Literary notes about billow (AI summary)
In literary works, "billow" is used to evoke a sense of fluid, rolling movement that often carries connotations of both natural force and gentle undulation. Writers apply the term to describe expansive, surging waves ([1], [2], [3]) that give life to tumultuous seas, as well as to depict the graceful, sweeping motion of elements like flame, smoke, or even cloth ([4], [5], [6]). Beyond its literal meaning, the word further enriches imagery by representing the ebb and flow of emotions or fate, suggesting variations in intensity—from the soft, caressing forms to the overwhelming power of nature itself ([7], [8]).
- Let the Atlantic billow heave its high and everlasting barrier between their country and ours.
— from Discussion on American Slavery by Robert J. (Robert Jefferson) Breckinridge - As the ship fell off into the trough of the sea when her sails rent, a foaming billow came roaring up, and striking her, made a clean breach over us.
— from A Voyage round the WorldA book for boys by William Henry Giles Kingston - I never saw so huge a billow, sir, As toss’d it upon shore.
— from The Complete Works of William Shakespeare by William Shakespeare - There came an upheaval, accompanied by a billow of flame and dense black smoke that rose in a cloud.
— from The Boy Aviators with the Air Raiders: A Story of the Great World War by John Henry Goldfrap - In a single loose, full billow it swept away from her forehead, and then flowed into a half-a-thousand rippling, crinkling, capricious undulations.
— from The Wit and Humor of America, Volume X (of X) - Gray mist above, full of falling rain; gray, wrathful waters underneath, foaming and bursting as billow broke upon billow.
— from The Seaboard Parish Volume 3 by George MacDonald - For we rise and fall on thy Bosom's Billow Whose heaving Swell is our Home Divine.
— from A Digit of the Moon: A Hindoo Love Story by F. W. (Francis William) Bain - Thus is the soul tossed about from life to life, from billow to billow in the great ocean of transmigration.
— from Evolution and Ethics, and Other Essays by Thomas Henry Huxley
