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Compression   Listen
noun
Compression  n.  
1.
The act of compressing, or state of being compressed. "Compression of thought."
2.
(Computers) Reduction of the space required for storage (of binary data) by an algorithm which converts the data to a smaller number of bits while preserving the information content. The act of compressing (3). Note: Compression may be lossless compression, in which all of the information in the original data is preserved, and the original data may be recovered in form identical to its original form; or lossy compression, in which some of the information in the original data is lost, and decompression results in a data form slightly different from the original. Lossy compression is used, for example, to compress audio or video recordings, and sometimes images, where the slight differences in the original data and the data recovered after lossy compression may be imperceptable to the human eye or ear. The JPEG format is produced by a lossy compression algorithm.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Compression" Quotes from Famous Books



... some melted lead, took a small portion of it out, placed it in his mouth, and then gave it in a solid state to some of the company. This performance, according to his account, was also very easy; for he seized only a very small particle, which, by a tight compression between the forefinger and the thumb, became cool before it reached the mouth. At this time Mr. Smith made his appearance, and M. Chabert forthwith prepared himself for mightier undertakings. A cruse of oil was brought forward and poured ...
— The Miracle Mongers, an Expos • Harry Houdini

... after they have merely heard what you have to say, but after My Moral Weight has been thrown into the scale.—Mrs. Finch! on leaving the bath, I shall have you only lightly clothed. I forbid, with a view to your head, all compression, whether of stays or strings, round the waist. I forbid garters—with the same object. You will abstain from tea and talking. You will lie, loose, on your back. ...
— Poor Miss Finch • Wilkie Collins

... asserts that a forced compression of the waist damages the power of the figure as an instrument for the expression of emotions, the result of all this being an unfavorable reaction upon the mind and character of the unfortunate victims. One of ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke

... their armies incontinently beaten and put to flight." Ts'ao Kung's notes on Sun Tzu, models of austere brevity, are so thoroughly characteristic of the stern commander known to history, that it is hard indeed to conceive of them as the work of a mere LITTERATEUR. Sometimes, indeed, owing to extreme compression, they are scarcely intelligible and stand no less in need of a commentary than the ...
— The Art of War • Sun Tzu

... freshness and suggestiveness in these papers. Dr. Maclaren has studied the art of compression with great success, and no teacher of a class could desire anything better for his purpose than these lessons. They may be heartily recommended to all teachers as about the best things of the kind ...
— The Life of David - As Reflected in His Psalms • Alexander Maclaren

... and the door held firmly closed. Also, the trap-door of a number of species is so designed as to be absolutely rain-proof, being bevelled and as accurately fitting a corresponding bevel of the tube as the setting of a compression valve of a ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday

... which they formulate, were first discovered and worked out for the short-story in the medium of poetry.[8] The ballad and narrative poem must be, by reason of their highly artificial form, comparatively short, possessing totality, immediateness, compression, verisimilitude, and finality. The old ballad which commemorates the battle of Otterbourne, fought on August 10, 1388, is a fine example of the short-story method. Its opening stanza speaks the last ...
— The Great English Short-Story Writers, Vol. 1 • Various

... quitted the room. The beauty of her face was not pleasant in that moment; there was a glitter in her eye, a compression of her lips that might have told any one to beware. Lady Thesiger became her own natural self after Coralie's departure; she talked so kindly to Clare that I could have kissed her hand ...
— Coralie • Charlotte M. Braeme

... Skrebensky? Could she not have a child of herself? Was not the child her own affair? all her own affair? What had it to do with him? Why must she be bound, aching and cramped with the bondage, to Skrebensky and Skrebensky's world? Anton's world: it became in her feverish brain a compression which enclosed her. If she could not get out of the compression she would go mad. The compression was Anton and Anton's world, not the Anton she possessed, but the Anton she did not possess, that which was owned by some other influence, by ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence

... manifested now as magnetism, now as electricity, and now as chemical agency, is supposed, on entering an organized body, to constitute its vital principle, something in the same manner as the steam becomes the mechanic power of the steam-engine, in consequence of its compression by the steam-engine; or as the breeze that murmurs indistinguishably in the forest becomes the element, the substratum, of melody in the AEolian harp, and of consummate harmony in the organ. Now this hypothesis is as directly opposed to my view as supervention ...
— Hints towards the formation of a more comprehensive theory of life. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... Dyke, with a compression of the lips. "I would hunt these scoundrels down without one cent reward. Nicholson was my friend, and a good one. He helped me once, when to do so was of great inconvenience to himself. It is my duty to see that his cowardly assassins ...
— Dyke Darrel the Railroad Detective - Or, The Crime of the Midnight Express • Frank Pinkerton

