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Chord   Listen
noun
Chord  n.  
1.
The string of a musical instrument.
2.
(Mus.) A combination of tones simultaneously performed, producing more or less perfect harmony, as, the common chord.
3.
(Geom.) A right line uniting the extremities of the arc of a circle or curve.
4.
(Anat.) A cord. See Cord, n., 4.
5.
(Engin.) The upper or lower part of a truss, usually horizontal, resisting compression or tension.
Accidental chords, Common chords, and Vocal chords. See under Accidental, Common, and Vocal.
Chord of curvature, a chord drawn from any point of a curve, in the circle of curvature for that point.
Scale of chords. See Scale.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Chord" Quotes from Famous Books



... up her violin which lay within reach of her arm. "I can better show you." She drew a long chord, then from it wandered into a melody, sweet and delicate; then she drew other chords, and on into other melodies, all related; then she began to talk again. "It is only on two strings I am playing—for hear? the others are now souls out of the music ...
— The Eye of Dread • Payne Erskine

... her, his footsteps muffled by the carpeting. The music had a curious rhythm that suggested figures dancing wildly around firelight. She struck a final chord, ...
— Operation Haystack • Frank Patrick Herbert

... to one single note applies also to the elements of a musical chord. A dozen notes may sound simultaneously, but the ear is able to assimilate each and blend it with its fellows; yet it requires a very sensitive and well-trained ear to pick out any one part of a harmony and concentrate the brain's ...
— How it Works • Archibald Williams

... keeping the chord of any curve to be used for the blades at the proper pitch angle, and in all cases propeller blades should be made rigid so as to preserve the true angle and not be distorted by centrifugal force or from any other cause, as flexibility will seriously ...
— Flying Machines - Construction and Operation • W.J. Jackman and Thos. H. Russell

... of the elbow that pressed against hers, and the ecstasy of her child's voice still trilling on the black silence, Lilly was conscious of movement. The gray silhouette marching down the aisle of gloom. A group up about the piano. Another chord struck out. Zoe's voice skipping upward ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst

... hour of triumph, away down here in this old southern State, as she stands nearing the border land of another world, recompensed the great pioneer for much that she had borne when life was young and audiences, as she said, less sympathetic. Mrs. Merrick's remarks, also, touched a deep chord and roused the audience to a ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper

... him something which awakened a responsive chord in my nature. He was a man to take a risk and welcome it for the risk's sake. Moreover, he was a horseman; as I saw by his quick glance over Satan's furniture. He caught the cheek strap of the bridle, and motioned us away as we would have helped him at the horse's head. Then ensued as ...
— The Way of a Man • Emerson Hough

... was now tense with fear, anxiety, apprehension; and with resolute fingers Mrs. Barton tightened the chord until the required note vibrated within the moral consciousness. The poor Marquis felt his strength ebbing away; he was powerless as one lying in the hot chamber of a Turkish bath. Would no one come ...
— Muslin • George Moore

... divine at once where they will come upon the secret of their own sensations, she ran down to the tree and peered on tiptoe at the embedded volume. On a blank page stood pencilled: "This is the last fruit of the tree. Come not to gather more." There was no meaning for her in that sentimental chord but she must have got some glimpse of a meaning; for now, as in an agony, her lips fashioned the words: "If I forget his face I may as well die;" and she wandered on, striving more and more vainly to call up his features. The—"Does he think of me?" and—"What am I to him?"—such timorous ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... summer time when skies are hot We seek its verdant, velvet sward, Oh may we hold in reverent thought The debt we owe, forgetting not The spirit passed to its reward Of one whose giant soul was fraught With true benignity—who sought To touch humanity's quick chord With fire from Heaven's altar brought, That love and zeal and being caught As ...
— Poems - Vol. IV • Hattie Howard

... one joy, or even to dwell On one rich chord of pain, Beyond the pulse of the song, would untune heaven And drown the stars ...
— The New Morning - Poems • Alfred Noyes

... lovesick swain, an opium fiend, are utterly unable to respond to the lure of outdoor sport or the joy of the well-doing of work; these joys, though perhaps acknowledged as real possibilities for them, fail to attract their wills, touch no chord in them, have no influence on their choices. Morality is the great eye-opener and insistent ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake

... stately silence. His eyes, intensely bright in the shadow of the kufiyeh, may have produced the spell which held the Princess throughout; or it may have been the eyes and voice; or, quite as likely, the character of Hatim touched a responsive chord in her breast. ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace

... rapidly. He felt sure of himself, sure of his disguise; if this were an exhibition of woman's wiles, it would find him proof; on that he was resolved. Yet, dissolved in tears as she was, with her long lashes glistening and her mouth twitching pitifully, the dancer seemed to touch a chord deep down ...
— Okewood of the Secret Service • Valentine Williams

... I! Feeble and selfish beyond all example among women! Why, why was I born, or why received I breath in a world and at a period, with whose inhabitants I can have no sympathy, whose notions of rectitude and decency find no answering chord in my heart? ...
— Jane Talbot • Charles Brockden Brown

... to Robert that there was a strange sort of kinship between him and the bird—a kinship and understanding which touched a chord of ready feeling in his heart. The ominous hoot of an owl in the wood startled him, and he rose to his feet. He could not sit still. Idleness would drive him mad. He strode off on to the moor, away from the track, his whole being burning in torture, and his mind a mass ...
— The Underworld - The Story of Robert Sinclair, Miner • James C. Welsh

... moment in the shadow of a great cottonwood. Houck stopped, devouring her with his hungry eyes. Bad as the man was, he had the human craving of his sex. The slim grace of her, the fundamental courage, the lift of the oval chin, touched a chord that went vibrating through him. He snatched her to him, crushing his kisses upon the disturbing mouth, upon the color spots that ...
— The Fighting Edge • William MacLeod Raine

... piano and struck a chord. The weeping boy piped up in a tone so thin and feeble that it was ...
— Caruso and Tetrazzini on the Art of Singing • Enrico Caruso and Luisa Tetrazzini

... that slowly she became taut and rigid almost as he, with wide eyes gazing into the night. He had struck a hidden chord; struck it ...
— The Rhodesian • Gertrude Page

... romance. It re-tells a chapter in the life of the Jewish people at the time of the prophet Isaiah. The poet could not exercise any choice as to his subject—it was forced upon him inevitably. In order to be sure of touching a responsive chord in his people, it was necessary to carry the action twenty-five centuries back. A Jewish novel based on contemporaneous life would have been incongruous both with truth and with the spirit of ...
— The Renascence of Hebrew Literature (1743-1885) • Nahum Slouschz

