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Proportional   Listen
adjective
Proportional  adj.  
1.
Having a due proportion, or comparative relation; being in suitable proportion or degree; as, the parts of an edifice are proportional.
2.
Relating to, or securing, proportion.
3.
(Math.) Constituting a proportion; having the same, or a constant, ratio; as, proportional quantities; momentum is proportional to quantity of matter.
Proportional logarithms, logistic logarithms. See under Logistic.
Proportional scale, a scale on which are marked parts proportional to the logarithms of the natural numbers; a logarithmic scale.
Proportional scales, Proportional compasses, Proportional dividers, etc. (Draughting), instruments used in making copies of drawings, or drawings of objects, on an enlarged or reduced scale.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Proportional" Quotes from Famous Books



... automatism; it wakens as soon as the possibility of a choice is restored. That is why, in organisms unprovided with a nervous system, it varies according to the power of locomotion and of deformation of which the organism disposes. And in animals with a nervous system, it is proportional to the complexity of the switchboard on which the paths called sensory and the paths called motor intersect—that is, ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park

... tenor of their life does not seem to have been affected by speculations about the world beyond. Of age indeed and of death they had a horror proportional to their acute and sensitive enjoyment of life; but their natural impulse was to turn for consolation to the interests and achievements of the world they knew, and to endeavour to soothe, by ...
— The Greek View of Life • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson

... we find ten grains in a square foot, we know that the number of square feet in the whole field is one-tenth that of the number of grains sown. So it is with the universe of stars. If the latter are sown equally through space, the extent of the space occupied must be proportional to the number of stars which ...
— Side-lights on Astronomy and Kindred Fields of Popular Science • Simon Newcomb

... reservoirs, that will collect the water in cases of freshets through thaws or heavy rainfalls, would be of great usefulness. Freshets and their devastating results would be impossible. Wide expanses of water, together with their proportional evaporations, would also, in all probability, bring about a more regular rain-fall. Finally such institutions would facilitate the erection of works for an extensive system ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel

... quire: an allusion to the music of the spheres; see lines 3, 1021. Pythagoras supposed that the planets emitted sounds proportional to their distances from the earth and formed a celestial concert too melodious to affect the "gross unpurged ear" of mankind: comp. l. 458 and Arc. 63-73. Shakespeare (M. of V. v. 1. 61) alludes to the music ...
— Milton's Comus • John Milton

... the final result. If the temperature of the animal be tested from time to time during the exposure, it will be found to rise steadily, and the severity of the symptoms will be directly, and in any one species constantly, proportional to the intensity of the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 86, February, 1875 • Various

... expectations of the success of this work. I thought that I was the only historian that had at once neglected present power, interest, and authority, and the cry of popular prejudices; and as the subject was suited to every capacity, I expected proportional applause. But miserable was my disappointment: I was assailed by one cry of reproach, disapprobation, and even detestation; English, Scotch, and Irish, whig and tory, churchman and sectary, freethinker and religionist, patriot and courtier, ...
— The History of England, Volume I • David Hume

... or Verkhovna Rada (450 seats; under Ukraine's new election law, half of the Supreme Council's seats are allocated on a proportional basis to those parties that gain 4% or more of the national electoral vote; the other 225 members are elected by popular vote in single-mandate constituencies; all serve ...
— The 2001 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... these varied results may be seen in the existing anthropoid apes. In all of them it would appear that the arm was a prominent factor in locomotion, for in each instance it is longer than the leg,—but it differs in proportional length in every instance. It is shortest in the chimpanzee, somewhat longer in the gorilla, still longer in the orang, and remarkably long in the gibbon. In all these instances the fact that the arms exceed the legs in length indicates that they must have played a large and important ...
— Man And His Ancestor - A Study In Evolution • Charles Morris

... the only living being in those dreams. Everything else consisted of lifeless things, and mostly of spaces and dimensions rather than of objects. The dominant characteristic was an increase of size proportional to the increase of distance from himself. He found himself, for instance, in the midst of a vast space laid out in squares. Where he stood at the centre, those squares were just large enough to hold him. ...
— The Soul of a Child • Edwin Bjorkman

... the common will is." It was primarily to check this abuse that a statute of the reign of Henry the Sixth restricted in 1430 the right of voting in shires to freeholders holding land worth forty shillings, a sum equal in our money to at least twenty pounds a year and representing a far higher proportional income at the present time. Whatever its original purpose may have been, the result of the statute was a wide disfranchisement. It was aimed, in its own words, against voters "of no value, whereof every of them ...
— History of the English People, Volume III (of 8) - The Parliament, 1399-1461; The Monarchy 1461-1540 • John Richard Green