... bystanders, rested upon the sweet, animated face of Sibyll, flushed into rich bloom at the notice it excited. Then as he approached the maiden, his quick glance darting to the woman he had first loved told him that he had at last discovered the secret how to wound. An involuntary compression of Katherine's proud lips, a hasty rise and fall of the stately neck, a restless, indescribable flutter, as it were, of the whole frame, told the experienced woman-reader of the signs of jealousy and fear. And he passed at once to the young maiden's ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... writes here is the same who was set to manage the last Siege of Schweidnitz, by Globes of Compression and other fine inventions; and almost went out of his wits because he could not do it. An expert ingenious creature; skilful as an engineer; had been brought into Friedrich's service by the late Balbi, during Balbi's ascendency (which ended ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... has been reissued in Everyman's Library. The volume of Selections in the Regent Library (Herbert and Daniel) was well edited by Miss Jebb, and may be recommended, for Mary Wollstonecraft rather gains than loses by compression. For her life Mr. Kegan Paul's William Godwin should be consulted. The edition of the Rights, published by T. Fisher Unwin, contains an admirable critical study of Mrs. Fawcett. There is no general history ...
— Shelley, Godwin and Their Circle • H. N. Brailsford

... and, with correcting finger, pointing the way toward better things. After Louis XIV, as Saint-Amand points out, the conditions of the Court of France were reflected even more vividly in the characters of the women of Versailles. "With compression and reserve," he observes, "there followed scandal. During the regency and the reign of Louis XV the morals of the Court fast deteriorated. A new epoch opened—troublous, lewd, dissolute. And was not the Duchess of Berry eccentric, capricious, passionate, the very image of the time? The favorites ...
— The Story of Versailles • Francis Loring Payne

... little color, and her black hair was "stringy"—which she hated! Now that she was no longer obliged to consider the expenditure of each dollar so carefully, the worried look about her big brown eyes, and the compression of her lips, had relaxed. For two years Ruth had been the head of the household and it had made her old before ...
— The Corner House Girls at School • Grace Brooks Hill

... mistake, sir," said the mathematician, with a penitent expression; "we ought to have subjected that peculiar skin to the action of a rolling machine. Where could my eyes have been when I suggested compression!" ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac

... operation, not a cent has been expended for repairs or accidents. The leading principle of the calorie engine consists in producing motive-power by the employment of the expansive force of atmospheric air instead of that of steam; the force being produced by compression of the air in one part of the machine, and by its dilatation by the application of heat in another part. This dilatation, however, is not effected by continuous application of combustibles, but by a peculiar ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 445 - Volume 18, New Series, July 10, 1852 • Various

... takes vengeance. The space is scant enough for all that is told in it; scant, that is to say, in comparison with the space of the story of Beowulf; though whether the poem loses, as poetry, by this compression is another matter. ...
— Epic and Romance - Essays on Medieval Literature • W. P. Ker

... to give a "general view of our work in about 1000 words:" and I attempt the task. The story is elastic; it bears compression. Perhaps it can be brought within the allotted space. I have often undertaken to tell it in five minutes, premising, however, always that to do this adequately would require ...
— The American Missionary - Volume 52, No. 2, June, 1898 • Various

... mildly; he did not even emphasize the words "clumsy and stupid." But the retort went home; the Pythians at the table,—of whom Blake was one,—chuckled; and Westby, with a deeper shade of crimson on his face and a sudden compression of ...
— The Jester of St. Timothy's • Arthur Stanwood Pier

... Ralston affirms, has verified and warrants the truth of these experiments, which have not yet been published. The most wonderful part appeared to me incredible: under a great degree of compression the water, Mr. Ralston ...
— The Life and Letters of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth

... in order to secure the vital purpose of compression with fixed shelving, the rule of arrangement according to subjects must be traversed partially by division into sizes. This division, however, need not, as to the bulk of the library, be more than threefold. ...
— On Books and the Housing of Them • William Ewart Gladstone

... concrete, and these are so often disregarded that the average serviceability of the concrete road surface is sometimes much lower than it would be if built with due regard for the effect of traffic on concrete surfaces. In most structural uses of concrete, its strength in compression only is utilized, and the factor of safety is such as to eliminate to some extent failures due to ...
— American Rural Highways • T. R. Agg

... dimness and perceived that the chasm took another turn and stretched away at a steep slant to unknown deeps, for its course was lost in darkness. What a place that was to be in—especially if that leather belt should break! The compression of the belt threatened to suffocate the intrepid fellow; he called to his friends to draw him up, but could not make them hear. They still lowered him, deeper and deeper. Then he jerked his third cord as vigorously as he could; his friends understood, and dragged him out of ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... became deadly pale, clenched her hands, pressing the palms strongly together, closed her eyes, and drew her lips with strong compression, as if the severe constraint which she put upon her internal feelings extended even to her muscular organization. Then raising her head, and drawing in her breath strongly ere she spoke, she said, with firmness,—"Father, I consent ...
— The Black Dwarf • Sir Walter Scott

... a mass to drive on the wedge of war. A black powder has changed the military art, and in a great degree the manners of mankind. Why may not the same science which produced it, produce another powder which, inflamed under a certain compression, might impell the air, so as to shake down the strongest towers ...
— Priestley in America - 1794-1804 • Edgar F. Smith

... perceiving that his enemy had escaped him, now turned his eyes, which were flashing with anger, upon his comrade, and gradually his muscles lost their rigid compression, his brow relaxed, and his look changed from its fierce expression, to the covert laughter which so often distinguished his countenance. The surgeon sat in dignified composure on his horse; his thin body erect, and his head elevated with ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper

... Saturday evening, a country lad bound hand and foot on the floor of a dark inner room in one of the dens of the High Street; and such was the state of exhaustion to which he was reduced, mainly through the compression of an old apron wrapped tightly round his face, that though they set him loose, it was some time ere he could muster strength enough to crawl away. He had been robbed by a bevy of women whom he had been foolish enough to treat; and on threatening to ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller

... doubtful whether it appeared in anything but a narrow and personal light. Several people heard him pacing in the small hours—for the vast place was packed with guests by a proprietor editor who, before all understood compression. And about five o'clock, if not before, Filmer left his room and wandered out of the sleeping house into the park, alive by that time with sunlight and birds and squirrels and the fallow deer. MacAndrew, who was also an early ...
— Twelve Stories and a Dream • H. G. Wells

... submarine Tom and his party were under scarcely greater discomfort than they would have been on the surface. True, they were confined to a restricted space, and the air they breathed came from compression tanks, and not from the open sky. The lights had to be kept aglow, of course, for it was pitch dark at that depth. The sunlight cannot penetrate to more than a hundred feet. But sunlight was not needed, for the craft carried powerful electric lights that could ...
— Tom Swift and his Undersea Search - or, The Treasure on the Floor of the Atlantic • Victor Appleton

... original stock of evidence current and in circulation even underwent a process of attrition. As in the story of the Eastern sage who first wrote the collected learning of the universe for his sons in a thousand volumes, and by successive compression and burning reduced them to one, and from this by further burning distilled the single ejaculation of the Faith, "There is no god but God and Mohamed is the Prophet of God," which was all his maturer wisdom deemed essential:—so in the books of that period do we find the corpus of genetic knowledge ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others

... grip you give your second when he comes up to say, that the gentleman with the loaded detonator opposite won't fire, that he feels he's in the wrong. Any or all of these together, very effective and powerful though they be, are light in the balance when compared with the two-handed compression you receive from the gentleman that expects you to marry ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever

... each other for a moment, defiantly, almost fiercely. There was a proud light in Ethel's eyes, a compression of the lips which told that she was not to be trifled with. Oliver stood pale, with frowning brows, and eyes that seemed to question both the reality of her feeling and the answer that he should make to her demand. It was by a great ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant

... true and the right were there! A fair, young creation,—so fair and so young, it seemed impossible that her destiny should be an unhappy one: yet her destiny was unhappy. The shadow on the brow, the melancholy which softened the clear hazel eye, the slightest possible compression of the mouth, said,—"Destined to misfortune!" Were these actual portraits of living persons, or at least of persons who had lived? Was there any connection between the man with two faces and two lives and the maiden with an unhappy destiny? After I became better acquainted with M—-y, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 41, March, 1861 • Various

... occur until toward the end of pregnancy. In these cases the cause is quite different. Because of the size of the womb at this time the element of compression becomes an important consideration. The function of the kidneys, bowels, bladder, and respiration may be more or less interfered with, and it may be desirable to use a properly constructed abdominal support, or maternity corset. These devices support and distribute the weight, and prevent the ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Volume I. (of IV.) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague, M.D.

... likely other metals, which an exaggerated example renders more apparent than can be done by direct statement. Cast iron, when subject to a bending strain, acts like a stiff spring, but when subject to compression it dents like a plastic substance. What I mean is this: If some plastic substance, say a thick coating of mud in the street, be leveled off true, and a board be laid upon it, it will fit, but if two heavy weights be placed on the ends, the center will be thrown up in the air far away from the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 643, April 28, 1888 • Various

... to the task of devising forms of type which should be smaller, so as to reduce the number and size of pages required for a book without sacrifice of legibility. A clear, clean cut type, with sharp lines and simple forms, capable of compression without loss of distinction, ...
— The Uses of Italic - A Primer of Information Regarding the Origin and Uses of Italic Letters • Frederick W. Hamilton

... and in the latest fashion. This Natasha noticed at once. He sat rather sideways in the armchair next to the countess, arranging with his right hand the cleanest of gloves that fitted his left hand like a skin, and he spoke with a particularly refined compression of his lips about the amusements of the highest Petersburg society, recalling with mild irony old times in Moscow and Moscow acquaintances. It was not accidentally, Natasha felt, that he alluded, when speaking of the highest aristocracy, ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy

... pit-gloom, with a grim smile now and then relaxing the tight-set compression of his thin lips, and with eyes that stared like a night-owl's into the gloom ahead of him, Breault ...
— The Country Beyond - A Romance of the Wilderness • James Oliver Curwood

... the entire mucous membrane of the respiratory tract, producing a nasal discharge, a sore and inflamed throat, pains and a feeling of compression, with a cough in the chest, ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Volume IV. (of IV.) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • Grant Hague

... consider on whom he was going to bestow it. Virtue held back his arm; but a milder form, a younger sister of Virtue's, not so severe as Virtue, nor so serious as Pity, smiled upon him; his fingers lost their compression; nor did Virtue appear to catch the money as it fell. It had no sooner reached the ground than the watchful cur (a trick he had been taught) snapped it up; and, contrary to the most approved method of stewardship, delivered it immediately ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey

... real worth veiled beneath a formal and retiring manner, and to admire features which, though regular, had a want of light and animation, which diminished their beauty even more than the thinness and compression of the lips, and the very pale ...
— Scenes and Characters • Charlotte M. Yonge

... reply, but the obstinate frown upon his brow and the stern compression of his lips were sufficient warning that it would be ...
— Katherine's Sheaves • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon

... he observes, are not poisonous, but strangle a man or other animal by powerful compression. The Ular Sawa, or great Python of the Sunda Isles, is said to exceed when full-grown, thirty feet in length; and it is narrated that a "Malay prow being anchored for the night under the Island of Celebes, ...
— Forest & Frontiers • G. A. Henty

... national need for economy in the consumption of paper, the Proprietors of Punch are compelled to reduce the number of its pages, but propose that the amount of matter published in Punch shall by condensation and compression be maintained and even, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 152, March 21, 1917 • Various

... is a strong word, Mr. Jasper." Claire's manner underwent another change, as was shown by the firm compression of his lips, and the steady gaze of his eyes, as he ...
— True Riches - Or, Wealth Without Wings • T.S. Arthur

... porcelain enameled, slab, bowl and apron on four sides in one piece, nickel-plated waste, low-pattern compression faucets with china indexes, supply pipes with ...
— The Complete Home • Various

... begin by pulling the fly-wheel round backwards until we feel the piston is on the compression stroke, then from this point—the crank being about 45 deg. above the front centre—pull the wheel round until the crank is in the position for the exhaust opening (see fig. 28). In this position there should be but the slightest play in the exhaust ...
— Gas and Oil Engines, Simply Explained - An Elementary Instruction Book for Amateurs and Engine Attendants • Walter C. Runciman

... whenever the motion of the blood through the arteries is impeded, whether it be by compression or infarction, or interception, there do the remote divisions of the arteries beat less forcibly, seeing that the pulse of the arteries is nothing more than the impulse or shock of the blood in ...
— The Harvard Classics Volume 38 - Scientific Papers (Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology) • Various

... crosshead. The spring buffers, which, as has been said, form an essential part of the quadrant, are fitted with steel rollers at the point of contact with the crosshead, thereby reducing the friction to a minimum. The springs, by their compression, absorb any shock coming on the rudder, and greatly reduce the vibration when struck by a sea. They are made adjustable, and can be either steel ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 1178, June 25, 1898 • Various

... natural representation of the passions. The advance was due partly, no doubt, to a perception of the heroic absurdities of French fiction, but also to the study of Italian novelle and the "Exemplary Novels" of Cervantes. But even when imitating the compression of these short tales Mrs. Haywood did not always succeed in freeing herself from the "amour trop delicat" of the romantic conventions. In two short "novels" appended to "Cleomelia: or, the Generous ...
— The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Haywood • George Frisbie Whicher

... determined by the touch, till the cold part of the paroxysm ceases. This determination is sometimes attended with difficulty; as strong and weak are only comparative degrees of the greater or less resistance of the pulsation of the artery to the compression of the finger. But the greater or less frequency of the pulsations affords a collateral evidence in those cases, where the degree of strength is not very distinguishable, which may assist our judgment concerning it. Since a moderately strong pulse, when the patient is in a recumbent posture, ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin

... up and saw the four posts rising hideously bare. In the middle of the bed-top was a huge wooden screw that had evidently worked it down through a hole in the ceiling, just as ordinary presses are worked down on the substance selected for compression. The frightful apparatus moved without making the faintest noise. There had been no creaking as it came down; there was now not the faintest sound from the room above. Amid a dead and awful silence I beheld before me—in ...
— After Dark • Wilkie Collins

... compression of lip and significant shake of the head of a physician about to take in hand a hopeless case of illness, the justice made known to his two neighbors the text of the sheet of paper, on which Claude Odouart de Buxieres had written, in his coarse, ...
— A Woodland Queen, Complete • Andre Theuriet

... her a moment with a glance that was almost of surprise, then, with a slight compression of the lips and the faintest raising of the shoulders, he turned from her and strode over to the window. There was a considerable concourse of people on their way to the Place de la Republique, for the hour of the tumbrils was ...
— The Trampling of the Lilies • Rafael Sabatini

... The principle of the lintel is that of resistance to transverse strains, and appears in all construction in which a cross-piece or beam rests on two or more vertical supports. The arch or vault makes use of several pieces to span an opening between two supports. These pieces are in compression and exert lateral pressures or thrusts which are transmitted to the supports or abutments. The thrust must be resisted either by the massiveness of the abutments or by the opposition to it of counter-thrusts from ...
— A Text-Book of the History of Architecture - Seventh Edition, revised • Alfred D. F. Hamlin

... wheels, and far lighter. And it was this lightness and solidity which Robur availed himself of in building his aerial locomotive. Everything—framework, hull, houses, cabins—were made of straw-paper turned hard as metal by compression, and—what was not to be despised in an apparatus flying at great heights—incombustible. The different parts of the engines and the screws were made of gelatinized fiber, which combined in sufficient degree flexibility with resistance. This material could be used in every form. It was insoluble ...
— Rubur the Conqueror • Jules Verne

... senseless, and so continued until the fourth day when he died. The whole auditory meatus was destroyed by suppuration. Gamgee tells of a constable who was stabbed in the left ear, severing the middle meningeal artery, death ensuing. In this instance, after digital compression, ligature of the common carotid was practiced as a last resort. There is an account of a provision-dealer's agent who fell asleep at a public house at Tottenham. In sport an attendant tickled his ear with a wooden article used as a pipe light. A quick, unconscious movement ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould

... last of these amiable feelings, he should lose no time in decamping, for the game is wholly and irretrievably lost. Mr. Ryfe would have felt this, could he have seen the gestures of the woman he loved, while she tore his letter into shreds—could he have marked the carriage of her haughty head, the compression of her sweet, resolute lips, the fierce energy of her white, cruel hands. Maud paced the floor for some half-dozen turns, opened the window, arranged the bottles on her toilet-table, the flowers on her chimney-piece, even took a good ...
— M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur." • G.J. Whyte-Melville

... was making his experiments on the compression of water, I was much struck with the mechanical means he had brought to bear on the subject, and was speculating on other applications of it, which ...
— Decline of Science in England • Charles Babbage

... of over-heated atmosphere, to be among the former.... They pinch their pretty little feet cruelly, which certainly need no such embellishment, and, of course, cannot walk; and if they did, in the state of compression to which they submit for their beauty's sake, would suffer too much inconvenience, if not pain, to derive any benefit from exercise ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble

... Morley; and it is, perhaps, the close proximity which suggests the strong physical likeness between the two. Both are clean shaven; both have the long narrow profile that is called hatchet-faced; in both there is the compression of lips that reveals depths of strength and tenacity; both have the slightly ascetic air of the philosopher turned politician; both look singularly young, not only for their years, but for the dazzling eminence ...
— Sketches In The House (1893) • T. P. O'Connor

... roaming, and with the reciprocal compression of each exercised on the other, coincided the new instincts of civilization. They were no longer barbarous by a brutal and animal barbarism. The deep soil of their powerful natures had long been budding into nobler capacities, and had expanded into nobler perceptions. Reverence ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. II (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey

... the Judson part," my father answered, with that compression of the lips that sometimes kept back a smile, and sometimes ...
— The Price of the Prairie - A Story of Kansas • Margaret Hill McCarter

... muscle. Air is carried to all parts of the body by a special system of air-sacks and tubes. This is a very advantageous structure for small animals with an external skeleton. In very large animals, or where the skeleton is internal, it would hardly be practicable; the risk of compression of the tubes at some point, and of thus cutting off the air-supply of some portion of the body, would be altogether ...
— The Whence and the Whither of Man • John Mason Tyler

... drilling requirements, but would show a great comparative loss in efficiency over electricity when applied to pumping. Despite the latter drawback, air transmission is a method growing in favor, especially in view of the advance made in effecting compression by falling water. ...
— Principles of Mining - Valuation, Organization and Administration • Herbert C. Hoover

... was, she observed—critical in millinery in the height of her ecstasy—the most majestic, charming, handsome Henri III. imaginable, the pride and glory of the assembly, only one degree too rosy at night for the tone of the lavender, needing a touch of French hands, and the merest trifle in want of compression about the waistband. She related that a certain Prince Henri d'Angleterre had buzzed at his ear annoyingly. 'Et Gascoigne, ou est-il?' called the King, and the Judge stepped forth to correct the obstreperous youth. The Judge was Jennings, clearly prepared by my father to foil the Prince—no ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... Palenque Indians, copied by Stephens from representations in plaster in different parts of the several structures, show that they were flat-heads, like the Chinook Indians of the Columbia River; their foreheads having been flattened by artificial compression. Herrera, speaking generally of the inhabitants of Yucatan, remarks, "that they flattened their heads and foreheads." [Footnote: ib., iv, 169.] Whether it was a general practice does not appear, aside from the Palenque monuments, and the off-hand ...
— Houses and House-Life of the American Aborigines • Lewis H. Morgan

... ball, fitted with a mouthpiece. The diameter is about 21/4 inches by 3 inches, its weight is two ounces, and it is so small that it can be carried without any inconvenience in the coat or even in the waistcoat pocket. Its capacity is such that all the air within it may be expelled by the compression of one hand. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 460, October 25, 1884 • Various

... We see her there now, as she sits in the glimmering by the bed-curtains,—her head a little drooped, as droops a snowdrop over a grave;—one ray of light from a round hole in the closed shutters falls on her smooth-parted hair, her small hands are clasped on her knees, her mouth has lines of sad compression, and in ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 23, September, 1859 • Various

... so much distorted by the compression of his chin, and by his face being out of window, that his sister could not make it out. In answer to her sound of inquiry, he took down one hand, removed the other from his temple, and emitting a modicum more voice from between his teeth, said, 'It ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge

... day of the month. I might have known no good would come of it. Ah, you should have seen him at that time, in full uniform. He belonged to the Paris Guards then. All the women were crazy about soldiers, and my head was turned, too——" Her tone, her gestures, and the compression of her thin lips, revealed the bitterness of her disappointment and her unavailing regret. "Ah, these handsome men!" she continued; "don't talk to me about them! This one had heard of my savings. I had nineteen thousand francs, so he begged me to marry him, ...
— The Count's Millions - Volume 1 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau

... the left, the pressure on the adjacent air is released and a rarefaction takes place. In 1/50 of 1 second you have the air adjacent to the rod compressed, back to normal, and rarefied; during this time the neighboring air is affected and the compression is communicated a distance which is the wave length of this given sound wave. In 1 second this disturbance is transmitted 1100 feet at 44 deg. Fahrenheit. The wave length for this sound wave then is ...
— Manhood of Humanity. • Alfred Korzybski

... every one of the whole family was giving continual shocks to Mr. Pilgrim's disciple, even when they felt most innocent; and though the mother was sometimes disposed to be angry, sometimes to laugh at the little shudder and compression of the lips she began to know, she perceived what an addition this must be to the unhappiness of the poor ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge

... in number, are on opposite sides of the machine. The valve-stems extend upward through ordinary stuffing-boxes, and are attached to the notched cross-heads by means of a threaded end which is prevented from screwing in or out by a compression nut on the lower end of the cross-head. Each cross-head is actuated by a pair of reciprocating pawls, or dogs (shown more plainly in the enlarged view, Fig. 18), one of which opens the valve and the other closes it. The several pairs ...
— Steam Turbines - A Book of Instruction for the Adjustment and Operation of - the Principal Types of this Class of Prime Movers • Hubert E. Collins

... time, assimilated everything else to itself. As the heroic legend with all its manifold discrepancies was easily developed into the tranquil fulness and light variety of epic poetry, so afterwards it readily responded to the demands which the tragic writers made upon it for earnestness, energy, and compression; and whatever in this sifting process of transformation fell out as inapplicable to tragedy, afforded materials for a sort of half sportive, though still ideal representation, in the subordinate species called the ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black

... said, scribbling briskly, "am I to write all that?" It occupied, even with much compression, space far into the second side of the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, April 5, 1916 • Various

... heard the sound of feet ascending the ladder; the door was softly opened; he saw the shadow of two men stalking towards the bed, a dark lanthorn being unshrouded, directed their aim to the supposed sleeper, and he that held it thrust a poniard to his heart; the force of the blow made a compression on the chest, and a sort of groan issued from the windpipe of the defunct; the stroke was repeated, without producing a repetition of the note, so that the assassins concluded the work was effectually done, and retired for the present ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett

... self-respect of individual Englishmen; a wholesome, purifying, and preserving element in the homes and lives of many, where, without it, the recklessness bred of insecure means and obscure position would run miserable riot; a tremendous power of omnipotent compression, repression, and oppression, no doubt, quite consistent with the stern liberty whose severe beauty the people of these islands love, but absolutely incompatible with license, or even lightness of life, controlling a thousand disorders rampant in societies where it ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble

... Calcutta was capable of coining 200,000 pieces a day. Medals, which usually have their figures in higher relief than coins, are produced by similar means; but a single blow is rarely sufficient to bring them to perfection, and the compression of the metal which arises from the first blow renders it too hard to receive many subsequent blows without injury to the die. It is therefore, after being struck, removed to a furnace, in which it is carefully heated red-hot ...
— On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures • Charles Babbage

... exceeded the resisting power, represented by the tensile strength of cast iron. When cast, the gun cooled from the outside inwardly, thus placing the inside metal in a state of tension and the outside in a state of compression. General Rodman, Chief of Ordnance of the United States Army, came forward with a remedy for this. He suggested the casting of guns hollow and the cooling of them from the inside outwardly by circulating a stream of cold water in the bore while the outside surface was kept at a ...
— Marvels of Modern Science • Paul Severing

... decrease of size &c 36; defalcation, decrement; lessening, shrinking &c v.; compaction; tabes^, collapse, emaciation, attenuation, tabefaction^, consumption, marasmus^, atrophy; systole, neck, hourglass. condensation, compression, compactness; compendium &c 596; squeezing &c v.; strangulation; corrugation; astringency; astringents, sclerotics; contractility, compressibility; coarctation^. inferiority in size. V. become small, become smaller; lessen, decrease &c 36; grow ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... usual some dainties for his darling. He watched Ellen unwrap the various parcels, not smiling as usual, but with a curious knitting of his forehead and pitiful compression of mouth. When she had finished and ran into the other room to show a great orange to her aunt, he drew a heavy sigh that was almost a groan. His wife coming in from the kitchen with a dish heard him, and looked at him with quick ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... be discharging close in the rear, until the very trees shook and men swayed under the compression of air in the vicinity. Over the heads of the silent infantry, shrapnel shrieked in reply, one after another, as the batteries opened with ...
— The Boy Allies with the Cossacks - Or, A Wild Dash over the Carpathians • Clair W. Hayes

... took the weapon from the hand of his friend and opened the pan. The last was filled with priming, caked like a bit of cinder, by time, moisture and compression. An application of the ramrod showed that both the pistols were charged, although Judith could testify that they had probably lain for years in the chest. It is not easy to portray the surprise ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper

... limbs over with blue spots. They wear round the leg, just below the knee, a tight strap of cotton, and another above each ankle. These are bound on when a girl is young, and hinder the growth of the parts by their compression, while the calf, which is unconfined, appears in consequence unnaturally large. Through the lower lip, which they perforate, they wear two or three pins with the points outwards. Should they wish to use one of them, they take ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston

... broke the link, neither of them sensibly hurt; though a leaf or two of the ingenuities, which were her thoughts, turned over in the phantasies of the lady; and the gentleman was taught to feel that a never so slightly lengthened compression of the hand female shoots within us both straight and far and round the corners. There you have Nature, if you want her naked in her elements, for a text. He loved his Nataly truly, even fervently, after the twenty years of union; he ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... new work. I ought to have thought of crying children rubbing their eyes with their knuckles, but I did not think of it, and cannot explain it. As far as my memory serves, they do not do so whilst roaring, in which case compression would be of use. I think it is at the close of the crying fit, as if they wished to stop their eyes crying, or possibly to relieve the irritation from the salt tears. I wish I knew more about ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin

... exactly as the Newgate Calendar and Howell's State Trials are compilations. In his preface to the work Borrow tells us that he has differentiated the book from the Newgate Calendar[66] and the State Trials[67] by the fact that he had made considerable compression. This was so, and in fact in many cases he has used the blue pencil rather than the pen—at least in the earlier volumes. But Borrow attempted something much more comprehensive than the Newgate Calendar and the State Trials in his book. In the former ...
— George Borrow and His Circle - Wherein May Be Found Many Hitherto Unpublished Letters Of - Borrow And His Friends • Clement King Shorter

... the box beneath the journal. The effect of the hydraulic pressure is to lift the axle, opening a passage for the escape of the compressed water, which at the same time, because of its release from compression, loses the power to sustain the weight. If, therefore, by the first impulse, the axle is thrown upward to any sensible distance, it will immediately fall back again, once more confining more or less completely the water. After one or two oscillations, ...
— Scientific American, Vol.22, No. 1, January 1, 1870 • Various

... embankment, the pressure of the bog turf tipped out of the waggons caused a copious stream of bog-water to flow from the end of it, in colour resembling Barclay's double stout; and when completed, the bank looked like a long ridge of tightly pressed tobacco-leaf. The compression of the turf may be imagined from the fact that 670,000 cubic yards of raw moss formed only 277,000 cubic yards of embankment at the completion ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles

... stirred up mud as he traveled. Only his sense of touch told him what was on the bottom. He wasn't afraid of grabbing a crab or an eel. All underwater creatures with any mobility at all get out of the way as fast as possible. He knew the compression wave caused by his movement would warn all ...
— The Flying Stingaree • Harold Leland Goodwin

... at the brain, may arise from concussion; compression; cerebral pressure from haemorrhage and other forms of apoplexy; blocking of a cerebral artery from embolism; dietetic and uraemic conditions; and from opium and other ...
— Aids to Forensic Medicine and Toxicology • W. G. Aitchison Robertson

... with the Suspition I had upon the whole Matter, that the chief manifest Change wrought in the Stone, was by Compression of its parts, rather than Incalescence, I took a piece of white Tile well Glaz'd, and if I press'd the Stone hard against it, it seem'd though I did not rub it to and fro, to shine at the Sides: And ...
— Experiments and Considerations Touching Colours (1664) • Robert Boyle

... esophagoscope. If the aspirating tube becomes clogged by solid food, the method of swab aspiration mentioned under bronchoscopy will succeed. Of course there is usually no cough to aid, but the involuntary abdominal and thoracic compression helps. Should a patient arrive in a serious state of water-hunger, as part of the preparation the patient must be given water by hypodermoclysis and enteroclysis, and if necessary the endoscopy, except in dyspneic cases, must be delayed until the ...
— Bronchoscopy and Esophagoscopy - A Manual of Peroral Endoscopy and Laryngeal Surgery • Chevalier Jackson

... expression. There is in his daily conversation a certain grim directness, and a laconic weightiness, which give an air of importance and authority even to his simplest utterances. This tendency to compression frequently has the effect of obscurity, not because his thought is obscure, but rather because energetic brevity of expression has fallen into disuse, and even a Norse public, long accustomed to the ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen

... or glottic shock, on the other hand, involves an undue effort of the vocal muscles, and the compression of the vocal cords causes irritation. The audible shock of the glottis cannot be avoided when it is necessary to accentuate a word beginning with an initial vowel. Constantly used, however, it is part of the misuse of the voice. Dr. Van Baggen recommends, as a method of correcting the ...
— The Voice - Its Production, Care and Preservation • Frank E. Miller

... excellence to that secret and persevering labor to which he had so nobly submitted, and by which he had given additional tone and power to his mind itself, I am perfectly convinced. His mind did, now, indeed, appear in itself the superior one; it had such a power of compression and expansion, of versatility and strength, that it seemed capable of anything and everything that he pleased. It was astonishing with what rapidity and effect he would shift the color, shape, and attitude of the same object as the emergencies of his ...
— Discourse of the Life and Character of the Hon. Littleton Waller Tazewell • Hugh Blair Grigsby

... body; or, in other words, that our conscious existence was in the body; but we rationally know that the sensation and volition occur in the brain, for neither sensation nor voluntary motion can occur if the nervous connection with the brain is interrupted by compression and section, or if the brain itself be sufficiently compressed. When the brain is exposed by an injury of the cranium, the pressure of a finger suspends all consciousness and volition, making a blank in the life ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, April 1887 - Volume 1, Number 3 • Various

... and force. Hence, the expression, as a description of a psychic episode, is a metaphor pure and simple. From the standpoint of the process of repression as pictured by the student of the vegetative apparatus, the term signifies a real bottling up of energy. For the repression means actual compression of muscle, the muscle contained in the viscera. And the repression means a real interference with the release of energy, which remains bound up, tugging for room for expression as much as a spring tightly coiled in a box. In the production of that tension an endocrine ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.

