What is "hemmed"

Usage examples of "hemmed".

Now on the summit of the cliffs he looked down into the circular valley and wondered what plague, war or superstition had driven the members of that ancient race forth from their stronghold to mingle with and be absorbed by the tribes that hemmed them in.

The press of men hemmed her in, dark, darting clansmen, most of them afoot, some on wiry, strong hill ponies.

To the last moment he had feared a trap, but this was the fresh air before him, the dim air of the ravine he knew, hemmed in with rock on both sides between the church and the castle.

Owen drew breath and plunged back to the little group, still hemmed into a few yards of the pathway.

For a few glorious hours she'd forgotten how hemmed in she was by this tor­tuous maze of deception.

She stretched, lifting her arms to better frame her heavy breasts with their dark brown nipples, and eyed him with a kittenish sort of sensuality that made him feel hemmed in.

It was the domesticity that was irritating him, the feeling of being hemmed in by rules.

She felt hemmed in, though she had a corner apartment and neighbors on only one side.

He set her on the ground in front of him, hemmed in by the truck, the open door, and his body.

The Alban soldiery listened to these words with conflicting feelings, but unarmed as they were and hemmed in by armed men, a common fear kept them silent.

Answering cheers arose right and left, from the Colline and the Naevian gates and the pillagers, hemmed in, unequal to the fight, and with every way of escape blocked, were cut to pieces.

Thus the Etruscans, now all but victorious, were hemmed in and cut to pieces.

As the Etruscans closed round them, they were hemmed by a continuous ring of men, and the more the enemy pressed upon them, the less the space in which they were forced to form their ever-narrowing square.

They were now hemmed in, and would, to a man, have paid the penalty for renewing the war, had not a Volscian, Vettius Messius, a man more distinguished by his exploits than by his pedigree, remonstrated loudly with his comrades, who were being rolled up into a helpless mass.

When the two bodies in two distinct attacks had forced the Etruscans back both in front and rear and hemmed them in, so that there was no way of escape either to their camp or to the hills - for in that direction the fresh enemy had intercepted them - and the horses, with their reins loose, were carrying their riders about in all directions, most of the Veientines made a wild rush for the Tiber.