... subsequently segregated. But my chief reason for believing that these soft earthy stones, with their extraneous fragments, are not of sedimentary origin, is the extreme improbability of crystals of feldspar, black microscopical specks, and small stains of a darker colour occurring in the same proportional numbers in an aqueous deposit, and in masses of solid trachyte. Moreover, as I have remarked, the microscope occasionally reveals a crystalline structure in the apparently earthy basis. On the other hand, the partial decomposition of such great masses of trachyte, forming whole mountains, ...
— Volcanic Islands • Charles Darwin

... community. [Footnote: Cf. Unpopular Review, vol. 1, p. 22.] Strong parties may go for many years without any representation, or with representation quite disproportionate to their numbers. By the method of proportional representation, every man's vote counts, and every considerable body of opinion can send its representative to council. Men of marked personality, who have aroused too great hostility to make them safe candidates as we vote today, because they would be unlikely to win a majority, can get a constituency ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake

... this Christian Realm, protesting against the Papal usurpation, comprising, first, the interests of a permanent learned class, that is, the Clergy;—secondly, those of the proper, that is, the infirm poor, from age or sickness;—and thirdly, the adequate proportional instruction of all in all classes by public prayer, recitation of the Scriptures, by expounding, preaching, catechizing, and schooling, and last, not least, by the example and influence of a pastor ...
— Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... resistance proportional to the vibrations of the diaphragm is the method which has produced the present prevailing form of transmission. Professor Bell's Centennial exhibit contained a water-resistance transmitter. Dr. Elisha Gray also ...
— Cyclopedia of Telephony & Telegraphy Vol. 1 - A General Reference Work on Telephony, etc. etc. • Kempster Miller

... or deformation of the material is known as the strain. Every stress produces a corresponding strain, and within a certain limit (see elastic limit, in FUNDAMENTAL CONSIDERATIONS AND DEFINITIONS, above) the strain is directly proportional to the stress producing it.[1] The same intensity of stress, however, does not produce the same strain in different materials or in different qualities of the same material. No strain would be produced in a ...
— The Mechanical Properties of Wood • Samuel J. Record

... and with the accession of hard bodies, moveable with the agitation of the waves, gives to the sea the power of undermining farther and farther into the solid basis of our land. This is the operation which is to be measured; this is the mean proportional by which we are to estimate the age of worlds that have terminated, and the duration of those that are ...
— Theory of the Earth, Volume 1 (of 4) • James Hutton

... well as the property securing It. Some States, such as Pennsylvania, impose a smaller, more nominal, tax upon stocks and bonds in the hands of the owner, for the sake of getting a larger return, but in many States, such as Massachusetts, this legislation would be unconstitutional, as not proportional taxation. ...
— Popular Law-making • Frederic Jesup Stimson

... formulation of results does, it is true, require constant correction and revision—but there is a central body of data which is little affected, and which accumulates from age to age. Now the finality of scientific truth is proportional to the modesty of its claims. Items of truth persist, while the interpretation of them is subject to alteration with the general advance of knowledge; and, relatively speaking, science consists in items of truth, and philosophy in their interpretation. The liability to ...
— The Approach to Philosophy • Ralph Barton Perry

... which he was so long the first citizen maintained until our own day the same proportional position among the empires of Christendom as it held in the seventeenth century, the name of John of Barneveld would have perhaps been as familiar to all men as it is at this moment to nearly every inhabitant of the Netherlands. Even now ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... officers, an impressive statistic only in the light of the record of a total of sixty black graduates in the preceding eighty-six years. Furthermore, there were only 116 black cadets in 1968, a vast proportional increase over former years but also an indication of the small number of black officers that could be expected from that source during the next four years (Table 26). Since cadets were primarily chosen by congressional nomination and from other special categories, ...
— Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 • Morris J. MacGregor Jr.

... antauxen pusxi, irigi. Propensity emo, inklino. Proper (exact) gxusta. Proper konvena. Property propreco, posedajxo. Prophecy profetajxo. Prophesy profetajxi. Prophet profeto. Propinquity proksimeco. Propitiate favorigi, trankviligi. Propitious favora. Proportional proporcia. Proposal propono. Propose proponi. Proposition propono. Proposition (gram.) propozicio. Proprietor posedanto. Propriety konveneco. Pro rata proporcie. Prorogue prokrasti. Prosaic proza. Proscribe ekzili. Prose prozo, prosajxo. Prosecute persekuti. Proselyte ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes

... situated within a cone, having its vortex at the observer's eye, and its base at the very limits of the system, the angle of the cone (at the eye) being 15'. Then the cubes of the perpendiculars let fall from the eye, on the plane of the bases of the various visual cones, are proportional to the solid contents of the cones themselves, or, as the stars are supposed equally scattered within all the cones, the cube roots of the numbers of stars in each of the fields express the relative lengths of the perpendiculars. A section of the sidereal system along any great circle ...
— Sir William Herschel: His Life and Works • Edward Singleton Holden