... because something had gone wrong with the keys of the piano. They stuck down, and I had to get Wilfred to sit underneath and keep poking them up as fast as I played on them, or else half the notes wouldn't sound; and it seemed so queer to only get part of a chord, and to miss the middle of a run. It quite put me out. I suppose it was the damp that caused it. We must get a tuner to come ...
— The Manor House School • Angela Brazil

... called out after him, drawn by a sudden chord of sympathy to this stranger, who had the rare capacity of confining himself ...
— Barlasch of the Guard • H. S. Merriman

... memory. You want to know all about this murder, of course. Well, now, look over these papers. They'll tell you in brief what little we know about it. And they may succeed in striking afresh some resonant chord in your memory." ...
— Recalled to Life • Grant Allen

... use of moments so blissful to hearts that love. There was something in the old man's mournful tone and glance when it rested upon him, that answered strangely and sadly to the spirit-voice breathing in his own bold breast. It seemed to touch that chord indefinably, yet felt by the vibration of every nerve which followed. He roused himself, however, and ere they joined the morning meal, there was a brighter smile on the lip and heart of Agnes than had rested there for many ...
— The Days of Bruce Vol 1 - A Story from Scottish History • Grace Aguilar

... each single verse, took up a diameter. But how, Mr. Sheridan, came you to venture George, Dan, Dean, and Nim, to place in the centre?[1] 'Twill appear to your cost, you are fairly trepann'd, For the chord of your circle is now in their hand. The chord, or the radius, it matters not whether, By which your jade Pegasus, fix'd in a tether, As his betters are used, shall be lash'd round the ring, Three fellows with whips, and the Dean holds the string. Will Hancock declares, you are out of your compass, ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift

... shows and country dances, revivals and weddings. He sold his honey, and sometimes his bees. He delighted in wreath-making, gardening, and carpentering, and always in the background was his music—some new air to try on the gilded harp, some new chord or turn to master. The garden was almost big enough, and quite beautiful enough, for that of a mansion. In the summer white lilies haunted it, standing out in the dusk with their demure cajolery, looking, ...
— Gone to Earth • Mary Webb

... of the story he began to play softer and softer, and ever softer, till his auditors, like the robbers, were fast asleep. Noticing this he stole out of the room, called in the other inmates of the house, who came carrying lights with them, and then with a tremendous, crashing chord disturbed the sweet slumbers ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks

... his violin. The cracked inventor, pulling his cardboard box on its ridiculous spools, stopped to listen; Weeping Willow forgot his grief and almost achieved a smile. Only the Emperor of Japan continued his pacing back and forth, his royal gloom untouched by any responsive chord. ...
— Broken to the Plow • Charles Caldwell Dobie

... always the chord Of the Overword, Dominant, pleading, sure, No truth too small to save and make endure. No good ...
— Behind the Arras - A Book of the Unseen • Bliss Carman

... guess," said Jerry, with unfeigned relief, and he struck a resounding chord. After Rosetta Muriel, and the atmosphere of tawdry pretense surrounding her, it was a relief to every one to launch into ...
— Peggy Raymond's Vacation - or Friendly Terrace Transplanted • Harriet L. (Harriet Lummis) Smith

... the howdahs, this was a final chord from the band, for the huge beasts were thoroughly startled, and the lookers-on noted that similar uneasiness was being displayed by the nine great elephants that appertained to Rajah Hamet's force, these in particular ...
— Trapped by Malays - A Tale of Bayonet and Kris • George Manville Fenn

... the rainbow and the tints of evening clouds Dispel the mists in which the world our spirits still enshrouds? The chord they strike!—oh, tell me not that it can be of earth— The golden heart-string that they touch is not of mortal birth: The very buds and blossoms, and the balmy summer air, Awake within us shadows vague of things more bright and fair; 'Tis almost like remembrance—oh! would that I could ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, January 1844 - Volume 23, Number 1 • Various

... thus in the coming twilight with those weird crimsons and scarlets showing through it, the wilderness looked very lonely and desolate. An ordinary boy, at the coming of night would have been awed, if alone, by the stillness of the great unknown spaces, but it found an answering chord in Henry. ...
— The Young Trailers - A Story of Early Kentucky • Joseph A. Altsheler

... costs more than anything; and Arthur was fastidious. Aggie's fingers had grown stiff, and their touch had lost its tenderness. Of their old tricks they remembered nothing, except to stumble at a "stretchy" chord, a perfect bullfinch of a chord, bristling with "accidentals," where in their youth they had been ...
— The Judgment of Eve • May Sinclair

... therefore the same altitudes at those two instants, the one before, the other after noon. It follows that, if the sun has not changed its declination during the interval, the two positions will be symmetrically placed one on each side of the meridian. Therefore, drawing the chord AB, and bisecting it in M, HM ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 3 - "Destructors" to "Diameter" • Various

... steadily at Hugon, but with no notice to bestow upon the bowing schoolmaster; then walked over to the harpsichord, and, sitting down, began to play an old tune, soft and slow, with pauses between the notes. When he came to the final chord he looked over his shoulder at the Colonel, standing before the mantel, with his eyes upon the fire. "So they have gone," he said. "Good riddance! A pretty ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston

... small vessels, getting the thick and the thin, just as we do to-day in our own sailing craft; getting well dusted at times, with the salt thick on their cheeks and decks. Taking it all round, the sea is rather a minor chord; so that these Burlington House pictures of the Argo and The Heroes, in orange and rose on a wine-red sea are not convincing. When my patron comes home I will humbly suggest Orpheus singing at the stem, a following wind, a great bellying sail behind, and all around ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch

... plunged his bangwan through my heart, nobody would have been in the least degree surprised; that, indeed, was the logical sequence for which everybody was at that moment waiting. But my request must have touched some hitherto hidden and unsuspected chord in the king's heart, for presently, when the tension had become almost unendurable, Lomalindela raised his head and said, in so gentle a tone of ...
— Through Veld and Forest - An African Story • Harry Collingwood

... complexion described as pasty, a pair of greyish-blue eyes, and a tangle of reddish curls just long enough to admit of being tied back with the bit of crumpled ribbon which kept them tidy. Cash was not of prepossessing appearance; yet perhaps because, the grateful glance touched a chord common to humanity in the heart of the stranger, or because one naturally warms to any creature whom one has befriended, or perhaps simply from the sweet womanliness which finds all childhood attractive,—whatever the motive, upon the impulse ...
— Apples, Ripe and Rosy, Sir • Mary Catherine Crowley

