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Speculum   Listen
noun
Speculum  n.  (pl. L. specula, E. speculum)  
1.
A mirror, or looking-glass; especially, a metal mirror, as in Greek and Roman archaeology.
2.
A reflector of polished metal, especially one used in reflecting telescopes. See Speculum metal, below.
3.
(Surg.) An instrument for dilating certain passages of the body, and throwing light within them, thus facilitating examination or surgical operations.
4.
(Zool.) A bright and lustrous patch of color found on the wings of ducks and some other birds. It is usually situated on the distal portions of the secondary quills, and is much more brilliant in the adult male than in the female.
Speculum metal, a hard, brittle alloy used for making the reflectors of telescopes and other instruments, usually consisting of copper and tin in various proportions, one of the best being that in which there are 126.4 parts of copper to 58.9 parts of tin, with sometimes a small proportion of arsenic, antimony, or zinc added to improve the whiteness.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Speculum" Quotes from Famous Books



... telescope, however, there are necessary limitations. Before the middle of this century, it was known that the future of astronomy depended upon the refracting lens, and not on the speculum. The latter, in the hands of the two Herschels and Rosse, had reached its utmost limits—as is shown by the fact that to this day the Rosse telescope is the largest of its kind in ...
— Notable Events of the Nineteenth Century - Great Deeds of Men and Nations and the Progress of the World • Various

... understand each other; but Saint Francis, in any case, understood them and believed that they were in sympathy with him. As far as the birds or wolves were concerned, it was no great matter, but Francis did not stop with vertebrates or even with organic forms. "Nor was it surprising," said the "Speculum," "if fire and other creatures sometimes revered and obeyed him; for, as we who were with him very frequently saw, he held them in such affection and so much delighted in them, and his soul was moved by such pity and compassion ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams

... STRABISMUS.—Division of the internal rectus.—Subconjunctival operation.—The spring-wire speculum (C) separating the lids, the surgeon divides the conjunctiva by a pair of scissors in a horizontal line (Fig. XI. A A) from the inner margin of the cornea, a little below its transverse diameter to the caruncle, then snipping through the sub-conjunctival tissue, he passes a blunt ...
— A Manual of the Operations of Surgery - For the Use of Senior Students, House Surgeons, and Junior Practitioners • Joseph Bell

... lux quoque sensibus, intus tu speculum, tu speculum foris, lumen, quod famulans offero, suscipe, ...
— The Hymns of Prudentius • Aurelius Clemens Prudentius

... commentaries on the decretals were frequently reprinted. He gave the name of "Novellae" to this work after the name of his mother and daughter. His code of morality contained no prohibition of literary theft, for his additions to the "Speculum Juris" of Durand are said to have been taken bodily from Oddrale. In the same magnificent manner he appropriated the treatise "De Sponsalibus et Matrimonio" of Anguissola. His daughter Novella was a learned woman, and became the wife of Giovanni Calderino, a jurist of Bologna. Their son, Gaspard ...
— Game and Playe of the Chesse - A Verbatim Reprint Of The First Edition, 1474 • Caxton

... steps from nimble Mercury flitting moth like in the beard of the sun to dull Neptune sagging in his cold course twenty six hundred million miles away; from the half inch orb of Hipparchus's naked eye, to the six feet speculum of Rosse's awful tube; from the primeval belief in one world studded around with skyey torch lights, to the modern conviction of octillions of inhabited worlds all governed by one law constitutes the most astonishing chapter in the history of the human mind. Every step ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger

... away, sometimes for weeks, and in such quantity as to soak the dressings and the pillow. In our experience, the escape of cerebro-spinal fluid is much less common than is generally supposed. In most cases, on examining the ear with a speculum, the tympanic membrane is found to be ruptured; when it is intact, the blood and cerebro-spinal fluid may pass down the Eustachian tube into the pharynx. The escape of brain matter from the ear is exceedingly ...
— Manual of Surgery Volume Second: Extremities—Head—Neck. Sixth Edition. • Alexander Miles

... matter, he immediately offered L2,000 for a gigantic telescope to be made for Herschel's own use. Nothing better did he want in life. The whole army of carpenters and craftsmen resident in Datchet were pressed into the service. Furnaces for the speculum metal were built, stands erected, and the 40-foot telescope fairly begun. It cost L4,000 before it was finished, but the King ...
— Pioneers of Science • Oliver Lodge

... with a certain untoward difficulty, which seems directly opposite to the doctrine I have been hitherto inculcating, at least, admits of no solution from it. In short it is this. Before the double convex glass or concave speculum EBF, let the point A be placed at such a distance that the rays proceeding from A, after refraction or reflection, be brought to unite somewhere in the AxAB. And suppose the point of union (i.e. the image of the point ...
— An Essay Towards a New Theory of Vision • George Berkeley

