Citations:wall

English citations of wall

			1678		1843
ME «	15th c.	16th c.	17th c.	18th c.	19th c.	20th c.	21st c.

• 1678 — John Bunyan. The Pilgrim's Progress.

  So he commanded his man to light the candle, and bid Christian follow him: so he had him into a private room, and bid his man open a door; the which when he had done, Christian saw the picture of a very grave person hang up against the wall; and this was the fashion of it.

  Then I saw in my dream that the Interpreter took Christian by the hand, and led him into a place where was a fire burning against a wall, and one standing by it, always casting much water upon it, to quench it; yet did the fire burn higher and hotter.

  So he had him about to the backside of the wall, where he saw a man with a vessel of oil in his hand, of the which he did also continually cast, but secretly, into the fire.

• 1843 — Charles Dickens. A Christmas Carol.

  The ancient tower of a church, whose gruff old bell was always peeping slily down at Scrooge out of a Gothic window in the wall, became invisible, and struck the hours and quarters in the clouds, with tremulous vibrations afterwards as if its teeth were chattering in its frozen head up there.

  You may talk vaguely about driving a coach-and-six up a good old flight of stairs, or through a bad young Act of Parliament; but I mean to say you might have got a hearse up that staircase, and taken it broadwise, with the splinter-bar towards the wall and the door towards the balustrades: and done it easy.

  Nobody under the bed; nobody in the closet; nobody in his dressing-gown, which was hanging up in a suspicious attitude against the wall.

Aging sense

• 1996 December 27, “The Definitive Answer to "Why Nice Guys Finish Last"”, in alt.romance‎^[1] (Usenet):

  Depreciation of assets happens. Prepare yourself
  Marla. Get ready for the wall.

• 2001 February 2, “what a drag it is getting old”, in soc.singles‎^[2] (Usenet):

  At what age would you peg the
  'wall' to be for men, on or thereabouts?

• 2001 June 19, “the laws of biomechanics”, in soc.singles‎^[3] (Usenet):

  I have never had a problem getting the attention of men. I'm 44
  and there's no wall staring me in the face

• 2002 January 22, “towards a useful smv metric”, in soc.singles‎^[4] (Usenet):

  That was only six
  years later and Natasha is not near the wall yet

• 2015 July 20, “catcalls are bad”, in rec.sport.football.college‎^[5] (Usenet):

  As for the wall....Im convinced part of this is just something us guys tell ourselves to 'get back'(in our minds) at all the girls who wouldn't sleep with us 5-10 years ago