TREMULOUS

Pronunciation (US): (GB):

I. (adjective)

Sense 1

Meaning:

(of the voice) quivering as from weakness or fear

Example:

spoke timidly in a tremulous voice

Synonyms:

quavering; tremulous

Classified under:

Adjectives

Similar:

unsteady (subject to change or variation)

Credits

Context examples:

Emma felt that her own note had deserved something better; but it was impossible to quarrel with words, whose tremulous inequality shewed indisposition so plainly, and she thought only of how she might best counteract this unwillingness to be seen or assisted.

(Emma, by Jane Austen)

I looked towards its completion with a tremulous and eager hope, which I dared not trust myself to question but which was intermixed with obscure forebodings of evil that made my heart sicken in my bosom.

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)

For, though shy, he did not seem reserved; it had rather the appearance of feelings glad to burst their usual restraints; and having talked of poetry, the richness of the present age, and gone through a brief comparison of opinion as to the first-rate poets, trying to ascertain whether Marmion or The Lady of the Lake were to be preferred, and how ranked the Giaour and The Bride of Abydos; and moreover, how the Giaour was to be pronounced, he showed himself so intimately acquainted with all the tenderest songs of the one poet, and all the impassioned descriptions of hopeless agony of the other; he repeated, with such tremulous feeling, the various lines which imaged a broken heart, or a mind destroyed by wretchedness, and looked so entirely as if he meant to be understood, that she ventured to hope he did not always read only poetry, and to say, that she thought it was the misfortune of poetry to be seldom safely enjoyed by those who enjoyed it completely; and that the strong feelings which alone could estimate it truly were the very feelings which ought to taste it but sparingly.

(Persuasion, by Jane Austen)

What else could that expression have meant—that dancing, tremulous light, and a something more which words could not describe.

(The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)

After vainly waiting for him to speak about it, herself still tremulous and stirred by what she had just seen and heard, she had asked the question.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

I am afraid I was in a tremulous state for a minute or so, though I did my best to disguise it.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

"Who comes?" he queried in a thin, tremulous voice.

(Love of Life and Other Stories, by Jack London)

Long, glinting dragonflies shot across the path, or hung tremulous with gauzy wings and gleaming bodies.

(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

He went in with a sounding plunge; the red cap came off and remained floating on the surface; and as soon as the splash subsided, I could see him and Israel lying side by side, both wavering with the tremulous movement of the water.

(Treasure Island, by Robert Louis Stevenson)