... exhausts his muse in a number of particulars, where he had better have been more succinct and select. He displays the prolific exuberance of a young poet, who had not yet taught himself the multiplied advantages of compression. He had not learned the principle, Relinquere quae desperat tractata nitescere posse. [116] But, as this is the fullest enumeration of the forms of witchcraft that occurs in the writers of antiquity, it seemed proper to give it to ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin

... you, Amanda. She has a full round chest, giving free play to the lungs; while your chest is narrow and flat. Without any compression, the action of your lungs is not so free and healthy as hers would be, laced as tightly as you say she laces. But when to your natural conformation you add artificial pressure, the action of your lungs becomes not only enfeebled, but the unhealthy action induced ...
— Words for the Wise • T. S. Arthur

... everybody's, and this was just one of those facts that are propagated with a mysterious and ridiculous rapidity. The whisper that carries them is very small, in the great scale of things, of air and space and progress, but it is also very safe, for there is no compression, no sounding-board, to make speakers responsible. And then repetition at sea is somehow not repetition; monotony is in the air, the mind is flat and everything recurs—the bells, the meals, the stewards' faces, the romp of children, the walk, the clothes, the ...
— A London Life; The Patagonia; The Liar; Mrs. Temperly • Henry James

... been for so long frozen out of that high-bred, haughty face, that the look of the eyes, the compression of the lips, the fear and horror of the entire countenance, amount almost ...
— The Diamond Coterie • Lawrence L. Lynch

... stranger moved forward to the window and stepped into the room. As she brushed by him she cringingly bowed her shoulders a little, and looked up at him as he stood a head and shoulders higher than herself. He looked back steadily and made no sign of seeing her save by a slight compression of the lips, until she passed on with dragging feet and stood listlessly in the middle of the room. It was evident that they completely understood one another, and yet their understanding sprung from no ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West

... no occasion whatever for these orders. The captain knew that well enough, but he had his own reasons for giving them. The men knew that, too, and they understood his reasons when they observed the increased sternness of his eyes, and the compression of ...
— Fast in the Ice - Adventures in the Polar Regions • R.M. Ballantyne

... He finished the prescribed form of sentences, and stepped down off the platform of the war engine with the Symbol of our Lord the Sun thrust out resolutely before him. To all ordinary seeming the crowd had been packed so that no further compression was possible, but before the advance of the Symbol the people crushed back, leaving a wide ...
— The Lost Continent • C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne

... character of the man, and was therefore the more overpowering when it had at once surmounted all restraints. Large tears flowed down the trembling features of his thin, and usually stern, or at least austere countenance; he eagerly returned the compression of Everard's hand, as if thankful for the sympathy which ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott

... and untinted, but the mouth was scarlet. The large long eyes of a changeful blue-gray, although limpid of surface, were heavy with the sadness of a sad spirit. Their natural fire was quenched just as the slight compression of her lips had lessened the sensuous ...
— The Splendid Idle Forties - Stories of Old California • Gertrude Atherton

... proofs. He wanted no steel in a ship's hull or in any part of her that had not behaved well in the shop tests, in the various machines that put the metal under bending stress, cross-breaking, hammering, drifting, shearing, elongation, contraction, compression, deflection, tension, and torsion stresses. The best of the steels had their elastic limits; there was none that ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes

... hope that my Walladmor will show when compared with the original. In saying this I disclaim all vanity; for, waiving other and more positive services to the German Walladmor, I here found my claim to the production of a "silk purse" simply on the negative merits of omission and compression. This is a point which on another account demands a word or two of explanation; as the reader will else find it difficult to understand upon what principle of translation three 'thick set' German volumes can have shrunk into two English ones ...
— Walladmor: - And Now Freely Translated from the German into English. - In Two Volumes. Vol. II. • Thomas De Quincey

... then, the nipple is to be regarded as an erectile organ, richly supplied with nerves and vessels, which, under the stimulation of the infant's lips—or any similar compression, and even under the influence of emotion or cold,—becomes firm and projects, mainly as a result of muscular contraction; for, unlike the penis and the clitoris, the nipple contains no true erectile tissue and little capacity for vascular engorgement.[19] We must then suppose ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 4 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... sure that there was sufficient, and we also tested and improved the ignition. At four o'clock the wind dropped, and in an hour the engine was started. While moving along, the idle cylinder was ejecting oil, and this, together with the fact that it had no compression, made me hope that broken piston-rings were the source of the trouble. It would only take two hours to remove three cylinders, take one ring from each of the two sound ones for the faulty one, and all might yet ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson



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