Online dictionaryOnline dictionary
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

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




Measurable   Listen
adjective
Measurable  adj.  
1.
Capable of being measured; susceptible of mensuration or computation.
2.
Moderate; temperate; not excessive. "Of his diet measurable was he." "Yet do it measurably, as it becometh Christians."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |
Add this dictionary
to your browser search bar





"Measurable" Quotes from Famous Books



... backward, and stood in the shelter and concealment of the foliage. For I had caught sight of Joan, and thought I would devise some sort of playful surprise for her. Think of it—that trivial conceit was neighbor, with but a scarcely measurable interval of time between, to an event destined to endure forever in histories ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc - Volume 1 (of 2) • Mark Twain

... call the material universe, but would not necessarily be discontinuous with the psychical phenomena which we find manifested in connection with the world of matter. The transfer of matter, or physical energy, or anything else that is quantitatively measurable, into such an unseen world, may be set down as impossible, by reason of the very definition of such a world. Any hypothesis which should assume such a transfer would involve a contradiction in terms. But the hypothesis of a survival of ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske

... effort and conviction, not by temperamental insensibility to fear. It is clear that there was a period in his life (and that before the worst of his bodily ills came upon him) when he was often within measurable distance of Carlylean gloom. He was twenty-four when he wrote thus, from Swanston, ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp

... the past history of New England, was printed in 1702, only a year later than Defoe's True-Born Englishman. For more than two centuries the development of English speech and English writing on this side of the Atlantic has kept measurable pace—now slower, now swifter—with the speech of the mother country. When we recall the scanty term of years within which was produced the literature of the age of Elizabeth, it seems like special pleading to insist that ...
— The American Mind - The E. T. Earl Lectures • Bliss Perry

... deed. We are queer creatures all of us, whether we are bad or good. From that moment I gave my servants orders to lay the table for eight persons every day, and told them that I was only at home to Goudar. I spent money madly, and felt that I was within a measurable distance of poverty. ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt

... why? Not because they ascribe to the emperor a sanctity which he had not in the minds of men universally, or which even to the writer's feeling was exaggerated, but because it was expressed coarsely, and as a physical power: now, every thing physical is measurable by weight, motion, and resistance; and is therefore definite. But the very essence of whatsoever is supernatural lies in the indefinite. That power, therefore, with which the minds of men invested the emperor, was vulgarized by this ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey

... Corsica after the manner he had imagined, Nelson was soon undeceived. Bonaparte himself, after a hurried visit to Leghorn, again departed to press the siege of Mantua, having assured himself that for a measurable time he had nothing to apprehend from movements on his flank and rear. Orders were received from Jervis on the 2d of July to institute a commercial blockade of Leghorn, permitting no vessels to enter or depart. The conduct of this business, ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan

... be under relation: if we assume a term to be out of all relation, it ceases to be an object of thought—it can neither be classified nor unclassified; it is beyond reason. Mathematics can proceed with its investigations only so long as it treats all quantities as measurable; it must wholly cease its calculations if an infinite term be introduced. To claim that analysis represents the complete normal action of the intellect in reasoning, is ultimately to claim that the initial point of thinking is the summum genus of ...
— The Philosophy of Evolution - and The Metaphysical Basis of Science • Stephen H. Carpenter

... arrived at in the convention of the Wood of Vincennes on May 8, 1330. Further negotiations were still necessary; and at the moment when everything was trembling in the balance, the sudden occupation of Saintes by the Count of Alencon, brother of Philip VI., brought matters within a measurable distance of war. But Edward, then at the beginning of his real reign, had no mind for fighting. A more satisfactory convention, drawn up on March 9, 1331, at Saint-Germain-en-Laye, was ratified by Edward at Eltham on March ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout

... study to us and its imperceptible drift was almost a reality, considering that each day was another step towards liberty—freedom from the tyranny of the wind. In a sense, the endless surge of the blizzard was a slow form of torture, and the subtle effect it had on the mind was measurable in the delight with which one greeted a calm, fine morning, or noted some insignificant fact which bespoke the approach of a milder season. Thus in August, although the weather was colder, there were the merest signs of thawing along the edges of the snow packed ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson

... the strong grounds of Morristown he led his small but gallant band; and through an eventful winter, by the high efforts of his genius, whose matchless force was measurable only by the growth of difficulties, he held in check formidable hostile legions, conducted by a chief experienced in the art of war, and famed for his valor on the ever-memorable heights of Abraham, where fell Wolfe, Montcalm, ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing

... dead man was suddenly resuscitated as the result of his own admissions in his cups, the wife and her second husband being consequently arrested and condemned to a term of imprisonment. Tolstoy seriously attacked the subject during the summer of 1900, and having brought it within a measurable distance of completion in a shorter time than was usual with him, submitted it to the judgment of a circle of friends. The drama made a deep impression on the privileged few who read it, and some mention of it ...
— The Forged Coupon and Other Stories • Leo Tolstoy

... is a danger in every way as real and immediate as riot or invasion, equally measurable in losses to us today and more far reaching in effect upon future prosperity. Although less sensational, it demands no ...
— Practical Forestry in the Pacific Northwest • Edward Tyson Allen

... his reign Henry VIII. had dreamt of the complete subjugation of Ireland, but it was only after the successful overthrow of the Geraldine Rebellion (1534-5) that the realisation of these dreams seemed to be within measurable reach. The boldness and military genius of Lord Leonard Grey bade fair to bring all Ireland within the sphere of English jurisdiction, until the religious crisis arose to complicate the issues. Many of the Irish princes took offence at ...
— History of the Catholic Church from the Renaissance • Rev. James MacCaffrey

... something new and uncanny, now that their features,—instead of being to him symbols of practical utility in the identification of this or that man, who until then had represented merely so many pleasures to be sought after, boredoms to be avoided, or courtesies to be acknowledged—were at rest, measurable by aesthetic co-ordinates alone, in the autonomy of their curves and angles. And in these men, in the thick of whom Swann now found himself packed, there was nothing (even to the monocle which many ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust

... the momentous changes of motor functions that characterize adolescence we must consider other than the measurable aspects of the subject. Perhaps the best scale on which to measure all normal growth of muscle structure and functions is found in the progress from fundamental to accessory. The former designates the muscles and movements of the trunk and ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall

... stone itself when I began to write about it, and it was not till one evening last spring, while staying with my nephew, Sir Thomas Acton, that I came within measurable distance of it. A dinner party was impending, and, at my instigation, the Bishop of Northchurch and Miss Panton, his daughter and heiress, ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery - Riddle Stories • Various

... Craven, "you find me something solid and within reach that's measurable. Something, preferably, about 200 million miles or so across. Then I'll tell you how far we are from the Sun. This ship is not in an orbit. It's not fixed in space. I have no accurate way of measuring distances ...
— Empire • Clifford Donald Simak