... twelve cattees; Salalos Ytam twelve and fourteen cattees; Turias and Tape Turias one and two cattees; Patola of two fathoms, fifty and sixty cattees; those of four fathoms and of one fathom at proportional prices; for twenty-eight pounds of rice, a dollar; Sago, which is a root of which the natives make their bread, is sold in bunches, and was worth a quarter of a dollar the bunch; velvets, sattins, taffetics, and other silk goods of China were much in request. This may suffice ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume IX. • Robert Kerr

... corrected. "I said it was the fairest way of acknowledging God's ownership and of working with him in partnership. And it is. It puts definiteness in the place of whim. It is proportional to our circumstances. It is not difficult. Mr. Drury says that forty years' search has failed to find a tither who has suffered hardship ...
— John Wesley, Jr. - The Story of an Experiment • Dan B. Brummitt

... entirely undeserved reproof for meanness and dishonourable views; then the old man announced finally what he should do. He should write to Julia and offer her a smallish sum down in case the bulb proved to be of no great worth, and a promise of a proportional percentage afterwards if it proved valuable. This idea pleased him very well; it satisfied his notions of integrity and fair dealing and also his thrifty soul, which found trying the otherwise unavoidable duty ...
— The Good Comrade • Una L. Silberrad

... proposed but unfortunately evidence soon began to accumulate to show that the stimulation produced by extracts of various sources is not a matter of pure vitamine. If we plot a curve of stimulation for various dilutions of a given extract we find that the stimulation is not directly proportional to the concentration of vitamine present but is a composite of several factors. The chart derived from experiments by Eddy and Stevenson shows the general nature of this curve. Other experimenters have reached similar results and some have gone so far as to maintain that the stimulation is ...
— The Vitamine Manual • Walter H. Eddy

... year, the author received at first but L10, which was afterwards increased by an additional sum, and by the profits of a quarto edition of the work. By a subsequent act of the legislature, extending the term of copyright, it reverted again to the author; but with no proportional increase of profit. Campbell's pecuniary circumstances are said to have been by no means easy at this time and a pleasant anecdote is recorded of him, in allusion to the hardships of an author's case, somewhat ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 407, December 24, 1829. • Various

... duration, although a few of tropical existence assume a fruticose habit, there is one plant in the vicinity of the Colony of Port Jackson, remarkable for its gigantic, arborescent growth; many specimens having been remarked from fifteen to twenty feet in height, of proportional robust habit, and of highly ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia] [Volume 2 of 2] • Phillip Parker King

... square of the time of revolution (or year) of each planet is proportional to the cube of its mean ...
— Pioneers of Science • Oliver Lodge

... you, adopting either a clock-wise or a counter clock-wise direction according to your thought. After a little practice you should produce a circular swing with a diameter of at least eight inches; but your success will be directly proportional to the exclusiveness of your thought and to your efforts to ...
— The Practice of Autosuggestion • C. Harry Brooks

... must necessarily be functionless when it first begins to appear. There are two very good reasons why such should not be the case in all instances, even if it should be the case in some. For, as a matter of observable fact, a very large proportional number of incipient organs are useful from the very moment of their inception. Take, for example, what is perhaps the most wonderful instance of refined mechanism in nature—the eye of a vertebrated animal. Comparative anatomy and embryology combine ...
— Darwin, and After Darwin (Vol. 1 and 3, of 3) • George John Romanes

... planted portion was about twenty-five years old he observed that the change in the native vegetation was greater than is often seen in passing from one quite different soil to another. Besides a great change in the proportional numbers of the native heath-plants, twelve species which could not be found on the heath flourished in the plantations. The effect on the insect life must have been still greater, for six insectivorous birds which ...
— Darwinism (1889) • Alfred Russel Wallace

... the latter an infinite number, the unmodified law of equipartition would require that the ether should finally appropriate all energy, leaving none of it to the matter. To escape this conclusion we have Rayleigh's law that the radiated energy, for a given wave length, is proportional to the absolute temperature, and for a given temperature is in inverse ratio to the fourth power of the wave-length. This is found by Planck to be experimentally unverifiable, the radiation being less for small wave-lengths and low temperatures, ...
— A Librarian's Open Shelf • Arthur E. Bostwick

... points and joints, with spines, in a row along its back, sides, and legs; these were curved, and almost sharp; on the back of its neck was a thick knotty lump, with a spine at each side, by which I lifted it; its tail was armed with spines to the point, and was of proportional length to its body. The lizard was about eight inches in length. Naturalists have christened this harmless little chameleon the Moloch horridus. I put the little creature in a pouch, and intended to preserve it, but ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles

... glory, truth, and knowledge, wherewith great and good men shine and illuminate others; darkness for obscurity of condition, and for error, blindness and ignorance; darkning, smiting, or setting of the Sun, Moon, and Stars, for the ceasing of a kingdom, or for the desolation thereof, proportional to the darkness; darkning the Sun, turning the Moon into blood, and falling of the Stars, for the same; new Moons, for the return of a dispersed people into a body ...
— Observations upon the Prophecies of Daniel, and the Apocalypse of St. John • Isaac Newton

