Coomb

Her triumph over obstacles ranging from the pedestrian to the inconvenient (growing up in the richest city in the world, attending law school, and having a disease the treatment of which was discovered more than 40 years ago), has created what will be a short lived coomb-bye-yaa with most of the major voting blocs in the country. ❋ Unknown (2009)

The OED defines “coomb” both as a boiling receptacle and as “a sharp and steep ravine where streams all rush downhill”. ❋ Unknown (2009)

The Treasury lawyers need to go through the pension contract with a fine tooth coomb and find a get out clause. ❋ Unknown (2009)

At the second time of closing in they found themselves near a lonely ash, the single tree on this part of the coomb, probably sown there by a passing bird some fifty years before. ❋ Unknown (2006)

But, though the wind up here blew unmistakably when it did blow, and the rain hit hard whenever it fell, the various weathers of the winter season were not quite so formidable on the coomb as they were imagined to be by dwellers on low ground. ❋ Unknown (2006)

‘Late to be traipsing athwart this coomb — hey?’ said the engaged man of fifty. ❋ Unknown (2006)

I asked the name of the brook, and he told me that it was called the brook of the hollow-dingle coomb, adding that it ran under Pont Newydd, though where that was I knew not. ❋ Unknown (2004)

I asked him the name of the ravine and he told me it was Ceunant Coomb or hollow-dingle coomb. ❋ Unknown (2004)

I bethought me, however, to try the creek which drained the coomb, and see whether it might not have made itself a smoother way. ❋ Unknown (2003)

Off course we all know whey this warty do no coomb, becourgh the tangs they are awl freezup, awl on they, awl they freezop. ❋ John Lennon (2000)

Out of apparently nothing more than the emptiness of "The White Visitation," she finds a projector, threads a reel and focuses the image on a water-stained wall, next to a landscape of some northern coomb, with daft aristocrats larking about. ❋ Pynchon, Thomas (1978)

It threw shadows of deep lavender across the frozen surface of a titanic glacier, which wound like an icy serpent from a coomb among the higher peaks, down and down until it curved in front of the pass and then away again to the left, to dwindle in the foothills and turn into a flowing stream of water. ❋ Howard, Robert E. (1969)

Off course we all know whey this warty do no coomb, be - courgh the tangs they are awl freezup, awl on they, awl they freezop. ❋ Lennon, John, 1940-1980 (1965)

From Deeping-coomb they rode to Isengard, and saw how the Ents had busied themselves. ❋ Tolkien, J. R. R. (1954)

The night was old and the East grey when they rode up at last from Deeping-coomb and came back to the Hornburg. ❋ Tolkien, J. R. R. (1954)

But they sat silent on their horses, and they gazed down upon the Deeping-coomb. ❋ Tolkien, J. R. R. (1954)

Their torches could be seen winding up the coomb in many lines. ❋ Tolkien, J. R. R. (1954)

The dark shadow yonder is the mouth of the Deeping-coomb. ❋ Tolkien, J. R. R. (1954)

Still some miles away, on the far side of the Westfold Vale, lay a green coomb, a great bay in the mountains, out of which a gorge opened in the hills. ❋ Tolkien, J. R. R. (1954)

Thence it fell into the Deeping-coomb and out into the Westfold Vale. ❋ Tolkien, J. R. R. (1954)