... little bright red light glowing in the distance. It might have been a hundred yards, and it might have been a mile away below him; it was perfectly impossible to judge, for the darkness was not measurable. ...
— King—of the Khyber Rifles • Talbot Mundy

... a result of these findings and lack of findings, that although a measurable quantity of induced radioactivity was found, it had not been sufficient to cause any harm to persons living in the two cities ...
— The Atomic Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki • United States

... yet arrived in England at the complete secularization of our elementary schools; but we are, in the opinion of some and in the wish of others, within measurable distance of the Paradisiacal terminus of secularism and secular reform; and therefore, with the thought of what has been going on and is still going on in France, we may do well to look for a few moments to our own country, and ...
— The Quarterly Review, Volume 162, No. 324, April, 1886 • Various

... of two glasses of rum and water, and lulled by Pratt's assurance that all would be well, Murgatroyd had carried home his hundred pounds with pretty much the same feeling which permeates a man who, having been within measurable distance of drowning, suddenly finds a substantial piece of timber drifting his way, and takes a firm grip on it. After all, a hundred pounds was a hundred pounds. He would be able to pay his rent, and his rates, and give something ...
— The Talleyrand Maxim • J. S. Fletcher

... Supreme Court, dying in 1873. He was another man whose life was embittered by failure to attain the prize of the presidency. Three times he tried for it, in 1860, in 1864, and in 1868, but he never came within measurable distance of it. For he lacked the capacity for making friends, and repelled rather than attracted by a studiously impressive demeanor, a painful decorousness, and an unbending dignity, which was, of course, no true dignity at all, but merely a bad ...
— American Men of Action • Burton E. Stevenson

... the heavens was the sun, Mars, Earth, Venus; the dear old solar system was still intact, undisturbed excepting for the slight perturbation in the region of Jupiter. Blaine doubted if the influence was measurable insofar as changes in the motions of ...
— The Copper-Clad World • Harl Vincent

... distances of certain celestial bodies being thus ascertainable, it becomes a matter of no great difficulty to determine the actual sizes of the measurable ones. It is a matter of everyday experience that the size which any object appears to have, depends exactly upon the distance it is from us. The farther off it is the smaller it looks; the nearer it is the bigger. ...
— Astronomy of To-day - A Popular Introduction in Non-Technical Language • Cecil G. Dolmage

... tableau existed only in the unfocussed minds of the two living beings to whom the consequence of this moment was not measurable in time. Then from the woman's parted lips came a long, strangling moan that mounted to something like a muffled shriek. She remained a moment rocking on her feet, then wheeled and stumbled toward the quilt-covered four-poster bed in one dark corner of the cabin. ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck

... in the commencing century, but that in all probability they, and not only they, but their water-born prototypes in the East also, are destined to such a process of dissection and diffusion as to amount almost to obliteration, so far, at least, as the blot on the map goes, within a measurable further space of years. ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells

... from space, is in all space, so also, apart from time, is it in all time. For nothing which is proper to nature can be predicated of the Divine, and space and time are proper to nature. Space in nature is measurable, and so is time. This is measured by days, weeks, months, years, and centuries; days are measured by hours; weeks and months by days; years by the four seasons; and centuries by years. Nature derives this measurement from the apparent revolution and annual motion of the sun of the world. ...
— Angelic Wisdom Concerning the Divine Love and the Divine Wisdom • Emanuel Swedenborg

... hand that had torn into fragments these helpless creatures; hers was the gentle hand that was softening the horror, the misery of it all. Dru knew there were those who felt that the result would never be worth the cost and that he, too, would come in for a measurable share of their censure. But deep and lasting as his sympathy was for those who had been brought into this maelstrom of war, yet, pessimism found no lodgment within him, rather was his great soul illuminated with the thought that with splendid heroism they had died in order that others might live ...
— Philip Dru: Administrator • Edward Mandell House

... work which may be done. For a period in history is like a more or less extended real landscape: it has, if you will, actual, chemically defined colours in this and that, if you consider this and that separate and unaffected by any kind of visual medium; and measurable distances also between this point and the other, if you look down upon it as from a balloon. But, like a real landscape, it may also be seen from different points of view, and under different lights; then, according ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. I • Vernon Lee

... only from nature and its light must needs think in accord with such extension as appears before his eyes. But it is the greatest mistake to think in this way about heaven. Extension there is not like extension in the world. In the world extension is determinate, and thus measurable; but in heaven it is not determinate, and thus not measurable. But extension in heaven will be further treated of hereafter in connection with space and time in the spiritual world. Furthermore, everyone knows how far the sight of the ...
— Heaven and its Wonders and Hell • Emanuel Swedenborg

... amplified by Mr. Crawley in "The Mystic Rose," the taboos on knots at childbirth, marriage, and death, are much better described by the term "sympathetic taboo." Moreover, if taboo were a form of magic as defined by Dr. Frazer, it would be a somewhat definite and measurable quantity; whereas the distinguishing characteristic of taboo everywhere is the "infinite plus of awfulness" always accompanying its violation. As Dr. Marett observes, there may be certain definite results, such as prescribed punishment ...
— Taboo and Genetics • Melvin Moses Knight, Iva Lowther Peters, and Phyllis Mary Blanchard

... electrokinetics was a laboratory puzzle—or had been, when there was leisure for research—while the science of electrostatics had progressed far past its state on Earth. The little truncheonlike weapons carried a stored-up static charge measurable only in hundreds of thousands of volts, which could be released in flashes which were effective up to a hundred feet ...
— The Fifth-Dimension Tube • William Fitzgerald Jenkins

... intellectual blinders upon pupils—restricting their vision to the one path the teacher's mind happens to approve. Probably the chief cause of devotion to rigidity of method is, however, that it seems to promise speedy, accurately measurable, correct results. The zeal for "answers" is the explanation of much of the zeal for rigid and mechanical methods. Forcing and overpressure have the same origin, and the same result upon alert and ...
— Democracy and Education • John Dewey

... of prayer in sickness, distress, and doubt are by no means measurable by the degree to which the primary causes thereof are made to disappear. There is a real conquest of trouble, even while trouble remains. It is sometimes a great source of strength, also, merely to realize that one is fully understood. The value ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park

... without farmers, our houses without tenants—the boasted wealth of England will have vanished like a splendid dream of the morning, and the children of the rich will have become even as the children of the poor; all this may be within measurable distance, and may very well happen before the death of men who are now no more than middle-aged. Considering this, as well as the other points in favour of the scheme before us, it may be owned that it is best to look after the boys and girls ...
— As We Are and As We May Be • Sir Walter Besant