... the centre portion of the envelope to sag downwards, while the ends would have a tendency to rise. The principle which has been found to be most satisfactory is to fix the points of suspension distributed over the greatest length of envelope possible proportional to the lift of gas at each section thus formed. From these points the wires are led to the car. If the car is placed close to the envelope it will be seen that the suspensions of necessity lie at a very flat angle and exert a serious longitudinal compression. This ...
— British Airships, Past, Present, and Future • George Whale

... there is no peace. The false bonds are best broken: with their collapse would come a release of social energy into political discussion. For every country is a mass of minorities which should find a voice in public affairs. Any device like proportional representation and preferential voting which facilitates the political expression of group interests is worth having. The objection that popular government cannot be conducted without the two party system is, I believe, refuted by the experience of Europe. If I had to choose between a Congressional ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann

... inflammable air and air which extinguishes a candle may differ from one another in the mode of the combination of these two constituent principles, as well as in the proportional quantity of each; and by agitation in water, or long standing, that mode of combination may change. This we know to be the case with other substances, as with milk, from which, by standing only, cream is separated; which by agitation becomes ...
— Experiments and Observations on Different Kinds of Air • Joseph Priestley

... traffic which have often been apparently the sole motives in city improvement. The conservation of historic buildings, whenever possible, the planting of trees along our streets, the laying out of gardens, the insistence upon a proportional amount of air and open space to new buildings would go a long way towards making our bricks-and-mortar joyless wildernesses into something human ...
— Civics: as Applied Sociology • Patrick Geddes

... Cotton Mather (p. 46.) had preached the sternest Puritan theology. Nearly all of the prominent writers mentioned in this chapter adopted liberal religious views. The recoil had been violent, and in the long run recoil will usually be found proportional to the strength of the repression. Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes even called the old theology largely "diabology." The name of one of his poems is Homesick in Heaven. Had he in the early days chosen such a title, he would either, like Roger ...
— History of American Literature • Reuben Post Halleck

... started a difficulty, Emily, which certainly requires explanation. It is found by experiment that the power of absorption corresponds with and is proportional to that of radiation; so that under equal temperatures, bodies compensate for the greater loss they sustain in consequence of their greater radiation by their greater absorption; so that if you were to make your experiment in an atmosphere heated ...
— Conversations on Chemistry, V. 1-2 • Jane Marcet

... will tan in 24 to 48 hours; heavier ones in proportional time. When on pulling or stretching the flesh side, it whitens, it is tanned. On taking from the tan, rinse the skin well in lukewarm water containing a handful of washing soda to the bucketful. Wring out with the hands and soak again ...
— Home Taxidermy for Pleasure and Profit • Albert B. Farnham

... of those from being troublesome, rich screens ornamented with gold and paintings of their idols were interposed between Montezuma and the torches. At his meals he was seated on a low throne or chair, at a table of proportional height covered with white cloths and napkins, four beautiful women attending to present him with water for his hands, in vessels named xicales, having plates under them, after which they gave him towels to dry his hands. Two other women attended ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. IV. • Robert Kerr

... intense where the greatest dependence of the parts on the whole is combined with the greatest dependence of the whole on its parts; the first (namely, the dependence of the parts on the whole) being absolute; the second (namely, the dependence of the whole on its parts) being proportional to the importance of the relation which the parts have to the whole, that is, as their action extends more or less beyond themselves. For this spirit of the whole is most expressed in that part which derives its importance as an End from its importance as a Mean, relatively ...
— Hints towards the formation of a more comprehensive theory of life. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... with all its suns and planets is analogous to a perfect watch. Each sun and planet moves over a prescribed orbit in a given time mathematically proportional to the movements of all the other celestial bodies, just as the geared wheels of the watch conform to their prescribed movements. The celestial bodies are seemingly actuated by invisible gears and are held rigidly in their proper places by a mighty force whose power is incalculable. ...
— The Planet Mars and its Inhabitants - A Psychic Revelation • Eros Urides and J. L. Kennon

... as we have supposed our comparer to read of, he can look, in imagination, on a space of proportional extent in any part of his native country, taking a district as a detached section of a general national picture. And he can figure to himself the result, resplendent upon this tract, of so much energy, there beneficently expended, as that island had cost: an energy, we mean equivalent in measure, ...
— An Essay on the Evils of Popular Ignorance • John Foster

... he resumed, "I must recall to your minds Newton's general law, 'that the attraction of two bodies is directly proportional to the product of their masses, and inversely proportional to the square of ...
— Off on a Comet • Jules Verne

