What is "contortionist"

Usage examples of "contortionist".

Then she would have to turn her attention to the five sturdy spindles in the back of the chair to free the upper chain, and not even a carnival contortionist born with rubber bones could get at them with a saw while pinioned as Chyna was.

Tents, booths, collapsible shops, the open rings of combat and the closed enclaves of sensory titivation, jugglers, tumblers, contortionists, men who promised eternal happiness, and harpies who roved, hard-eyed and falsely charming, offering pleasure to those who had come to join in the fun.

Thank goodness her hair was short, for it took a contortionist to wash it, but she did manage and then collapsed back against the copper tub.

The Prince worked at it feverishly from the outside, but it took a contortionist manoeuvre from me and a fierce stamp from my heel to spring it open : the thought of sparks from the scraping metal was a vivid horror, as I could now hear as well as scarcely breathe from the flood of escaping petrol.

Saint, and heard the contortionist effects blasphemously disentangling themselves as he closed the door behind him.

The truck had moved, so I no longer had to sit like a contortionist to keep the trigger.

The minstrels played and sang, contortionists and tumblers went through their antics, the guests danced and sang carols, but Beran kept apart until well into the day.

Several men commiserated over the fickleness of women-at least they did when they there were no women around-and some of the unmarried women, contortionists and acrobats and seamstresses, began eyeing him much too warmly.

Gerdo was one of the contortionists, and if he'd spoken a dozen words to Liam in all the time they'd been in Hardorn, Darkwind, at least, didn't know about it.

Parvati gave a final pitiable little yelp and out he popped, while all over India policemen were arresting people, all opposition leaders except members of the pro‑Moscow Communists, and also schoolteachers lawyers poets newspapermen trade‑unionists, in fact anyone who had ever made the mistake of sneezing during the Madam's speeches, and when the three contortionists had washed the baby and wrapped it in an old sari and brought it out for its father to see, at exactly the same moment, the word Emergency was being heard for the first time, and suspension‑of‑civil rights, and censorship‑of‑the‑press, and armoured‑units‑on‑special‑alert, and arrest‑of‑subversive‑elements.

Adria, a slim woman holding a flowered green robe around her, came running up in bare feet and vanished into the yellow wagon, where the other four contortionists lived.

He had heard some of the contortionists joking about how the Taraboner serving girl was wearing the Tairen thief-catcher out till he could barely walk.

Juilin darted back the way he had come at a run, and Mat ran after him, along the wide main street of the show where noisy gawking crowds were watching the four bare-chested Chavana brothers stand on one another’s shoul­ders, and contortionists in filmy trousers and glittering vests sit on their own heads, and a slack-rope walker in spangled blue breeches climbing a long wooden ladder to begin her performance.

Gerdo was one of the contortionists, and if he’d spoken a dozen words to Liam in all the time they’d been in Hardorn, Darkwind, at least, didn’t know about it.

Stores, dealerships, galleries struggled to satisfy the skyrocketing demand for ever more recherche produce: limited-edition olive oils, three-hundred-dollar corkscrews, customized Humvees, the latest anti-virus software, escort services featuring contortionists and twins, video installations, outsider art, featherlight shawls made from the chin-fluff of extinct mountain goats.