Online dictionaryOnline dictionary
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

  Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Atmospherical   Listen
adjective
Atmospherical, Atmospheric  adj.  
1.
Of or pertaining to the atmosphere; of the nature of, or resembling, the atmosphere; as, atmospheric air; the atmospheric envelope of the earth.
2.
Existing or occurring in the atmosphere. "The lower atmospheric current."
3.
Caused, or operated on, by the atmosphere; as, an atmospheric effect; an atmospheric engine.
4.
Dependent on the atmosphere. (R.) "In am so atmospherical a creature."
Atmospheric engine, a steam engine whose piston descends by the pressure of the atmosphere, when the steam which raised it is condensed within the cylinder.
Atmospheric line (Steam Engin.), the equilibrium line of an indicator card. Steam is expanded "down to the atmosphere" when its pressure is equal to that of the atmosphere. (See Indicator card.)
Atmospheric pressure, the pressure exerted by the atmosphere, not merely downwards, but in every direction. In amounts to about 14.7 Ibs. on each square inch.
Atmospheric railway, one in which pneumatic power, obtained from compressed air or the creation of a vacuum, is the propelling force.
Atmospheric tides. See under Tide.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |
Add this dictionary
to your browser search bar





"Atmospherical" Quotes from Famous Books



... It varies in diameter between 25 and 35 centimeters and has the shape of a low broad cone. The edges, like those of the hat already described, are reinforced with rattan painted with a mixture of beeswax and pot black for preserving the rattan against atmospheric influences. No paint is applied to the sago sheath, but the beeswax is applied to the bamboo as a preservative against cracking. Neither are any decorative incisions or tracings used in this form of hat, it being primarily and essentially for protection against sun and rain. Two parallel ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan

... are such a dreary round of dull monotonous toil, and they have so little sun to cheer them. They ought to be taught to laugh, and have the brightness put into themselves, and then it would seem as if they had been relieved of half the atmospheric pressure beneath which they groan. Think what your own life would be if day day after day brought you nothing but toil; if you had nothing to look back upon, nothing to look forward to, but the labour ...
— Ideala • Sarah Grand

... The period of his revival was marked by the achievement of each one of his books which he composed then, persuaded that, once written and construed, a sentimental or social experience was not worth the trouble of being dwelt upon. Thus is explained the incoherence of custom and the atmospheric contact, if one may so express it, which are the characteristics of his work. Take, for example, his first collection of novels, the 'Etudes de Femmes,' which made him famous. They are about a sentimental ...
— Cosmopolis, Complete • Paul Bourget

... quarantine, since it is during this period of recovery that most of the complications of scarlet fever occur, and if the patient is kept under observation, either in his sick room or on some porch where atmospheric exposure is not too great and where the child is certain to eat nothing harmful, the chances for avoiding lung troubles and ...
— Rural Hygiene • Henry N. Ogden

... quantity is taken out on the point of a common match, and rubbed upon a cork, which produces an immediate flame. If a small piece of phosphorus be put into a vial, and a little boiling oil poured upon it, a luminous bottle will be formed; for on taking out the cork, to admit the atmospheric air, the empty space in the vial will become luminous; and if the bottle be well closed, it will preserve its ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton

... by counterclockwise gyre (broad, circular system of currents) in the southern Indian Ocean; unique reversal of surface currents in the northern Indian Ocean; low atmospheric pressure over southwest Asia from hot, rising, summer air results in the southwest monsoon and southwest-to-northeast winds and currents, while high pressure over northern Asia from cold, falling, winter air results in the northeast monsoon and northeast-to-southwest winds and currents; ...
— The 2003 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency

... imaginations to the comparative disregard of the incidents and impressions which suggested them; and was little susceptible of ideas originating in other minds. We behold the result. He lives alone in a world of mountains, streams, and atmospheric phenomena, dealing with moral abstractions, and rarely encountered by even shadowy specters of beings outwardly resembling himself. There is measureless grandeur and power in his moral speculations. There is intense reality in his pictures of external nature. But though his ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Volume I. No. 9. - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 26, 1850 • Various

... atonal works was his second, "Concord" piano sonata, one of the finest, and some would say the finest, works of classical music by an American. It reflects the musical innovations of its creator, featuring revolutionary atmospheric effects, unprecedented atonal musical syntax, and surprising technical approaches to playing the piano, such as pressing down on over 10 notes simultaneously using a ...
— Essays Before a Sonata • Charles Ives

... undulating land stretching away to the south-south-east and to the westward of it. The appearance of this headland has been foretold for the last two days, by masses of black fog, but it seems strange that land so high should not have been seen before, as there is little change in the atmospheric conditions. ...
— South! • Sir Ernest Shackleton

... front view and Fig. 2 a side view of the wind-chest. A is the wind-chest into which compressed atmospheric air has been introduced, either through the side or bottom, from the end of the wind-trunk B. The pallets, C C C, are held against the openings, D D D, leading from the wind-chest to the mouth of the ...
— The Recent Revolution in Organ Building - Being an Account of Modern Developments • George Laing Miller

... my dear sir," observed the Idiot. "Views that are not aired become musty. Why shouldn't I give them an atmospheric opportunity once in ...
— The Idiot • John Kendrick Bangs

... these thick mists: it is impenetrable gloom; night and day are both alike; the sails, saturated with the watery vapour, hang heavily, and flap against the masts with a sad foreboding sound, whilst every heart on board feels more or less oppressed by the atmospheric influence, and every countenance expresses languor or discontent. But these discomforts are minor evils compared with other attendants upon a Newfoundland fog. It often happens that, in spite of every precaution on the part of the men on the look-out, the bows of the vessel ...
— Narratives of Shipwrecks of the Royal Navy; between 1793 and 1849 • William O. S. Gilly