... value to that of San Francisco, has been discovered on the Turon River by those energetic and experienced practical miners, Messrs. Hargraves and party. The method of cradling is the same, the appliances required are simple and inexpensive, and the proportional yield of gold highly reassuring. It is impossible to forecast the results of this most momentous discovery. It will revolutionise the new world. It will liberate the old. It will precipitate Australia into ...
— Robbery Under Arms • Thomas Alexander Browne, AKA Rolf Boldrewood

... the spirit of the new times; but it resulted both from the nature of the Cynical philosophy and from the temperament of Varro, that the Menippean lash was very specially plied round the cars of the philosophers and put them accordingly into proportional alarm—it was not without palpitation that the philosophic scribes of the time transmitted to the "severe man" their newly-issued treatises. Philosophizing is truly no art. With the tenth part of the trouble with which a master rears his slave to be a professional baker, he trains himself ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen

... up entirely to wine; and its maddening influence upon my hereditary temper rendered me more and more impatient of control. I began to murmur,—to hesitate,—to resist. And was it only fancy which induced me to believe that, with the increase of my own firmness, that of my tormentor underwent a proportional diminution? Be this as it may, I now began to feel the inspiration of a burning hope, and at length nurtured in my secret thoughts a stern and desperate resolution that I would submit no longer to ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... those brief words engraven by HERMES on a Stone, and known under the name of "The Tablet of Emerald:" the Unity of Being and the Unity of the Harmonies, ascending and descending, the progressive and proportional scale of the Word; the immutable law of the Equilibrium, and the proportioned progress of the universal analogies; the relation of the Idea to the Word, giving the measure of the relation between the Creator and the Created, the necessary mathematics of the Infinite, proved ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike

... verification by experiment of what is now known as the "law of comparison," or the law by which one is enabled to refer accurately the resistance of a model to one of larger size, or to that of a full sized vessel. In effect, the law is this—for vessels of the same proportional dimensions, or, as designers say, of the same lines, there are speeds appropriate to these vessels, which vary as the square roots of the ratio of their dimensions, and at these appropriate speeds the resistances will vary as the cubes of these dimensions. The fundament ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 717, September 28, 1889 • Various

... greatest chemists of the age: Justus von Liebig, the discoverer of "The Law of the Minimum," which is this: That of the sixteen known constituents of the blood essential to the healthy growth and maintenance of the organs and tissues of the body, the absence of any proportional ingredient, however small, will cause degeneration in the organism and interfere with the proper functioning of one or more ...
— Valere Aude - Dare to Be Healthy, Or, The Light of Physical Regeneration • Louis Dechmann

... is assumed at the outset to be the same. Thus in the "tower," the front and back staircases and halls take up 22,000 cubic feet out of the total 106,000 cubic feet covered by the entire building. In the "flat" the proportional part of the halls and staircases for each suite is represented by a comparatively insignificant quantity ...
— The American Architect and Building News, Vol. 27, Jan-Mar, 1890 • Various

... there is no need of this. For instance, one, two, three, being given, everyone can see that the fourth proportional is six; and this is much clearer, because we infer the fourth number from an intuitive grasping of the ratio, which the first bears ...
— The Ethics • Benedict de Spinoza

... generally be welcomed as opportune. Proportional Representation has made very rapid, almost startling advances in recent years. In one shape or another it has been adopted in many countries in Northern Europe, and there is a prospect of a most important extension of this adoption in the reform of the parliamentary institutions ...
— Proportional Representation - A Study in Methods of Election • John H. Humphreys

... confirmation was superseded; all check upon appeals to Rome was removed, by the allowance granted every man to depart the kingdom at pleasure, and the fines to be imposed on the clergy, for any offence, were ordained to be proportional to their lay estates, not to their ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume VI. • Various

... effects are proportional to their causes, is sometimes laid down as an independent axiom of causation: it is really only a particular case of the composition of causes; and it fails at the same point as the latter principle, viz. when an addition does not become compounded ...
— Analysis of Mr. Mill's System of Logic • William Stebbing

... these divisions, suppose it be required to find a fourth proportional which shall stand to the third of three numbers as the second does to the first. The merchant's clerk knows his rule; he multiplies the second into the third and divides by the first. He neither knows nor ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude

... the Lords gave a friendly reception to the Franchise Bill. They have learned a good deal since 1911. Even Lord SALISBURY forebore on this occasion his usual intention to die in the last ditch, and was ready to let the Bill pass, provided that Proportional Representation was included in it. The most vehement criticism came from Lord BRYCE, who viewed with alarm the addition of six million women to the electorate. Women, he declared, neither met nor ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Dec. 26, 1917 • Various

... many ruminant animals. The Hipparion, as the extinct European three-toed horse is called, in fact, presents a foot similar to that of the American Protohippus (Fig. 9), except that, in the Hipparion, the smaller digits are situated farther back, and are of smaller proportional size, ...
— American Addresses, with a Lecture on the Study of Biology • Tomas Henry Huxley

