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Inverse   Listen
adjective
Inverse  adj.  
1.
Opposite in order, relation, or effect; reversed; inverted; reciprocal; opposed to direct.
2.
(Bot.) Inverted; having a position or mode of attachment the reverse of that which is usual.
3.
(Math.) Opposite in nature and effect; said with reference to any two operations, which, when both are performed in succession upon any quantity, reproduce that quantity; as, multiplication is the inverse operation to division. The symbol of an inverse operation is the symbol of the direct operation with -1 as an index. Thus sin-1 x means the arc or angle whose sine is x.
Inverse figures (Geom.), two figures, such that each point of either figure is inverse to a corresponding point in the order figure.
Inverse points (Geom.), two points lying on a line drawn from the center of a fixed circle or sphere, and so related that the product of their distances from the center of the circle or sphere is equal to the square of the radius.
Inverse ratio, or Reciprocal ratio (Math.), the ratio of the reciprocals of two quantities.
Inverse proportion, or Reciprocal proportion, an equality between a direct ratio and a reciprocal ratio.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Inverse" Quotes from Famous Books



... that the value of old scientific periodicals is, other things being equal, in the inverse ratio of their age, for the obvious reason that what is most valuable in the earlier volumes of a series is drained off into the standard works with which the intelligent practitioner is supposed to be familiar. But no extended record of facts grows too old to be useful, provided only that we ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... abstract form and physical quality, for the aesthetic feeling or intuition it is paramount. For example, a botanist, qua botanist, will reck little of beauty of colour, or curve, or scent—indeed at times his interest in a plant may be in inverse ratio to its beauty. But the lover of flowers, or the poet, or the artist, will fix upon such aesthetic qualities as determining his mood and judgment. Not that the reflective and the aesthetic judgments are antagonistic— ...
— Nature Mysticism • J. Edward Mercer

... for the purposes of punishment. It is true that she was still inferior and this distinction was recognized and emphasized by the difference in the penalties imposed for the commission of the same crimes, these penalties being in inverse ratio to the ...
— Legal Status Of Women In Iowa • Jennie Lansley Wilson

... had just happened; but this was neither my turn of mind nor the inclination of my heart. The facility with which I forget past evils, however recent they may be, is astonishing. The remembrance of them becomes feeble, and, sooner or later, effaced, in the inverse proportion to the greater degree of fear with which the approach of them inspires me. My cruel imagination, incessantly tormented by the apprehension of evils still at a distance, diverts my attention, and prevents me from recollecting those which are past. Caution is needless after the evil ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau

... this word or this idea is unmeaning, and void of sense; it were better for man that the idea was banished from his mind, struck out of his language: this principle is only the converse of the axiom of ARISTOTLE,—"if the direct be evident, the inverse must be so likewise." How has it happened, that the profound LOCKE, who, to the great mortification of the metaphysicians, has placed this principle of ARISTOTLE in the clearest point of view? how is it, that all those who, like him, have recognized the absurdity of the ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 1 • Baron D'Holbach

... that consciousness is the only reality—the material world being external appearance only. Thoughts are causally connected, but not physical events. (The doctrine is thus the exact inverse ...
— The Problems of Psychical Research - Experiments and Theories in the Realm of the Supernormal • Hereward Carrington

... does lay it on thick to the kids, though," said Wrangham, who happened to be present. "His lickings are in inverse ratio to ...
— Follow My leader - The Boys of Templeton • Talbot Baines Reed

... Critical-Utopian Socialism and Communism bears an inverse relation to historical development. In proportion as the modern class struggle develops and takes definite shape, this phantastic standing apart from the contest, these phantastic attacks on it lose all practical value and all theoretical justification. Therefore, although ...
— Manifesto of the Communist Party • Karl Marx

... whom the University of Cambridge accorded the honour of an honorary degree in 1893, has written but one opera, 'Mefistofele,' but his influence upon modern Italian music must be measured in inverse ratio to his productive power. When 'Mefistofele' was originally produced in 1868, Verdi's genius was still in the chrysalis stage, and the novelty and force of Boito's music made 'Mefistofele,' even in its fall—for the first performance was a ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild

... 11. A Letter signed Philoscriblerus, on the name of Pope. Letter to Mr Theobald, inverse, signed B. M. (Bezaleel Morris) against Mr P—-. Many other little Epigrams about this time in the same papers, by James Moore, ...
— Poetical Works of Pope, Vol. II • Alexander Pope

... humanly possible. The element of error is always present. I've checked and re-checked my calculations. I've augmented the vacuum tubes by installing three super-dimensional inverse power tubes." He clasped the girl's arm. "The street is no place to talk. Let's go to ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, October, 1930 • Various

... an influence upon the fertility of marriages. In southern regions more children are born, fewer in northern. The number of children is in inverse proportion to the amount of food in a country and in a season. In Belgium, the higher the price of bread the greater the number of children, and the greater the number of ...
— The Physical Life of Woman: - Advice to the Maiden, Wife and Mother • Dr. George H Napheys

... expressed it, "en rapport" with his surroundings; under other circumstances, as at the present time, it very nearly approached the ludicrous. He was small in stature, but his bump of self-esteem was developed in an inverse ratio to his size. He seemed to be making a constant effort to maintain his dignity at the proper level, in which direction he was greatly assisted by a pair of eye-glasses, perched on a very large and decidedly Roman ...
— The Award of Justice - Told in the Rockies • A. Maynard Barbour