... of gold, russet and faded green rustled on the ground. The sun was gone behind the hills, the lake was tinted with salmon and dun, and Maurice (who honestly would have liked to run) was turning purple, not from atmospheric effect, but from the partly congealed state of his blood. Already he was thinking that his adventure had turned out rather well. It was but a simple task for a man of his imagination to construct a pretty romance, with a kingdom ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath

... United Kingdom. The grand coast-scenery of Cornwall and of Western Ireland, the lovely lake landscapes of Killarney, sylvan homes and storied towers, all have been laid under contribution by an eye quick to seize and a hand prompt to reproduce these most subtle and transient atmospheric effects of light and colour which are the legitimate domain of the true water-colourist. With all these pictures about us—and with Mr. Colomb's workshop fitted up with Armstrong lathes and all manner of tools wherein he varies the routine of official life by making all manner of instruments, ...
— Ireland Under Coercion (2nd ed.) (2 of 2) (1888) • William Henry Hurlbert

... obeyed at the pace of double quick time—Kant talking all the way to the eating-room about the state of the weather [Footnote: His reason for which was, that he considered the weather one of the principal forces which act upon the health; and his own frame was exquisitely sensible to all atmospheric influences.]—a subject which he usually pursued during the earlier part of the dinner. Graver themes, such as the political events of the day, were never introduced before dinner, or at all in his study. The moment that Kant had taken his seat, and unfolded his napkin, he opened the ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey

... known that the corpse has been preserved for centuries in the iceberg, or in antiseptic peat; and that when atmospheric air was introduced to the exposed surface it crumbled into dust. Exposure worked dissolution, but it only manifested the death which was already there; so with sorrow, it is not the living heart which drops to pieces, ...
— Sermons Preached at Brighton - Third Series • Frederick W. Robertson

... by the cords, but they cut my fingers. Then I remembered the natural law, that internal atmospheric pressure prevents any consciousness of the enormous external pressure exerted by an atmosphere forty-five miles thick, and applied the law, saying, "These books have all been upon the inside of my head, of course I shall not feel them on the outside." ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various

... distant arch, and sometimes it melts in the sunlight and lies pale and rare and delicate upon the eye, so that one feels that he is breathing the sky and moving in it. The memory of a week is full of pictures of this atmospheric beauty. I looked from a lofty balcony at the Vatican upon broad gardens lustrously green with evergreen and box and orange trees, in whose dusk gleamed the large planets of golden fruit. Palms, and the rich, rounding tuft of Italian pines, and the solemn ...
— Early Letters of George Wm. Curtis • G. W. Curtis, ed. George Willis Cooke

... in a simple and admirable contrivance. The smooth, rounded head of the thighbone, moist with glairy fluid, fits so perfectly into the smooth, rounded cavity which receives it, that it holds firmly by suction, or atmospheric pressure. It takes a hard pull to draw it out after all the ligaments are cut, and then it comes with a smack like a tight cork from a bottle. Holding in this way by the close apposition of two polished surfaces, the lower extremity swings freely forward and backward like a pendulum, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various

... says, "abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity." There have been men, and some women too, who could practice well the heavenly virtue of charity toward the world at large, and with a general atmospheric effect, but could not always bring it down to earth, and train it in the homely, crooked paths of household care. But those who have seen Miss Alcott at home know that such is not her practice. In the last summer, as for ...
— St. Nicholas, Vol. 5, No. 2, December, 1877 • Various

... Donald Menzel, in a book entitled Flying Saucers, says they saw a refracted image of their own balloon caused by an atmospheric phenomenon. Maybe he is right, but the General Mills people don't believe it. And their disagreement is backed up by years of practical experience with the atmosphere, its tricks ...
— The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects • Edward Ruppelt

... the calcareous precipitate, and distil off three-fourths of the alcohol. There then remains a strong solution of rhubarbine, to which add as much sulphuric acid as will exactly neutralize it. Evaporate this slowly to dryness, without having access to atmospheric air. The residuum will be of a brownish-red colour, intermingled with brilliant specks, possessing a slightly pungent styptic taste, soluble in water, and its odour that of the native rhubarb." This residuum is the sulphate of rhubarb. ...
— North American Medical and Surgical Journal, Vol. 2, No. 3, July, 1826 • Various

... celestial bodies." "Not at all," you say; "the earth is made up largely of chalk, and what is the difference between chalk and cheese, except in the price?" "But, if it's green cheese the moon is made of," asks your opponent, "why does it look yellow?" "Only the natural effect of atmospheric refraction," you reply calmly; "remember how a politician's badly soiled reputation will shine out a brilliant white, through the favourable atmosphere that surrounds a Congressional investigating committee. Recall how a ...
— The Patient Observer - And His Friends • Simeon Strunsky

... natural occurrences must be included many of the phenomena connected with the behaviour of birds. Undoubtedly numerous species of birds are susceptible to atmospheric changes (of an electrical and barometric nature) too slight to be observed by man's unaided senses; thus only is to be explained the phenomenon of migration and also the many other peculiarities in the behaviour of birds whereby approaching changes in the weather may be foretold. ...
— Bygone Beliefs • H. Stanley Redgrove

... time a certain organized uniformity in the units. The units are the many individual plants that occur in every community, whether this be a beech forest, a meadow, or a heath. Uniformity is established when certain atmospheric, terrestrial, and other factors are co-operative, and appears either because a certain defined economy makes its impress on the community as a whole, or because a number of different growth-forms are combined to form a single aggregate which has a ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park