... far not enough accurate tests have been made upon Indians to enable us to draw reliable conclusions. The Negro, however, has been tested on an extensive scale. The results seem to leave little doubt that there are real and measurable differences in the mental powers of races, just as we know to be the case among individuals. The matter is so important that we may well dwell on it a moment before turning to the cause of the differences in the ...
— The Red Man's Continent - A Chronicle of Aboriginal America, Volume 1 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Ellsworth Huntington

... thought came into being, and both Pestalozzi and Froebel contributed to its diffusion—whether in the form of Pestalozzi's ideal, "I must do good to the child," or Froebel's, "I must do good through the child," or perhaps a measurable merging of ...
— Library Work with Children • Alice I. Hazeltine

... telescope not having been invented, he could not use a telescopic-sight as we now do in gunnery. This not only removes the difficulty of focussing, but makes the minimum visible angle smaller. Helmholtz has defined the minimum angle measurable with the naked eye as being one minute of arc. In view of this it is simply marvellous that, when the positions of Tycho's standard stars are compared with the best modern catalogues, his probable error in right ascension is only /- 24", 1, and in ...
— History of Astronomy • George Forbes

... with hands,' a statelier edifice, 'eternal in the heavens.' To die in Christ is not to die, but becomes a mere change of condition and of place, to be with Him, which is far 'better.' So an Apostle who was coming within measurable distance of his own martyrdom, even whilst the headsman's block was all but in his sight, said: 'He hath abolished death,' the physical fact ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren

... or rests, in speaking and reading, are a total cessation of the voice during a perceptible, and, in many cases, a measurable space of time. ...
— English Grammar in Familiar Lectures • Samuel Kirkham

... halved the field with the hexameter. For the remaining literature of the Empire, for that of the Middle Ages so far as it followed classical models, and even for that of the Renaissance, which carries us down to within a measurable distance of the present day, the hexameter as fixed by Virgil, and the elegiac as popularised by Gallus and rapidly brought to perfection by his immediate followers, are the only two ...
— Latin Literature • J. W. Mackail

... already said, noisy nuisances for the singer, but indispensable for word-formation, and so for human intercourse. Each has also its own pitch, and investigators have come to a measurable degree of agreement ...
— Voice Production in Singing and Speaking - Based on Scientific Principles (Fourth Edition, Revised and Enlarged) • Wesley Mills

... indicators of crisis, subject to data and statistics. Less measurable but no less profound is a sapping of confidence across our land — a nagging fear that America's decline is inevitable, and that the next generation must lower ...
— U.S. Presidential Inaugural Addresses • Various

... into a uniform mould by the long tradition of scientific philosophy. For example in the Timaeus there is a presupposition, somewhat vaguely expressed, of a distinction between the general becoming of nature and the measurable time of nature. In a later lecture I have to distinguish between what I call the passage of nature and particular time-systems which exhibit certain characteristics of that passage. I will not go so far as to claim Plato in direct support ...
— The Concept of Nature - The Tarner Lectures Delivered in Trinity College, November 1919 • Alfred North Whitehead

... inasmuch as that alone is measured by time which has beginning and end in time. Hence, if the movement of the heavens lasted always, time would not be of its measure as regards the whole of its duration, since the infinite is not measurable; but it would be the measure of that part of its revolution which has beginning and end ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I (Prima Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas

... lower than in former years; but it is still very high, if the changes which have since occurred in the market values are taken into consideration. In Germany a substitute has been found in aniline, which is so cheap that within a measurable distance of time no indigo whatever will be bought. If I may be permitted to give His Highness any advice, I would recommend him in the future to establish an industry instead ...
— The Coming Conquest of England • August Niemann

... are now!" exclaimed Beatrice gleefully. "It's only quite a short way to the Morton's. They live in the next terrace but two. I believe we're within measurable distance of some lunch." ...
— A Popular Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil

... Milner knew that any delay which involved the continuance of the present position—a position which was one of moral superiority for the Dutch—would unite the whole of the Dutch, with a section of the British population, against Great Britain within a measurable period. He recognised that the franchise question was the one issue which could be raised between the paramount Power and the South African Republic in which the whole of the Cape Dutch would not throw in their lot bodily with their republican ...
— Lord Milner's Work in South Africa - From its Commencement in 1897 to the Peace of Vereeniging in 1902 • W. Basil Worsfold

... living in his native town, where he enjoyed such consideration as might attach to a gentleman whose talent for losing at cards had not the merit of being incidental to an obliging disposition. The Count Gemini was not liked even by those who won from him; and he bore a name which, having a measurable value in Florence, was, like the local coin of the old Italian states, without currency in other parts of the peninsula. In Rome he was simply a very dull Florentine, and it is not remarkable that he should not have cared to pay frequent visits to a place where, to carry it off, ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 2 (of 2) • Henry James

... these cases there is an original and a secondary, or derivative, form of the superstition, and it is our object to trace out which is which. Do the rags deposited at wells symbolise offerings to the local deity? If so, they bring us within measurable distance of a cult which rests upon faith in the power of natural objects to harm or render aid to human beings. Does the question of first-foot rest upon the colour of the hair or upon the sex of the person? I think, looking at all the examples I have been able to ...
— Folklore as an Historical Science • George Laurence Gomme

... from one end of our orbit or the other—though the difference of our position, corresponding to the points marked January and July in Fig. 54, is 185,000,000 miles—no apparent change of position can be observed. In some, however, the parallax, though very minute, is yet approximately measurable. The first star to which this test was applied with success was that known as 61 Cygni, which is thus shown to be no less than 40 billions of miles away from us—many thousand times as far as we are from the Sun. The nearest ...
— The Beauties of Nature - and the Wonders of the World We Live In • Sir John Lubbock

... a sentence as It is unthinkable, it is simply impossible to group the elements into any other and smaller "words" than the three indicated. Think or thinkable might be isolated, but as neither un- nor -able nor is-un yields a measurable satisfaction, we are compelled to leave unthinkable as an integral whole, a miniature bit of art. Added to the "feel" of the word are frequently, but by no means invariably, certain external phonetic characteristics. Chief of these is accent. In many, perhaps ...
— Language - An Introduction to the Study of Speech • Edward Sapir

... young master mariner who, coming ashore in Proud, the lobster-catcher's cranky boat, had walked up the shifting shingle to the crown of the ridge and stood watching her, in silence, for a quite measurable period, before passing on his way down to the ferry. For, from her first sight of him, had he not seemed to evoke that same sense of remembrance, to be, like the reek off the mud-flats, already well-known, something given back to her rather than newly discovered? She was ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet

... (b) A measurable action upon a body under which the state of rest of that body, or its state of uniform motion in ...
— The Standard Electrical Dictionary - A Popular Dictionary of Words and Terms Used in the Practice - of Electrical Engineering • T. O'Conor Slone

