Uvula Quotes

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I also think pronunciation of a foreign tongue could be better taught than by demanding from the pupil those internal acrobatic feats that are generally impossible and always useless. This is the sort of instruction one receives: 'Press your tonsils against the underside of your larynx. Then with the convex part of the septum curved upwards so as almost but not quite to touch the uvula try with the tip of your tongue to reach your thyroid. Take a deep breath and compress your glottis. Now without opening your lips say "Garoo".' And when you have done it they are not satisfied.
Jerome K. Jerome (Three Men on the Bummel)
I tried to utter, but could not. The tongue had got all tangled up with the uvula, and the brain seemed paralyzed. I was feeling the same stunned feeling which, I imagine, Chichester Clam must have felt as the door of the potting shed slammed and he heard Boko starting to yodel without -- a nightmare sensation of being but a helpless pawn in the hands of Fate.
P.G. Wodehouse
Ninety percent of the obstruction in the airway occurs around the tongue, soft palate, and tissues around the mouth. The smaller the mouth is, the more the tongue, uvula, and other tissues can obstruct airflow.
James Nestor (Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art)
But there was a more seductive, more dangerous truth to Fillory that Quentin couldn’t let go of. It was almost like the Fillory books— especially the first one, The World in the Walls— were about reading itself. When the oldest Chatwin, melancholy Martin, opens the cabinet of the grandfather clock that stands in a dark, narrow back hallway in his aunt’s house and slips through into Fillory (Quentin always pictured him awkwardly pushing aside the pendulum, like the uvula of a monstrous throat), it’s like he’s opening the covers of a book, but a book that did what books always promised to do and never actually quite did: get you out, really out, of where you were and into somewhere better.
Lev Grossman (The Magicians (The Magicians, #1))
I am not, I regret to say, a discreet and fetching sleeper. Most people when they nod off look as if they could do with a blanket; I look as if I could do with medical attention. I sleep as if injected with a powerful experimental muscle relaxant. My legs fall open in a grotesque come-hither manner; my knuckles brush the floor. Whatever is inside—tongue, uvula, moist bubbles of intestinal air—decides to leak out. From time to time, like one of those nodding-duck toys, my head tips forward to empty a quart or so of viscous drool onto my lap, then falls back to begin loading again with a noise like a toilet cistern filling. And I snore, hugely and helplessly, like a cartoon character, with rubbery flapping lips and prolonged steam-valve exhalations. For long periods I grow unnaturally still, in a way that inclines onlookers to exchange glances and lean forward in concern, then dramatically I stiffen and, after a tantalizing pause, begin to bounce and jostle in a series of whole-body spasms of the sort that bring to mind an electric chair when the switch is thrown. Then I shriek once or twice in a piercing and effeminate manner and wake up to find that all motion within five hundred feet has stopped and all children under eight are clutching their mothers’ hems. It is a terrible burden to bear.
Bill Bryson (In a Sunburned Country)
There is perhaps a kind of strange double comfort in knowing that you will almost certainly never lose your uvula but that it wouldn’t matter too much anyway if you did.
Bill Bryson (The Body: A Guide for Occupants)
Do you see this shoelace? I’d like to take it and tie your tongue to your uvula, and your uvula to your stomach, and your stomach to your uterus, so that the very first word of your answer leaves you hollow.
Roque Larraquy (Comemadre)
Despite all the admiration M. Swann might profess for these figures of Giotto, it was a long time before I could find any pleasure in seeing in our schoolroom (where the copies he had brought me were hung) Charity devoid of charity, that Envy who looked like nothing so much as a plate in some medical book, illustrating the compression of the glottis or uvula by a tumour in the tongue, or by the introduction of the operator's instrument, a Justice whose greyish and meanly regular features were the very same as those which adorned the faces of certain good and pious and slightly withered ladies of Combray whom I used to see at mass, many of whom had long been enrolled in the reserve forces of Injustice. But in later years I understood the arresting strangeness, the special beauty of these frescoes lay in the great part played in each of them by its symbols, while the fact that these were depicted, not as symbols (for the thought symbolized was nowhere expressed), but as real things, actually felt or materially handled, added something more precise and more literal to their meaning, something more concrete and more striking to the lesson they imparted.