... only upon the direct fatigue from labor and the pauses for rest; a large variety of other factors may lead to fluctuations which are economically important. The various hours of the day, the seasons of the year, the atmospheric conditions of weather and climate, may have such influence. Some elements of this interplay have been cleared up in recent years. Just as the experiments of pedagogical psychology have determined ...
— Psychology and Industrial Efficiency • Hugo Muensterberg

... luxuriant vegetation, and our encampment was again in a most romantic spot. Ah! why should regions so lovely be traversed so soon? This chain of mountains is called the Musgrave Range. A heavy dew fell last night, produced, I imagine, by the moisture in the glen, and not by extraneous atmospheric causes, as we have had ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles

... researches on 'the influence of gravity on cell-division,' Roux his experimental investigations on 'the time of the determination of the chief planes in the frog-embryo.'... In the same year appeared A. Rauber's experimental studies 'on the influence of temperature, atmospheric pressure, and various substances on the development of animal ova,' which have brought many similar works in their train. The following year (1884) saw a lively controversy on Pflueger's gravity-experiments with animal eggs, in which took part Pflueger, Born, Roux, O. Hertwig and ...
— Form and Function - A Contribution to the History of Animal Morphology • E. S. (Edward Stuart) Russell

... The influence of resonance and pitch, echo and absorption of tones, i. e., the location of the sound, is of great importance. Finally, it must not be forgotten that people's ability to hear varies with the weather. Colds reduce the power, and not a few people are influenced by temperature, atmospheric pressure, etc. These considerations show the degree in which auditory illusions can be of importance even in tests of their nature and existence. They show above all that the same object of comparison under the same circumstances must be used in every test. Otherwise ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden

... however, I find more of vainglory and ostentation than solid satisfaction; and its votaries would seem to display less a calm, healthy affection for tobacco than (as Sir T. Browne hath it) a "passionate prodigality.'' And, besides grievous wasting of the pocket, atmospheric changes, varyings in the crops, and the like, cause uncertainty to cling about each individual weed, so that man is always more or less at the mercy of Nature and the elements — an unsatisfactory and undignified ...
— Pagan Papers • Kenneth Grahame

... the bars, its incessant roar seeming like a warning not to venture into its power; while evening was rapidly closing in, the coming darkness threatening to increase the difficulties to be encountered. Still Mr Dumaresq was unwilling to expose his followers to the baneful atmospheric influences of another night spent within the mouth of the river, or to the chances of attack from any of the slavers' friends who might be in the neighbourhood, and who would always be ready to win back a prize at any sacrifice of the lives of ...
— Our Sailors - Gallant Deeds of the British Navy during Victoria's Reign • W.H.G. Kingston

... vain for any sure plan of an ancient crater. The extreme summit is situated on the southern end of a narrow ridge that bounds the general summit on the east. Viewed from the north, it appears as an irregular blunt point about ten feet high, and is fast disappearing before the stormy atmospheric action to ...
— Steep Trails • John Muir

... is not only more graceful, but has acquired greater fulness of expression, and he is evidently working in a deeper and richer vein of thought. Purity of expression is still his polar star, and his writing is nowhere overloaded, but it has a warmer tone, a deeper perspective, and an atmospheric quality which painters call chi-aroscuro. He charms with pleasing fancies, while ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns

... gradually waste away beneath the ever-during influence of atmospheric causes, and the material being then carried down by the streams, through a series of caverns resembling those of which they once formed a portion, would be swept out into the ocean and deposited on sandbanks, to be raised ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 1 (of 2) • George Grey

... Without a Name"[18] is a translation of "Une Histoire Sans Nom" of Barbey d'Aurevilly, and is preceded by one of Saltus's charming and atmospheric literary essays, the best on d'Aurevilly to be found in English. When this book first appeared, Mr. Saltus informs me, a reviewer, "who contrived to be both amusing and complimentary," said that Barbey d'Aurevilly was a fictitious person and ...
— The Merry-Go-Round • Carl Van Vechten

... these same volumes he will find the article, by Dr. Jacob Bigelow, doubtless, which was the first hint of our rural cemeteries, and foreshadowed that new era in our underground civilization which is sweetening our atmospheric existence. ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... a way open for a decent retreat, Catholics also point to a difference in temperament between the phlegmatic Luther coming from a northern clime, which through its atmospheric rigors begets somber reflections and gloomy thoughts, and the airy, fairy Italians, who revel in sunshine, flowers, and fruits, drink fiery wines, and naturally grow up into a freedom of manners and ...
— Luther Examined and Reexamined - A Review of Catholic Criticism and a Plea for Revaluation • W. H. T. Dau

... a weird alchemist-surgeon, Grammer Oliver's skeleton, and the face of Giles Winterborne, brought Grace Melbury to the morning of the next day. It was fine. A north wind was blowing—that not unacceptable compromise between the atmospheric cutlery of the eastern blast and the spongy gales of the west quarter. She looked from her window in the direction of the light of the previous evening, and could just discern through the trees the shape of the ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy

... eclipse of the sun, which commenced on Tuesday morning at 6.41 Greenwich time, was central at 9.13 P. M., and ended on the earth generally at twenty-five minutes past midnight on Wednesday morning, was likely to be accompanied with strong atmospheric and seismic disturbances. The learned physicist has gained great reputation by previous similar forecasts. His first and great success was the foretelling the destructive shock at Belluno, on June 29, 1873. Nearly the whole of Northern Italy was affected, and upwards ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, April 1887 - Volume 1, Number 3 • Various

... of this disease are often difficult to discover. The dog, in warm climates, seems to have a natural disposition to it. As exciting causes, atmospheric influence may be reckoned, sultry days, cold nights, and damp weather. Other occasional causes may be found in violent falls, bruises, and overfeeding. Fat petted dogs that are easily overheated by exertion are often attacked by this disease. The result of the disease depends on ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt

... a particularly good time on earth, but anyhow, he preferred it to atmospheric effects. He said that he had no head for heights, but if Di and Peggy wanted to go, and Captain March was kind enough to take them—er—up, a tiny way into the—er—air, he supposed that in these days he ought not ...
— Secret History Revealed By Lady Peggy O'Malley • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

... machine was falling. Arcot pushed the control over to the last ampere, and felt the slight surge, as greater power rushed through the coils momentarily. Soon this was gone too, as the generator behind faltered. The driving power of the atmospheric heat was gone. More than sixty miles below them they could see the Earth as a greenish brown surface, slightly convex, and far to the east they could distinguish a silvery line of water! But they had no eyes but for the column of shooting ...
— The Black Star Passes • John W Campbell

... the same condition as we take it in. As chemically combined in the food-stuff known as protein, nitrogen is indispensable to animal life; but our bodies make no use of the gaseous form of nitrogen. Oxygen, on the other hand, supports life; and though it forms less than one-fifth of the atmospheric air, it is present in ample amount for our needs. After we draw air into our lungs, the oxygen it contains is absorbed by the blood and used by the tissues. In return our tissues give up a waste product, carbonic acid gas, which is thrown off by the lungs. It is interesting to observe that the ...
— The Prospective Mother - A Handbook for Women During Pregnancy • J. Morris Slemons

... her his fears that the structure was scarcely as weather-proof as he desired; and he anticipated hourly the commencement of the rainy season. Helen smiled and pointed to the sky, which here was clear and bright. But Hazel shook his head doubtingly. The wet season would commence probably with an atmospheric convulsion, and then settle down to uninterrupted rain. Helen refused obstinately to believe in more rain than they had experienced on board ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade

... Mangles, "and yet it would have been better to have fished them up in the open sea. Then we might have found out the road they had come by taking the exact latitude and longitude, and studying the atmospheric and submarine currents; but with such a postman as a shark, that goes against wind and tide, there's no clew whatever to ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne

... question, would have brought it to the verge of triviality. Still as an example of his unrivalled mastery in rendering the glow and semi-transparency of flesh, enhanced by the contrast with white linen—itself slightly golden in tinge; in suggesting the appropriate atmospheric environment; in giving the full splendour of Venetian colour, duly subordinated nevertheless to the main motive, which is the glorification of a beautiful human body as it is; in all these respects the picture is of superlative excellence, a representative example of the ...
— The Later works of Titian • Claude Phillips

... qualities of steam—its condensation, so as to produce a vacuum, to the proper management of which our modern engines owe much of their efficacy. Papin seems to have been the first who conserved the idea of the cylinder and piston, which he made to act on atmospheric principles—that is to say, he took a cylinder with a piston moving up and down in it, and found that by removing the air from under the piston in the cylinder, that the pressure of the atmosphere would drive it down to the bottom of the cylinder: this he performed by admitting steam, ...
— Lectures on Popular and Scientific Subjects • John Sutherland Sinclair, Earl of Caithness

... N. air &c (gas) 334; common air, atmospheric air; atmosphere; aerosphere^. open air; sky, welkin; blue sky; cloud &c 353. weather, climate, rise and fall of the barometer, isobar. [Science of air] aerology, aerometry^, aeroscopy^, aeroscopy^, aerography^; meteorology, climatology; pneumatics; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... H. R. Haweis has defined "humour as the electric atmosphere, wit as the flash. A situation provides atmospheric humour, and with the culminating point of it comes the flash." This definition is peculiarly applicable to the humour of the Bench and Bar when the situation invariably provides the atmosphere for the wit. Not less so is this the case in American Courts ...
— Law and Laughter • George Alexander Morton

... feeder a half inch opening is cut at the bottom, fig 4, a, and an inclined plane b, reaching half way up the depth of the trough; and a sheet of perforated tin, c (placed horizontally from point b,) through which the bees suck the food, which is kept at the same level by atmospheric pressure; for as the food is drawn down below the mouth of the bottle, d, air forces itself into the bottle, and the same quantity of food trickles down into the feeder, a piece of glass, e, exactly the same size as the feeder, is placed over it, through which the bees may be seen whilst ...
— A Description of the Bar-and-Frame-Hive • W. Augustus Munn

... all the female members of the Carroll family were out there. Captain Carroll was in the City, and Eddy, who, being a boy, was more susceptible to the lash of atmospheric influence, ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... Atmospheric pressure is measured by the barometer. The weight of the air in round numbers is 15 lb. to the square inch and will support a column of water 1 in. square, 34 ft. high, or a column of mercury (density ...
— The Boy Mechanic: Volume 1 - 700 Things For Boys To Do • Popular Mechanics

... is the use of your discovery of atmospheric electricity?" The philosopher answered the question by another, "What is the use ...
— The Jest Book - The Choicest Anecdotes and Sayings • Mark Lemon

... have the misfortune to lose a limb after the middle age. HIS LORDSHIP usually predicted an alteration in the weather with as much certainty from feeling transient pains in this stump, as he could by his marine barometer; from the indications of which latter he kept a diary of the atmospheric changes, which was written ...
— The Death of Lord Nelson • William Beatty

... The Air and Atmospheric Phenomena, the Ocean, Mountains, Volcanic Phenomena, Rivers, Falls and Cataracts, Grottoes and Caverns, and the Phenomena of Vegetation, are described in this volume, and in the most charming manner possible, because the descriptions given have been selected from the writings of the most distinguished ...
— The Wonders of Pompeii • Marc Monnier

