dungeon-like

Updated: May 25, 2025

I entered the keep by a low and frowning doorway: the lower floor consisted of a large dungeon-like room, with a vaulted roof; on the left hand was a winding staircase in the thickness of the wall; it looked anything but inviting; yet I stole softly up, my heart beating.

George Henry Borrow - Lavengro: The Scholar, the Gypsy, the Priest

Down we went, farther and farther from the daylight, and found ourselves, anon, in a dark chamber or cell, the shape or boundaries of which we could not make out, though it seemed to be of stone, and black and dungeon-like.

Nathaniel Hawthorne - Passages from the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete

Half a dozen steps away was a table and on the table a lamp. Croisset lighted it, and with a quiet laugh faced the engineer. They were in a low, dungeon-like chamber, without a window and with but the one door through which they had entered. The table, two chairs, a stove and a bunk built against one of the log walls were all that Howland could see.

James Oliver Curwood - The Danger Trail

Even the dungeon-like vaults beneath, now lighted and ventilated on the most approved modern plan, had been turned as if by magic into kitchens, servants' offices, ice-rooms, and wine cellars, worthy of the splendour of the grandest hotel in Italy, in the now bygone period of seventeen years since.

Wilkie Collins - The Haunted Hotel

And these would be succeeded by soft, flute-like voices, mingling in chorus. The effect of this, in so dark and dungeon-like a place, where the mighty hand of Nature had performed one of her wildest freaks, was bewildering in the extreme, and gave wing to the strangest fancies. Hardly a word was spoken; not a brace manned, nor a sheet touched.

F. Colburn (Francis Colburn) Adams - The Von Toodleburgs: Or, The History of a Very Distinguished Family

I entered the keep by a low and frowning doorway: the lower floor consisted of a large dungeon-like room, with a vaulted roof; on the left hand was a winding staircase in the thickness of the wall; it looked anything but inviting; yet I stole softly up, my heart beating.

George Henry Borrow - Lavengro; the Scholar, the Gypsy, the Priest

After the blow on the bead Warren had lain unconscious for so long, and when he finally roused the darkness and dungeon-like appearance of the room so perplexed him, that he thought himself delirious. He was very dizzy, and tried to sleep, feeling that if he could lose himself, he would wake and find the whole thing a bad dream.

George Durston - The Boy Scouts in Front of Warsaw

Rude hammocks made out of old sails were in many cases used as substitutes for the demolished bunks; but the space they swung in was so confined that they were far from being agreeable. The general aspect of the forecastle was dungeon-like and dingy in the extreme.

Herman Melville - Omoo

But most of all, more than his own life or all that a thousand lives might hold for him, he loved the violet-eyed girl who had come into his life from the desolation and unhappiness of Jed Hawkins' cabin. Forgetting the law, forgetting all but her, he went at last into the dungeon-like gloom between the rocks, and after Peter had wallowed himself a bed in the carpet of sand they fell asleep.

James Oliver Curwood - The Country Beyond: A Romance of the Wilderness

The ivy is very abundant about the ruins, and hangs its green curtains quite from top to bottom of some of the windows. There are likewise very large and aged trees within the castle, there being no roof nor pavement anywhere, except in some dungeon-like nooks; so that the trees having soil and air enough, and being sheltered from unfriendly blasts, can grow as if in a nursery.

Nathaniel Hawthorne - Passages from the English Notebooks, Volume 2.