... into this region in the canoe he had in fact become slowly stupefied by the poisonous vapour he had inhaled. His mind was partly in abeyance; it acted, but only after some time had elapsed. He now at last began to realize his position; the finding of the heap of blackened money touched a chord of memory. These skeletons were the miserable relics of men who had ventured, in search of ancient treasures, into the deadly marshes over the site of the mightiest city of former days. The deserted and utterly extinct city of London was ...
— After London - Wild England • Richard Jefferies

... of the metal tubes gave forth a prolonged and majestic chord, which died away little by little, as if a gentle breeze had ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Spanish • Various

... words touched a chord in my memory. We were once more standing, K. and I, in our workroom at Pretoria, having just finished reading the night's crop of sixty or seventy wires. K. was saying to me, "You had better go out to the Western Transvaal." ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume I • Ian Hamilton

... hardly have taken anything amiss from Louis. After having for so many years withheld all the lassez-aller of paternal affection, when the right chord had once been touched, his fondness for his grown-up son had the fresh exulting pride, and almost blindness that would ordinarily have been lavished on his infancy. Lord Ormersfield's sentiments were few and slowly ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. I) - or, The Clue of Life • Charlotte M. Yonge

... quite distinct from the equinoctial, it will take a much greater number of degrees when they are transferred and drawn on the spherical body. Calculating by geometrical proportion, with the arc and chord, whereby we pass from a plane to a spherical surface, so that each parallel is just so much less as its distance from the equinoctial is increased, the number of degrees in the said maps is much greater than the said pilots confess, and ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1803 • Emma Helen Blair

... the glass of Time, and turn'd it in his glowing hands; Every moment, lightly shaken, ran itself in golden sands. Love took up the harp of life, and smote on all the chords with might; Smote the chord of self that, trembling, pass'd in ...
— She and I, Volume 1 • John Conroy Hutcheson

... to Marion's heart. Not that she was hopeless; far from it, she would have told you. But her sense of humor did not conceal from her that in spite of her grin-and-bear-it mien, she was far from happy. At any rate, the suggestion that Jimmy was hopeless awoke a sympathetic chord in her breast, so that she looked at him more tenderly on the day after she had been told. Jimmy was slow of speech and rather dirty as to his face. There were warts on his hands, and his sphinx-like countenance was impassive almost to the point of stolidity. Somehow, though, Miss ...
— The Law-Breakers and Other Stories • Robert Grant

... wrong chord, and she looked up almost indignantly. "You ought to be manly enough to keep straight by yourself, you ought never to have sunk as you have done. There can be no ...
— People of Position • Stanley Portal Hyatt

... rests close on his breast, gaze with dangerous fascination into his face. Her dress is of rich white satin, and, with the delicate green and gold sheen of her rival's robe—she with whom the Prodigal's right hand toys in caress—makes up a wonderfully brilliant prismatic chord, having the effect of focusing the richer, but not less gorgeous, pigments spread everywhere on the canvas. The faces of the women are very beautiful, and are made voluptuous by a subtle art which, through all their beauty, tells a story of unrestrained ...
— The Aldine, Vol. 5, No. 1., January, 1872 - A Typographic Art Journal • Various

... peak some ten miles away, and shot to it in a line which was impeccably straight. Then he repeated the flight, this time in a slight even curve, flowing and smooth as the rise, swell, and gradual fall of a musical chord. The next time, he flew to the peak in a zipping parabola that was as the course of ...
— The Trimming of Goosie • James Hopper

... as the Miserere "Ah che la mort" was sung, and unconsciously put out her hand. The sleeve of her soft evening gown brushed Danvers' arm, and instantly his heart began to sing. Not so had he been stirred by Eva's conscious touch, years before. Eva had not struck the chord ...
— A Man of Two Countries • Alice Harriman

... beautiful by the knowledge that he has done what is possible with the talent entrusted to him, and unconsciously made the gift more suitable to join the Everlasting Choir, Eternal in the Heavens, to join in the congregation of saints who had found the harmony of the Lost Chord, and to make the heavens ring with the melody of the last strain, Only in heaven I ...
— Sixty Years of California Song • Margaret Blake-Alverson

... hymn e a there c s cite e a freight c k cap i e police ch sh machine i e sir ch k chord o u son g j cage o oo to n ng rink o oo would s z rose o a corn s sh sugar o u worm x gz examine u oo pull gh f laugh u oo rude ph f sylph y i my qu ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey

... skill, and ran at full speed to the point where the animal had lain down to watch him pass. From this point he followed the trail just far enough to catch its curve. Then he left it and ran in a straight line shrewdly calculated to form the chord to his quarry's section of a circle. His plan was to intercept and pick up the trail again about three quarters of a mile further on. In nine cases out of ten his calculation would have worked out as ...
— The House in the Water - A Book of Animal Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts

... as the artist is attracted by form and colour, and the musician by delicate combinations of harmonies and the exquisite balance of sound. You know," he said, "what a suspension is in music—it is a chord which in itself is a discord, but which depends for its beauty on some impending resolution. It is just so with moral choice. The imagination plays a great part in it. The man whose morality is high and profound sees instinctively the approaching contingency, ...
— The Child of the Dawn • Arthur Christopher Benson

... the votary, not of wisdom, but of a bald and shapeless asceticism, who is so excessively penetrated with the reality, the duties, the claims, and the constant hazards of civilisation, as to find in himself no chord responsive to that sombre pensiveness into which Obermann's unfathomable melancholy and impotence of will deepened, as he meditated on the mean shadows which men are content to chase for happiness, and on all the pigmy progeny of giant effort? 'C'est peu de chose,' says Obermann, 'de n'etre point ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. I - Essay 3: Byron • John Morley

... all this morbid feeling would vanish if the chord of sympathy between him and his countrymen were touched. But my persuasions were vain, the mind could not be bent from its natural inclination. Shelley shrunk instinctively from portraying human passion, with ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley

... gems of thought, the acute power of reasoning, that exquisitely delicate sense of feeling, which has never yet been accurately defined, and which probably never can be—which waits for some unseen mystic sympathy to touch it, and decide whether the chord shall be in minor or major key—which produces a tone of thought, now sublime, and now brimming over with coruscations of wit from almost the same incidents; and yet all those faculties of the soul, though not destroyed, are held in abeyance, because ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack

... song more drear, while thought soars into gloom. Find me the harbor of the roaming storm, Or end of souls whose doom is life itself! So vague, yet surely sad, the song I dream And utter not. So sends the tide its roll,— Unending chord of horror for a woe We but half know, even ...
— Along the Shore • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop

... none Save to his ear the wind-harp lone. Therein I hear the Parcae reel The threads of man at their humming wheel, The threads of life and power and pain, So sweet and mournful falls the strain. And best can teach its Delphian chord How Nature to the soul is moored, If once again that silent string, As erst it wont, ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes

... throat and the feeling that he had been rebuked. He nodded to Hen, laid down the mandolin and picked up the guitar, turned up the a string a bit, laid a booted and spurred foot across the other knee, plucked a minor chord ...
— Cow-Country • B. M. Bower

... it by heart. I really do not know when the memorizing takes place. The music is before me on the piano; I forget to turn the pages, and thus find I know the piece. In playing with orchestra I know the parts of all instruments, unless it be just a simple chord accompaniment; it would not interest me to play with orchestra and not know the music in this way. On one occasion I was engaged to play the Sgambatti concerto, which I had not played for some time. I tried it over on the piano and found I could not remember it. My first ...
— Piano Mastery - Talks with Master Pianists and Teachers • Harriette Brower

... should shine in all his glory; Again, the twilight seems the fitting time. Yet sweet dark night would understand the story, So old, so new, so tender, so sublime. Wild storms should rage to chord with my desire, Yet faithful stars should shine and ...
— Three Women • Ella Wheeler Wilcox

... about their coasts the thin undercut drifts that never quite leave the high altitudes. In and out of the bluish ice caves he flits and sings, and his singing heard from above is sweet and uncanny like the Nixie's chord. One finds butterflies, too, about these high, sharp regions which might be called desolate, but will not by me who love them. This is above timber-line but not too high for comforting by succulent small herbs and golden tufted grass. A granite mountain does not crumble with alacrity, but once resolved ...
— The Land of Little Rain • Mary Austin

... well-nigh undone more than two years of resolve. She had heard herself, as it were in a dream, promising that this man might come. She had found herself later in her own apartments, panting, wide-eyed, afraid. Some great hand, unseen, uninvited, mysterious, had swept ruthlessly across each chord of womanly reserve and resolution which so long she had held well-ordered and absolutely under control. It was self-distrust, fear, which now compelled her to take refuge in this woman's fence of speech with him. "Surely," argued she with herself, "if love once dies, ...
— The Mississippi Bubble • Emerson Hough

... grew into a purpose so all-absorbing that I might have been overwhelmed by it, had not my over-active imagination been brought to bay by another's common sense. Hugo's plea for suffering Humanity—for the world's miserable—struck a responsive chord within me. Not only did it revive my latent desire to help the afflicted; it did more. It aroused a consuming desire to emulate Hugo himself, by writing a book which should arouse sympathy for and interest in that ...
— A Mind That Found Itself - An Autobiography • Clifford Whittingham Beers

... Italian type with 6/4 chord or suspension swarm in Tannhaeuser and Lohengrin. In Tristan they never have the stereotyped character which they have ...
— Wagner's Tristan und Isolde • George Ainslie Hight

... commenced, "when I tell you, that I have overheard all you have said in the last half hour. I did not remain in that thicket, however, for the purpose of eaves-dropping; but having accidentally heard one of you mention a name, the sound of which touches a chord whose vibrations you can not understand, I remained, almost against my own will, to learn more. I thus became acquainted with the object of your meeting, and the dilemma in which you find yourselves placed by the absence ...
— Western Characters - or Types of Border Life in the Western States • J. L. McConnel

... modulated force. A nose-flute in the author's collection with the lower hole open produces the sound of [f]; with both holes unstopped it emits the sound [a]; and when both holes are stopped it produces the sound of [c], a series of notes which are the tonic, mediant, and dominant of the chord of F minor. ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson

... I suppose," said the maiden, in tones as soft and tremulous as the lightly-touched chord of some musical instrument, as she threw back her veil, and disclosed a beauty of features and sweetness of countenance that at once raised a buzz of ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson

... the evils in store for the proud highlanders before him, and appealed to them in the name of Almighty God to join him in a war for liberty. But all this eloquence was wasted. His appeal struck no responsive chord. The people flatly refused to give him their assistance. He had, therefore, but one course left. With no further hope of keeping his whereabouts unknown, he hastened with all speed from the town, and fled over the ice-bound hills of the west, to seek a last ...
— The Swedish Revolution Under Gustavus Vasa • Paul Barron Watson

... right chord now. She set her white face like flint in the darkness, and said, "I'll make the attempt, no matter ...
— Miss Lou • E. P. Roe

... of perpendiculars let fall from V and c on a b; and d the base of a perpendicular from the point of the cusp to the arch line. Then a b will always be a span of the arch, V p its perpendicular height, V a the chord of its side arcs, d c the depth of its cusps, c c the horizontal interval between the cusps, a c the length of the chord of the lower arc of the cusp, V c the length of the chord of the upper arc of the cusp, (whether continuous or not,) ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume I (of 3) • John Ruskin

... a wife in defense of her husband touched a chord in Phillida and excited an emotion she could not define. There was that in her own heart which answered to this conjugal championship. She could have envied Mrs. Beswick her poverty with her right to defend the man she loved. She felt an increasing interest in the ...
— The Faith Doctor - A Story of New York • Edward Eggleston

... here is fully accomplished, and it has nothing further to do with the material. Only that Almighty Power which created it can restore its association with a perception of matter, and that by reuniting the broken chord—the silver chord which bound it to its prison walls of clay. Henceforth it is to deal only with pure spirit and as pure spirit; it has a nobler destiny before it, and higher and more glorious objects to employ its powers and engross its emotions and affections than any that ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 5, November, 1863 • Various

... break down, that he should not be forced to drop this incomprehensible feint of strangeness. But her dying eyes searching the face close to them discover in it no glimmer of feeling. Her heart-broken murmur: "Siegfried.... knows me not?" touches no chord. The hero is for handing her over with all convenient haste to her proper guardian. "Gunther, your wife is ailing!" As Gunther comes, he rouses her: "Awake, woman! Here is your husband!" Because her senses seem clouded and she a moment before ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall

... Robert, with a deep sigh, "God is punishing me perhaps for thinking too late of this just reparation. O my good and noble Sandra, you touch a chord which vibrates sadly in my heart, and you anticipate the unhappy confidence I was about to make. I feel a gloomy presentiment—and in the hour of death presentiment is prophecy—that the two sons of my nephew, Louis, who ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - JOAN OF NAPLES—1343-1382 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE

... impressiveness of the scene there could be no doubt. It even touched some unfamiliar chord in the soul of Nicol Brinn. The effect of such an interview upon an imaginative, highly strung temperament, could be well imagined. It was perhaps theatrical, but that by such means great ends had already been achieved he knew to ...
— Fire-Tongue • Sax Rohmer

