Looking for words and phrases to enrich poetry and creative writing? This classic collection from Grenville Kleiser provides plenty of expressive phrases.
You can review these lists when you seek extra power in written literary works. You can also use them to develop your vocabulary. First, see if you can determine meanings of each word you don't know by studying the context of the phrase that contains the unknown word. Then, confirm your impressions by looking up and learning each unfamiliar word.
I
I capitulated by inadvertence
I cut my reflections adrift
I felt a qualm of apprehension
I suffered agonies of shyness
I took the good day from the hands of God as a perfect gift
I was in a somber mood
I was overshadowed by a deep boding
I was piqued
I yielded to the ingratiating mood of the day
Ill-bred insolence was his only weapon
Ill-dissimulated fits of ambition
Imbued with a vernal freshness
Immense and careless prodigality
Immense objects which dwarf us
Immersed in secret schemes
Immured in a trivial round of duty
Impassioned and earnest language
Impatient and authoritative tones
Impervious to the lessons of experience
Implying an immense melancholy
Imprisoned within an enchanted circle
In a deprecating tone of apology
In a flash of revelation
In a gale of teasing merriment
In a misery of annoyance and mortification
In a musing ecstasy of contemplation
In a sky stained with purple, the moon slowly rose
In a spirit of indulgent irony
In a strain of exaggerated gallantry
In a tone of after-dinner perfunctoriness
In a tone of musing surprise
In a tumult of self-approval and towering exultation
In a vague and fragmentary way
In a wise, superior, slightly scornful manner
In accents of menace and wrath
In its whole unwieldy compass
In moments of swift and momentous decision
In quest of something to amuse
In requital for various acts of rudeness
In the air was the tang of spring
In the dusky path of a dream
In the face of smarting disillusions
In the flush and heyday of youth and gaiety and loveliness
In the heyday of friendship
In the mild and mellow maturity of age
In the perpetual presence of everlasting verities
In this breathless chase of pleasure
In this chastened mood I left him
Incapable of initiative or boldness
Inconceivable perversion of reasoning
Indolently handsome eyes
Indulge in pleasing discursiveness
Ineffable sensation of irritability
Infantile insensibility to the solemnity of his bereavement
Infantine simplicity and lavish waste
Innumerable starlings clove the air
Insensible to its subtle influence
Inspired by the immortal flame of youth
Intangible and indescribable essence
Intense love of excitement and adventure
Intimations of unpenetrated mysteries
Into her eyes had come a hostile challenge
Into the purple sea the orange hues of heaven sunk silently
Into the very vestibule of death
Involuntarily she sighed
Involuntary awkwardness and reserve
Involved in a labyrinth of perplexities
It came to him with a stab of enlightenment
It elicited a remarkably clear and coherent statement
It is a flight beyond the reach of human magnanimity
It is a thing infinitely subtle
It is not every wind that can blow you from your anchorage
It lends no dazzling tints to fancy
It moved me to a strange exhilaration
It parted to a liquid horizon and showed the gray rim of the sea
It proved a bitter disillusion
It seemed intolerably tragic
It seemed to exhale a silent and calm authority
It was a breathless night of suspense
It was a desolating vision
It was a night of little ease to his toiling mind
It was a night of stupefying surprises
It was all infinitely soft and refreshing to the eye
It was an evening of great silences and spaces, wholly tranquil
It was sheer, exuberant, instinctive, unreasoning, careless joy
It was the ecstasy and festival of summer
It was torture of the most exquisite kind
J
Jealousies and animosities that pricked their sluggish blood to tingling
Joy rioted in his large dark eyes
Judging without waiting to ponder over bulky tomes
K
Kind of unscrupulous contempt for gravity
Kiss-provoking lips
L
Laden with the poignant scent of the garden honeysuckle
Language of excessive flattery and adulation
Lapped in soft music of adulation
Lapse into pathos and absurdity
Large, dark, luminous eyes that behold everything about them
Latent vein of whimsical humor
Lead to the strangest aberrations
Leaping from lambent flame into eager and passionate fire
Leave to the imagination the endless vista of possibilities
Life flowed in its accustomed stream
Lights and shadows of reviving memory crossed her face
Lionized by fashionable society
Long intertangled lines of silver streamlets
Lost in a delirious wonder
Lost in irritable reflection
Love hovered in her gaze
Ludicrous attempts of clumsy playfulness and tawdry eloquence
Luke-warm assurance of continued love
Lulled by dreamy musings
Luminous with great thoughts
Go back to the Main Page of Expressive Phrases... or ... Go to the Next Page: Expressive Phrases, Page 5 (M-Q).
Editor's note: This section of EnhanceMyVocabulary.com is excerpted and adapted from Project Gutenberg's Fifteen Thousand Useful Phrases, by Grenville Kleiser.
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