Off-key

Usage examples of discordant.

The noise of the iron-teethed rollers crunching the lumps of coal, and the bang and rattle of ponderous machinery were never before so loud and discordant, and the black streams moving down their narrow channels never passed beneath these dizzy boys in monotony quite so dull and ceaseless as they were passing this day.

She felt his lips smile behind her hand, and to the discordant tunes of the chivaree filling the dark, they crept back into their bedroom to make their own music in the night.

The voices of these desert beasts brought home to Domini with an intimacy not felt by her before the exquisite remoteness of their situation, and the shrill, discordant noise, rising and falling with a sort of melancholy and sneering mirth, mingled with bitterness, was like a delicate music in her ears.

The distinctive shield of white feathers bound into her hair shook as if in response to her anger, and her words unleashed the others, a chorus of discordant views, too rapid an exchange for Liath to see immediately which one spoke what words.

It was more as as if one or two whole instruments were micrometrically off key, playing perfectly consistently as units and yet infinitesi-mally out of tune, so that the entire performance was elusively discordant.

His task is to rid himse of ego so that consciousness, once its usual discordant mental content dumped out of it through ritual prayer and meditation, may experience nonself as a living formlessness and emptiness into which God may come, if it please Him to come.

From far away, across many fields and scattered ploughlands, came the merry peal of bells, odd and discordant, in the morning air.

The possums, soft, furry squirrel-like animals with round, startled eyes and incongruously discordant voices, seemed determined to harvest the bark and leaves of the young trees without ever allowing them the chance to come to fruition.

Other times, discordant sounds rose, seemingly from the dust and rubble itself, squeals of entropy and when they fell away the silence seemed even deeper.

The discordant tones of the voices and instruments drew nearer, and now droning songs mingled with the sound of the tambourines and cymbals.

He thought to sing, to try to use music to quiet himself as Sadye often did, but even as he started, his senses became overwhelmed by a different kind of tune, the discordant tune that Sadye had played to bring the weretiger out.

He revolved it as a chant: with anon and anon involuntarily a discordant animadversion on Lady Busshe.

From the tent came the thin, discordant voices of the mourners as they joined in an a cappella hymn.

The discordant noise of the two or three instruments which formed the orchestra struck gloom to the soul and added to the horrors of the cavern.

These poor wretches were stunted in their growth, their hideous faces bedaubed with white paint, their skins filthy and greasy, their hair entangled, their voices discordant, and their gestures violent.