Marcel Proust (Swann's Way: In Search of Lost Time #1)
That’s your ghoul, isn’t it?” asked Harry, who had never actually met the creature that sometimes disrupted the nightly silence. “Yeah, it is,” said Ron, climbing the ladder. “Come and have a look at him.” Harry followed Ron up the few short steps into the tiny attic space. His head and shoulders were in the room before he caught sight of the creature curled up a few feet from him, fast asleep in the gloom with its large mouth wide open. “But it . . . it looks . . . do ghouls normally wear pajamas?” “No,” said Ron. “Nor have they usually got red hair or that number of pustules.” Harry contemplated the thing, slightly revolted. It was human in shape and size, and was wearing what, now that Harry’s eyes became used to the darkness, was clearly an old pair of Ron’s pajamas. He was also sure that ghouls were generally rather slimy and bald, rather than distinctly hairy and covered in angry purple blisters. “He’s me, see?” said Ron. “No,” said Harry. “I don’t.” “I’ll explain it back in my room, the smell’s getting to me,” said Ron. They climbed back down the ladder, which Ron returned to the ceiling, and rejoined Hermione, who was still sorting books. “Once we’ve left, the ghoul’s going to come and live down here in my room,” said Ron. “I think he’s really looking forward to it—well, it’s hard to tell, because all he can do is moan and drool—but he nods a lot when you mention it. Anyway, he’s going to be me with spattergroit. Good, eh?” Harry merely looked his confusion. “It is!” said Ron, clearly frustrated that Harry had not grasped the brilliance of the plan. “Look, when we three don’t turn up at Hogwarts again, everyone’s going to think Hermione and I must be with you, right? Which means the Death Eaters will go straight for our families to see if they’ve got information on where you are.” “But hopefully it’ll look like I’ve gone away with Mum and Dad; a lot of Muggle-borns are talking about going into hiding at the moment,” said Hermione. “We can’t hide my whole family, it’ll look too fishy and they can’t all leave their jobs,” said Ron. “So we’re going to put out the story that I’m seriously ill with spattergroit, which is why I can’t go back to school. If anyone comes calling to investigate, Mum or Dad can show them the ghoul in my bed, covered in pustules. Spattergroit’s really contagious, so they’re not going to want to go near him. It won’t matter that he can’t say anything, either, because apparently you can’t once the fungus has spread to your uvula.
J.K. Rowling (Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Harry Potter, #7))
I imagined swinging from the punching bag of his uvula.
Edan Lepucki (If You're Not Yet Like Me)
palate is a wall or septum that separates the oral cavity from the nasal cavity, forming the roof of the mouth. This important structure makes it possible to chew and breathe at the same time. The hard palate—the anterior portion of the roof of the mouth—is formed by the maxillae and palatine bones and is covered by a mucous membrane; it forms a bony partition between the oral and nasal cavities. The soft palate, which forms the posterior portion of the roof of the mouth, is an arch-shaped muscular partition between the oropharynx and nasopharynx that is lined with mucous membrane. Hanging from the free border of the soft palate is a conical ¯ muscular process called the uvula ( U-vu¯ -la � little grape). During swallowing, the soft palate and uvula are drawn superiorly, closing off the nasopharynx and preventing swallowed • C L I N I C A L C O N N E C T I O N Per i toni t is A common cause of peritonitis, an acute inflammation of the peritoneum, is contamination of the peritoneum by infectious microbes, which can result from accidental or surgical wounds in the abdominal wall, or from perforation or rupture of abdominal organs.If, for example, bacteria gain access to the peritoneal cavity through an intestinal perforation or rupture of the appendix, they can produce an acute, life-threatening form of peritonitis. A less serious (but still painful) form of peritonitis can result from the rubbing together of inflamed peritoneal surfaces. Peritonitis is of particularly grave concern to those who rely on peritoneal dialysis, a procedure in which the peritoneum is used to filter the blood when the kidneys do not function properly (see page 1048). •
Anonymous
South Tampa is the polyp of land that dangles into Tampa Bay like a uvula.