... them, towards whom they are very liberal when they are sick, thinking that the Operation of the Remedies they take, is proportional to the Presents they make unto ...
— The Mide'wiwin or "Grand Medicine Society" of the Ojibwa • Walter James Hoffman

... connections. Protests were staged. Riots were organized. The electoral system under which the Peoples Progressive Party had won its victories was altered in London and Jagan was replaced by a system of proportional representation under which the P.P.P. was defeated and a new ...
— Civilization and Beyond - Learning From History • Scott Nearing

... some reason which I could never understand and cannot approve) he was kept locked up to break him of the graceful habit. Here, it is not the similarity, it is the difference, that is worthy of remark; the clearly marked degrees of gratitude and the proportional duration of his visits. Anything further removed from instinct it were hard to fancy; and one is even stirred to a certain impatience with a character so destitute of spontaneity, so passionless in justice, and so priggishly obedient to ...
— Memories and Portraits • Robert Louis Stevenson

... being as great differences between the climates of different parts as there are between the countries of Europe. Consequently a uniform absolute increase would be grossly unfair to some and grossly favourable to others. The increase is therefore proportional to the cost of living. Moscow is taken as a norm of 100, and when a new minimum wage is established for Moscow other districts increase their minimum wage proportionately. A table for this has been worked out, whereby in comparison with 100 for Moscow, Petrograd is set down as 120, Voronezh or Kursk ...
— Russia in 1919 • Arthur Ransome

... days. At the end of that time, if no friend had paid his debt, he could be put to death, or sold as a slave into a foreign state. If there were several creditors, they could actually cut his body to pieces, each taking a piece proportional in size ...
— Historic Tales, Volume 11 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris

... it all such rising dangers as total prohibition, and the female franchise, the daylight saving, and eugenic marriage, together with proportional representation, the initiative and the referendum, and the duty of the citizen to take an intelligent interest in politics—and I admit that I shall not be sorry ...
— Frenzied Fiction • Stephen Leacock

... constructed on the upper blank part of the paper, a proportional diagram consisting of two intersecting ...
— The Mystery of 31 New Inn • R. Austin Freeman

... acknowledged, from principles of reasoning most flattering to the human character. If industry, frugality, and disinterested integrity were alike the virtues of all, there would, apparently, be more of the social spirit, in making all property a common stock, and giving to each individual a proportional title to the wealth of the whole. Such is the basis upon which Plato forbids, in his Republic, the division of property. Such is the system upon which Rousseau pronounces the first man who enclosed a field with a fence, and, said, "This is mine," a traitor to the human species. A wiser, and ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various

... different periodic times; he also saw that the greater the mean distance of the planet the greater was its periodic time, and he was determined to find out the connection between the two. It was easily found that it would not be true to say that the periodic time is merely proportional to the mean distance. Were this the case, then if one planet had a distance twice as great as another, the periodic time of the former would have been double that of the latter; observation showed, however, that the periodic time of the more distant planet exceeded twice, and was indeed ...
— The Story of the Heavens • Robert Stawell Ball

... toilfully bringing to a close its eight months' career of futility, the British Empire was in the grip of the most terrible ordeal through which it has ever passed. On the 21st of March, 1918, the assembled Irishmen in Dublin were discussing whether or not proportional representation should form part of the hypothetical constitution of Ireland, and on the same day the Germans well-nigh overwhelmed the 5th Army at the opening of the great offensive campaign which threatened ...
— Ulster's Stand For Union • Ronald McNeill

... great many years, manufactures, taken in a general point of view, have not partaken of the character of a regular profession, in which all who engaged with honest industry and a sufficient capital might reasonably expect returns proportional to their advances and labor—but have, on the contrary, rather resembled a lottery, in which the great majority of the adventurers are sure to be losers, although some may draw considerable advantage. Men continued for a great many years to exert ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume V (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart

... changed, the other changed likewise, and as my own height increased my notion of things near at hand became equally expanded. But the hills, mark you, were out of my reach: I could not apply myself to them: I had an actual, instead of a proportional eidolon of their magnitude; so that, of course (my eye being larger and flatter nowadays, and so the image presented to me then being in sober earnest smaller than the image presented to me now), I found the hills nearly as much too great as I had found the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... marvellous change. It had been easy enough, in the excitement following her discovery, to contemplate a meeting with Lounsbury. But that excitement having dwindled not a little, the idea of seeing him and of talking to him mounted in proportional importance. She saw herself drawing up before his store, or standing just within as she related her story. She saw his face, the blue eyes, full of fun—and she had not met him since that evening! Her heart began to thump with her picturing, its poundings playing up to her throat ...
— The Plow-Woman • Eleanor Gates