... I hardly knew how often till I came to read through my diary in cold print. But all the time I was conscious, and am still more so now, of K.'s greatness. Still more so now because, when I compare him with his survivors, they seem measurable, ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume 2 • Ian Hamilton

... day, or these endless and wordy chatterers. And lo! to the consciousness of the soul, the permanent identity, the thought, the something, before which the magnitude even of democracy, art, literature, &c., dwindles, becomes partial, measurable—something that fully satisfies, (which those do not.) That something is the All, and the idea of All, with the accompanying idea of eternity, and of itself, the soul, buoyant, indestructible, sailing ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman

... this because we do not know its biochemical aspects. (We must beware of regarding something as unacceptable because it is not measurable in exact terms, he warns.) We see its practical results, and, therefore, thymogenetic automatism must stand in the first rank as of overwhelming significance. Thus, also, the principle, strength through joy (Kraft durch Freude) ...
— Readings on Fascism and National Socialism • Various

... may possibly overcome. It will therefore be well to glance at the array of the wild forms which afford some prospect of success in the hereafter, including under the title of successes those kinds which may contribute not only to immediately measurable wealth, but the aesthetic ...
— Domesticated Animals - Their Relation to Man and to his Advancement in Civilization • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler

... either side of which lies perdition. There was none to cry Timbul save Macready, except Miss Helen Faucit, who gained a brilliant triumph as Lady Carlisle. The part of Charles I. was enacted so execrably that damnation for all was again and again within measurable distance. "The Younger Vane" ranted so that a hiss, like an embodied scorn, vibrated on vagrant wings throughout the house. There was not even any extraneous aid to a fortunate impression. The house was in ill repair: the seats dusty, the "scenery" commonplace and sometimes noticeably inappropriate, ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp

... tell him the truth; so she said, "Yes." Then Thorstan said in a voice which did not sound like his, "That is another reason why I must go." And then they looked at each other for a measurable space of time—and then Thorstan got up ...
— Gudrid the Fair - A Tale of the Discovery of America • Maurice Hewlett

... city's main thoroughfare at any point better calculated to bewilder and astound than the very corner where Curtis had picked up the cab. On both sides, from the level of the street to a height often measurable in hundreds of feet, nearly every building blazed with electric signs. Many of the devices seemed to be alive. Horses galloped, either in Roman stadium or modern polo-ground; a girl's skirts were fluttered by a rain-storm; ...
— One Wonderful Night - A Romance of New York • Louis Tracy

... of the value of the method of training by which it was initiated and stimulated. I refer to the rapidity of the learning process and its degree of permanency, or, in terms of habit formation, to the rapidity with which a habit is acquired, and to its duration. Of these two easily measurable aspects of the modifications in which training results, I have chosen the first as a means to the special study of the efficiency of the training to which the dancing mouse has been ...
— The Dancing Mouse - A Study in Animal Behavior • Robert M. Yerkes

... did, but all the same, six weeks later, toward the middle of June, the moment when Mrs. Prest undertook her annual migration, I had made no measurable advance. I was obliged to confess to her that I had no results to speak of. My first step had been unexpectedly rapid, but there was no appearance that it would be followed by a second. I was a thousand miles from taking tea with my hostesses—that ...
— The Aspern Papers • Henry James

... bankruptcy to think of; and, distracted between the two different griefs, he could brood over neither. But of the two, certainly his son's conversion was the worst in his eyes. The bankruptcy was intelligible—measurable; it was something known and classified—part of the ills which flesh (or, at least, commercial flesh) is heir to. But ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley

... reaching a point where his favourite gems might become all at once a mere drug in the market. Depreciation is the one bugbear that perpetually torments Sir Charles's soul; that winter he stood within measurable distance of ...
— An African Millionaire - Episodes in the Life of the Illustrious Colonel Clay • Grant Allen

... nearer. We see a clearly recognized even disk, of equal dimensions in every direction. This is the photosphere. We here reach some definitely measurable data for estimating its visible size. We already know its distance. Its disk subtends an angle of 32' 12".6, or a little more than half a degree. Three hundred and sixty such suns, laid side by side, would span the celestial arch from east to west with a half circle of light. Two lines ...
— Recreations in Astronomy - With Directions for Practical Experiments and Telescopic Work • Henry Warren

... struck our young man that he had never seen his subject before, and yet somehow this revelation was not produced by the sense of actually seeing it. What was revealed was the difficulty—what he saw was not the measurable mask but the ambiguous meaning. He had taken things for granted which literally were not there, and he found things there—except that he couldn't catch them—which he had not hitherto counted in or presumed to handle. This baffling effect, eminently in the line of the mystifying, so familiar ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James

... through the greasy composition daubed all over it; anything so grimly, detestably, ridiculously shameful as the whelp in his comic livery, Mr. Gradgrind never could by any other means have believed in, weighable and measurable fact though it was. And one of his model children had come ...
— Hard Times • Charles Dickens*

... neutronium, of course—couldn't use it if we could. What we need and are going to get is a material of about two and a half million specific gravity. Got to have it for lenses and controls for the fifth-order forces. Those rays go right through anything less dense without measurable refraction. But I see Rovol's giving me a nasty look. He's my boss on this job, and I imagine this kind of talk's barred during the period of relaxation, as being ...
— Skylark Three • Edward Elmer Smith

... they were breaking their vows and violating solemn engagements by acting as its ministers, and that in order to preserve the respect of honest men they should leave it—that the question of change, far off as it had once seemed, came within "measurable distance"? The generation to which they belonged had been brought up with strong exhortations to be real, and to hate shams; and now the question was forced on them whether it was not a sham for the English Church to call itself ...
— The Oxford Movement - Twelve Years, 1833-1845 • R.W. Church

... occasions on which he and Grey had met face to face. But for him, as for many another man of our time, Henry Grey's influence was not primarily an influence of personal contact. His mere life, that he was there, on English soil, within a measurable distance, had been to Elsmere in his darkest moments one of his thoughts of refuge. At a time when a religion which can no longer be believed clashes with a scepticism full of danger to conduct, every such witness as Grey to the ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... fully entered his understanding. Few minds, it seems, can conceive of any deity as other than some anthropomorphic extension of themselves, for the idea is too greatly blinding to admit human thought within a measurable distance even of a faintest conception. The true, stupendous nature of the forces these letters in the opening syllable clothed, Spinrobin unquestionably never apprehended. Miriam, with her naked and undefiled intuitions, ...
— The Human Chord • Algernon Blackwood

... your own mind, and thus embalm and preserve the beauty. Or if you are a poet, you may have a similar experience and reproduce it, humanized, in a poem. But the beauty is always a distilled and re-created, or, shall we say, an incarnated beauty—a tangible and measurable something, like moisture in the air, or sugar in the trees, or quartz in the rocks. There is, and can be, no "science of beauty." Beauty, like truth, is an experience of the mind. It is the emotion you feel when in health you look from your door or window of a May morning. If ...
— The Last Harvest • John Burroughs