... along the badly paved streets, and he was not long in reaching the high road. The moon shone high in the firmament. Great thick clouds floated across its disc, but it reappeared directly. A stormy wind soughed in the upper atmospheric regions. ...
— The Grandee • Armando Palacio Valds

... astronomical attributes of this once molten globe. From its rotation there result the oblateness of its form, the alternations of day and night, and (under the influence of the moon) the tides, aqueous and atmospheric. From the inclination of its axis, there result the precession of the equinoxes and the many differences of the seasons, both simultaneous and successive, that pervade its surface. Thus the multiplication of effects ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer

... has never been exactly understood. Philosophers and men of science have worked very hard over it, but all the conclusion they have been able to arrive at is, it must be due to fog, or smoke, or atmospheric phenomena. The most celebrated of them are in favor of atmospheric phenomena, and they ...
— The Pot of Gold - And Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins

... nothing else. All the rules of aerial perspective that ever were written, will not tell me how sharply the pines on the hill-top are drawn at this moment on the sky. I shall know if I see them, and love them; not till then. I may study the laws of atmospheric gradation for fourscore years and ten, and I shall not be able to draw so much as a brick-kiln through its own smoke, unless I look at it; and that in an entirely humble and unscientific manner, ready to see all that ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume III (of 3) • John Ruskin

... in the rug, or in the carpet, or in the door-mat, or in any thick article of dress you may either have on, or have at hand—if it be woollen, so much the better; or, throw him down, and roll him over and over on the floor, as, by excluding the atmospheric air, the flame will go out:—hence the importance of a mother cultivating presence of mind. If parents were better prepared for such emergencies, such horrid disfigurations and frightful deaths would ...
— Advice to a Mother on the Management of her Children • Pye Henry Chavasse

... plexus, and a lumbar ganglion not far from your liver, and I'm going to tell everybody. Nothing brings a man home to himself like telling everybody. And I will drive you home to yourself, do you hear? You've been poaching in my private atmospheric grounds long enough, identifying yourself with me and me with everybody. A nice row there'd be in heaven if Aldebaran caught Sirius by the tail and said, "Look here, you're not to look so green, you damm dog-star! It's ...
— Fantasia of the Unconscious • D. H. Lawrence

... was the onrush of the storm. At first the rain fell in short and sudden showers, driven from angry clouds eager for some atmospheric change whereby to be relieved of their pent-up burden. Then the wind, as though in answer to the prayer of the clouds, changed its course and stilled its moaning, and the sky 'wept its ...
— Lancashire Idylls (1898) • Marshall Mather

... from under the dome of his massive brow. Often in this little room, cosiest in the house, Jolyon would catch a moment of communion with his father. Not, indeed, that he had definitely any faith in the persistence of the human spirit—the feeling was not so logical—it was, rather, an atmospheric impact, like a scent, or one of those strong animistic impressions from forms, or effects of light, to which those with the artist's eye are especially prone. Here only—in this little unchanged room where his father had spent the most of his waking hours—could be retrieved ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... balance would exert as much breaking force on its pivots as a balance of the same weight, but 3/4" in diameter acting against a very much stronger hairspring. There is another factor in the balance problem which deserves our attention, which factor is atmospheric resistance. This increases rapidly in proportion ...
— Watch and Clock Escapements • Anonymous

... expression—"we cannot be too careful in our attempts to keep out such or such a disease?" For my part, I admit that I can more easily comprehend the propagation of certain epidemics by contagion, than I can by any other means, when unaccompanied by sensible atmospheric changes; and if I reject contagion in cholera, it is because whatever we have in the shape of fair evidence, is quite conclusive as to the non-existence of any such principle. Indeed abundance of evidence now lies before the public, ...
— Letters on the Cholera Morbus. • James Gillkrest

... absorbed, and carbonic acid given off in its place; and in course of time, the free oxygen of the water is exhausted, the water becomes stale, and at last poisonous, from excess of carbonic acid. If the water is not changed, the fishes come to the surface and gulp atmospheric air. But though they naturally breathe air (oxygen) as we do, yet they are formed to extract it from the water; and when compelled to take air from the surface, the gills, or lungs, soon get inflamed, and death at last puts an end ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various

... season's growth. There are times when the new growth developed in a matter of a few days to sometimes as long as two weeks. During the period of prolongation of the new growth and the formation and receptiveness of the pistillate flower much can happen. The catkins shed pollen when the temperature and atmospheric conditions are normal. Many times the pollen is dispersed before ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 44th Annual Meeting • Various

... thought that elements can be changed, suspended, collected and associated and produce any chemical compound necessary to sustain animal life, wash out, salt, sweeten and preserve the being from decay and death by chemical, electric, atmospheric or climatic conditions. By this we are admonished in all our treatment not to wound the lymphatics, as they are undoubtedly the life giving centers and organs. Thus it behooves us to handle them with wisdom and tenderness, for by and from them ...
— Philosophy of Osteopathy • Andrew T. Still

... must always be liable to considerable atmospheric changes, and become, at particular seasons, very unhealthy, there cannot be a doubt: but that is invariably the case in all low situations within the tropics, on the west coast of Africa, where the decomposition of animal and vegetable matter is so rapid in its progress. But the insular ...
— A Voyage Round the World, Vol. I (of ?) • James Holman

... homicidally, reason coldly reminded the young man that not to save his life could he assassinate, or even hurt, Mr. Pat, and that the net result of another endeavor to do so would be merely a second mortifying atmospheric journey. Was it not unreasonable for a man, in a hopeless attempt to gratify irrational passion, to take a step the sole and certain consequences of which would be a humiliating soaring and ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison

... heritage? What are they doing even now? They are sitting dejected in their houses, or standing in their doorways with folded arms and anxious, expectant faces. For a change is coming: they are on the eve of a tempest. Not an atmospheric change; no blighting simoom will sweep over their fields, nor will any volcanic eruption darken their crystal heavens. The earthquakes that shake the Andean cities to their foundations they have never known and can ...
— The Purple Land • W. H. Hudson

... is the name of Mr. Heathcliff's dwelling. 'Wuthering' being a significant provincial adjective, descriptive of the atmospheric tumult to which its station is exposed in stormy weather. Pure, bracing ventilation they must have up there at all times, indeed: one may guess the power of the north wind blowing over the edge, by the excessive slant of a few stunted firs at the end of the house; and ...
— Wuthering Heights • Emily Bronte

... the sex life so that some men and women become pure in the accepted sense, it will always be true that men and women will be vaguely or definitely attracted to each other. Like the atmospheric pressure which though fifteen pounds to the square inch at the sea level is not felt, so there exists a sex pressure, excited by men and women in each other. There is a smoldering excitement always ready to leap into flame whenever ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson

... and tossing trees. He did not like the wind at all; it blew in his face too much; it made him shut his eyes; and it blew off his hat, of which he was very proud. He was, as far as I remember, about four. After complaining repeatedly of the atmospheric unrest, he said at last to his mother, "Well, why don't you take away the trees, and ...
— Tremendous Trifles • G. K. Chesterton

... acceleration chair and, watching the atmospheric altimeter, a delicate instrument that recorded their height above the surface of a heavenly body, began to call off the ...
— Treachery in Outer Space • Carey Rockwell and Louis Glanzman

... atmosphere, and it is seldom that we are troubled with fogs of any kind. In this respect, at all events, the Midland metropolis is better off than its Middlesex namesake, with its "London particular," as Mr. Guppy calls it. But there was one day (17th) in December, 1879, when we were, by some atmospheric phenomena, treated to such "a peasouper" that we must note it as being the curiosity of the day, the street traffic being put a stop to while the ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell

... who are nourished from childhood on the truths revealed by science, the sky is known to be merely an optical appearance due to the partial absorption of the solar rays in passing through a thick stratum of atmospheric air; the clouds are known to be large masses of watery vapour, which descend in rain-drops when sufficiently condensed; and the lightning is known to be a flash of light accompanying an electric discharge. But these conceptions are extremely recondite, and have been attained only through ...
— Myths and Myth-Makers - Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology • John Fiske

... "foot" inside its long shell, and there is a row of holes in the shell itself. It is conjectured that the abalone perhaps exhausts the air under the shell, and so causes the shell to cling more tightly to the rock than ever, through atmospheric pressure. It is very difficult to take an abalone from its rocky home, unless the creature ...
— Out of the Triangle • Mary E. Bamford

... shore. He rubbed his glass, and called some other officers to verify the absence of the ancient seamark, but all they could make out was a white cloud, that might be smoke or dust or mist hanging over the town. It must be mist, they said; some unusual atmospheric condition must have rendered ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner

... in our onward career towards death, time held on its accustomed course. Still and for ever did the earth roll on, enthroned in her atmospheric car, speeded by the force of the invisible coursers of never-erring necessity. And now, this dew-drop in the sky, this ball, ponderous with mountains, lucent with waves, passing from the short tyranny of watery Pisces and the frigid Ram, entered the radiant demesne ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley

... dirty burglars of moonlight. The clammy stupid distance uttered dimly an uncanny conflict—the mutterless tumbling of brutish shadows. A crowding ooze battled with my lungs. My nostrils fought against the monstrous atmospheric slime which hugged a sweet unpleasant odour. Staring ahead, I gradually disinterred the pale carrion of the darkness—an altar, guarded with the ugliness of unlit candles, on which stood inexorably the efficient implements ...
— The Enormous Room • Edward Estlin Cummings

... Villa di Quarto, dictated at the end of the winter, by which time we are not surprised to find he had become much attached to the place. The Italian spring was in the air, and it was his habit to grow fond of his surroundings. Some atmospheric paragraphs of these ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine

... amongst those old people; and that it was impossible in many instances to decide, whether the black colour was owing to an increase of what is called the healthy black matter,—to a morbid secretion, or to a foreign substance being imbedded with the atmospheric air. After examining a considerable number of lungs, and finding that the division of the black matter into three kinds was not founded upon observation, and that the descriptions of them given by the best ...
— An Investigation into the Nature of Black Phthisis • Archibald Makellar

... were very sad when we went to express our gratitude and take leave of them. We only stayed two days at La Grange, and when we returned to Paris, Somerville went home and my son joined us, when we made a rapid tour in Switzerland, the only remarkable event of which was a singular atmospheric phenomenon we saw on the top of the Grimsel. On the clouds of vapour below us we saw our shadows projected, of giant proportions, and each person saw his own shadow surrounded by a bright circle of prismatic colours. It is ...
— Personal Recollections, from Early Life to Old Age, of Mary Somerville • Mary Somerville

... of the ancient religion of India and Persia was at first nothing more than a simple veneration of nature, its pure elements and its primary energies, the sacred fire, and above all, Light,—the air, not the lower atmospheric air, but the purer and brighter air of Heaven, the breath that animates and pervades the breath of mortal life. This pure and simple veneration of nature is, perhaps the most ancient, and was by far the most generally prevalent in the primitive ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike

... rejoined Lucien, "such mistakes are often made, even by old travellers on the prairies. It is an atmospheric illusion very common. I have heard of a worse case than ours—of a raven having ...
— The Boy Hunters • Captain Mayne Reid