... great people of builders to be seen in such perfection. There is the amphitheatre, smaller, but more perfect even, than that at Arles. There is the Maison Carree, a temple almost quite perfect, and of surpassing proportional perfection. Small this temple is: it consists of thirty elegant Corinthian columns, ten of which are disengaged, and form the portico, whereas the remainder are engaged in the naos or sanctuary. No engraving can give an idea of ...
— In Troubadour-Land - A Ramble in Provence and Languedoc • S. Baring-Gould

... climate, the habits, the season, the time of life, the race, and the breed. Quetelet[3] has shown that before puberty the weight of the male is for equal ages above that of the female, but that towards puberty the proportional weight of the female, due chiefly to gain in fat, increases, so that at twelve the two sexes are alike in this respect. During the child-bearing time there is an absolute lessening on the part of the female, but after this time the weight of the woman increases, and the maximum is ...
— Fat and Blood - An Essay on the Treatment of Certain Forms of Neurasthenia and Hysteria • S. Weir Mitchell

... that the number of vibrations is independent of the width, proportional to the thickness, and very nearly inverse ratio of the square of the length, provided the latter ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 365, December 30, 1882 • Various

... Government." On its formation the National Board included among its members Dr. Murray, the Catholic Archbishop of Dublin; Dr. Whately, the Protestant Archbishop of that city; and Dr. Carlisle, a Presbyterian Minister. No attempt was made to effect anything approaching a proportional representation of the creeds concerned, and the two Catholic members were outvoted by their five Protestant colleagues on the Board for the control of the education of the children of a population in which Catholics were to Protestants in the ratio ...
— Ireland and the Home Rule Movement • Michael F. J. McDonnell

... common affairs, namely for the conduct of foreign affairs, for the army, and for the ministry of finance. The revenues of the joint budget consist of the revenues of the joint ministries, the net proceeds of the customs, and the quota, or the proportional contributions of the two states. This quota is fixed for a period of years, and generally coincides with the duration of the customs and commercial treaty. Until 1897 Austria contributed 70%, and Hungary 30% of the joint expenditure, remaining ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various

... who performed the operation on me, was astonished, was, on account of the redness of my blood. The inhabitants having a sort of white fluid in their veins, the purity of which is proportional to their ...
— Niels Klim's journey under the ground • Baron Ludvig Holberg

... disposed to make some concessions. The word "national" was dropped from all the resolutions; and minor changes were made in the interest of harmony. But on the fundamental question of what was termed "proportional representation,"—that is, representation of the States in proportion to numbers in the national legislature,—no agreement seemed possible. More than once the convention was on the point of adjourning sine die. Even the usually placid Franklin suggested that "prayers ...
— Union and Democracy • Allen Johnson

... constant, is such that 1/(1-x-x^2-x^3) once expanded into a series will give coefficients proportional to approx. c**n and c ...
— Miscellaneous Mathematical Constants • Various

... our distinction between Up and Down from which as a starting-point we build up our conception of tridimensional Space. And in this respect it must be remembered that as the areas of spheres are proportional to the squares of their radii it necessarily follows that gravity if it acts uniformly in tridimensional Space must vary in intensity in proportion to the square of the distance of the point of application from the ...
— Essays Towards a Theory of Knowledge • Alexander Philip

... a basis of representation, and taunted them with bitter words. "Either count your Negroes as men or as beasts; if they are men, free them, let them vote, let them be elected to office. If they are cattle, let the number of deputies be proportional to your human population; we have counted neither our horses ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 7, 1922 • Various

... having discovered the law of gravitation. That was known for thousands of years before he was born; and if the reverend gentleman would read a little more he would find that Newton's discovery was not that there is such a law as gravitation, but that bodies attract each other "with a force proportional directly to the quantity of matter they contain, and inversely to the squares of their distances." I do not think he made the discoveries on account of his Christianity. Laplace was certainly in many respects ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll

... great proportional developement of the vital system; and it is frequently observable in the woman of the Saxon population of England, as in the counties of Norfolk, ...
— Sketches of the Fair Sex, in All Parts of the World • Anonymous

... gloves, and face masks with respirators, but that didn't prevent the stuff from sifting through onto their bodies. Rip, who directed the work and kept track of the radiation with a gamma-beta ion chamber and an alpha proportional counter, knew they would ...
— Rip Foster in Ride the Gray Planet • Harold Leland Goodwin

... inflammable vapor. A light is applied at a touch hole, and the explosion drives up the piston, which, working on a lever, forces down the piston of a pump for pumping water. Robt. Street adds to his description a note: "The quantity of spirits of tar or turpentine to be made use of is always proportional to the confined space, in general about 10 drops to a cubic foot." This engine is quite a workable one, although the arrangements described are ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 484, April 11, 1885 • Various