... they have passed in pursuit of interior ideals, of which when attained astral clairvoyance is but an individual circumstance, are many, but still a small minority as compared with the modern cultivated world. But as time goes on, and within a measurable future, some of us have reason to feel sure that the numbers of those who are competent to exercise astral clairvoyance will increase sufficiently to extend the circle of those who are aware of their capacities, ...
— The Story of Atlantis and the Lost Lemuria • W. Scott-Elliot

... Lou continued to learn things. The pupils of a grammar school abjure school bags; a Geography now being a folio volume measurable in square feet, it is the thing to build upon its basic foundation an edifice of other text-books, and carry the sum total to and fro on an ...
— Emmy Lou - Her Book and Heart • George Madden Martin

... he announced his discovery of the progressive transmission of light. It was believed that light travelled instantaneously, but Roemer was able to demonstrate the inaccuracy of this conclusion, and determined that light travels through space with a measurable velocity. ...
— The Astronomy of Milton's 'Paradise Lost' • Thomas Orchard

... in popular feeling toward trade unions was so gradual as not to be measurable, but some of its stages can be distinguished. Perhaps the first very noticeable step in the general acceptance of trade unions, other than their mere legalization, was the interest and approval given ...
— An Introduction to the Industrial and Social History of England • Edward Potts Cheyney

... probably find this exhilarating. I have just had a talk with our mutual friend Cadell, the Signal Officer of this brigade, and we have decided that we are fed up with it. For one thing—after two months' experience of shell fire the sound of a shell bursting within measurable distance makes you start and shiver for a moment—reflex action of the nerves. That is annoying. We both decided we would willingly change places with you and take a turn at defending your doubtless excellently executed ...
— Adventures of a Despatch Rider • W. H. L. Watson

... fund of capital, on the one hand, and to a permanent force of labor, on the other, can with advantage be called rents. In this treatise we do not think it best to employ that nomenclature. What is not uncertain is that these gains are measurable by the same formula that measures the rent of a piece of land. If the essential thing about rent were that it is a material product and consists of a sum of differential quantities, these incomes certainly ...
— Essentials of Economic Theory - As Applied to Modern Problems of Industry and Public Policy • John Bates Clark

... wildernesses—in the most savage of the scenes of pure Nature—there is apparent the art of a Creator; yet is this art apparent only to reflection; in no respect has it the obvious force of a feeling. Now, if we imagine this sense of the Almighty Design to be harmonized in a measurable degree, if we suppose a landscape whose combined strangeness, vastness, definitiveness, and magnificence, shall inspire the idea of culture, or care, or superintendence, on the part of intelligences superior yet akin to humanity—then the sentiment of interest is preserved, while the Art is made ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... more educated a people are, the more will they abound in all those conveniences, comforts, and satisfactions which money will buy; and, other things being equal, the increase of competency and the decline of pauperism will be measurable on this scale. ...
— Popular Education - For the use of Parents and Teachers, and for Young Persons of Both Sexes • Ira Mayhew

... the blood drum in his ears. Was not this the word for which he had waited? But still some deeper instinct held him back, warning him, as it seemed, that to fall below his purpose at such a juncture was the only measurable failure. He must know more before he yielded, see deeper into her heart and his; and each moment brought the clearer conviction that there was ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton

... variation we now possess, the occurrence of three, four, or five, coincident variations cannot be otherwise than frequent. As a fact, more than half the whole population of most species seems to vary to a perceptible and measurable, and therefore sufficient, amount in scores of ways. Take a species with a million pairs of individuals—half of these vary sufficiently, either or -, in the four acquired characters A, B, C, D: what will be the proportion ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences Vol 2 (of 2) • James Marchant

... system, the sumphs being connected in such a way as not to modify the section of the tube, nor consequently the pressure of the air. The presence of the siphons and stop valves did not seem to affect the pressure to any measurable extent. The following table contains a list of the more important mains tested, and it may be mentioned that the resistance, due to the reservoirs, was at first partially included. The trials were carried out while the mains were not ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 803, May 23, 1891 • Various

... sunlight, that struck golden gleams through the burnished abundance of her hair; of noting the grace and dignity of her pose, and speculating as to the nature of her thoughts. His wife's reckless impulse on that fateful September day was bringing him now within measurable distance of a very human danger. The deep, passionate heart of him, crushed and stifled during the past five years, was in no safe state to be brought into contact with a lighted match. But of this danger he was, by his very nature, ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver

... near you," she whispered. "I—I am frightened, Philip. I am terrified by the unknown. Somehow, on the rock our dangers were measurable. Here, we shall soon be swallowed up among a whole ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy

... achievements. The end of the great war left her with a wider dominion than that with which she was endowed when she plunged into the struggle; but it left her also with augmented power and prestige, a settled sense of security, and a steeled spirit of resolution—elements not measurable on the scale of the map, but counting as immense factors in the government and development of ...
— Terre Napoleon - A history of French explorations and projects in Australia • Ernest Scott

... precipices which produce on the imagination nearly the effect of verticality. There is, however, only one point at which they reach anything approaching such a condition; and that point is wholly inaccessible either from below or above, but sufficiently measurable by a series ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin

... superiorities are matters plainly measurable and calculable, not in any wise to be referred to estimate of sensation. Of the grandeur or expression of the hills I have not spoken; how far they are great, or strong, or terrible, I do not for the moment consider, because vastness, and ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)

... dangers, neither Grom nor A-ya, nor the unsleeping Loob had lost sight of the object of their journey. Every straight and slender sapling and seedling of hard grain they tested, but hitherto they had found nothing that came within measurable ...
— In the Morning of Time • Charles G. D. Roberts

... ignores the discrepancies between precept and practice, and the influence which practice has exerted upon theory; on the other hand, however, it confines a subject, otherwise impossibly large, within measurable limits. The chief emphasis has been laid upon the sixteenth century, the period of the most enthusiastic experimentation, when, though it was still possible for the translator to rest in the comfortable ...
— Early Theories of Translation • Flora Ross Amos

... clean, bright, gardened townships spoke of country fare and pleasant summer evenings on the stoop. It was a sort of flat paradise; but, I am afraid, not unfrequented by the devil. That morning dawned with such a freezing chill as I have rarely felt; a chill that was not perhaps so measurable by instrument, as it struck home upon the heart and seemed to travel with the blood. Day came in with a shudder. White mists lay thinly over the surface of the plain, as we see them more often on a lake; and though ...
— Across The Plains • Robert Louis Stevenson

