At this point, the hideous skulls on the masks of the tsolings are rendered less threatening.

I did not want Janai to know that the brain of Vor Daj abode in the hideous skull of Tor-dur-bar.

She hates everything on Earth: her name, the wind that blows, the solid objects and people, "every time I look at this horrid vehicle; the rubbery flesh, the flat face, the ghastly yellow hair that grows out of this hideous skull, I can only think I am grotesque."

The hideous skull, in sharp contrast with Prudence's handsomely upper-caste Greek profile (most of Creti's figures have the same face) is a reminder - along with other allegorical objects in the picture - that life doesn't last.

In South Texas she is called La Vieja Blanca, the old lady in white, and she acts as a siren, enticing men, but when they get a look at her face, they see her hideous white skull instead.

Frodo looked down at the body with pity and horror, for as he looked it seemed that long years of death were suddenly revealed in it, and it shrank, and the shrivelled face became rags of skin upon a hideous skull.

Inside that hideous skull was the brain that had created for LaFitte the Solar Transformer, the IonExchange Self-Powered Water Still, the LaFitte Negative-Impedance Transducer, and a thousand other great inventions.

It was the face of a decaying corpse, almost but not quite a skeleton's hideous skull.

Its jaws trembled, and the hideous swollen skull rocked back and forth in convulsive movements.