... be forever unalterable, save by the consent of both parties. The first guaranteed complete freedom of worship and religious belief to all peaceable and orderly persons. The second provided for trial by jury, the writ of habeas corpus, the privileges of the common law, and the right of proportional legislative representation. The third enjoined that faith should be kept with the Indians, and provided that "schools and the means of education" should forever be encouraged, inasmuch as "religion, morality, and knowledge" were necessary to good government. The fourth ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Three - The Founding of the Trans-Alleghany Commonwealths, 1784-1790 • Theodore Roosevelt

... living in territories which are to them vast continents, and rivers, and seas, but which are yet only the bodies of our other component souls; coral reefs and sponge-beds within us; the animal itself being a kind of mean proportional between its house and its soul, and none being able to say where house ends and animal begins, more than they can say where animal ends and soul begins. For our bones within us are but inside walls and buttresses, that is to say, houses constructed of lime and stone, as it ...
— Life and Habit • Samuel Butler

... town on the south-western part of the island presently showed me. Also an orderly of Guanche breed from the parts about Arico, who had served for years at the palace, was pointed out as a type. He stood six feet four, with proportional breadth; his face was somewhat lozenge-shaped, his hair straight, black like a Hindu's, and his tawny skin looked only a little darker than that of Portuguese Algarves. The beauty of the islanders results from a mixture of Irish blood. During the Catholic persecution before 1823 many ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton

... refractor is the ordinary, familiar type of telescope. It consists, essentially, of a large lens at one end of a tube, and a small lens, called the eye-piece, at the other. The function of the large lens is to act as a sort of gigantic eye. It collects a large amount of light, an amount proportional to its size, and brings this light to a focus within the tube of the telescope. It thus produces a small but bright image, and the eye-piece magnifies this image. In the reflector, instead of ...
— The Outline of Science, Vol. 1 (of 4) - A Plain Story Simply Told • J. Arthur Thomson

... the Assembly adopted a "Declaration of Rights of Man and of the Citizen" (R. 253), much like the American Declaration of Independence. This declared, among other things, that all men were born free and have equal rights, that taxes should be proportional to wealth, that all citizens were equal before the law and have a right to help make the laws, and that the people of the nation were sovereign. These principles struck at the very foundations of ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY

... chase it day and night, but the dolphin is its worst and swiftest foe. If it escape into the air, the dolphin pushes on with proportional velocity beneath, and is ready to snap it up the moment it descends to wet ...
— Wanderings In South America • Charles Waterton

... consists of the Senate (17-member body appointed by the governor general) and the House of Representatives (17 seats; members are elected by proportional representation to serve five-year terms) election results: percent of vote by party - NA%; seats by party - ALP 12, UPP 4, independent 1 elections: House of Representatives - last held 9 March 1999 (next to be held NA ...
— The 2002 CIA World Factbook • US Government

... the leucocyte cavalry, and a light attack repelled by their skirmish-line, yet when it comes to the heavy fighting of a fever-invasion, it is the slow but substantial burgher-like fixed cells of the body which form the real infantry masses of the campaign. And I believe that upon the proportional relation between these primitive and civilized cells of our body-politic will depend many of the singular differences, not only in degree but also in kind, in the immunity possessed by various individuals. While some surgeons and anatomists will show a temperature from the merest scratch, ...
— Preventable Diseases • Woods Hutchinson

... Philanthropy. Culture Aids to the Common Life. Many Languages in One Country. The Children's Bureau. A Women's Lobby at the National Capitol. Women's Interest in Public Life a Social Asset. Social Service in Peace. Problems Voters Must Solve. Confusion Between National and Local Effort. Preferential Voting. Proportional Representation. What Shall Public and What Shall Private Social Service Attempt? Difficulty in Being a Good American Citizen. Our Country a Member of the Family of Nations. ...
— The Family and it's Members • Anna Garlin Spencer

... of pigmentation is clearly correlated with sexual vigor. "In general," Heusinger laid down, in 1823, "the quantity of pigment is proportional to the functional effectiveness of the genital organs." This connection is so profound that it may be traced very ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 5 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... Dottie. If we had precisely four times their acceleration and had started from the same place, we would of course overtake them in just the number of days they had the start of us, since the distance covered at any constant positive acceleration is proportional to the square of the time elapsed. However, there are several complicating factors in the actual situation. We started out not only twenty-nine days behind them, but also a matter of five hundred thousand light-years ...
— Skylark Three • Edward Elmer Smith

... I knew him to be a man of ability, and he had proved that he was the reverse of a demagogue by placing himself in strong opposition to the prevailing opinion of the Democratic party on two such important subjects as Malthusianism and Proportional Representation. Men of this sort, who, while sharing the democratic feeling of the working classes, judge political questions for themselves, and have the courage to assert their individual convictions ...
— Annie Besant - An Autobiography • Annie Besant



Words linked to "Proportional" :   proportional counter, relative, proportionality, proportionate, proportional representation, proportional sample, proportional font, proportional tax, quantity, proportional counter tube, proportional sampling



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