Literary notes about rumbling (AI summary)
Writers employ "rumbling" to evoke a rich tapestry of sound that imbues a scene with atmosphere and underlying tension. In some passages it describes the deep, mechanical throb of machinery and transportation—like a tram-car rounding a bend [1] or the rolling sound of workhouses and railroads at a distance [2], [3]—while in others it paints the natural world in vivid, foreboding hues, as in the approach of storm clouds or the distant echo of thunder [4], [5], [6]. The term also captures the internal, almost visceral sensations of characters, reflecting moods or physical states from the low growl of an animal [7] to the internal stirrings of hunger or despair [8], [9]. In each use, "rumbling" serves to create an immersive auditory landscape that heightens the readers' sensory experience.
- But as she dreamed of it, she heard the tram-car grinding round a bend, rumbling dully, she saw it draw into sight, and hum nearer.
— from The Rainbow by D. H. Lawrence - The great mills were getting under way—one could hear a vast stirring, a rolling and rumbling and hammering.
— from The Jungle by Upton Sinclair - It was now dark; but a rumbling of wheels was audible.
— from Jane Eyre: An Autobiography by Charlotte Brontë - Then the black clouds, rumbling loudly, and covering the heavens and the cardinal points, ceaselessly rained during day and night.
— from The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 - A tempest, which was only rumbling in the distance as yet, was floating on the surface of this crowd.
— from Notre-Dame de Paris by Victor Hugo - Immense glaciers approached the road; we heard the rumbling thunder of the falling avalanche, and marked the smoke of its passage.
— from Frankenstein; Or, The Modern Prometheus by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley - The she-wolf stood over against her cub, facing the men, with bristling hair, a snarl rumbling deep in her throat.
— from White Fang by Jack London - Thus he praised himself, found joy in himself, listened curiously to his stomach, which was rumbling with hunger.
— from Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse - In a daze he walked on, up the path by the bank, upriver, listened to the current, listened to the rumbling hunger in his body.
— from Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse
