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Inflammable   Listen
adjective
Inflammable  adj.  
1.
Capable of being easily set fire; easily enkindled; combustible; as, inflammable oils or spirits.
2.
Excitable; irritable; irascible; easily provoked; as, an inflammable temper.
Inflammable air, the old chemical name for hydrogen.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Inflammable" Quotes from Famous Books



... the people being in this inflammable condition, it was clear that only disunion and jealousy amongst their Chiefs prevented their combining against us, and that if any impetus could be given to their religious sentiment strong enough to unite the discordant elements ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts

... tested by the inspector. In London there are no such laws; the gas companies control a small portion of the work as regards the connexion to meters, while the insurance companies require gas jets to be covered with a wire guard where liable to come in contact with inflammable goods. As to water, the various water companies in England have each their own set of regulations as to the kind of fittings and thickness and quality of pipe to be used, whether for service, wastes ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various

... an ordinary depth of water. Coal is used in the manufactories, which is dug from the adjacent mountains, and brought to the works on wooden railways. Seven miles above Charlestown is the famous burning spring. Inflammable gas escapes, which, if ignited, will burn with great brilliancy for many hours, and even for several days, in a favorable state of the atmosphere. The State of Virginia has constructed a tolerably good turnpike road from the mouth of the Guyandotte, on the Ohio, to Staunton. ...
— A New Guide for Emigrants to the West • J. M. Peck

... deny, that when an oppressed people feel their chains galling to them, they have a right to follow the example of the colonists, and strike for freedom. This right doubtless belongs to the negro, and these inflammable publications were calculated to lead them on to make the effort. But what reflecting mind can fail to foresee the horrors consequent upon such a hopeless endeavour? More especially must it have presented itself to the mind of the slave-masters; ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray

... Berry had made his gallant stand opposite the fierce assaults of Jackson, and where lay by thousands the mingled dead and wounded foes, there broke out about noon a fire in the dry and inflammable underbrush. The Confederates detailed a large force, and labored bravely to extinguish the flames, equally exhibiting their humanity to suffering friend and foe; but the fire was hard to control, and many wounded perished in ...
— The Campaign of Chancellorsville • Theodore A. Dodge

... her side. Unconscious? I don't know. First of all, I felt certain that this was no chance meeting. Something had happened before. Was he a man for a coup-de-foudre, the lightning stroke of love? I don't think so. That sort of susceptibility is luckily rare. A world of inflammable lovers of the Romeo and Juliet type would very soon end in barbarism and misery. But it is a fact that in every man (not in every woman) there lives a lover; a lover who is called out in all his potentialities often by ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad

... illumination. As I write I work opt the idea—gasoline, balls of oakum, caps and gunpowder from a few cartridges, Roman candles, and flares blue, red, and green, shallow metal receptacles to carry the explosive and inflammable stuff; and a trigger-like arrangement by which, pulling on a string, the caps are exploded in the gunpowder and fire set to the gasoline-soaked oakum and to the flares and candles. It will be brain as well as brawn ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London

... built up. Still the danger could not be wholly prevented. The miners must necessarily guide their steps through the extensive underground ways with lighted lamps or candles, the naked flame of which, coming in contact with the inflammable air, daily exposed them and their fellow-workers in the pit to the risk of death in one of ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles

... proclaimed the marshaling of his forces. Archie and Leary reached the Governor as he was crawling over the stones. Some one threw a shovelful of coals upon a heap of wood that evidently had been soaked in inflammable oil, for the ...
— Blacksheep! Blacksheep! • Meredith Nicholson

... ruddy reflections yards away. They roared and sang as they devoured the inflammable mattresses, stuffed with straw, and laid hold of the dry timbers piled above. They spat showers of sparks, turned the falling snowflakes to specks of crimson, and drove curls of thick yellow smoke into the room through the chinks of the now ...
— The Cryptogram - A Story of Northwest Canada • William Murray Graydon

... history of the Netherlands was written by their conqueror. Celtic Gaul is already in the power of Rome; the Belgic tribes, alarmed at the approaching danger, arm against the universal, tyrant. Inflammable, quick to strike, but too fickle to prevail against so powerful a foe, they hastily form a league of almost every clan. At the first blow of Caesar's sword, the frail confederacy falls asunder like a rope of sand. The tribes scatter ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... lit a small ball of hemp saturated in some inflammable substance, which he had carried with him, and, fixing it on to the point of his sword, held it up to the boards above, at the same time that the other drew his pistol and ...
— Boycotted - And Other Stories • Talbot Baines Reed

