What is "gnawing"

Usage examples of "gnawing".

Viv had never stopped sucking, even years after she ran off with Ooze, television in one hand, fifth of scotch in the other, leaving Frank with a gnawing hunger that would consume him like a slow fire and would not be satisfied by pizza, and he would retire out of boredom and curiosity to a Nursing Camp with a TV set, a cybersex unit and a Hollywood radiator, until one day when he would escape and journey through furrowed tunnels to the foul nightmare worlds of his imagination realized and manifested, to the uncharted lands beneath the shopping malls, and he would work his way back to thls place, the here and now, wherever that might be, and he would die, in a room filled with hyperactive children and thinking appliances with the cold taste of rubberish pizza still on his lips.

I thought him a very fine actor indeed, but now I realize that he was of the line that descended from Irving, in which descent all the beauty and diablerie of that great player had been lost, and only the mannerisms -- grunting, eye-flashing, and gnawing the nether lip -- remained.

King Domas had given his promise, we were still gnawing on that doubtful coin to test its worth.

He dipped doughy bread into it regularly and sucked at the resulting mess, chewing but not biting off, gnawing and worrying at the saliva-fouled bread that dripped wan yellow onto his desk.

Ritz in deepest dejection, for he already saw himself sitting alone in the evening thinking and thinking and gnawing on his slate pencil, while Sally and Edi could pursue their merry entertainments.

He made such a noise gnawing it that Ern felt sure it could be heard for miles around!

I pushed a stool up to the kitchen window, grabbed a big chunk of dry bread and the pot of plum butter, pushed the curtains to left and right, dipped the bread into the plum butter, and was already gnawing and tugging when Tulla crawled out of the kennel.

The gnawing insatiety kept her awake, even though she could feel the new stone working on the foliage she had consumed that day and even though the buzzing of the day insects had ceased, indicating that night was at hand.

Jake had been huddled by the ruins of the tiny fire, the jawbone across his knees, gnawing disconsolately on the bones of the rabbit.

His eyes were as flat and hard as Kien remembered them, though they had an even greater bleakness, as if a major new worry was gnawing at him.

I am, I think, awake enough to realize that Kier Gray has succumbed to that gnawing disease of dictators of all ages, the persecution complex.

Even as he stood there, he could feel her clutching him loverlike from behind, her talons sinking into his shoulders and her razor teeth gnawing at his neck.

He was gnawing, grinding his teeth on the hangnail, then the nail itself, the base of the nail, the pale arc of quarter moon, the lunula, and there was something awful and atavistic in the scene, Chin unborn, curled in a membranous sac, a scary little geek-headed humanoid, sucking his scalloped hands.

Indeed, it had come to him, like a mawworm gnawing away at his insides, that she had been taking the precaution of removing Philippe to a place of safety before she herself set off knowingly into danger.

And then it came to him, insidiously, like a mawworm gnawing away at his pat assumptions.