... followed by a flash of lightning, which should strike and precipitate the ball on St. Paul's cathedral. This would be a miracle as long as no causative 'nexus' was conceivable between the antecedent, the noise of the shout, and the consequent, the atmospheric discharge. ...
— Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... with a different furnace, and taking 1 lb. of gas to be 2.35 cubic feet, the water evaporated was found to be 20.31 lb., or 83.4 per cent. of the theoretical heat units were utilized. The steam was under the atmospheric pressure, there being a large enough opening to prevent any back pressure, the combustion of both gas and coal was not hurried. It was found that the lower row of tubes could be plugged and the same amount of water could be evaporated ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 520, December 19, 1885 • Various

... afterglow on the mountains across the valley was now in its prime glory; and once the two wayfarers paused and commented upon it. Once more the mountaineer was agreeably surprised; the average peasant is impervious to atmospheric splendor, beauty ...
— The Goose Girl • Harold MacGrath

... galvanic battery, none of them will explode; if any gas be introduced so as to produce a gentle pressure during the decomposition, then a rapid evolution of gases will result; the results of decomposition in a vacuum differ from those under atmospheric pressure or when they are burnt in a pistol, musket, a cannon, or in a mine; where we have little or no pressure it is difficult to get these substances to burn rapidly; nitro-glycerin is more difficult to explode than powder; in many respects it resembles gun-cotton which is made in ...
— Scientific American, Vol. 17, No. 26 December 28, 1867 • Various

... Even to herself she never used the words "worldly ambition." The task was a noble one, to make the career of the man she believed in and loved glorious, to bring him to renown. While he was shut up, working in the little room she had made so cozy, so "atmospheric," she would be at work for him in the world they were ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens

... striking features of the valley, and has a tolerably correct idea of the sublimity of some of these features. What the photograph cannot do is to give an impression of the unique grouping, of the majesty, and at times crushing weight upon the mind of the forms and masses, of the atmospheric splendor and illusion, and of the total value of such an assemblage of wonders. The level surface of the peaceful, park-like valley has much to do with the impression. The effect of El Capitan, seen across a meadow and rising from a beautiful ...
— Our Italy • Charles Dudley Warner

... quite aware of the atmospheric difficulties. The fact that it is so thick and misty is entirely due to the heavy body of moisture in the ground—but if I start off early in the morning I may ...
— How I Filmed the War - A Record of the Extraordinary Experiences of the Man Who - Filmed the Great Somme Battles, etc. • Lieut. Geoffrey H. Malins

... descending spray, and the rainbow dwells in its {261} bosom; but there is no longer any stream, nothing but an irridescent mist. The word etherial, best expresses the quality of Shelley's genius. His poetry is full of atmospheric effects; of the tricks which light plays with the fluid elements of water and air; of stars, clouds, rain, dew, mist, frost, wind, the foam of seas, the phases of the moon, the green shadows of waves, the shapes of flames, the "golden lightning of the setting sun." Nature, in Shelley, wants ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers

... also to impair or destroy fertility in the soil, and they may arise from the decomposition of animal or vegetable matter, in a soil containing a superabundance of porous lime. The atmospheric air and water, contained in the moist and porous soil, are decomposed. The hydrogen of the water combines with the nitrogen of the air, and that given off by the decomposing organic bodies, and forms ammonia. The nitrogen of the ammonia then takes up the oxygen of the ...
— A Journey through the Kingdom of Oude, Volumes I & II • William Sleeman

... one, as it is a well-known fact that in a general way the term blight is frequently used for various injuries or diseases of plants causing the whole or parts to wither and die, whether occasioned by insects, fungi, or atmospheric influences. ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 13th Annual Meeting - Rochester, N.Y. September, 7, 8 and 9, 1922 • Various

... indicate that walls of such brick had ever been raised upon them. The disintegrated mass would have shown itself in the form of the embankment after the lapse of many centuries. On the contrary, they were found in the precise form they would have assumed, under atmospheric influences, after structures of the kind described had perished, and the embankments had been abandoned ...
— Houses and House-Life of the American Aborigines • Lewis H. Morgan

... to introduce carbolic acid into the interior. Indeed, such a procedure would be objectionable, as it would stimulate the pyogenic membrane to unnecessary suppuration. All that is requisite is to guard against the introduction of living atmospheric germs from without, at the same time that free opportunity is afforded for the escape ...
— The Harvard Classics Volume 38 - Scientific Papers (Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology) • Various

... to start him on, and setting himself manfully to the task, in less than half an hour he found that he had reached an atmospheric band where the breeze blew pleasantly cool and invigorating. The cloud over the summit of the cone had floated away, and all was clear and bright as he resumed the ascent, feeling now that an hour would bring him to the top, ...
— Fire Island - Being the Adventures of Uncertain Naturalists in an Unknown Track • G. Manville Fenn

... select Oriental colors. Aiming at simplicity, he decreed that not more than eight or nine colors should be found upon the subdued palette from which he would paint the Exposition. Then he took into consideration the climate and atmospheric conditions peculiar to San Francisco. Every phase of sky and sea and land, every shadow upon the Marin hills, across the bay, was noted in choosing an imitation of natural travertine for the key color of ...
— The Jewel City • Ben Macomber

... miles in the hour, with small trucks of stone and lime behind them.... Lean mules no longer crawl leisurely along the little rails with trucks of stone, through Croydon, once perchance during the day, but the whistle and rush of the locomotive, and the whirr of the atmospheric, are now heard ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker

... never mellowed by damps or anything else, and spoils everything near it by its intolerable and inevitable glare. The moderately dark brick, of a neutral red, is to be chosen, and this, after a year or two, will be farther softened in its color by atmospheric influence, and will possess all the advantages we have enumerated. It is almost unnecessary to point out its fitness for a damp situation, not only as the best material for securing the comfort of the inhabitant, but because it will the sooner ...
— The Poetry of Architecture • John Ruskin