... thousandth part of a second they found themselves within measurable distance of TOBY's own Planet. And here ...
— Punch Among the Planets • Various

... heavens, is about six times as far off as alpha Centauri. His probable diameter is twelve million miles, and the light he emits two hundred times more brilliant than that of the sun. Yet, even through the telescope, he has no measurable diameter; he looks merely like a ...
— History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science • John William Draper

... degree of complexity, however great, are admitted, it would seem that any system, whose state at a given moment is a function of certain measurable quantities, must be a deterministic system. Let us consider, in illustration, a single material particle, whose co-ordinates at time t are [Math: x{t}, y{t}, z{t}]. Then, however, the particle moves, there must be, theoretically, ...
— Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays • Bertrand Russell

... noticed him. He, Cromwell, was already there; no notice would make him other than he already was. Till his hair was grown gray; and Life from the downhill slope was all seen to be limited, not infinite but finite, and all a measurable matter how it went,—he had been content to plough the ground, and read his Bible. He in his old days could not support it any longer, without selling himself to Falsehood, that he might ride in gilt ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle

... manoeuvring, got his army hemmed in, "bottled up," Grant called it, at Bermuda Hundred, where he was almost completely out of the offensive movement for months. Sigel had been worsted in the North, and had been relieved by Hunter, who had won measurable ...
— Ulysses S. Grant • Walter Allen

... measurable by its wants. Is there to you no meaning in the singularity that power in full degree to speculate upon the future was given to man alone? By the sign as I see it, God meant to make us know ourselves created for another and a better life, ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace

... forward a chair and sat beside him. Those uprisings of vagrant desire still struggled, combating the dominion of the fixed idea. But the struggle grew faint and fainter. And then, for a measurable time, Richard fell silent again while she waited. Verily there is no sharper discipline for a woman's proud spirit, than that administered, often quite unconsciously, by the man ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet

... colonies; and each word brings up a picture of a land or race or settlement permeated by the influences of the sea. The old term of "coastline" has no application to such an intermediary belt, for it is a zone of measurable width; and this width varies with the relief of the land, the articulation of the coast according as it is uniform or complex, with the successive stages of civilization and the development of navigation among the people ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple

... confinement from shores, the direction of the wind, etc., influence, in many or in all places, the height and time of the tide; and a portion of these circumstances being either not accurately knowable, not precisely measurable, or not capable of being certainly foreseen, the tide in known places commonly varies from the calculated result of general principles by some difference that we can not explain, and in unknown ones may vary from it by a difference that we are not able to foresee or conjecture. ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill

... that is, which concerned the cause of the duel, and it had been highly satisfactory to observe the sympathy and respect with which he had imbibed it. She had, too, been so discreet about it; she had not come within measurable distance of asserting that the challenge had been in any way connected with her. She had only been very emphatic on the point of its not being connected with poor dear Irene, and then occupied herself with her sweet flowers. That had been sufficient, and she felt in her bones and marrow that he ...
— Miss Mapp • Edward Frederic Benson

... Accompanied by twelve observers the vessel ascended and travelled without incident for eight hours. Then a slight mishap demanded attention, but was speedily repaired, and was ignored officially as being too trivial to influence the main issue. Victory appeared within measurable distance: the arduous toil of many patient years was about to be rewarded. The airship was within sight of home when it had to descend owing to the development of another motor fault. But as it approached the ground, Nature, as if infuriated at the conquest, rose up in rebellion. ...
— Aeroplanes and Dirigibles of War • Frederick A. Talbot

... Poplars, &c., of France and Italy, but wide-spreading, hospitable Oaks, Yews and other sturdy battlers with wind and storm, which have a far more genial and satisfactory appearance. And the trees of England have a commercial as well as a less measurable value; for timber of all sorts is in demand in the collieries, manufactories and mines, and bears a high price, the consumption far exceeding the domestic supply. But for the trees, these sullen skies and level grounds would ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley

... EDGE.—Under the action of the body-weight this is somewhat different from that of the coronary edge. Anteriorly, and at the sides, as far as the wall forms an acute angle with the ground, the tendency to expansion exists, but the change of form first becomes measurable in the region where the lateral cartilages begin. Quite posteriorly the expansion ...
— Diseases of the Horse's Foot • Harry Caulton Reeks

... is observable in number, that it is that which the mind makes use of in measuring all things that by us are measurable, which principally are EXPANSION and DURATION; and our idea of infinity, even when applied to those, seems to be nothing but the infinity of number. For what else are our ideas of Eternity and Immensity, but the repeated additions of certain ideas of ...
— An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume I. - MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books I. and II. (of 4) • John Locke

... that the spiritual will, once awakened, shall, through the effort of the contest, come to its full strength; that ground gained can be held permanently; that great as is the dead-weight of the adversary, it is yet measurable, while the Warrior who fights for you, for whom you fight, is, in might, immeasurable, ...
— The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali • Charles Johnston

... stillness for a measurable time, so that they could hear far off a flower-girl's laugh outside Charing Cross, and someone whistling furiously for a taxicab in one of the streets off the Strand. Then the Captain, with a movement so sudden that it ...
— The Wisdom of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton

... and fiction, not open to rationalistic criticism; a partition wall of allegories, built of dead facts cemented with wild fancies; it looms ever between the immeasurable and the measurable past." ...
— Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel • Ignatius Donnelly

... here an important clue to Mr Kipling and his work. Mr Kipling writes of the heroic life. He writes of men who do visible and measurable things. His theme has usually to do with the world's work. He writes of the locomotive and the engineer; of the mill-wheel and the miller; of the bolts, bars and planks of a ship and the men who sail it. He writes, in short, of ...
— Rudyard Kipling • John Palmer

... now "takes up the wondrous tale," and maintains at a high level its historic interest and literary charm. He finds DISRAELI, after the fantastic flights of early manhood, in an assured position. He was within measurable distance of assuming the Leadership of a Party which, long dallying with the harsh appellation Protectionist, now decided to be known as Conservative, a compromise hotly resented by good Tories. A flash of the old vanity flickers over a letter ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, December 9, 1914 • Various

... Men (a little soiled). Rare. 30s." He was in the middle of the Vs now and within measurable distance of the end. Business being slack in the front shop, he finished earlier than usual, and actually found himself with nearly a whole hour upon his hands before dinner. He had half a mind to spend it at his club, the Junior Journalists', in the ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair

... forest, and treat them both alike, if not as unimportant agencies, at least as quantities of unknown value in our meteorological equation. [Footnote: Schacht ascribes to the forest a specific, if not a measurable, influence upon the constitution of the atmosphere. "Plants imbibe from the air carbonic acid and other gaseous or volatile products exhaled by animals or developed by the natural phenomena of decomposition. On ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh

... retire in six months did not mean that he would not have given the British a fight before he lowered the tricolour. He was not the man to surrender quite tamely; but he knew that he could no longer hold out for more than a measurable period, the length of which would ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott

... if this increasing divorce rate continues, by 1950 one fourth of all marriages in the United States will be terminated by divorce, and in 1990 one half of all marriages. Thus we are apparently within measurable distance of a time when, if present tendencies continue, the family, as a permanent union between husband and wife, lasting until death, shall cease to be. At least, it is safe to say that in a population where one half of all marriages will be terminated ...
— Sociology and Modern Social Problems • Charles A. Ellwood

... that these are the very phrases with which Racine has managed to express all the violence of human terror, and rage, and love. Voltaire at his best never rises above the standard of a sixth-form boy writing hexameters in the style of Virgil; and, at his worst, he certainly falls within measurable distance of a flogging. He is capable, for instance, of writing lines as bad as ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey

... came across, or, rather, came within measurable distance of, never appeared at all so far as ...
— In the Wrong Paradise • Andrew Lang

... other forms of energy was now extremely significant. Living forces had been considered as standing apart from the rest of nature. Vital force, or vitality, had been thought of as something distinct in itself; and that there was any measurable relation between the powers of the living organism and the forces of heat and chemical affinity was of course unthinkable before the formulation of the doctrine of the correlation of forces. But as soon as that doctrine was understood it began to appear at once ...
— The Story of the Living Machine • H. W. Conn

... flash upon the screen the widows and orphans still break into loyal song. The ten thousand religions of mankind are still ten thousand religions, all busy at keeping men apart and hostile. I see scarcely a measurable step made anywhere towards that world kingdom of God, which is, I assert, the manifest solution, the only formula that can bring peace to all mankind. Mankind as a whole seems to have learnt nothing and forgotten nothing in ...
— War and the Future • H. G. Wells

... earnestness of the people has suffered under the influence of the many misleading writings and tendencies which have in recent times found their way into every stratum of society.' As at home, so in Norway, the question of Church Disestablishment, with all its consequences, is approaching within measurable distance of practical solution.[21] ...
— The Quarterly Review, Volume 162, No. 324, April, 1886 • Various

... century is out we shall be a people of eighty millions, and within measurable time this plain of a thousand miles from here to the Rockies will be as thickly peopled as ...
— Lady Merton, Colonist • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... what language he speaks?" Felix asked with a despairing gesture. It was terrible to stand thus within measurable distance of the secret which might, perhaps, save Muriel's life, and yet be perpetually balked by wheel within wheel of more than ...
— The Great Taboo • Grant Allen

... feeding experiments which have been carried on at Rothamsted it has been shown that the amount consumed both for a given live weight of animal within a given time, and for the production of a given amount of increase, is, as current food stuffs go, measurable more by the amounts they contain of digestible and available non-nitrogenous constituents than by the amounts of the digestible and available nitrogenous constituents they supply. The non-nitrogenous substance (the fat) in the ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... the process certainly went on, but the progress became so slight as to be hardly measurable. What was gained in the east or elsewhere, cannot be known; but forces, called loosely Greek fire and gunpowder, came into use in the west in the thirteenth century, as well as instruments like the ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams

... all these absurdities (if absurdities they be, which I am not now discussing), from which it is sought to extract the conclusion that extended substance is finite, do not at all follow from the notion of an infinite quantity, but merely from the notion that an infinite quantity is measurable, and composed of finite parts therefore, the only fair conclusion to be drawn is that: infinite quantity is not measurable, and cannot be composed of finite parts. This is exactly what we have already proved (in Prop. xii.). Wherefore the weapon which they aimed at us has ...
— The Ethics • Benedict de Spinoza

... this statement is a true one, and yet it seems quite vague and unreal to the majority of people, simply because they regard such a faculty as something absolutely different from anything they have yet experienced, and feel fairly confident that they themselves, at any rate, are not within measurable ...
— Clairvoyance • Charles Webster Leadbeater

... exquisitely beautiful.... I am persuaded that this also was written by Dekker." And seeing that no mortal critic but Kingsley ever dreamed of such absurdity as Kingsley rushes forward to refute, his controversial capacity will probably be regarded by all serious students of poetry or criticism as measurable by the level of his capacity for accurate report of fact or accurate ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... gas,—atmospheric air for instance,—can be compressed into a space a thousand times smaller by mere mechanical pressure, and then its bulk must be to the least measurable surface of a solid body, as a grain of sand to a mountain. By the mere effect of mass,—the force of gravity,—gaseous molecules are attracted by solids and adhere to their surfaces; and when to this physical force is added the feeblest chemical affinity, the liquifiable ...
— Familiar Letters of Chemistry • Justus Liebig

... Fraunhofer, moreover, constructed for the observatory at Koenigsberg the first really available heliometer. The principle of this instrument (termed with more propriety a "divided object-glass micrometer") is the separation, by a strictly measurable amount, of two distinct images of the same object. If a double star, for instance, be under examination, the two half-lenses into which the object-glass is divided are shifted until the upper star ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke

... span, pace step; apply the compass &c. n.; gauge, plumb, probe, sound, fathom; heave the log, heave the lead; survey. weigh. take an average &c. 29; graduate. Adj. measuring &c. v.; metric , metrical; measurable, perceptible, noticeable, detectable, appreciable, ponderable, determinable, fathomable; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... how everything else the master of the house consisted of, resources, possessions, facilities and amiabilities amplified by the social legend, depended, for conveying the effect of quantity, on no personal "equation," no mere measurable medium. Quantity was in the air for these good people, and Mr. Verver's estimable quality was almost wholly in that pervasion. He was meagre and modest and clearbrowed, and his eyes, if they wandered without fear, yet stayed without defiance; his shoulders were not broad, his chest was not high, ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James

... you rather of my thoughts than of my moods, for there at least one comes to something with a form that may be drawn and a substance that is measurable; one ceases to struggle with things indefinable and the effort to convey by metaphors and imaginary voices things that are at once bodiless and soundless and lightless and yet infinitely close and real. And moreover ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells

... they termed it in their euphonious language, as soon as the spring came round! However, I wouldn't place much credence in their statement, I assure you. Those Crows are such curs that they would say anything rather than venture 'within measurable distance,' as the phrase goes, of a possible ...
— Picked up at Sea - The Gold Miners of Minturne Creek • J.C. Hutcheson

... having no further use for the natives, was merely awaiting the catastrophe that would effectually cover his tracks. Without the need of further aid from the Birwas he was now within measurable distance of the Karewenda Hills. Another six hours ought to find him in at least the temporary shelter of the German fortified post ...
— Wilmshurst of the Frontier Force • Percy F. Westerman

