Narrow passage

Usage examples of defile.

Harry lay at the end of a narrow defile, thirty feet wide at the most at its base, overlooked on both sides by towering cliffs and by Afridi, each commanding a wide field of fire through which a rescuing force would need to pass.

Advancing with a steady and rapid course, he passed, without difficulty, the defiles of the Apennine, received into his party the troops and ambassadors sent to retard his progress, and made a short halt at Interamnia, about seventy miles from Rome.

IX He felt the wild beast in him betweenwhiles So masterfully rude, that he would grieve To see the helpless delicate thing receive His guardianship through certain dark defiles.

The Bogue varied in width from three miles at its broadest to less than a mile at some places, and steep hills on either side fell to the water in a natural defile.

He does not need to try perilous experiments with his own soul in order to make sure that lust defiles, that avarice hardens, that frivolity empties, that selfishness cankers the heart.

He thought of Bruno, who that morning had defiled the Greek temple with his opinion of eurythmics, and Frank, who was on his fifth psychoanalyst and had seizures in unsuitable places when his will was crossed.

Self-love is the foulest of all foul feeders, and will defile that it may devour.

You did not go to the Harpies and defile their gifts to you by exposing them to these unfitting sentiments pressed upon your unwilling minds.

Katla emerged from the twisting defile out into the heathland at the foot of the cliff, it was already too late.

Both roads traversed the outer flanks of the Alban Hills, but the Via Latina did so through a defile which chopped a gap in the eastern escarpment of the ridge and allowed the road to travel onward to Rome in the flatter space between this high ground and the Alban Mount itself.

Thinking that the only route open to the Samnites if they planned to attack Rome was the Via Appia, Sulla remained in his defile on the Via Latina and kept watch, sure he could not be taken by surprise.

An exceptionally saintly lacquered lohan was admiring the diamond-encrusted imperial sceptre that the Ancestress had placed at his feet, and apparently he feared that the other funeral gifts might be defiled by demons.

Thrace, and wind through the defiles, and over the mountains of Macedonia, coast the clear waves of the Peneus, cross the Larissean plain, pass the straits of Thermopylae, and ascending in succession Oeta and Parnassus, descend to the fertile plain of Athens.

Vaguely he seemed to understand that, in that great new land of the West, in the open-air, healthy life of the ranches, where the conditions of earning a livelihood were of the easiest, refinement among the younger women was easily to be found--not the refinement of education, nor culture, but the natural, intuitive refinement of the woman, not as yet defiled and crushed out by the sordid, strenuous life-struggle of overpopulated districts.

It was through this defile that the massive Indian force that had been assembling in secret in the city of Srinagar planned to roll.