... Swift motion. 5. Being conducted by metals. 6. Crack or noise in exploding. 7. Subsisting in water or ice. 8. Rending bodies it passes through. 9. Destroying animals. 10. Melting metals. 11. Firing inflammable substances. 12. Sulphureous smell. The electric fluid is attracted by points. We do not know whether this property is in lightning. But since they agree in all the particulars wherein we can already compare them, is it not probable they agree likewise ...
— Practical Education, Volume II • Maria Edgeworth

... under the shade of a welcome mimosa upon which I had already hung my water-skin to cool. We cut sonne long thin strips of flesh from the giraffe, and lighted a fire of dry babanoose wood expressly for cooking. This species of wood is exceedingly inflammable, and burns like a torch; it is intensely hard, and in colour and grain it is similar to lignum vitae. The festoons of giraffe flesh were hung upon forked sticks, driven into the ground to leeward of the fire, while others were simply ...
— The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker

... quite at ease. Two or three have been called home to be Ministers of Foreign Affairs, as they have learned something of constitutional liberty in England. England is, as yet, all quiet, and I hope will keep so, but the Chartists are at work and Ireland is full of inflammable matter. But England does love her institutions, and is justly proud of their comparative freedom, and long may she enjoy them. . . . On Sunday Mr. Emerson dined with us with Lady Morgan and Mrs. Jameson—the authoress. ...
— Letters from England 1846-1849 • Elizabeth Davis Bancroft (Mrs. George Bancroft)

... rival, met in Lincoln Hall for a banquet a few hours after the close of the game. On this night while the rest of the school was busily engaged in heaping up piles of wood, rubbish, barrels and every imaginable kind of inflammable material, the members of the team gathered to discuss the victory and to hear the speeches that Coach Murray, as toastmaster, called for with the voice of authority. Any member of the eleven whom Mr. Murray singled out knew ...
— The Mark of the Knife • Clayton H. Ernst

... Gudrun, flushed and inflammable. 'What can be worse than this public grief—what is more horrible, more false! If GRIEF is not private, and ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence

... night seemed to be suddenly undrawn. Objects the most minute were visible as in the broad view of day. The brown heath, the grey and the mossy stone, were each distinguishable, but clad alike in one bright and unvarying colour, red as the roaring furnace. Soon the great magazine of inflammable matter in the interior caught fire, and rolled out in a wide mass of light, like the first burst of ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby

... house and looted it completely, except the books in the library, for which they seem to have had some respect; but we had reason to believe that on Monday the house would have been burnt, for gunpowder and inflammable materials were found strewed about after they left. They took everything they could carry away, and destroyed the rest, cutting long slits in the gauze of the mosquito-rooms, and pouring all the chemicals and medicines of the dispensary ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall

... it came about that by nightfall all the squares and public places were thronged with an idle and expectant crowd, not actively mischievous or threatening, but affording a vast mass of inflammable material in case the fire should start in any quarter. They gathered everywhere in dense groups, exchanging rumors and surmises, in which fact and fiction were ...
— The Bread-winners - A Social Study • John Hay

... insisted. "We're all made of inflammable stuff. Any man knows that. We couldn't, any of us, pull through life decently if we didn't let each other be each ...
— Strong Hearts • George W. Cable

... frigid but relatively non-corrosive atmosphere. When the pumps in the air lock began pulling out the methane-laden atmosphere, they began to bulge slightly, but not excessively. Then nitrogen, extracted from the ammonia snow that was so plentiful, filled the room, diluting the remaining inflammable gases to ...
— Unwise Child • Gordon Randall Garrett

... ever considered such a rosy cloud of rhetoric as is his lecture on war, in which a reasonable shape no sooner looms than it is lost again, to be worth preserving. The subject of war is of importance, inflammable humanity being what it is, and the results of war being what we know; and the quality of the critical attention we give to so great a matter is unfortunately clear when we regard the list of distinguished critics of letters who have accepted, apparently ...
— Waiting for Daylight • Henry Major Tomlinson

... south. Legaspe founded the city then with wooden buildings, for wood is produced abundantly in those regions. The roofs of the houses were covered with nipa leaves, which resemble our mace-reed, [279] and which form a sufficient defense against the rains. It is, however, an inflammable material, and is the occasion of the great fires that have happened there so often. Luzon is more densely populated than any of the many islands—which are called Filipinas in honor of King Filipo II, and which, as is affirmed, number eleven thousand. Luzon has a circumference of three hundred ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XVI, 1609 • H.E. Blair

... were in full vigorous exercise. It was always a time of anxiety to the Roman authorities, lest this fiery people should break out into insurrection. Jerusalem at the Passover was like a great magazine of combustibles, and into it Jesus flung a lighted brand amongst the inflammable substances that were gathered there. We have to remember, too, that all His life long He had gone exactly on the opposite tack. Remember how He betook Himself to the mountain solitudes when they wanted to make Him a king. Remember how He was ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren

... perfectly willing to become enthusiastic over an encounter not in the immediate future. But his peaceful disposition once roused, and my inflammable nature crawls into the darkest corner under the bed to escape ...
— At Home with the Jardines • Lilian Bell

... note and accent of her grief was of unmistakable feeling. Jess Kissock had begun in play, but her inflammable nature kindled easily into real passion. For at least that night, by the bridge of the Grannoch water, she believed that ...
— The Lilac Sunbonnet • S.R. Crockett

... have blazed up; over the bush I see a pine-tree hung with moss; that, too, would fly in fire upon the instant to its topmost bough; and the flame of that long torch—how would the trade-wind take and brandish that through the inflammable forest! I hear this dell roar in a moment with the joint voice of wind and fire, I see myself gallop for my soul, and the flying conflagration chase and outflank me through the hills; I see this pleasant forest burn for ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XXI • Robert Louis Stevenson

... off, but nuts were fastened on exposed surfaces for purposes of deception; threads of bolts were destroyed, the bolts being replaced with but one or two threads to hold them, and thus calculated to give way under pressure. Piles of shavings and inflammable material with cans of kerosene near suggested the intention to burn the vessels, intentions thwarted by our watchfulness, while the absence of explosives has been accounted for purely on the ground of the risk which the crews would have run in ...
— Our Navy in the War • Lawrence Perry

... there any woman from here to Kamchatka who doesn't look upon a trained nurse as her natural born enemy? I don't blame 'em!" she added chokingly. "Look at the impudent jobs we get sent out on! Quarantined upstairs for weeks at a time with their inflammable, diphtheritic bridegrooms—while they sit down stairs—brooding over their wedding teaspoons! Hiked off indefinitely to Atlantic City with their gouty bachelor uncles! Hearing their own innocent little sisters' ...
— The White Linen Nurse • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott

... attention from all around; she also hinted, at the same time, that it would be well for me to lay aside a little of my self-sufficiency, and accommodate myself to the humors of my grandmother. This to me!—to me, whose temper was so inflammable that the least inadvertent touch was sufficient to set it in a blaze—it was too much! So, like a well-disposed young lady, I very properly resolved that mine should not be the arm to support the venerable Mrs. Arlington in her daily walks; that should the children playfully ornament ...
— A Grandmother's Recollections • Ella Rodman

... ignited coal appeared to very advantageously replace the refractory bricks, the role of which it exactly fulfilled. It has been found well, moreover, to break the flames by a few piles of bricks in the furnace, in order to obtain as intimate a mixture as possible of the inflammable gases. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 623, December 10, 1887 • Various

... the cover on the saucepan Joe caused the fire to appear. The flowers were artificial ones, made of paper soaked in an inflammable composition, and then allowed to dry. As Joe pointed his wand at them an assistant behind the scenes pressed an electric button, which shot a train of sparks against the prepared paper. It caught fire, the flowers were burned, and ignited ...
— Joe Strong on the Trapeze - or The Daring Feats of a Young Circus Performer • Vance Barnum

... directly under his hiding-place. At first he was too much afraid of discovery to listen to what they were saying, but later his interest outweighed his fear. For they were evidently lovers, and Sandy was at that inflammable age when to hear mention of love is dangerous and to see a manifestation of it absolute contagion. When the great question came, his heart waited for the answer. Perhaps it was the added weight of his ...
— Sandy • Alice Hegan Rice

... of the negotiators was amicable enough. The Americans found their opponents courteous and well-bred; and both sides evinced a desire to avoid in word and manner, as Bayard put it, "everything of an inflammable nature." Throughout this memorable meeting at Ghent, indeed, even when difficult situations arose and nerves became taut, personal relations continued friendly. "We still keep personally upon eating and drinking terms with them," Adams wrote at ...
— Jefferson and his Colleagues - A Chronicle of the Virginia Dynasty, Volume 15 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Allen Johnson

... boon, so great were the difficulties and obstacles which stared them in the face. It was impossible for the liberators of Italy to have effected so marvellous a movement if the material on which they worked had not been so impulsive and inflammable. ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume X • John Lord

... the Devil's Puff-ball or Witchmeal, is used on the stage, as well in England as on the continent, to produce flashes of fire. It is made of the pollen of common club moss, or wolf's claw (Lycopodium clavatum), the capsules of which contain a highly inflammable powder. Translators have uniformly failed in rendering ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller

... poor fellows, without thinking, gave away their position by having too large a fire. Anyway, this shell burnt everything round them, including the flaps of a barn door standing upright, with nothing inflammable near, but the doors were in a blaze in a moment, and also their clothes. One man had 18 holes in him; the other was dreadfully scorched and hurt. I gave him morphia tablets, but I'm afraid they did not do him much good; it was a mercy that the doctor ...
— Letters of Lt.-Col. George Brenton Laurie • George Brenton Laurie

... be incinerated or buried in the ashes that fell from the fountain of flame. Within ten minutes the city itself had disappeared in a whirling flame vomited from the mountain, though for some hours the inflammable portions of the buildings continued to burn, until all was consumed that could be. The volcano whose ancient crater for more than fifty years had been occupied by a quiet lake in which picnic parties bathed, discharged a torrent of fiery mud, which rolled toward ...
— Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror • Richard Linthicum

... anybody can suggest anything better, I should like to hear it," replied Kit. "I don't want to burn the boat, I'm sure; but I can't see anything else that looks inflammable." ...
— Left on Labrador - or, The cruise of the Schooner-yacht 'Curlew.' as Recorded by 'Wash.' • Charles Asbury Stephens

... wood, olives, grain, nuts, pine cones, the kernels of which nourished the more needy population, and clothing, which through Caesar's favor was distributed from time to time among the rabble huddled into narrow alleys. In those places the fire, finding abundance of inflammable materials, became almost a series of explosions, and took possession of whole streets with unheard-of rapidity. People encamping outside the city or standing on the aqueducts knew from the color of the flame what was burning. The furious power of the wind carried forth from the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various

... pair of blankets to be found throughout the whole gallery of garrets (those for years past used by long-bearded old-clothesmen Jews), with a wicked leer that would lull all suspicion asleep in a man of a far less inflammable temperament, she literally envelopes him in vermin, and after a night of one of the plagues of Egypt, the Doctor rises in the morning, from top ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson

... this, the attacking party retreated two or three times over, as if to ask for advice or fresh orders from their boats—orders that were pretty decisive, for they came on each time more keenly than before, the last time with bundles of inflammable wood and reeds, with which they boldly advanced to the verandah of the residency, throwing them down ...
— Middy and Ensign • G. Manville Fenn

... have been famed for his exquisite beauty and to have been wooed by Aphrodite herself. Thus it would appear, as scholars have already observed, that Cinyras was in a sense a duplicate of his handsome son Adonis, to whom the inflammable goddess also lost her heart. Further, these stories of the love of Aphrodite for two members of the royal house of Paphos can hardly be dissociated from the corresponding legend told of Pygmalion, a Phoenician king of Cyprus, who is ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer

... renounce, in case of war among themselves, the employment by their military or naval forces of any projectile of a weight below 400 grammes which is either explosive or charged with fulminating or inflammable substances." ...
— Letters To "The Times" Upon War And Neutrality (1881-1920) • Thomas Erskine Holland

... demands a severe moral effort. It can never be an easy thing to rely on love as the ultimate wisdom and power in the universe. "The will to believe," if not everything, is all but everything, in predisposing us to listen to the arguments of the faith and in rendering us inflammable to ...
— Some Christian Convictions - A Practical Restatement in Terms of Present-Day Thinking • Henry Sloane Coffin

... governors, if natives, would be partisans rewarded for mercenary service, or if foreigners, would be nobles of wasted fortunes and greedy for salaries to replenish them. Kindling-matter from abroad was thrown on this inflammable public mind at home; for after each arrival the journals would be filled with the enthusiasm of the Wilkes controversy, which then was at its height in England; and if "London resounded the word Liberty from every corner and every voice," there was an echo ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various

... the British had learned how to avoid the more severe effects of the poison. The result of experience brought into existence a new device. It has been called a flame projector, and has been described as a portable tank which is filled with a highly inflammable coal-tar product. The contents of the tank were pumped through a nozzle at the end of which was a lighting arrangement. The flame could be ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various

... political economy.'[256] He had been disheartened by the prejudices of the ignorant labourer, and felt the incompatibility of a free government with such ignorance. A real education, such as was given in Scotland, would make the poor not, as alarmists had suggested, more inflammable, but better able to detect the sophistry of demagogues.[257] He is, of course, in favour of savings banks,[258] and approves friendly societies, though he is strongly opposed to making them compulsory, as they would then ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen

... California, seem at least to know that the sun is material and impersonal. They say that when all was dark in the beginning, the animals were constantly jostling each other. After a painful encounter, the hawk and the coyote collected two balls of inflammable substance; the hawk (Indra was occasionally a hawk) flew up with them into heaven, and lighted them with sparks from a flint. There they gave light as sun and moon. This is an exception to the general rule that the heavenly bodies are regarded as persons. The Melanesian ...
— Myth, Ritual, and Religion, Vol. 1 • Andrew Lang

... nothing—neither myself, nor anybody else. I have passed through fire. What was inflammable has been burnt to ashes; what is left is deathless. I have dedicated myself to the feet of him, who has received all my sin into the depths of his ...
— The Home and the World • Rabindranath Tagore

... metal container with hinged cover for storing inflammable polishes, cleaning fluids, chemically treated dust cloths, mops, oily cloths, and the like. Make sure they are put there when not in use, instead of being tossed into some convenient "glory hole." Use metal containers also for hot ashes and the ...
— If You're Going to Live in the Country • Thomas H. Ormsbee and Richmond Huntley

... anciens Forets de la Gaule, chap. xxix.] In the spontaneous wood the spread of fire is somewhat retarded by the general humidity of the soil and of the beds of leaves which cover it. But in long droughts the superficial layer of leaves and the dry fallen branches become as inflammable as tinder, and the fire spreads with fearful rapidity, until its further progress is arrested by want of material, or, more rarely, by heavy rains, sometimes caused, as many meteorologists suppose, by the ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh

... a very inflammable wood were used to test for the presence of the deadly smoke-gas. Lighting one of these, Tom tossed ...
— Tom Swift and his Big Tunnel - or, The Hidden City of the Andes • Victor Appleton

... as inflammable as can be, and they've only got to bring plenty of dry, fierce, burning wood and pile it up, and there we are as soon as they set light to it. They can have ...
— Fire Island - Being the Adventures of Uncertain Naturalists in an Unknown Track • G. Manville Fenn

... very curious. It is believed that the sequel of them was a very unhappy marriage. Captain Farquhar was of a loving disposition, and as inflammable as a hay-rick. He cannot have been much more than twenty-one when he described what he desired in a wife. "O ...
— Gossip in a Library • Edmund Gosse

... on the 27th of March. Important events had occurred there since his departure. The population of that great city, which numbered nearly three hundred thousand inhabitants, fickle, inflammable, inclined to change, had followed the suggestions of Turkish emissaries, and fallen upon the French the moment they heard the cannon at Heliopolis. Pouring forth outside the walls during the battle, and seeing Nassif-Pasha ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 12 (of 12) • S. Rappoport

... in his hand a big roll of the inflammable paper-like bark of the white birch-tree, which he had brought in with him to kindle his fire, expecting that it had gone out during his absence. Seeing a glow still on the hearth, and feeling instantly ...
— Camp and Trail - A Story of the Maine Woods • Isabel Hornibrook

... flame diffusing a very agreeable heat; and on different pieces of furniture were placed candlesticks with metal candles, from the top of each of which issued a steady light, like that of a lamp burning with spirits of wine. These different receptacles were supplied with inflammable gas by means of tubes communicating with an apparatus underneath. By this contrivance, in short, all the apartments were warmed very comfortably, and illuminated in ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon

... you, as others have done, may find, perhaps, that the passions of your sex are easier raised than allayed. Do not, therefore, boast too soon or too strongly of your insensibility to, or resistance of, its powers. In the composition of the human frame there is a good deal of inflammable matter, however dormant it may lie for a time, and like an intimate acquaintance of yours, when the torch is put to it, that which is within you may burst into a blaze; for which reason, and especially, too, as I have entered ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing

... Saint Denis was almost as bristling and as formidable as the barrier of the Faubourg Saint Antoine in June, 1848. The handful of the Representatives of the People had swooped down like a shower of sparks on these famous and inflammable crossroads. The beginning of the fire. The fire had caught. The old central market quarter, that city which is contained in the city, shouted, "Down with Bonaparte!" They hooted the police, they hissed the troops. Some ...
— The History of a Crime - The Testimony of an Eye-Witness • Victor Hugo

... had threatened Jeanne from the English camp, was guarding the retreat of his men as they ran across a bridge over the Loire, but the French brought up and set fire to an old barge piled high with straw, tar, sulphur and all kinds of inflammable material, and the only escape for the English lay ...
— A Treasury of Heroes and Heroines - A Record of High Endeavour and Strange Adventure from 500 B.C. to 1920 A.D. • Clayton Edwards

... fell like a spark of fire among the inflammable masses of Protestants assembled at Perth. The sentence promulgated was an open act of hostility against the lords, who felt themselves bound by their word which they had given to the preachers and by their vow to each other. They considered that the Regent's promise ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke

... quantity is very considerably increased. This oil is good for every purpose for which olive or almond oil is used. For domestic purposes it is esteemed, and it does not become rancid so quickly as other oils. Experiments have been made on its inflammable properties, and it is proved that the brilliancy of light was superior to that of olive oil, and its durability was likewise proved to be seven minutes per hour beyond the combustion of the best olive oil, with the additional ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds

... troops, but must fain eat and drink after the manner of their own country. They were often noisy and unruly also in their wassail, and their quarter of the camp was prone to be a scene of loud revel and sudden brawl. They were, withal, of great pride, yet it was not like our inflammable Spanish pride: they stood not much upon the "pundonor," the high punctilio, and rarely drew the stiletto in their disputes, but their pride was silent and contumelious. Though from a remote and somewhat barbarous island, they believed themselves the most perfect men ...
— Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada • Washington Irving

... of the Celestial Empire in Chinese junks, saw a little box containing a magnetized needle, called Ting-nan-Tchen, or "needle which points to the south." They also noticed terrible machines used by the armies in China called Ho-pao or fire-guns, into which was put an inflammable powder, which produced a noise like thunder and projected stones and pieces of iron with ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke

... sexual temptations. The most beautiful forms of art are those which have the element of sex interest, and the general emotional susceptibility of the creator or lover of beauty makes the sex emotion particularly inflammable. Other emotions also may be unwisely stimulated by art. In times of international friction, war-songs, "patriotic" speeches, or martial processions may arouse an unreasoning jingo spirit. The love of deviltry is fostered in boys by many of the penny ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake

... whole, so far as I can understand the description, it entirely resembles the Sitakunda near Chitagang, that is, the water has no connexion with a subterraneous fire, and the flame is occasioned by the burning of an inflammable air, that issues from the crevices of a rock, over which the water has been artificially conducted. The streams of the Kali and Narayani unite at Kagakoti, take the name of Narayani, and are also called Krishna, Gandaki, and Salagrami, ...
— An Account of The Kingdom of Nepal • Fancis Buchanan Hamilton

... the ambulances—Column Forward! Sometimes a gun was unlimbered, trained upon the threatening breastwork and fired. Once a shell burst beneath a wagon that had been drawn into the fields. It held, it appeared, inflammable stores. Wagon and contents shot into the air with a great sound and glare, and out of the light about the place came a frightful crying. Men ran to right and left to escape the rain of missiles; then the light died out, and the crying ceased. The column went on slowly, past ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston

... immediately kindled flame of popular bigotry. The always inflammable population of Jerusalem was more than usually excitable at the times of the Feasts, when it was largely increased by zealous worshippers from a distance. Noble teaching would have left the mob as stolid as it ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren

... anchorage, and Drake, turning eight of his oldest ships into fire-ships, distributed them in the night amongst the enemy, ordering the crews to set them on fire and then return in their small boats. The ships were piled up with inflammable material, with their guns loaded, and when these exploded, the Spaniards were so terrified that they unfurled their sails, cut their cables, and so lost their anchors. They fled in confusion, many being seriously damaged in collision, but only to encounter ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor

... little while this same unknown poet was pleased to put abroad a certain ballad of his that was ostensibly given over to the praise of certain lovely ladies of our city. Florence was always a very paradise of fair women. An inflammable fellow like myself could not walk the length of a single street without running the risk of half a dozen heartaches, and never was traveller that came and went but was loud in his laudations of the loveliness of Florence feminine. A poet, therefore, could scarcely have ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy

... difficult to describe because everything had such different appearance from familiar things in America. One noticeable feature was the character of the construction. The buildings are of stone or some other such inflammable material, with roofs of slate or tile. There are no frame buildings, except those that have been constructed ...
— In the Flash Ranging Service - Observations of an American Soldier During His Service - With the A.E.F. in France • Edward Alva Trueblood

... from Mountchance's laboratory—terror written in their faces. Helter-skelter the crowd darted from the house forcing Sally Salisbury with them whether she would or not. In the mad fight for gold large glass bottles filled with acids, alcohol and other inflammable liquids had been upset and smashed, and the smouldering fire in the furnace did the rest. What with the bundles of dried herbs which burnt like so much tinder and the woodwork, the panelled walls and furniture, nothing ...
— Madame Flirt - A Romance of 'The Beggar's Opera' • Charles E. Pearce

... was in the large upper room of the college at Lewisburg, Pa.; I was about to address the students. No more people could get into this room, which was on the second or third storey. The President of the college was introducing me when some inflammable Christmas greens, which had some six months before been wound around a pillar in the centre of the room, took fire, and from floor to ceiling there was a pillar of flame. Instantly the place was turned from a jolly commencement ...
— T. De Witt Talmage - As I Knew Him • T. De Witt Talmage

... either operate upon the principle of admitting air into the flues to accomplish the combustion of the uninflammable parts of the smoke, or seek to attain the same object by passing the smoke over or through the fire or other incandescent material. Some of the plans, indeed, profess to burn the inflammable gases as they are evolved from the coal, without permitting the admixture of any of the uninflammable products of combustion which enter into the composition of smoke; but this object has been very imperfectly fulfilled in any of the contrivances yet brought under the notice of the public, ...
— A Catechism of the Steam Engine • John Bourne

