Goddard).
— from Being Well-Born: An Introduction to Eugenics by Michael F. (Michael Frederic) Guyer

and as they receive a

And for the nobility, they come to court, and pay deference and respect, according as they have any matters to do, and as they receive a kindly countenance; but that he is at no pains to gain them, and make himself beloved by them, having gone so far as to prohibit these noblemen to enter his room, whom she had first appointed to be about his person.
— from Life of Mary Queen of Scots, Volume 1 (of 2) by Henry Glassford Bell

and as they rode along

But the lads were in the best of spirits and as they rode along they sang and cracked jokes to their hearts’ content.
— from The Rover Boys Down East; or, The Struggle for the Stanhope Fortune by Edward Stratemeyer

again and then rising a

again and again and again; and then rising a little higher, and with an oath that I leave out: “Fetch aft the rum, Darby!”
— from Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson

already across the river and

But when they had come rather close, they met the enemy already across the river, and not at all willingly they engaged with some of them.
— from Procopius History of the Wars, Books V. and VI. by Procopius

amid all the rush and

He spent the day at his flour mill down the river road and in the evenings read his Bible and his weekly paper undisturbed and happy amid all the rush and din.
— from Duncan Polite, the Watchman of Glenoro by Mary Esther Miller MacGregor

This tab, called Hiding in Plain Sight, shows you passages from notable books where your word is accidentally (or perhaps deliberately?) spelled out by the first letters of consecutive words. Why would you care to know such a thing? It's not entirely clear to us, either, but it's fun to explore! What's the longest hidden word you can find? Where is your name hiding?

Color thesaurus

Literary notes

Word games