... machine! The editor's phrase very nearly hits off the situation. As we have the linotype to set up the written words with a minimum of human agency, we really seem to be within measurable distance of a similar automaton that will produce the literature to be set up without the intrusion of any flesh-and-blood author. In this connection I may perhaps be permitted to quote a sentence or two from myself, ...
— Vanishing Roads and Other Essays • Richard Le Gallienne

... words and dispositions not less unhesitatingly than other young ladies of her age. Signs are small measurable things, but interpretations are illimitable, and in girls of sweet, ardent nature, every sign is apt to conjure up wonder, hope, belief, vast as a sky, and colored by a diffused thimbleful of matter in the shape of knowledge. They are not ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot

... with the disappearance of the frontier and free land. It alone can reveal how much of the courageous, creative American spirit, and how large a part of the historic American ideals are to be carried over into that new age which is replacing the era of free lands and of measurable isolation by consolidated and complex industrial development and by increasing resemblances and connections between the New ...
— The Frontier in American History • Frederick Jackson Turner

... velocities be as the times, and the total space passed through be as the squares of the times, then the total space passed through must be as the squares of the velocity; and as the vis viva or mechanical power inherent in a falling body, of any given weight, is measurable by the height through which it descends, it follows that the vis viva is proportionate to the square of the velocity. Of two balls therefore, of equal weight, but one moving twice as fast as the other, the faster ball has four times the energy or mechanical ...
— A Catechism of the Steam Engine • John Bourne

... likely to be more accurate in deciding whether a response is correct or incorrect than it is in deciding how much quality a given product contains. This does not furnish an excuse for failing to employ the quality-of-products scales, however, for the qualities they measure are not measurable in terms of the magnitude of tasks performed. The fact appears, however, that the method of employing the quality-of-products scales is "by comparison" (of child's production with samples reproduced on the scale), while the method of employing ...
— How to Teach • George Drayton Strayer and Naomi Norsworthy

... saves him from hoping too much and being too greatly disappointed. It recalls him to the proportions of the job. He gets something done by not attempting everything. ... And it clears him up. We get him to look into himself, to see directly and in measurable terms what it is that puts him wrong and holds him back. He's no longer vaguely ...
— The Secret Places of the Heart • H. G. Wells

... Leader, had been coloured by the enthusiasm with which the Englishman had inspired him. Sir Frank Leader was known as the uncrowned king of the world's pulp-wood trade. But Bull felt, and declared, that the appellation did not come within measurable distance of expressing the man's real genius. Then there were those others: Stanton Brothers, and Lord Downtree, and the virile, youthful creature, Ray Birchall. All of them were strong pillars of support for the ruling genius ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum

... line more than ninety millions of miles in length, not only vanishes from sight before we reach the distance of the great mass of stars, but becomes such a mere point that when magnified by the powerful instruments of modern times the most delicate appliances fail to make it measurable. Here the solar motion comes to our help. This motion, by which, as I have said, we are carried unceasingly through space, is made evident by a motion of most of the stars in the opposite direction, just as passing through a country on a railway we see the houses on the right and on the left being ...
— Side-lights on Astronomy and Kindred Fields of Popular Science • Simon Newcomb

... so considerable? Because, I suppose, the phenomena which they were observing recurred, for the most part, within moderate intervals; so that they could collect large experience within the compass of their natural lives: because days and months and years were measurable periods, and within them the more simple phenomena ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude

... things, and my work was as hard as possible, there can be no doubt that so far it was like nature. Pettitt had strengthened the positive and scientific tendency that there is in me, so that I was quite ardent in the pursuit of the rigid and measurable truths, neither knowing nor caring anything about those more subtle and less manifest truths that the cultivated artist loves. However, I painted away diligently enough from nature, giving two long sittings each day, and writing only in the evenings. My readings at this time were ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al

... ether. Since the ether was supposed to be at rest, such motion was indistinguishable from absolute motion. The motion of the earth relatively to the ether should have been different at different points of its orbit, and measurable phenomena should have resulted from this difference. But none did, and all attempts to detect effects of motions relative to the ether failed. The theory of relativity succeeded in accounting for this fact. But it ...
— The Einstein Theory of Relativity • H.A. Lorentz

... describes it, "the effect"—the parts played by labour and nature are indefinite and incommensurable so long as the land, the labour, and the effect remain all three the same, the parts become immediately measurable when the effect begins to vary, and one of the causes, and only one of them, at the same ...
— A Critical Examination of Socialism • William Hurrell Mallock

... nature of the delay made it a not altogether bad thing since the days that passed were days of stirring events. In the case of Stand Watie's First Brigade no less than of Tandy Walker's Second were the events distinguished by measurable success. The Indians were generally in high good humor; for even small successes, when coupled with appreciation of effort expended, will produce that. One adventure of Watie's, most timely and a little out of the ordinary, had been very exhilarating. ...
— The American Indian as Participant in the Civil War • Annie Heloise Abel

... A measurable silence followed the emission of this ingenious conjecture; then Betton observed with gentle irony: "Extremely neat. And of course it's no business of yours to supply any valid motive for this remarkable ...
— Tales Of Men And Ghosts • Edith Wharton

... three volumes are in the hands of the printer almost in their entirety, I venture to express the hope that the whole work will appear within measurable time, the parts following each ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg

... yet for the presentation of definite scientific results. However it may be in the physical universe, in the cosmos of science our knowledge must be nebulous before it constellates into definitely measurable shapes, and nothing is gained by attempting to anticipate the evolutionary process. Thus it is that here, for the most part, we have to content ourselves at present with the task of mapping out the field in broad and general outlines, bringing together the ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 4 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... responsible person would give; dilapidation would be so visible, and so calculable in such instances, that any secondary lease, or subletting, would be rather an increase of security than a source of alarm. Any evil from such a practice would be improbable measurable, and remediable. In land, on the contrary, the object is not to get the highest prices absolutely, but to get the highest prices which will not injure the machine. One tenant may offer and pay double the rent of another, and in a few years leave the ...
— Peter Plymley's Letters and Selected Essays • Sydney Smith

... in these titanic operations of Nature and their excessive slowness of progress rob them of much of their dramatic quality. Perhaps an inch of distance was an extraordinary advance for the Lewis Overthrust to make in any ordinary year, and doubtless there were lapses of centuries when no measurable advance was made. Yet sometimes sudden settlings, accompanied by more or less extended earthquakes, must ...
— The Book of the National Parks • Robert Sterling Yard

... degree of heat or cold in the particles of all bodies, which is perceptible by sensation, and is measurable by their expansion or contraction. It is the key to the theory of the winds, of rain, of aerial and oceanic currents, of vegetation and climate with all their multifarious and important differences. While the inclined position ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 6, No. 33, July, 1860 • Various



Words linked to "Measurable" :   measurability, important, of import



Copyright © 2024 Dictionary One.com