... yesterday had left her ears dull to this real first time of hearing love speeches, so that this seemed the second, and the words she heard, after the first little shock of realizing what they were, touched no chord that would respond. ...
— Taquisara • F. Marion Crawford

... I saw the Pleiades, rising through the mellow shade, Glitter like a swarm of fireflies tangled in a silver braid. Love took up the harp of Life, and smote on all the chords with might; Smote the chord of Self, that, trembling, pass'd in music out of sight. Cursed be the sickly forms that err from honest Nature's rule! Cursed be the gold that gilds the straiten'd forehead of a fool! Comfort? Comfort scorn'd of devils! this is truth the poet sings, That a sorrow's crown of sorrow ...
— Modern English Books of Power • George Hamlin Fitch

... was one word that I did not catch, although it rang like a suddenly struck chord of music, and the door yielded to ...
— Caves of Terror • Talbot Mundy

... and said that she must not keep Margaret expecting her. Perhaps her aunt guessed that she had touched the true chord of anxiety. ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge

... Not one of the guests had ever before known the depth of sympathy in the old Bishop till now. Every chord in the nature of each man vibrated to ...
— The City and the World and Other Stories • Francis Clement Kelley

... ever come to the birth, or coming, what form it would bear? Yet, even so, she rejoiced in her son and the high spirit he displayed, while the instinct of romance which inspired his speech touched an answering chord ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet

... characters. There were scores of varieties, which in complication and detail put to confusion the complicated system of some of the old Graeco-Roman writers. The basic idea seems to have been that each part and organ had its own proper pulse, and just as in a stringed instrument each chord has its own tone, so in the human body, if the pulses were in harmony, it meant health; if there was discord, it meant disease. These Chinese views reached Europe in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and there is a very elaborate ...
— The Evolution of Modern Medicine • William Osler

... minister's life. But finding that Henry was firm in his opinion that this sound general principle did not in the least apply to this particular case, the professor proceeded to touch the tenderest chord in the young man's heart. He told him that it would be ungenerous, and in some sense dishonorable, for him to take a woman delicately brought up into the poverty and trial incident to a minister's life. If you understood, sir, how morbid his sense of honor is, you would not wonder ...
— Duffels • Edward Eggleston

... nature was so tenuous that he seemed to respond to all the subtler influences of the universe; a sensitive chord attuned to poetic values, he appeared to exercise an almost mediumistic refraction and revelation of matters which lie only in the realm ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke

... rights of all Christians to a share therein, and the greed of Spain in refusing other nations a proper share. He played upon his audience as a skilled player upon a harp, touching each string of emotion in turn, and then striking a chord to which all strings would vibrate. For a moment he excited religious emotion, then political fervour, then greed, love of glory and adventure, then national pride and hatred of Spain, then all these together by one cunning sentence. The forester out ...
— Sea-Dogs All! - A Tale of Forest and Sea • Tom Bevan

... is the use of combined sounds. These may be either dissonant, inharmonious in relation to each other, or harmonious, agreeable. All points of repose in a harmonized piece of music must be consonant; or, to say it differently, the combined sound (chord) standing at the beginning or end of a musical phrase must be harmonious. All the elements in it must bear consonant relations to all the others. Between the points of repose the combined sounds may or may not be consonant. Under certain conditions dissonances ...
— A Popular History of the Art of Music - From the Earliest Times Until the Present • W. S. B. Mathews

... walked so that he had won a nick-name which I can only reproduce by calling it "Here's my back, and there's my back," because the lower parts of his back emphasised themselves demonstratively as though about to fly off in different directions like the two extreme notes in the chord of the augmented sixth, with every step he took. It may be guessed, therefore, that the receipt of the circular had for a moment an almost paralysing effect on those to whom it was addressed, owing to the astonishment which it occasioned them. It certainly was a daring surprise, but like ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler

... feud; We've changed hard blows enough. You fought—alone— For a sublime ideal; I as one Among the money-grubbing multitude. And yet it seemed as if a chord united Us two, as if a thousand thoughts that lay Deep in my own youth's memory benighted Had started at your bidding into day. Yes, I amaze you. But this hair grey-sprinkled Once fluttered brown in spring-time, and this brow, Which ...
— Love's Comedy • Henrik Ibsen

... Michael Stanley sent the following letter to the Committee of the Prison Association: "When I read the account of the venerable Friend Hopper's death, I could not help weeping. It touched a tender chord in my heart, when I came to the account of his being the prisoner's friend. My soul responded to that; for I had realized it. About six years ago, I was one of those who got good advice from 'the old man.' I carried it out, and met with great success. I was ...
— Isaac T. Hopper • L. Maria Child

... prayers aloud, and the refrain of "Namu Amida Butsu" seemed perpetually in one's ears. As the conclusion of the service approached, the voices of the choir, the priests, and the congregation increased in strength and volume, and ceased suddenly in a final chord of supplication. For a few moments there was stillness over the bowed heads of the congregation, and then the priests rose and the crowd began to stream down the great flight of steps. In the streets outside were rows of booths, where printed prayers and brightly embroidered triangular cloths, ...
— The Empire of the East • H. B. Montgomery

... jumped whenever I came round the corner, and used to stand behind trees watching me. Also she used to come to see the dogs fed. Now, when I knew beyond all question the state of her feelings, I borrowed Guido's guitar, and struck one chord upon it at night under her window, and sang but one word—Vieni! In three minutes she came on to the balcony, and we looked at each other. There was a moon, and we could see quite well. We stood looking like that for five minutes without a syllable spoken, and then I went away. I went away ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett

... Till, all at once, from the astonied crowd There brake a hum that swelled to laughter loud; But on he rode, nor seemed to reck or heed, Till 'neath the balcony he checked his steed. Then, handing lance unto his tall esquire, He sudden struck sweet chord upon his lyre, And thus, serene, his lute he plucked until The laughter died and all stood hushed and still; Then, hollow in his helm, a clear voice rang, As, through his ...
— The Geste of Duke Jocelyn • Jeffery Farnol

... external to her own deep but unsettled misery. Time after time they spoke to her as before, each earnestly hoping that some favorite expression or familiar tone of voice might impinge, however slightly, upon her reason, or touch some chord of her affections. These tender devices of their love, however, all failed; no corresponding emotion was awakened, and they resolved, without loss of time, to see what course of treatment medical advice recommend them to pursue on her behalf. Accordingly William proceeded with a heavy ...
— Jane Sinclair; Or, The Fawn Of Springvale - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton

... (only six bars) is followed by an Allegro in D minor, six-eight time, closing on a major chord; then eight bars common time in B flat (no heading); and, finally, a Presto (three-four) commencing in G minor and closing in B flat. None of the movements is in ...
— The Pianoforte Sonata - Its Origin and Development • J.S. Shedlock

... in a soft chord and the dancers began trooping through the doorway to the big punch-bowl of lemonade in one corner of the hall. They were just in time to see a lithe figure in pink spring out, catlike, from behind the palm-screened alcove ...
— Marjorie Dean - High School Sophomore • Pauline Lester

... Fenced it with tin. One only path it show'd By which the gatherers when they stripp'd the vines Pass'd and repass'd. There, youths and maidens blithe In frails of wicker bore the luscious fruit, While, in the midst, a boy on his shrill harp 710 Harmonious play'd, still as he struck the chord Carolling to it with a slender voice. They smote the ground together, and with song And sprightly reed came dancing on behind.[12] There too a herd he fashion'd of tall beeves 715 Part gold, part tin. They, lowing, from the stalls Rush'd forth to ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer

... the wind sighed through the leafy boughs, seemed to sob a sad requiem for the dead. There was a little song I had learned in the Institution, and had so often sang, when unknown to those around me every chord in ...
— The World As I Have Found It - Sequel to Incidents in the Life of a Blind Girl • Mary L. Day Arms

... my father!" Here a sudden change was visible,—some chord of sorrow was touched, and it ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby

... "Parsifal" may be found in some of the mazurkas of Chopin. He was, as Rubinstein called him, "the soul of the pianoforte." No one before or after him knew how to make that instrument speak so eloquently. By ingeniously scattering the notes of a chord over the keyboard while holding down the pedal, he practically gave the player three or four hands, and greatly enlarged the harmonic and coloristic possibilities of the pianoforte. Liszt, Rubinstein, Paderewski, and ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIV • John Lord

... Ethel, however, struck the chord, and the girls chimed in weakly. Then, the music, strengthening their hopes as it progressed, made them more cheerful. Loudly, they brought out ...
— The Girl Scouts' Good Turn • Edith Lavell

... heart leaped up. This girlish voice rang upon the chord of memory. Wade had not the strength to look at her then. It was not that he could not bear to look, but that he could not bear the disillusion sure to follow his first glimpse of this adopted daughter of Belllounds. Sweet ...
— The Mysterious Rider • Zane Grey

... dismissed this unexpected incident. But, when I went upstairs to my own room, I surprised myself by beginning to laugh about it and then surprised myself still more by beginning to cry about it. In short, I was in a flutter for a little while and felt as if an old chord had been more coarsely touched than it ever had been since the days of the dear old doll, ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens

... I do not know whether she meant to give a genuine warning, or to strike a chord that should sound ...
— The King's Mirror • Anthony Hope

... that awkward elephant that made Jerry feel all friendly inside and struck the chord of envy in his heart. He was not at all inclined to laugh when the cap with the very floppy palm-leaf-fan-ears attached fell off, as Danny started to gallop around the woodshed on all fours to see if ...
— The Circus Comes to Town • Lebbeus Mitchell

... the Church gathered about Parker, and applauded his invective and endorsed his arraignment of the churches that had placed their hands upon their mouths, and their mouths in the dust, before the slave power. He touched a chord in the human heart, and it yielded rich music. He educated the pew until an occasional voice broke the long silence respecting the bondman of the land. First, the ministers were not so urgent in their invitations to Southern ministers to occupy their pulpits. This coldness was followed by feeble ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams

... at a signal from the princess, and commenced his playing, if such it could be called, thrumming violently, and jarring every chord of his instrument to a tone of such dissonance, that the attendant girls put their fingers into their ears, and pitied the beautiful ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Frederick Marryat

... controlling your thoughts, it will be serviceable to you to think over all the details of the annoyance from which you are suffering, and to consider all the extenuating circumstances of the case; to imagine (this will be good use to make of your vivid imagination) what painful chord you may have unconsciously struck, what circumstances may possibly have led the person who annoys you to suppose that the provocation originated with yourself instead of with her. It may be possible that ...
— The Young Lady's Mentor - A Guide to the Formation of Character. In a Series of Letters to Her Unknown Friends • A Lady

... knew that this was no time for the indulgence of sentiment; she knew that duty must be done, even though every chord of her heart quivered with agony. After much consideration and earnest prayer, she had concluded to let him go, and the thought of sending him away from her, and all he loved, among entire strangers, was ...
— Arthur Hamilton, and His Dog • Anonymous

... some reflections on the vanity of his pursuit,—he supplied several mining-camps with whiskey and tobacco,—in conjunction with the dreariness of the dusty plain on which he habitually drove, may have touched some chord in sympathy with this sensitive woman. Howbeit, after a brief courtship,—as brief as was consistent with some previous legal formalities,—they were married; and Mr. Tretherick brought his blushing bride to Fiddletown, or "Fideletown," ...
— Tales of the Argonauts • Bret Harte

... presently I thought of the fan, turned my head, and it was not there. A great fear seized me. I looked out of the open door where the morning sun threw the checkered shadows of the honeysuckle on the floor of the gallery, and over the railing to the tree-tops in the court-yard. The place struck a chord in my memory. Then my eyes wandered back into the room. There was a polished dresser, a crucifix and a prie-dieu in the corner, a fauteuil, and another chair at my bed. The floor was rubbed to an immaculate cleanliness, stained ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... functions, is based on the supposition that love is bound up with propagation. This is the fateful error of the modern theory of love, a rationalistic, metaphysical abstraction, which touches no corresponding chord in the human soul. To base the relationship of love and death on an association of becoming and declining is a beautiful idea, but nothing more. Modern synthetic love produces this relationship in its metaphysical perfection out of itself; it is foreign alike to pure sexuality and to spiritual ...
— The Evolution of Love • Emil Lucka

... arm, D, is to the chord of arc, ab, divided by 2, so is the radius to the sine angle oscillation of arm, D, divided ...
— Scientific American, Volume XXIV., No. 12, March 18, 1871 • Various

... on board the Celtic, when Thomas came to her cabin in the dark, she had recognized his voice. In the light the activity of the eye had dulled the keenness of the ear; but in the dark the ear had found the chord. For days she had been subconsciously waiting to hear one or the other of those voices; and Thomas' had come with a shock. The words "Aeneid" and "Enid" had so little variation in sound between them that Kitty had found her second man in Lord Monckton. Sooner or later ...
— The Voice in the Fog • Harold MacGrath