... houses in the street, or in this part of the town for that matter. Yet with all this crowding and renting of rooms Mrs. Phillips did not grow rich. She was always getting into debt or getting out of it, this depending in inverse ratio upon Joe being in work ...
— The Workingman's Paradise - An Australian Labour Novel • John Miller

... she knew that Soolsby hated him; but his aversion now was more definite and violent than he had before shown, save on that night long ago when David went first to Egypt, and she had heard hard words between them in this same hut. She supposed it one of those antipathies which often grow in inverse ratio to the social position of those concerned. She replied ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... of the iron camp bedsteads placed in rows, hospital fashion, and then he set out in an inverse direction, on his long journey through the seas. Instead of living like a bird in the full wind of the tops, he remained below deck, in the midst of the bad air of ...
— An Iceland Fisherman • Pierre Loti

... would be perfect. Suppose the impossible, that the shortest man was the heaviest, the tallest the lightest, and that the whole order needed to be exactly reversed; then we should say that the correlation was perfectly inverse or negative. Suppose the shift from height order to weight order mixed the men indiscriminately, so that you could not tell anything from a man's position in the height order as to what his position ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth

... other hand, if (declining to state any odious circumstantialities,) she were to reply,—'No matter, children, for my precise years, which are disagreeable remembrances; I confess generally to being a lady of a certain age,'—here, in the inverse order, given the valuation of the age, we should yet be at a loss for the absolute years numerically: would a 'certain age,' mean that 'mamma' was a million, be the same more or less, or perhaps not much ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey

... migrations, the plains are the regions where people dwell in greatest numbers. The plains in the two great land masses of the Old World and the New have the same inverse or right- and left-handed symmetry as the mountains. In the north the vast stretches from the Mackenzie River to the Gulf of Mexico correspond to the plains of Siberia and Russia from the Lena to the Black Sea. Both regions have a vast sweep of monotonous tundras at the north and both ...
— The Red Man's Continent - A Chronicle of Aboriginal America, Volume 1 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Ellsworth Huntington

... his own letters, while Louis laughed at the enunciation of this inverse ratio; and then took up the note again, to wonder at the tone of anxiety and distress, so unlike James. He went to call on Lady Conway, and was better satisfied to find that James had written in a lively ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. II) • Charlotte M. Yonge

... although it is not, perhaps, easy to give any distinct reason why they should be so, since theological disputes in general could scarce be considered as interesting to them. But zeal, amongst the lower orders at least, is often in an inverse ratio to knowledge; and sailors were not probably the less earnest and devoted Protestants, that they did not understand the controversy between the Churches. As for the merchants, they were almost necessarily inimical to the gentry of Lancashire and Cheshire; ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott

... position of the rings after the 9,999th move has been made, and the reader will find that the method shown will solve any similar question, no matter how many rings are on the tiring-irons. But in working the inverse process, where you are required to ascertain the number of moves necessary in order to reach a given position of the rings, the rule will require a little modification, because it does not necessarily follow that the position is one that is actually ...
— Amusements in Mathematics • Henry Ernest Dudeney

... the great hissing locomotive, with its parabolic headlight and its coal-laden tender, came the baggage, mail, and express cars; then the passenger coaches, in which the social condition of the occupants seemed to be in inverse ratio to their distance from the engine. First came emigrants, "honest miners," "cow-boys," and laborers; Irishmen, Germans, Welshmen, Mennonites from Russia, quaint of garb and speech, and Chinamen. Then came long cars full of people of better station, ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 6 • Various

... point to the fact that their bodies are either always, or very often, in a state of apparent unconsciousness at the moment of the phenomenon. Among the minority, i.e. of apparitions of the dead, the frequency seems to be in inverse proportion to the time which has elapsed since death. Those which appear at the moment of death are very frequent, whereas, on the other hand, those of persons who have been very long dead are almost unknown; ...
— The Alleged Haunting of B—— House • Various

... the Needles passage. Numberless yachts skimmed by them; those fairy-like fabrics which Englishmen alone know how thoroughly to enjoy, varying in size from Lord Yarborough's superb Falcon, to the tiny craft whose owner is probably proud of her in inverse ratio to her tonnage. All is not gold that glitters, and the fair admirers of the graceful frigate and corvette would have been somewhat horrified, could they have witnessed the various scenes taking place within the dark recesses of the ships, and had ...
— The Three Lieutenants • W.H.G. Kingston

... more exact, and the influence of supernatural doctrine on conduct the greater, the further we go back in time and the lower the stage of civilisation submitted to investigation. Historically, indeed, there would seem to be an inverse relation between supernatural and natural knowledge. As the latter has widened, gained in precision and trustworthiness, so has the former shrunk, grown vague and questionable; as the one has more and more filled the sphere of action, so has the other retreated into the region of meditation, ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley; A Sketch Of His Life And Work • P. Chalmers Mitchell

... Yelves, in the town hall. The attorneys for Portugal deferred their voting until this day, and voted that the order of examination should be in the inverse order. Immediately the deputies for Spain declared that in order to avoid discussions they made the declaration of the following writ. In substance this was reduced to saying that they ought to determine ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1803 • Emma Helen Blair