... presented a Telford medal and a Telford premium to Mr. S. B. Boulton for his paper "On the Antiseptic Treatment of Timber," to which I desire to refer all those who seek information on this point. With respect to the preservation from fire of inflammable building materials, the processes, more or less successful, that have been tried are so numerous that I cannot even pretend to enumerate them. I will, however, just mention one, the asbestos paint, because it is used to coat the wooden structures ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 488, May 9, 1885 • Various

... An old man was appointed caretaker, and lived in a frail hut in the midst of the wood. He cooked his dinner daily with the help of a wild-looking, unclothed little daughter who shared his humble home. They generally kindled their fire inside the hut, which was made of most inflammable materials, and to judge by the clouds of smoke which poured out through the coarse thatch at cooking time, the operations were on rather a large scale. He also made a large bonfire of refuse bits of wood outside his hut on cold nights, and there he ...
— India and the Indians • Edward F. Elwin

... visionary or designing men, who stand ready to advocate the paradox of perpetual peace between the States, though dismembered and alienated from each other. The genius of republics (say they) is pacific; the spirit of commerce has a tendency to soften the manners of men, and to extinguish those inflammable humors which have so often kindled into wars. Commercial republics, like ours, will never be disposed to waste themselves in ruinous contentions with each other. They will be governed by mutual interest, and will cultivate a spirit ...
— The Federalist Papers • Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison

... drawback to these pines is that their inflammable branches are always suggesting a display of extempore fireworks to the Arabs, who ...
— Fountains In The Sand - Rambles Among The Oases Of Tunisia • Norman Douglas

... 1253, Scourge thee as a burning wheel.]—At certain feasts a big wheel soaked in some inflammable resin or tar was set fire to and rolled ...
— The Electra of Euripides • Euripides

... as to the need of beating out the fire and trampling down a place to isolate it, as in the bush-fires of her experience; and Rosamond related the achievements of the regiment in quenching many a conflagration in inflammable colonial cities. ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge

... with clay. That would carry fire, as well as a vessel of either cast or wrought iron—at least sufficient to serve for a short excursion such as we should care to make. Now-a-days, fire is not used for inflating balloons. Inflammable gas has been found to be far superior for this purpose; but as we have no such thing in stock, we should have to proceed on the old original plan—that employed by the brothers Montgolfier—the ...
— The Cliff Climbers - A Sequel to "The Plant Hunters" • Captain Mayne Reid

... of (which may not improperly be called) practical imagination, he had made arrangements to meet every probable contingency. All the shrouds and sails of the ship not absolutely necessary for its immediate management, were thoroughly wetted, and so rolled up that they were as hard and as little inflammable as so many solid cylinders of wood; every sailor had his appropriate place and function, and a certain number were appointed as the fire-men, whose sole duty it was to be on the watch if any part of the vessel should ...
— Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit etc. • by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... the origin of the term "Bezonian," which occurs in the Shaksperean drama? Answer.—Some trace it to Ben Zine, an inflammable friend of "ancient Pistol's." It is far more probable, however, that the word was originally written "Bazainian," and was merely prophetic of the well-known epithet now bestowed by Prussian soldiers on the French troops serving ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 25, September 17, 1870 • Various

... hall light, burning his hand on the hot base at the same time, and applied its open flame to one of his molotails. The wick caught with a roar of flame and he threw it at approaching soldiers before it could burn his hand. It flew towards them, hit the wall and broke, inflammable fuel spurted in every direction and ...
— The Ethical Engineer • Henry Maxwell Dempsey

... I rightly apprehend his meaning, is essentially the contention of the Apostle James. The temptation is to the latent evil what the spark is to the inflammable material. If the material were not there the spark would be as harmless as though it dropped into ice-water. "I can hear words, I can see things, but they will have power over me only in the measure that something in me answers ...
— Men in the Making • Ambrose Shepherd

... their work well. Before leaving its precincts they had sprinkled coal oil over every square metre of carpet, window-hangings and tapestries, and the slow-match was not long in passing the fire to its inflammable timber. The library of the Louvre was destroyed, but the museums, galleries and their famous ...
— Royal Palaces and Parks of France • Milburg Francisco Mansfield

... region to which she seemed commissioned the warmth of her zeal was not likely to work harm. What effect it had was in the main good. But the material in her hands was only combustible in a slow way; the plutocratic conscience is rarely inflammable—for the most part it smolders like punk. Nor was Mrs. Frankland herself in any danger of being carried by her enthusiasms into fanaticism of action. However her utterances might savor of ultraism, she was conservative enough in practical matters to keep a sort of "Truce ...
— The Faith Doctor - A Story of New York • Edward Eggleston

