zigzag

• The entrance to this ancient place of devotion was under a very low round arch, ornamented by several courses of that zig-zag moulding, resembling shark's teeth, which appears so often in the more ancient Saxon...
• His thoughts were fixed on one subject, and it was an effort to him to follow the zigzag remarks of his children—an effort which he did not make. - 1854 September – 1855 January, [Elizabeth Gaskell], chapter 6, in North...
• There, by dint of looking closely about me, I found a rough zig-zag descending path notched out: which I followed. - 1866 December 10, Charles Dickens, “No. 1 Branch Line. The Signal-Man.”, in Charles Dickens, editor,...

• She had just succeeded in curving it down into a graceful zigzag, and was going to dive in among the leaves, which she found to be nothing but the tops of the trees under which she had been wandering, when a sharp hiss...
• And still, high in front, arose the precipitous barrier of the mountain, greened over where it seemed that scarce a harebell could find root, barred with the zigzags of a human road where it seemed that not a goat could...

• […] she saw them as we see the throngs which cover the canvases of Sallaert, Van Alsloot, and others of that school—vast masses of beings, jostling, zigzagging, and processioning in definite directions, but whose...
• At the base this vent was dark, cool, and smelled of dry, musty dust. It zigzagged so that he could not see ahead more than a few yards at a time. - 1912 January, Zane Grey, “Surprise Valley”, in Riders of the Purple...
• If the first two novels created a new genre — Peakean fantasy — then this third volume zigzags between several: the Bildungsroman, science fiction, social satire, morality tale and dystopian prophecy. - 2002, Malcolm...

Synonyms: zig and zag