... tail. She had been making most elaborate preparations all the while, stretching and retracting her claws, squirming her whalebone body flatter and flatter, her tail assuming majestic proportions, while her ears disappeared in inverse ratio. ...
— Red Saunders' Pets and Other Critters • Henry Wallace Phillips

... so doing, whether he be a declared foe or a false friend Besides, the Anti-Corn Law League has used the most despicable falsehoods and tricks to win the support of the workers. It has tried to prove to them that the money price of labour is in inverse proportion to the price of corn; that wages are high when grain is cheap, and vice versa, an assertion which it pretends to prove with the most ridiculous arguments, and one which is, in itself, more ridiculous than any other that has proceeded from the mouth of an Economist. ...
— The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844 - with a Preface written in 1892 • Frederick Engels

... world, and of finding every petty race wedded to its own opinions; claiming the monopoly of Truth; holding all others to be in error, and raising disputes whose violence, acerbity and virulence are in inverse ratio to the importance of the disputed matter. A peculiarly active and acute observation taught him that many of these jarring families, especially those of the same blood, are par in the intellectual processes of perception and reflection; that in ...
— The Kasidah of Haji Abdu El-Yezdi • Richard F. Burton

... siphon recorder is exactly the inverse of the mirror galvanometer. In the latter we have a small magnet suspended in the centre of a large coil of wire—the wire enclosing the magnet, which is free to rotate round its own axis. In the former we have a small coil suspended ...
— Heroes of the Telegraph • J. Munro

... a tower builded on a lake, Mock'd by its inverse shadow, dark and deep— That seem'd a still intenser night to make, Wherein the quiet waters sank to sleep,— And, whatso'er was prison'd in that keep, A monstrous Snake was warden:—round and round In sable ringlets I beheld him creep Blackest amid black shadows to the ground, Whilst ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood

... then the Burattini deserve the greater credit because they are agitated by the legs from below the scene, and not managed by cords from above, as at the Marionette Theatre. Their audiences, as I said, are always interesting, and comprise: first, boys ragged and dirty in inverse ratio to their size; then weak little girls, supporting immense weight of babies; then Austrian soldiers, with long coats and short pipes; lumbering Dalmat sailors; a transient Greek or Turk; Venetian loafers, pale-faced, statuesque, ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells

... the fifth, containing the connected view of history, rekindled all my enthusiasm; which the sixth (or concluding) volume did not materially abate. In a merely logical point of view, the only leading conception for which I am indebted to him is that of the Inverse Deductive Method, as the one chiefly applicable to the complicated subjects of History and Statistics: a process differing from the more common form of the deductive method in this—that instead of arriving at its conclusions by general reasoning, and verifying them by specific experience ...
— Autobiography • John Stuart Mill

... grows hotter and hotter until its temperature reaches a maximum as a white star. At this point the contraction process does not stop, but the heating process does. Further contraction is now accompanied by cooling, and the star goes through its colour changes again, but this time in the inverse order. It contracts and cools to yellow and finally to red. But when it again becomes a red star it is enormously denser and smaller than when it began as a red star. Consequently the red stars are divided into two ...
— The Outline of Science, Vol. 1 (of 4) - A Plain Story Simply Told • J. Arthur Thomson

... called to inquire after the ladies; and hoped he had no injury to their health to lay on his conscience. Mr. Arnold, who had a full allowance of curiosity, its amount being frequently in an inverse ratio to that of higher intellectual gifts, begged him to spend the rest of the day with them; but not to say a word of what had passed the day before, till after Harry had retired for ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald

... all its sufferings and injustices, if the institution of private property necessarily carried with it as a consequence that the produce of labour should be apportioned as we now see it almost in inverse proportion to labour, the largest portions to those who have never worked at all, the next largest to those whose work is almost nominal, and so in descending scale, the remuneration dwindling as ...
— The History of the Fabian Society • Edward R. Pease

... former years. Instead of being rich people, we shall have to be very careful indeed to make ends meet. To return to Rotherwood is utterly out of the question, and with the price of everything doubled and trebled, and our income in the inverse ratio, it is impossible to keep up so ...
— A Popular Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil

... happiness have no necessary connection with each other. In some cases it might be said that happiness is in the inverse proportion to riches. The happiest part of most men's lives is while they are battling with poverty, and gradually raising themselves above it. It is then that they deny themselves for the sake of others,—that they save from their earnings to ...
— Thrift • Samuel Smiles

... savagely. 'And it seems to me, that sitting here, you fancy yourself examining some vagrant or poacher at Gylingden sessions. And pray, Sir, have you no evidence in the letters you speak of but the insertion of dates, and the posting them in inverse order, to lead you to that ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu

... now for a lawyer who is a businessman and who will keep people out of trouble instead of getting them in. And we also have a few physicians who are big enough to tell a man there is nothing the matter with him, if they think so, and then charge him accordingly—in inverse ratio to the amount ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers, Volume 8 • Elbert Hubbard

... appreciate more if we were offered less to appreciate. Apropos of this, I have long been struck by the case of a dear Italian friend of mine, whose keenness of perception and grip of judgment and unexpectedness of fancy is almost in inverse proportion to her knowledge of books or opportunity of travel. An invalid, cut off from much reading, and limited to monotonous to-and-fro between a town which is not a great town and a hillside village which is not a—not a great village; she is quite marvellously delightful by her ...
— Hortus Vitae - Essays on the Gardening of Life • Violet Paget, AKA Vernon Lee

