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Retardation   Listen
noun
Retardation  n.  
1.
The act of retarding; hindrance; the act of delaying; as, the retardation of the motion of a ship; opposed to acceleration. "The retardations of our fluent motion."
2.
That which retards; an obstacle; an obstruction. "Hills, sloughs, and other terrestrial retardations."
3.
(Mus.) The keeping back of an approaching consonant chord by prolonging one or more tones of a previous chord into the intermediate chord which follows; differing from suspension by resolving upwards instead of downwards.
4.
The extent to which anything is retarded; the amount of retarding or delay.
Retardation of the tide.
(a)
The lunitidal interval, or the hour angle of the moon at the time of high tide any port; the interval between the transit of the moon and the time of high tide next following.
(b)
The age of the tide; the retard of the tide. See under Retard, n.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Retardation" Quotes from Famous Books



... the results of recent research on the structure and form of the universe, and the changes taking place in it. The most curious illustration of the way in which he arrived at a correct conclusion by defective reasoning is found in his anticipation of the modern theory of a constant retardation of the velocity with which the earth revolves on its axis. He conceived that this effect must result from the force exerted by the tidal wave, as moving towards the west it strikes the eastern coasts of Asia and America. An opposite conclusion was reached by Laplace, who showed that the effect ...
— Side-lights on Astronomy and Kindred Fields of Popular Science • Simon Newcomb

... liberated within the animal's body: as an ox, on the contrary, increases in weight from day to day, it is desirable that as little as possible of its food should be disorganised. The wasteful expenditure of the animal's fat may be obviated by shelter, and the application of artificial heat: the retardation of the destruction of its flesh is even more under our control; for, as active muscular exertion involves the decomposition of tissue, we have merely to diminish the activity of the motions which cause this waste. This, in practice, is effected by stall-feeding. Confined within ...
— The Stock-Feeder's Manual - the chemistry of food in relation to the breeding and - feeding of live stock • Charles Alexander Cameron

... theory of universal gravitation. The irregularities exhibited in the lunar motions had been known in the time of Hipparchus and Ptolemy. Tycho had discovered the great inequality, called the "variation," amounting to 37', and depending on the alternate acceleration and retardation of the moon in every quarter of a revolution, and he had also ascertained the existence of the annual equation. Of these two inequalities Newton gave ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson

... renders the problem insoluble. How can the eggs, which should grow slowly for eleven months, suddenly acquire their full expansion in forty-eight hours, when fecundation has been retarded twenty-one days, and by the effect of this retardation alone? Observe, I beseech you, that the hypothesis of successive expansion is not gratuitous; it rests on the principles of sound philosophy. Besides, for conviction that it is well founded, we have only to look at the figures given by Swammerdam of the ovaries of the queen bee. ...
— New observations on the natural history of bees • Francis Huber

... stars, in short, a constellation. Each would be what we call a 'nebulous star,' not unlike the sun at present; that is to say, it would be surrounded by a glowing atmosphere of vapours, and perhaps meteoric matter. Under the action of gravity, centrifugal force, and tidal retardation, their orbits would become more circular, they would gradually move further apart, rotate more slowly on their axes, and assume the shapes they have now. In cooling down, new chemical compounds, and probably elements would be formed, since the so-called elements are perhaps mere combinations ...
— A Trip to Venus • John Munro



Words linked to "Retardation" :   retardant, agent, moronity, amentia, hold, slowing, subnormality, delay, change, postponement, deceleration, mental retardation, backwardness, retardent, lag, slowdown, modification, mental defectiveness, wait, mental deficiency, imbecility, idiocy



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