... know what a "node" in music means exactly—some of you may know nothing whatever about it. Simply, it is the fixed point of a sonorous chord, at which it divides itself, when it vibrates by aliquot parts, and produces the harmonic sounds. And do you not see how this struck chord can serve and does serve to illustrate my exposition of the back and belly—more particularly the latter—in their vibrations and their ...
— Violin Making - 'The Strad' Library, No. IX. • Walter H. Mayson

... his nose a little, and made a low soft noise, a chord of mingled obedience and delight—a moan of pleasure mixed with a ...
— A Rough Shaking • George MacDonald

... the kind of suitable Christmas interest I meant to awaken in the story is not in it. Do you understand? For an ordinary number it is quite unobjectionable. If you should think of any other idea, narratable by an old man, which you think would strike the chord of the season; and if you should find time to work it out during the short remainder of this month, I should be greatly pleased to have it. In any case, this story goes ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 1 (of 3), 1833-1856 • Charles Dickens

... of Bar-Wul-Yann was gone, yet still the pink cliffs glowed, the fairest marvel that the eye beheld—and this in a land of wonders. And soon the twilight gave place to the coming out of stars, and the colours of Bar-Wul-Yann went dwindling away. And the sight of those cliffs was to me as some chord of music that a master's hand had launched from the violin, and which carries to Heaven or Faery ...
— A Dreamer's Tales • Lord Dunsany [Edward J. M. D. Plunkett]

... His speech and general appearance struck a long-dormant chord; but in her mind was no recognition ...
— The Splendid Idle Forties - Stories of Old California • Gertrude Atherton

... to render is not the rose but the beauty of the rose, his sense of one chord in the universal harmony which the rose sounds for him, not that only, but the beauty of all roses that ever were or ever shall be; and inevitably he will select such colors and such lines as bring that special and interpreted beauty into ...
— The Enjoyment of Art • Carleton Noyes

... replied: "Because you never pay any attention to the arpeggio, dear. It doesn't begin on the chord. It begins on the G flat. ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan

... struggle than Della had imagined. He had truly loved her, old as he was, and had not loved lightly; but he could not take to his heart the heartless wife which she had frankly admitted she must be if he married her; and Della had, unwittingly, skillfully touched a tender chord, when she made the appeal to his feelings which she did. He had felt the force of her reasoning, and had been delighted with her frankness and her confidence; though it pained him to relinquish her, he was too much a soldier to ...
— The Brother Clerks - A Tale of New-Orleans • Xariffa

... he made Eugene Aram a noble, tender, gentle person, whom ungovernable passion, under circumstances of overwhelming provocation, had once impelled to an act of half-justifiable homicide, and who had for years been slowly dying with remorse. He touched no chord of terror, but only the chord of pity. Like his portrayal of Mathias, the picture showed the reactionary effect of hidden sin in the human soul; but the personality of the sufferer was entirely different. Each of those men has had experience ...
— Shadows of the Stage • William Winter

... suffering, oppressed, and tormented souls, who can endow even dumb misery with speech. Nobody can approach him in the colours of late autumn, in the indescribably touching joy of a last, a very last, and all too short gladness; he knows of a chord which expresses those secret and weird midnight hours of the soul, when cause and effect seem to have fallen asunder, and at every moment something may spring out of nonentity. He is happiest of all when creating from out the nethermost depths ...
— The Case Of Wagner, Nietzsche Contra Wagner, and Selected Aphorisms. • Friedrich Nietzsche.

... more to chiefs and ladies bright The harp of Tara swells; The chord alone that breaks at night Its tale of ruin tells. Thus Freedom now so seldom wakes, The only throb she gives Is when some heart indignant breaks, To show that ...
— De La Salle Fifth Reader • Brothers of the Christian Schools

... even though that right includes the privilege of not reading every word of the famous Essays, and of only reverting—in our light return to them—to those aspects and qualities which strike an answering chord in ourselves. ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys

... the chiselled wonder of a thousand yellow windows with their oblongs and hectagons and triangles of golden light, the shattered softness of the intersecting planes of star-shine and blue shade, all trembled on John's spirit like a chord of music. On one of the towers, the tallest, the blackest at its base, an arrangement of exterior lights at the top made a sort of floating fairyland—and as John gazed up in warm enchantment the faint acciaccare sound of violins drifted ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald

... smote a responsive chord in his heart. It would be good to have a man of his own race beside him, even though it were but ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini

... 'tis He alone Decidedly can try us, He knows each chord—its various tone, Each spring—its various bias: Then at the balance let's be mute, We never can adjust it; What's done we partly may compute, ...
— English Satires • Various

... It must have struck a vibrant chord in the old man's breast. Absorbed in parish gossip and his 'Cottage Poems,' caring no longer for the world but only for newspaper reports of it, actively idle, living a resultless life of ascetic self-indulgence, ...
— Emily Bront • A. Mary F. (Agnes Mary Frances) Robinson

... heart fluttered at the question, and my imagination glowed with a thousand fond presages. I answered in the affirmative; and we met by accident at the ball. I could nut behold him without emotion: when he accosted me, his well-known voice made my heart vibrate, like a musical chord, when its unison is struck. All the ideas of our past love, which the lapse of time and absence had enfeebled and lulled to sleep, now awoke, and were reinspired by his appearance; so that his artful ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett

... back," said the musician kindly, seeing the tears in the young fellow's eyes. "See, we will try a scale." He struck a chord. "Now, open your mouth—so—Do-o-o-o!" He sang a long note. Nino could not resist any longer, whether he had any voice or not. He blushed red and turned away, but he opened his mouth and made ...
— A Roman Singer • F. Marion Crawford

... with an energetic, as if soldierly, stride; he bowed a second time after which he straightened as a chord and, looking straight into the ...
— In Desert and Wilderness • Henryk Sienkiewicz

... sound of her own lament; and while the notes fly away through the courtyard of the mansion, tranquil as usual, where the fountain is playing in the midst of a clump of rhododendrons, the singer interrupts herself, her hands prolonging the chord, her eyes fixed on the music, but her glance far, far away. The doctor is absent. The interests of his business and his health have banished him from Paris for a few days, and, as frequently happens ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet

... or spirit? Who shall say What touch the chord of memory thrills? It passed, and left the August ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier

... of vibrations. There," she said, throwing another pair of pebbles in, and pointing to the two sets of widening rings as they overlapped one another; "the twinkling of a star, and the pulsation in a chord of music, are THAT. But I cannot picture the thing in my own mind. I wonder whether the hundreds of writers of text-books on physics, who talk so glibly of vibrations, realize them ...
— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw

... struck a chord which always vibrated intensely in my heart. 'How can I ever forget her? And yet, Miss Moncton, dear Miss Moncton, I do not wonder at your ...
— The Monctons: A Novel, Volume I • Susanna Moodie

... I complained of you just now that you never looked at the Byzantine font in the temple of St. John. The sacristan generally will not let you. He takes you to a particular spot on the floor, and sings a musical chord. The chord returns in prolonged echo from the chapel roof, as if the building were all ...
— Val d'Arno • John Ruskin

... sighing in unison, as though regretting deeply their mad impulsiveness in accepting the invitation. On this, other presents were offered; Bulpert said his memento would come later on. One of his friends sat on the music-stool, and Sarah, the charwoman's daughter, entering at the first chord with a tray that held sandwiches and cakes, said to him casually, "Hullo, George, you on in this scene?" and handed around the refreshments. Bulpert's friend, disturbed by the incident, waited until the girl left the room, and then explained ...
— Love at Paddington • W. Pett Ridge

... fine example of the all-around American high-school boys. His fondness for clean, honest sport of all kinds will strike a chord ...
— Betty Vivian - A Story of Haddo Court School • L. T. Meade

... where far-reaching batteries could be posted, were great advantages. It covered the principal roads to Washington and Baltimore, and its convex shape, enabling troops to reinforce with celerity any point of the line from the centre, or by moving along the chord of this arc, was probably the cause of our final success. The enemy, on the contrary, having a concave order of battle, was obliged to move troops much longer distances to support any part of his line, and could not communicate ...
— Chancellorsville and Gettysburg - Campaigns of the Civil War - VI • Abner Doubleday

... The piece, in three sharps, opened on the tonic, yet the very first note in the bass was a G-sharp. The following colloquy ensued: Editor: "Does the piece begin with the tonic chord of A?" Composer: "Yes." Editor: "Is the G-sharp, then, to be regarded as a suspension?" Composer: "Of course. That makes it right. How ...
— The Shadow World • Hamlin Garland

... imperfect than the message. Their outlines and their lovely faces might shine uncertain in the excess of light; but the words were always plain. The pity for France that was in their hearts spread itself into the silent rural atmosphere, touching every sensitive chord in the nature of little Jeanne. It was as if her mother lay dying there before ...
— Jeanne d'Arc - Her Life And Death • Mrs.(Margaret) Oliphant

... be a guardian spirit, which deigns to flit through this wayward world, to cheer the stricken breast, and purify feelings, whose every chord vibrates to the touch of woe; surely such presides, and throws a sunny halo, on the group, that blood has united—on which family love has shed its genial influence—and of which, each member, albeit bowed down by sympathetic grief, ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman

... then another followed, and was lost in the singer's voice. During a long phrase on the harpsichord, sharp and tinkling, the singer turned his head towards the dais, and there came a plaintive little sob. But he, instead of stopping, struck a sharp chord; and with a thread of voice so hushed as to be scarcely audible, slid softly into a long cadenza. At the same moment he threw his head backwards, and the light fell full upon the handsome, effeminate face, with its ashy pallor and big, black ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee

... touched some secret chord—though what it was he was too busy to inquire. The girl drew herself up ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley

... this to the Emperors of Germany and Austria-Hungary; the King of England, the Czar of Russia and the President of France. The President's brief note touched the chord of sympathy of the whole world; but it was too late then to stop the war. European statesmen had been preparing for a conflict. With the public support which each nation had, each government wanted to fight until there was ...
— Germany, The Next Republic? • Carl W. Ackerman

... triumph,—the moment when, working his will before him, the machine at last, resistless, silent, massive pantomime of a life, offers itself to the gaze of men's souls and the needs of their bodies,—to know an inventor at all is to know that at a moment like this a chord is touched in him strange and deep, soft as from out of all eternity. The melody that Homer knew, and that Dante knew, is his also, with the grime upon his hands, standing and watching it there. It is the same song that from pride to pride and joy to joy has been singing through the hearts of The ...
— The Voice of the Machines - An Introduction to the Twentieth Century • Gerald Stanley Lee

... powers of Art Propitious view'd, and from his genial star Shed influence to the seeds of fancy kind, Than his attemper'd bosom must preserve The seal of Nature. There alone unchanged, Her form remains. The balmy walks of May There breathe perennial sweets; the trembling chord Resounds for ever in the abstracted ear, 370 Melodious; and the virgin's radiant eye, Superior to disease, to grief, and time, Shines with unbating lustre. Thus at length Endow'd with all that nature can bestow, The child of Fancy oft in silence bends O'er these mix'd treasures ...
— Poetical Works of Akenside - [Edited by George Gilfillan] • Mark Akenside

... I continued. I hardly know where I found the hardihood thus to open a conversation with a stranger; the step was contrary to my nature and habits: but I think her occupation touched a chord of sympathy somewhere; for I too liked reading, though of a frivolous and childish kind; I could not digest or comprehend the serious ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte

... more correct to say, from my point of consciousness to yours; or, to be still more accurate, to say that the intensity of my thoughts struck a sympathetic chord in yours, and vibrated through you as one consciousness. Without undue familiarity, Mr. Henley, I have found in you a responsive temperament. There are few men I can not influence, and with ...
— The Ghost of Guir House • Charles Willing Beale

... of the white-gloved hand, a few gentle tips of the wand, and then a sweep which seemed to draw out the long, rich opening chord of the Dream Song and set it drifting away among the trees till it lost itself in the rattle and clatter of ...
— In the Quarter • Robert W. Chambers

... dwindled in energy with the closing hour of the affair, and seizing an auspicious moment, Norton Pyford had reached the piano, and for twenty minutes demonstrated the close relation of the chord of C Minor to the colour brown. Modernist music, acting on unusual souls as classical music on ordinary souls, stimulated the flagging conversational powers of the guests, and he was soon surrounded by a gesticulating group of ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter

... theatre ever erected has the resonance, the perfect acoustics of a circus tent when the canvas is wet and the temperature within above 70 degrees. There was a chord from the orchestra. Alfred ran to the platform in the middle of the ring. (The gentleman who announced the concert assured the audience there would be a stage erected). This stage was a platform ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field

... impulse the battalion halted; faced to the window, and spontaneously came to "Present!" as the ringing rebel yell rattled the windows of that block. The chord had been touched that the roughest ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon



Words linked to "Chord" :   arpeggio, change, harmonize, chordal, alter, note, common chord, straight line, tone, play



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