... In inverse order of importance, the shutters had come down, the toiler had been out, dinner-pail in hand, for hours, when Milady yawned over her morning coffee and the magnates of finance appeared in their triumphal procession down ...
— The Midnight Passenger • Richard Henry Savage

... for this reason that science and religion are in inverse ratio to each other; the one diminishes and grows weaker in the same proportion that the other increases and grows stronger in its struggle against ...
— Socialism: Positive and Negative • Robert Rives La Monte

... she contributes little or nothing to the common income in no way embarrasses an American wife; her pretensions are usually in an inverse proportion to her personal means. A man I knew some years ago deliberately chose his bride from an impecunious family (in the hope that her simple surroundings had inculcated homely taste), and announced to an incredulous circle of friends, at his last bachelor dinner, ...
— The Ways of Men • Eliot Gregory

... important questions of God, immortality, and freedom, would have been either decided long ago, or would very soon be brought to a conclusion. But, in general, the uprightness of the defence stands in an inverse ratio to the goodness of the cause; and perhaps more honesty and fairness are shown by those who deny than by ...
— The Critique of Pure Reason • Immanuel Kant

... mosquitoes. The anopheles, small, grey and quietly persistent, carries the malaria that has laid our army low. Culex, larger and more noisy, trumpets his presence in the night watches: but the mischief he causes is in inverse ratio to the noise he makes. Stegomyia, host of the spirium of yellow fever, is also here, but happily not yet infected; not yet, but it may be only a question of time before yellow fever is brought along the railways or caravan routes from the Congo or the rivers of the West Coast, ...
— Sketches of the East Africa Campaign • Robert Valentine Dolbey

... all parts of the musket are assembled in the inverse order in which they are dismounted. Before replacing screws, oil them slightly with good sperm oil, as inferior oil is converted into a gum, which clogs the operation of the parts. Screws should not be turned in so hard as to make the parts bind. When a lock has, from any cause, become gummed with ...
— Ordnance Instructions for the United States Navy. - 1866. Fourth edition. • Bureau of Ordnance, USN

... successful speculation in land which was ingenious in its simplicity; instead of erecting new buildings in the immediate vicinity of the last houses of the town, they bought up adjacent pieces of land, and began to build on the outskirts of these. This inverse order of construction raised the value of building sites with extraordinary rapidity, and, after having completed the outer ring, they built in the middle of the town on these highly valuable sites, instead of continually erecting houses at ...
— The Jewish State • Theodor Herzl

... vanity, and an exaggerated notion of their own importance, which we find in the masses, generally in inverse proportion to real merit, is especially strong in criminals. In the cell occupied by La Gala, the following notice was found in his handwriting: "March 24th. On this date La Gala learnt to knit." Another criminal, Crocco, tried hard ...
— Criminal Man - According to the Classification of Cesare Lombroso • Gina Lombroso-Ferrero

... silk which the little creatures produce, I shall ask permission to go over to Severac, so that my Camille may see how the silk is spun. My Camille is so intelligent, she will grasp anything that you tell her in a moment. Did she not understand one day the inverse ratio of ...
— Two Poets - Lost Illusions Part I • Honore de Balzac

... attention: on the one hand, facile attention shows the reign of habit. The solid acquisitions are those with which attention is at home, and which are therefore more or less habitual. But, on the other hand, it is equally true that attention is in inverse ratio to habit. We need to attend least to these functions which are most habitual, and we have to attend most to those which are novel and only half acquired. We get new acquisitions mainly, indeed, by strained attention. So we have a ...
— The Story of the Mind • James Mark Baldwin

... few of the broadest and simplest principles of morality. This, to my mind, is much as if a man of science should make the story of the fall of the apple in Newton's garden, an integral part of the doctrine of gravitation, and teach it as of equal authority with the law of the inverse squares. ...
— Lay Sermons, Addresses and Reviews • Thomas Henry Huxley

... spectra existing at the same time; of reciprocal direct spectra; of a combination of direct and inverse spectra; of a spectral halo; rules to pre-determine the ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. I - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin

... and with Daughter:—insipid CORPUS DELICTI herself has appeared on the scene; and Grumkow, we find, has been writing some description of her to the Crown-Prince. Description of an unfavorable nature; below the truth, not above it, to avert disappointment, nay to create some gleam of inverse joy, when the actual meeting occurs. That is his art in driving the fiery little Arab ignominiously yoked to him; and it is clear he has overdone it, for once. This is Friedrich's THIRD utterance to him; much the most emphatic ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. IX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... let him die without remedies because she doesn't believe in the reality of disease. She is quite willing to legislate for his stomach, his mind, his soul, her teachableness, it goes without saying, being generally in inverse proportion to her knowledge; for the arrogance of science is humility compared ...
— Children's Rights and Others • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin

... were to be made between Communism with all its chances, and the present state of society with all its sufferings and injustices; if the institution of private property necessarily carried with it as a consequence, that the produce of labor should be apportioned as we now see it, almost in an inverse ratio to the labor—the largest portions to those who have never worked at all, the next largest to those whose work is almost nominal, and so in a descending scale, the remuneration dwindling as the work grows harder and more disagreeable, until the most fatiguing and ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel

... may thus emerge from the brain have been classed by physiologists among the phenomena of inverse vision, or cerebral sight. Elsewhere I have given a detailed investigation of their nature (Human Physiology, chap, xxi.), and, persuaded that they have played a far more important part in human affairs than is commonly supposed, have thus expressed myself: "Men ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper

... shall be wedged in so as to avoid collisions during the rotation; lastly, the box shall be tied to a cord and I will whirl the whole thing round like a sling. With this contrivance, it will be quite easy to obtain any rate of speed that I wish, any variety of inverse movements that I consider likely to make my captives lose their bearings. I can whirl my sling first in one direction and then in another, turn and turn about; I can slacken or increase the pace; if I like, I can make it describe figures of ...
— The Mason-bees • J. Henri Fabre

... motor tends to increase, a centrifugal regulator placed upon the motor reduces the action of the pump and, consequently, the supply of water to the tube, thus checking the velocity of the machine. If the velocity tends to slacken, the inverse process is employed. In order to stop the machine, it suffices to turn off the water furnished by the pump by means of a three-way cock, and to send the water back to the reservoir of supply. The boiler can be ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 664, September 22,1888 • Various

... the Latin Commentary to have; and, therefore, it was impossible for it to be obedient. That to the Latin it would have been impossible, as is said, is evident by such an argument as this: each thing which proceeds by an inverse order is laborious, and consequently is bitter, and not sweet; even as to sleep by day and to wake by night, and to go backwards and not forwards. For the subject to command the sovereign, is to proceed in ...
— The Banquet (Il Convito) • Dante Alighieri

... Features—Art Distinguishes Between the Two by Emphasis—Many Technical Devices: 1. Emphasis by Terminal Position; 2. Emphasis by Initial Position; 3. Emphasis by Pause [Further Discussion of Emphasis by Position]; 4. Emphasis by Direct Proportion; 5. Emphasis by Inverse Proportion; 6. Emphasis by Iteration; 7. Emphasis by Antithesis; 8. Emphasis by Climax; 9. Emphasis by Surprise; 10. Emphasis by Suspense; 11. ...
— A Manual of the Art of Fiction • Clayton Hamilton

... indicated on an inverse ratio to one's good appearance, we should have been very wealthy indeed. We felt as if it would take us a week to get rested and lost little time in getting to bed when the party broke up. We imagine most of the residents of Vernal ...
— Through the Grand Canyon from Wyoming to Mexico • E. L. Kolb

... something beyond it, and to change of place and pursuit as the means of improving his fortunes. This at last, as has been seen, led him off to the West in the ardent hope of becoming in time a wealthy farmer. In an inverse ratio to the hopeful elevation of spirits with which Parker set out upon his journey was the sorrowful depression experienced by his wife. But Rachel kept meekly and patiently her feelings to herself. It was ...
— Lizzy Glenn - or, The Trials of a Seamstress • T. S. Arthur

... 'Melancholy' in his remembrance while writing 'Il Penseroso.'" [24] The author thinks that, whatever may be true of Gothic architecture—an art less national than ecclesiastical—"sculpture and painting, on the one hand, and the spirit of chivalry on the other, have usually flourished in an inverse ratio one to the other, and it is not therefore in England, France, or Spain, but among the free cities of Italy and Germany that we must look for their rise." [25] I give these conclusions—so opposite to those of Catholic mediaevalists like Digby and Pugin—because ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers

... Such an escapement is pictured in Fig. 152. The verge is again vertical and carries near its upper end two arms D D, which are each connected by a cord with a pendulum. The two pendulums oscillate constantly in the inverse sense the ...
— Watch and Clock Escapements • Anonymous

... amiable one, he was much resembled by that eminent man the late Sir George Jessel, whose civility to a barrister was always in inverse ratio to the barrister's practice; and whose friendly zeal in helping young and nervous practitioners over the stiles of legal difficulty was only equalled by the fiery enthusiasm with which he thrust back the Attorney and Solicitor General ...
— Obiter Dicta - Second Series • Augustine Birrell

... [It may be remarked in general, although the rule is liable to exceptions, that the dimensions of a crater are in an inverse ratio to the elevation of the mountain. Daubeney, op. ...
— COSMOS: A Sketch of the Physical Description of the Universe, Vol. 1 • Alexander von Humboldt

... sale—the creation of Abbotsford pulling him one way, on the other his desire to accumulate a library round him in his Tusculum. Writing to his familiar Terry, he says, "The worst of all is, that while my trees grow and my fountain fills, my purse, in an inverse ratio, sinks to zero. This last circumstance will, I fear, make me a very poor guest at the literary entertainment your researches hold out for me. I should, however, like much to have the treatise on Dreams by the author of the New Jerusalem, which, as John Cuthbertson, ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton

... any observing habitue of the place, contains a great many queer, spurious people, smuggled in somehow by indirect influence, when royal command is not the least effectual: a surprizing number of seedy, poverty-stricken young men, and, in an inverse ratio, women who have any thing more than the clothes they wear: yet, by mere dint of difficulty, by the simple circumstance of making admission to this assembly a matter of closeting, canvassing, balloting, black-balling, and so forth, people of much better fashion ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXVIII. February, 1843. Vol. LIII. • Various

... in comparison with a society where mind and morals had the glorious license of Olympians and could follow the unobstructed paths of inclination in realms controlled only by fancy! Napoleon's greeting was laconic, "Vous etes un homme." This flattered Goethe, who called it the inverse "ecce homo," and felt its allusion to his citizenship, not in Germany, but in the world. The nineteenth-century Caesar then urged the great writer to carry out an already-formed design and compose a drama on the life ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane

... course of a scientific correspondence with Leibnitz, published in 1712, by the Royal Society, under the title, "Commercium Epistolicum de Analysi promota," not only communicated very many remarkable discoveries, but added, that he was in possession of the inverse problem of the tangents, and that he employed two methods which he did not choose to make public, for which reason he concealed them by anagrammatical transposition, so effectual as completely to extinguish the faint glimmer of light which shone through his scanty explanation.[B] The reference ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 20, June, 1859 • Various

... himself effected in the little institute of Wuerzburg with the scantiest means—a new proof of the maxim enunciated by me, and hitherto never confuted, that "the scientific results of an institute are in inverse proportion to its size." (See "The Aim ...
— Freedom in Science and Teaching. - from the German of Ernst Haeckel • Ernst Haeckel

... less desperate. Unless I could find some method of compensating for my lost ballast, the inverse gravity of my inertron ship would hurl me continuously upward until I shot forth from the last air layer into space. I thought of jumping, and floating down on my inertron belt, but I was already too high for this. The air was too rarefied to permit breathing outside, though ...
— The Airlords of Han • Philip Francis Nowlan

... when people rise at two in the morning, it does not require much calculation to tell how keen the appetite must become when it has grumbled five hours in vain for aliment. P——, however, was callous to hunger, or thirst; and as he made capture after capture, all thought of food decreased in an inverse ratio. When R—— had alighted from the pram, the boatman drew it up on the shore, lest it should get adrift, for it was the only available pram at Boom; and touching his slouch hat, signified to R—— his intention of going to his morning meal. R—— consented. We sat down on a piece of ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross

... call attention to the fact that, as M. Henri Martin says, by an apparent contradiction, the fall of the Communes declared itself in inverse ratio to the progress of the Tiers Etat. By degrees, as the government became more settled from the great fiefs being absorbed by the Crown, and as parliament and other courts of appeal which emanated from the middle ...
— Manners, Custom and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period • Paul Lacroix

... and in every case of crime, unemployment, the coefficient of correlation would be 1. If crime were never found in unemployment, and unemployment never in crime, the coefficient of correlation would be -1, indicating a perfect inverse relationship. A coefficient of 0 would indicate that there is no relationship. The coefficient of .47 would accordingly indicate a significant but not a "high" correlation between crime ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman

... plane than by a linear figure. Indeed, the familiar mystery of memory calls for such a conception. Memory is a carrying forward of the past into the present, and the fact that we can recall a past event without mentally rehearsing all the intermediate happenings in inverse order, shows that in the time aspect of memory there is simultaneity as well as sequence—time ceases to be linear and becomes plane. More remarkable illustrations of the sublimation of the time-sense are to be found in the phenomena ...
— Four-Dimensional Vistas • Claude Fayette Bragdon

... the growth of the human mind has been her chief object. Throughout Christendom, whatever advance has been made in knowledge, in freedom, in wealth, and in the arts of life, has been made in spite of her, and has everywhere been in inverse proportion to her power. The loveliest and most fertile provinces of Europe have, under her rule, been sunk in poverty, in political servitude, and in intellectual torpor, while Protestant countries, once proverbial for sterility and barbarism, have been turned by skill and industry into gardens, ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... as possible. Accordingly there is no fundamental or indispensable portion of an acetylene apparatus which lends itself to the protection of the patent laws; and even the details (it may be said truthfully, if somewhat cynically) stand in patentability in inverse ratio to their ...
— Acetylene, The Principles Of Its Generation And Use • F. H. Leeds and W. J. Atkinson Butterfield

... for his erring Jessie, nothing could wipe out his sense of loss; his grief was always with him. But whereas, judged by the outward seeming of his character, he should have been crushed under Fate's cruel blow, an inverse process seemed to have set in. He was lifted, exalted to the almost sublime heights where ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum

... formations is vast indeed when measured by any human standard, and, as all action implies time, so are we compelled to regard these mineral masses as a measure of the time which has elapsed during their accumulation. The amount of the time which they represent is, of course, in the inverse proportion of the intensity of the forces which have been in operation. If, in the ancient world, mud and sand accumulated on sea-bottoms at tenfold their present rate, it is clear that a bed of mud or sand ten feet thick would ...
— Time and Life • Thomas H. Huxley

... various formalities, are treated by their lords as existences on sufferance. And even more. The fact that they are ruled, governed, and owned they must acknowledge and confess as a favour of heaven! On the other hand, there are those rulers themselves whose greatness is in inverse proportion to ...
— Selected Essays • Karl Marx

... been started in the far north and had spread out over the earth with the velocity of sound. Though the barographs themselves gave no indication whence this wave had come, the variation in its intensity at different meteorological observatories could be accounted for by the law of inverse squares on the supposition that the explosion which started the wave had occurred at fifty-five degrees north, ...
— The Man Who Rocked the Earth • Arthur Train

... inverse process, the reduction of divine beings to simple human proportions, has gone on in early cults and in early attempts at historical construction to a not inconsiderable degree. Thus, to take a relatively late example, by Saxo Grammaticus and in the ...
— Introduction to the History of Religions - Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV • Crawford Howell Toy

