| He shifted his feet slightly, tautened his muscles with a tentative pull, then relaxed again, questing for a perfect adjustment of all the levers of his body. |
| The Killer braced himself with the rope across his hip, and as the antelope tautened the singing strands in a last frantic bound for liberty he was thrown over upon his back. |
| The chip hose and the power cable are suspended on rollers on the wire, which is tautened between two posts. |
| When the ciliary muscle is relaxed, the ring enlarges away from the lens and the suspensory ligaments are tautened, flattening the lens into a shape suitable for viewing distant objects. |
| Francis Bacon once pointed out the amazing boniness of a particular Degas pastel — how the top of the model's spine seemed almost to break through the tautened skin as she craned forward to dry her hair. |
| The coach sound system hums, as if something tautened is endlessly reverberating. |