Tim Dorsey (Florida Roadkill (Serge Storms Mystery, #1))
Just a moment.’ Assad disappeared out the door, and Carl stared at the cup. The combination of words like ‘libido’ and ‘Mona’ made him suddenly thirsty. A little sip couldn’t hurt. He felt the steam and the smell of distant, exotic coasts and dived in. He thought it tasted rather good until the effect kicked in. The combination of neck arteries suddenly opening, oesophagus collapsing, vocal cords scratching like hell and not being able to feel his uvula all made him instinctively grab his throat with one hand and support himself on the edge of the table with the other. If there’d been acid in the cup, it wouldn’t have felt much different. He wanted to swear but not a word came out, only tears and saliva from the corners of his mouth, and he had an unusually keen desire for revenge and ice-cold water by the bucketload. ‘What’s wrong, Carl?’ asked Assad as he came in with the report. ‘Was there too much ginger?
Jussi Adler-Olsen (The Hanging Girl: Department Q 6)
She pushed herself through the opening, around an ornament that was simultaneously a hanging light bulb and a uvula, and stepped inside. She entered the Mouth, the Throne Room, the Jaws of the Devouring God, or maybe just another in a series of countless double-wides gutted and lashed together with scavenged steel and magic, the bare skeleton of an illusory power. Tongue. The Devourer. God, the Devil, or nobody at all.
S.R. Hughes (The War Beneath)
If you go to a mirror, open your mouth, and look at the back of the throat, you’ll see a fleshy tassel that hangs bat-like from the soft tissues. That’s the uvula. In mouths least susceptible to airway obstruction, the uvula will appear high and clearly visible from top to bottom. The deeper the uvula appears to hang in the throat, the higher the risk of airway obstruction. In mouths that are most susceptible, the uvula may not be visible at all. This measurement system is called the Friedman tongue position scale, and it’s used to quickly estimate breathing ability.
James Nestor (Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art)
All singers now sound the same because all you have to do is whisper and sound pretty. No one ever belts. Don’t you wanna hear someone’s heart again?" she said. "All I hear is tongue and breath and cheek and throat. I want ugly again. Mistakes. Uvula.
Kristian Ventura (The Goodbye Song)
Do whales have uvulas?” “How am I supposed to know if it’s a girl whale?” “It’s the dangly punching-bag–looking thing in the back of your throat,
Roshani Chokshi (Aru Shah and the End of Time (Pandava Quartet, #1))
Sophie,” Tiergan said, forcing her to pay attention, “since Fitz can no longer transmit to you, I’m going to need you to open your mind to his for this exercise—and for now I want you both to keep your thoughts focused on something unimportant. Like socks, or napkins, or uvulas.
Shannon Messenger (Everblaze (Keeper of the Lost Cities, #3))
My foot swings directly up where my jaw used to be and I become perhaps the first person in the history of man to kick himself in his own uvula.
John Scalzi (Old Man's War (Old Man's War, #1))
The smell was a predatory cave stink, the suffocating funk of a great somnolent monster that was all mouth and hunger. It had canning jars for teeth, a single string hanging off a light bulb its uvula. It waited placidly, eternally, for country kids to stumble down its backbone stairs.
Jess Lourey (Unspeakable Things)
A madman came to me and accused me of killing god. Killing god! I told him gently that god cannot be killed. He came closer to me, hurling accusations, and I could smell alcohol on his breath. I then told him that the god he spoke of was in the bottle that he had just emptied, that he had drank down his god, that his god was now inside him. He was so struck by my words that his lips started to quiver, and his face changed its colour. He moved aside on the pavement and started to prod his uvula to induce vomiting. When he looked at the contents of his regurgitation, he was surprised to see that there was no god, not in the smallest morsels. As his saliva hung from his mouth, he started screaming: “It’s I who have killed god; woe be upon me,” and left the pavement in tears.
Ashish Khetarpal (The Watchdog and Other Stories)
Early in the morning of October 8, 1991, Mrs. Florence A. Snegg of Uvula, Michigan, was having an extremely vivid dream in which her son, Russell, was involved in a terrible automobile accident. Suddenly she was awakened by the ringing of her telephone. On the line was a Missouri state trooper, calling long distance to remind Mrs. Snegg that she had never had children
Dave Barry (Dave Barry Is from Mars and Venus)