... the sum of that which becomes unconscious (as it were the burden to be divided) is equal to the sum of all the representations with the exception of the strongest (hence b c), and is divided among the individual representations in the inverse ratio of their strength, consequently in such a way that the strongest (the one which most actively and successfully resists arrest) has the least, and the weakest the most, of it to bear. It may thus come to pass that a representation is entirely driven out of consciousness by two stronger ones, ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg

... His conscience stood in inverse relation to the vigor of his body. When he was well, his too darkly stained past life troubled him little; but when he was unmanned by weakness, he was incapable of fighting the ghastly demon that forced upon his memory in ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... disappearance of the pearl was exactly two days before the arrest of Beppo for some crime of violence, an event which took place in the factory of Gelder and Co., at the very moment when these busts were being made. Now you clearly see the sequence of events, though you see them, of course, in the inverse order to the way in which they presented themselves to me. Beppo had the pearl in his possession. He may have stolen it from Pietro, he may have been Pietro's confederate, he may have been the go-between of Pietro and his sister. ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes - Magazine Edition • Arthur Conan Doyle

... Admiral Sir E. Owen. Amidst all the vicissitudes of his perilous life and increasing age, he still maintains the same unabated thirst for travel, and his mental and bodily faculties appear to grow in activity and strength in the inverse ratio of his declining life ...
— The Economist - Volume 1, No. 3 • Various

... constructed with an inverse circulation, the carbonic acid then entering the annular vessel, R, directly, and afterward the worm, S, whence it escapes to the exterior of the apparatus. The expansion cock sometimes becomes obstructed by the solidification of ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 821, Sep. 26, 1891 • Various

... in special cases (see A. Konig in M. von Rohr's Die Bilderzeugung, p. 373; K. Schwarzschild, Gottingen. Akad. Abhandl., 1905, 4, Nos. 2 and 3). At the present time constructors almost always employ the inverse method: they compose a system from certain, often quite personal experiences, and test, by the trigonometrical calculation of the paths of several rays, whether the system gives the desired reproduction (examples are given in A. Gleichen, ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... 'New Way to Pay Old Debts' showed, in consequence, more vitality than any of his other plays. Much praise has been given, and not more than enough, to the originality and force of the conception. The conventional miser is elevated into a great man by a kind of inverse heroism, and made terrible instead of contemptible. But it is equally plain that here, too, Massinger fails to project himself fairly into his villain. His rants are singularly forcible, but they are clearly what other people would think about ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen

... his mind snapped in the strain of the last match? These thoughts weren't his. Self-pity hadn't made him a Winner—why was he feeling it now? Anvhar was his universe—how could he even imagine it as a tag-end planet at the outer limb of creation? What had come over him and induced this inverse thinking? ...
— Planet of the Damned • Harry Harrison

... translation. Mr. Morris has, therefore, consented to allow his versions of the Romances to be combined into one volume in a form not unworthy of their excellence but more accessible to those lovers of books whose purses have a habit of varying in inverse proportion to the amount of their love. He has honoured me by asking me to introduce them to that wider public to which they now make ...
— Old French Romances • William Morris

... must remember that the nearer a planet is to the sun the greater is the amount of heat and light that it receives, the variation being proportional to the inverse square of the distance. The earth's distance from the sun being 93,000,000 miles, while Mercury's is only 36,000,000, it follows, to begin with, that Mercury gets, on the average, more than six and a half ...
— Other Worlds - Their Nature, Possibilities and Habitability in the Light of the Latest Discoveries • Garrett P. Serviss

... heap of mould would decide to work in broad daylight? I did not reckon upon it all. Nevertheless, to salve my conscience, I tried bringing the Scolia into contact with her prey under the bell-glass. I was well-advised to do so, for my success was in inverse ratio to my hopes. Next to the Philanthus, none of the Hunting Wasps displayed such ardour in attacking under artificial conditions. All the insects experimented upon, some sooner, some later, rewarded me for my patience. Let us watch the Two-banded Scolia (S. bifasciata, VAN DER LIND) ...
— More Hunting Wasps • J. Henri Fabre

... Jack," said the colored man solemnly, "dis trip am wuss dan any ob de udders. It suah am. Good land a' massy! T' t'ink ob being projected transmigatorially in de obverse tangent ob de parallelism circumdelegated on de inverse side ob a duodecimo. It's too altogether imparipinated fo' dis chile! I'se afraid dat's what I is! I'se too much afraid t' go," and Washington started to run from the shop, as if he feared that the big projectile would take ...
— Through Space to Mars • Roy Rockwood

... the creator of the Lowiewski function transformations and the rules of inverse probabilities worthy of eulogy?" He turned to MacLeod. "I couldn't have done what you did, but maybe it was for the best. The traitor is dead; the mathematician will ...
— The Mercenaries • Henry Beam Piper

... proved, would, one might suppose, be sufficient to point out the true principle to the legislator, and to show him how he ought to assist industry (if indeed it is any part of his business to assist it at all), for it would be absurd to say that the laws of men should operate in an inverse ratio ...
— Sophisms of the Protectionists • Frederic Bastiat

... impossible to equalise, and which has its intrinsic foundation in the difference in the amount of effort and inconvenience involved in engaging in the different branches of labour. Certainly it is not the same in Freeland as in other parts of the world, where only too often the burden of labour is in inverse ratio to its profitableness; with us difficult, burdensome, unpleasant kinds of labour must without exception obtain larger gains than the easier and more agreeable—so far as the latter do not demand special skill—otherwise ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka

... importance of the despised "little" things, and looked not so much to the dimensions of the instrument as to the amount of good or evil it was capable of effecting, having learned by experience that the magnitude of results was often in an inverse ratio to the means employed, more especially when applied in ...
— Another World - Fragments from the Star City of Montalluyah • Benjamin Lumley (AKA Hermes)

... science? When Astronomy was young "the morning stars sang together for joy," and the planets were guided in their courses by celestial hands. Now, the harmony of the stars has resolved itself into gravitation according to the inverse squares of the distances, and the orbits of the planets are deducible from the laws of the forces which allow a schoolboy's stone to break a window. The lightning was the angel of the Lord; but it has pleased ...
— The Origin of Species - From 'The Westminster Review', April 1860 • Thomas H. Huxley

... Gordon had made no remark. She never took part in gossip. But she had mentally resolved that she would inquire carefully just how distant this relative was, and then she would take means to place their Annie at a distance from the young man in an inverse ratio to the space between ...
— 'Lizbeth of the Dale • Marian Keith

... York; at Wilmington, North Carolina, $10.25. Not impossibly, river transportation had in these last some cheapening effect, not readily ascertainable now. In sugar, the scale is seen to ascend in an inverse direction. At Boston, unblockaded, it is quoted at $18.75 the hundredweight, itself not a low rate; at New York, blockaded, $21.50; at Philadelphia, with a longer journey, $22.50; at Baltimore, $26.50; at Savannah, $20. In the last named place, nearness to the Florida line, with the inland ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 2 • Alfred Thayer Mahan

... attention. This law, which pervades the entire animal economy, and is of course important in proportion to its universality, is as follows:—The sympathetic harmony between animals, other things being equal, is IN INVERSE PROPORTION to their rank in that scale of comparison in which man is taken as the maximum of perfection. Consequently, man is most deficient in this instinctive something, which, for lack of a better term, I have ventured to style 'sympathetic harmony,' while ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various

... of the Melbury family was of that kind which evinces some shyness in showing strong emotion among each other: a trait frequent in rural households, and one which stands in curiously inverse relation to most of the peculiarities distinguishing villagers from the people of towns. Thus hiding their warmer feelings under commonplace talk all round, Grace's reception produced no extraordinary demonstrations. But that more was felt than was enacted appeared ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy

... we had acquired by actual possession. The charter-claims were elaborated with the most wearisome prolixity at the time; but so were the English claims to New Amsterdam a century earlier. Conquest gave the true title in each case; the importance of a claim is often in inverse order to the length at which it is set forth in a diplomatic document. The west was gained by: (1) the westward movement of the backwoodsmen during the Revolution; (2) the final success of the Continental armies in the east; (3) ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Two - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1777-1783 • Theodore Roosevelt

... incongruously, in London-made dress-boots; envoys from Burmah or the khanates, appareled in a kind of bedgowns; diplomates from all the embassies and ministries, in uniforms of all sorts and colors, the amount of stars, orders and suchlike decorations on each illustrious chest being usually in the inverse ratio of the real importance of the country to which the wearer belongs; gallant generals in scarlet and gallant admirals in blue; and gallant militia officers and deputy lieutenants just as scarlet and blue, ay, and golden ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 12, No. 32, November, 1873 • Various

... the Loire carries barks almost as far as Croisic. If they want to lie by a little, or to refresh the crew, they come to Pirial along the coast; from Pirial they find another inverse current, which carries them to the Isle-Dumal, two ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... saw their own merits in an exaggerating mirror, and whose shamelessness in urging their claims was often in inverse proportion to their merits, roused only the contemptuous cynicism of the King. But Monk was a claimant of another type; and it startled the King when Monk placed in his hands a list of some seventy names as proper recipients for the dignity of Privy Councillors, Some of these names ...
— The Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon V2 • Henry Craik

... from the neckcloth of Sir Bingo, but they were not much attended to; for it had not escaped the observation of the quicksighted gentry at the Well, that the Baronet's feelings towards the noble Earl were in the inverse ratio of those displayed by Lady Binks, and that, though ashamed to testify, or perhaps incapable of feeling, any anxious degree of jealousy, his temper had been for some time considerably upon the fret; a circumstance concerning which his fair moiety did not think it necessary to ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott

... what a miserable state literature had fallen, than the immense superiority which the occasional rhymes, carelessly thrown on paper by men of this class, possess over the elaborate productions of almost all the professed authors. The reigning taste was so bad, that the success of a writer was in inverse proportion to his labour, and to his desire of excellence. An exception must be made for Butler, who had as much wit and learning as Cowley, and who knew, what Cowley never knew, how to use them. A great command of good homely English distinguishes him still ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... importance, the first was of great weight. According to all probability, it was too soon for any serious attack. Without being beautiful, she pleased much and many; a second obstacle, since sensibility in women is almost always developed in inverse ratio to their success. She had brains; she was wonderfully aristocratic in all ...
— Gerfaut, Complete • Charles de Bernard



Words linked to "Inverse" :   opposite, additive inverse, inverse cosecant, backward, oppositeness, inverse sine, direct, inverse secant, mathematics, reverse, inverse function, maths, inverse cotangent, multiplicative inverse, inverse tangent



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