... he went on. "That man Porter would make the finest material for ring-oiling, dust proof, non-inflammable bearings that I ever saw. He's just about the hardest, smoothest, shiniest, coolest little piece of metal that ever came my way. Well, he wants to delay us on this job. I took that in the moment I saw him. Well, I told him ...
— Calumet "K" • Samuel Merwin and Henry Kitchell Webster

... or a dirigible balloon, is a comparatively simple matter. Of course there are complications that may ensue, from the danger of carrying high explosives in the limited quarters of an airship, with its inflammable gasoline fuel, and ever-present electric spark, to the possible premature explosion of the bomb itself. But they seem to ...
— Tom Swift and his Aerial Warship - or, The Naval Terror of the Seas • Victor Appleton

... tortures of jealousy and the madness of hatred. The revenge of Othello, after it has once taken thorough possession of his mind, never quits it, but grows stronger and stronger at every moment of its delay. The nature of the Moor is noble, confiding, tender, and generous; but his blood is of the most inflammable kind; and being once roused by a sense of his wrongs, he is stopped by no considerations of remorse or pity till he has given a loose to all the dictates of his rage and his despair. It is in working his noble nature up ...
— Characters of Shakespeare's Plays • William Hazlitt

... heroism of that army officer, who challenged his personal foe to bestride a barrel of powder with him—the match to be placed between them—and be blown up in good company, for it is pretty certain that the whole earth itself is a vast hogshead, full of inflammable materials, and which we are always bestriding; at the same time, that all good Christians believe that at any minute the last day may come and the terrible combustion of the ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville

... stolid to weep for her husband. But even her stolidity was not proof against the fiery influence of jealousy, and, waking and sleeping, her visions were of veiled damsels of Orient assailing the too inflammable heart of Lieutenant ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon

... thither, cause thou to be erected a quadrangular palace in the neighbourhood of the arsenal, rich in the materials and furniture, and guard thou the mansion well (with prying eyes). And use thou (in erecting that house) hemp and resin and all other inflammable materials that are procurable. And mixing a little earth with clarified butter and oil and fat and a large quantity of lac, make thou a plaster for lining the walls, and scatter thou all around that house hemp ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa - Translated into English Prose - Adi Parva (First Parva, or First Book) • Kisari Mohan Ganguli (Translator)

... admitted generously the entire sincerity of Salome's kinspeople in believing plaintiff to be the lost child; but reminded the court of the credulity of ill-trained minds, the contagiousness of fanciful delusions, and especially of what he somehow found room to call the inflammable imagination of the German temperament. He appealed to history; to the scholarship of the bench; citing the stories of Martin Guerre, the Russian Demetrius, Perkin Warbeck, and all the other wonderful cases of mistaken or counterfeited identity. Thus he and his associates pleaded for the ...
— Strange True Stories of Louisiana • George Washington Cable

... Babogo say, that, before the invention of weaving hemp, all the people clothed themselves in the soft, inflammable layers of the sheath that envelops the ...
— Philippine Folk-Tales • Clara Kern Bayliss, Berton L. Maxfield, W. H. Millington,

... not understand," answered the burgher-magistrate, "that the young man Butler's zeal is of so inflammable a character. But I will make farther investigation. What other business is ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... adversaries, who had converted every house into a fortress, whence they could with difficulty be dislodged. In order, therefore, to foil this deadly warfare, they had recourse to a still more terrible expedient: they applied the blazing torch to the inflammable habitations of their enemies; a rising gale seconded their intentions, and the greedy flames spreading widely round, the town was soon enveloped in one promiscuous conflagration. Large volumes of red foggy flame ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio

... ejaculations and the exploits of Guido Santo. They soon recovered themselves, however, picked up their paladins and managed to bring the performance to its conclusion, and we shut the theatre and proceeded upstairs to the house. On the way the buffo took me aside into his workshop to show me two inflammable Turkish pavilions which he was making; Ettorina in her madness was to fire them in a few days, one in the afternoon and the other at the evening repetition, as a conclusion ...
— Castellinaria - and Other Sicilian Diversions • Henry Festing Jones

... melodies, represents the demon of discord as annually appearing in the Boyne, and casting forth the burning arrows which were ignited by his breath; but the scene of the fiery fiend's operations might be well supposed as changed to "Conciliation Hall," and his arrows thence flung over the inflammable isle. However indifferent the loyalists might be to the conflicts between Old Ireland and Young Ireland, the government could not be so, for "O'Connell's tail" was, if no ornament, of some use ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan



Words linked to "Inflammable" :   inflammability



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