... says—"When a visitation of the church of Pancras was made, in the year 1251, there were only forty houses in the parish." The desolate situation of the village, in the latter part of the 16th century, is emphatically described by Norden, in his "Speculum Britanniae." After noticing the solitary condition of the church, he says—"Yet about the structure have bin manie buildings, now decaied, leaving poore Pancrast without companie or comfort." In some manuscript additions to his ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 17, No. 483., Saturday, April 2, 1831 • Various

... Greek, St. Paul uses the word mirror, which is also the word used in the Latin Vulgate, "per speculum;" that is, by means of a mirror. The meaning, therefore, of St. Paul is not that we see through a glass by transmitted light, as when we look through a telescope, but as when we see an image reflected in a mirror. Let us suppose a man so circumstanced in this world that he has ...
— The Happiness of Heaven - By a Father of the Society of Jesus • F. J. Boudreaux

... contemplo et formam cognosco meam, quem ad modum ego sum—saepe in speculum inspexi—nimis similest mei; itidem habet petasum ac vestitum: tam consimilest atque ego; sura, pes, statura, tonsus, oculi, nasum vel labra, malae, mentum, barba, collus: totus. ...
— Amphitryo, Asinaria, Aulularia, Bacchides, Captivi • Plautus Titus Maccius

... whether he was capable of swallowing, I dared not take the risk of pouring the liquid into his mouth for fear of suffocating him. A stomach-tube would have solved the difficulty, but, of course, I had not one with me. I had, however, a mouth-speculum which also acted as a gag, and, having propped the patient's mouth open with this, I hastily slipped off one of the rubber tubes from my stethoscope and inserted into one end of it a vulcanite ear-speculum to serve as a funnel. Then, introducing the other end of the tube into the ...
— The Mystery of 31 New Inn • R. Austin Freeman

... MSS. and versions: the first hand of the Sinaitic, however, and the valuable cursives 1 and 33 with the Aethiopic (a version on which not much reliance can be placed) and m. of the Old Latin (Mai's 'Speculum,' presenting a mixed African text) [Endnote 170:1], insert [Greek: Haesaiou] before [Greek: tou prophaetou]. It also appears that Porphyry alleged this as an instance of false ascription. Eusebius admits that it was found in some, though not in the most accurate MSS., and Jerome says that ...
— The Gospels in the Second Century - An Examination of the Critical Part of a Work - Entitled 'Supernatural Religion' • William Sanday

... of poverty, masquerade so strangely through our fancy; and they are in fact so very strange an extinct species of the human family,—a veritable Monk of Bury St. Edmunds is worth attending to, if by chance made visible and audible. Here he is; and in his hand a magical speculum, much gone to rust indeed, yet in fragments still clear; wherein the marvellous image of his existence does still shadow itself, though fitfully, and as with an intermittent light! Will not the reader peep with us into this singular camera lucida, where an extinct species, though fitfully, ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle

... thief of souls, a rapacious wolf, a Herod; a man who reveals himself a Pagan in his attempts to turn Plato into a Christian; a man who disputes about Faith in the teeth of Faith, and criticises the Law in the name of the Law; a man, most enormous of all, who sees nothing as symbol or emblem (per speculum in aenigmate), but dares to look all things in the face (facie ad faciem omnia intuetur). Facie ad faciem omnia intuetur, this, which is the acknowledged method of all modern, as it had been of all antique, thought, nay, of all ...
— Renaissance Fancies and Studies - Being a Sequel to Euphorion • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)

... properly a soft or easy chair used in the "gynaecaea," or women's apartments. These were of various forms and sizes, and had backs to them; it was considered effeminate for the male sex to use them. "Sellae" was the name of seats common to both sexes. The use of the "speculum," or mirror, was also confined to the female sex; indeed, even Pallas or Minerva was represented as shunning its use, as only befitting her more voluptuous ...
— The Fables of Phdrus - Literally translated into English prose with notes • Phaedrus

... the German soldiers; they sorted out women and girls who were to be deported. There then took place scandalous scenes: young girls belonging to the most worthy families in the town had to pass medical visits even with the speculum and had to endure most atrocious physical and moral suffering. These young girls were segregated like beasts anywhere in the rooms of the town halls and schoolhouses, and were mingled with the ...
— Out To Win - The Story of America in France • Coningsby Dawson

... Spectator rigardanto. Spectre fantomo. Spectrum spektro. Speculate spekulacii. Speculation spekulacio. Speculative spekulativa. Speculate (theorise) teoriigi. Speculative (theoretic) teoria. Speculum spegulo. Speech parolado. Speechless muta. Speed rapido. Speed rapidigi. Speedy rapida. Spell silabi. Spell cxarmo. Spend elspezi. Spendthrift malsxparulo. Sphere sfero. Spherical sfera. Sphinx sfinkso. Spice spico. Spider araneo. Spider's web ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes



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