... the simple open blue of the sky. This is of course the color of the pure atmospheric air, not the aqueous vapor, but the pure azote and oxygen, and it is the total color of the whole mass of that air between us and the void of space. It is modified by the varying quantity of aqueous vapor suspended in it, whose color, in its most imperfect, and therefore most visible, state ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin

... painter. The fifty landscapes of his which we possess, contain the whole scale from a state of idyllic repose to one of dramatic excitement and tension. Take, for instance, the evening scene with the rainbow in the Louvre, marvellous in its delicate gradations of atmospheric tone, and the equally marvellous thunderstorm in the Belvedere at Vienna, where a rain-cloud bursts under sulphur lightning, and a mountain stream, swollen to a torrent and lashed by the hurricane, carries all before it—trees, rocks, ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese

... at its greatest brilliance, it is possible to see it during daytime when one knows exactly where to look. But on January 7, 1948, Venus was less than half as bright as its peak brilliance. However, under exceptionally good atmospheric conditions, and with the eye shielded from direct rays of the sun, Venus might be seen as an exceedingly tiny bright point of light. . . . However, the chances of looking at just the right spot are very ...
— The Flying Saucers are Real • Donald Keyhoe

... this occurrence, Maurice was walking along the beach, watching some peasant lads who were spearing trout in a brook near by. The sun had just dipped below the western mountain peaks, and a cool, bluish twilight, which seemed the essence of atmospheric purity, purged of all accessory effects, filled the broad, placid valley, and made it a luxury to breathe. The torches of the fishermen flitted back and forth between the slender stems of the birches, and now and then sent up a great glare of light ...
— Ilka on the Hill-Top and Other Stories • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen

... formed from the fact, that mice perish speedily in air which contains one six-thousandth of ozone. It is always present in the atmosphere in a greater or lesser degree, in direct relation with the amount of atmospheric electricity, and appears to obey the same laws in its variations, finding its maximum in winter ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 455 - Volume 18, New Series, September 18, 1852 • Various

... gaze around me the rarest sight of all is in atmospheric hues. The prairies—as I cross'd them in my journey hither—and these mountains and parks, seem to me to afford new lights and shades. Everywhere the aerial gradations and sky-effects inimitable; nowhere else such perspectives, such transparent lilacs and grays. I ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman

... several days from its decomposition. Although fixed air is known to extinguish a lighted candle, and destroy animal life, that is, to be equally unfit for the combustion of inflammable bodies, or the support of animal respiration, it is also known to be as successfully employed as atmospheric air, or even dephlogisticated air, to melt glass, &c., when applied to the clear flame of a wax candle, by passing a current of it through a blow-pipe, to direct that flame on the glass ...
— The American Practical Brewer and Tanner • Joseph Coppinger

... generally uninteresting. There is far more to be said in favour of that newer school at Paris, the Archaicistes, as they call themselves, who, refusing to leave the artist entirely at the mercy of the weather, do not find the ideal of art in mere atmospheric effect, but seek rather for the imaginative beauty of design and the loveliness of fair colour, and rejecting the tedious realism of those who merely paint what they see, try to see something worth seeing, and to see it not merely with actual ...
— Intentions • Oscar Wilde

... read; and if the whole, or any large portion, be read continuously it will give a lively and true impression of a beautiful, diverse country, of a distinctive people, and of a number of vivid men and women, including Borrow himself. It is less rich than "The Bible in Spain," less atmospheric than "Lavengro." It is Borrow's for reasons which lie open to the view, not on account of any hidden pervasive quality. Thus what exaggeration there is may easily be seen, as when a fallow deer is described as equal to a bull in size, or when carn-lleidyr is said to be one "who, being ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas

... castings rolling laterally from the higher to the lower parts, which would thus be raised. Any projection beneath a ledge would not afterwards receive disintegrated matter from above, and would tend to be obliterated by rain and other atmospheric agencies. There is some analogy between the formation, as here supposed, of these ledges, and that of the ripples of wind-drifted sand as described ...
— The Formation of Vegetable Mould through the action of worms with • Charles Darwin

... inhabitants were not at that moment troubling themselves about the chances of atmospheric disturbance above ground. Everybody, as a matter of course, had put on his best clothes for the occasion. Madge was dressed in the fashion of days gone by, wearing the "toy" and the "rokelay," or Tartan plaid, of matrons of the olden ...
— The Underground City • Jules Verne

... which inhabits the marshes of Senegal and Gambia, is curious in more than one respect. Firstly, it can breathe oxygen, whether, like other fish, it finds it dissolved in water or in the atmospheric air. When during the summer the marshes in which it lives dry up, it takes refuge in the mud at the bottom, which hardens and imprisons it, and it thus remains curled up until the time when the water after the rainy season has softened the earth which surrounds it. ...
— The Industries of Animals • Frederic Houssay

... consequently relative, we may succeed in uncovering the pure nucleus, the direct intuitions of things in themselves; as we correct the observed positions of the heavenly bodies by allowing for the error due to the refracting influence of the atmospheric medium, an influence which does not alter the facts, but only our ...
— The Philosophy of the Conditioned • H. L. Mansel

... Newton who asked the question, and Tom Swift who answered it. The chums were in the pilot-house of the dipping, swaying Mars, which was nosing her way into the storm, fighting on an upward slant, trying, if possible, to get above the area of atmospheric disturbance. ...
— Tom Swift and his Aerial Warship - or, The Naval Terror of the Seas • Victor Appleton



Words linked to "Atmospherical" :   atmosphere, atmospheric



Copyright © 2024 Dictionary One.com