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Aperture   /ˈæpərtʃər/   Listen
Aperture

noun
1.
A device that controls amount of light admitted.
2.
A natural opening in something.
3.
An man-made opening; usually small.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Aperture" Quotes from Famous Books



... the door of the audience chamber fell ajar, and through the aperture came, like the sudden chatter of a bird, the high, nasal, but well-bred ...
— The Napoleon of Notting Hill • Gilbert K. Chesterton

... obtained by a small door in the north side to a wheel-stair leading to the upper floors, and visible as a projecting turret at the S.E. angle of the transept. The east window of the sacristy is pronounced remarkable, having two round-headed windows surmounted by a visica-formed aperture. It has a piscina in the south wall near the east end. The apartment next the sacristy may originally have been a parlour, but is now appropriated as a mausoleum. There is an ambry in the south wall near the east end, and the doorway is semicircular ...
— Scottish Cathedrals and Abbeys • Dugald Butler and Herbert Story

... the stained glass had been brought from England. The design of the window showed Jesus blessing little children. Time had dealt gently with the window; but just at the feet of the figure of Jesus a small triangular piece of glass had been broken out. To this aperture Sophy applied her eyes, and through it saw and heard what she ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various

... out to the raft, carrying the loose end of the rope with them. Mr. Gilder and Grimshaw quickly returned to the land, leaving the burly Plater to make a vigorous attack with an axe against the sides of one of the wheat bins. He soon splintered and tore off a board, leaving an aperture through which a broad stream of wheat rushed out on the deck of the raft. This Plater began to shovel overboard, working with furious energy, as though combating a hated enemy. In ten minutes both bins were empty, and so much of the wheat had ...
— Raftmates - A Story of the Great River • Kirk Munroe

... in the place was dim and uncertain. The only glazed aperture in the shed was a small window at the rear. With considerable interest Ralph strained his gaze in an endeavor to make out his captors. Then in immense ...
— Ralph on the Overland Express - The Trials and Triumphs of a Young Engineer • Allen Chapman

... The day when Mr. Fortune received through the post letters upon which militancy had squirted its oppression and its determination in black and viscid form through the aperture of the letter box. "And you're sticking up for them!" declared Mr. Fortune in a very great passion. "You're deliberately sticking up for them. You—pah!—pouff!—paff! I have got the abominable stuff ...
— If Winter Comes • A.S.M. Hutchinson

... bedsteads, like cupboards, which were then common in the houses of the poor, and to this day may be seen in many a house in Brittany. The door of it was left half-open to give the sleeper air, and from this aperture the noise of his snoring issued in a way ...
— The Junior Classics • Various

... half-breed at the counter sprawl across the account book which had yielded him so much satisfaction. Almost at the instant of his fall a lean, agile, dusky, disreputable figure leaped into the room through the aperture which his knife had freed ...
— The Triumph of John Kars - A Story of the Yukon • Ridgwell Cullum

... having changed its mode of fall above), when again it fell; and the two girls, who had come up from the chalet, expressed their opinion at once, that the 'cascade est finie.' This time all was plain; the water gushed in a violent jet d'eau through the new aperture, hardly any of it escaping above. It rose again gradually, as the hole was choked with stones, and again fell; but presently sprang out almost to its first elevation (the water being by this time in much less body), and retained very nearly the form it had yesterday, until ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin

... the right of the fireplace now opened, and from the aperture there came the form of an aged woman. In her hand she held letters,—the very letters over which I had seen the Hand close; and behind her I heard a footstep. She turned round as if to listen, and then she opened ...
— Pausanias, the Spartan - The Haunted and the Haunters, An Unfinished Historical Romance • Lord Lytton

... linen, generally with no opening in front, but with sufficient aperture in the neck to allow it to be easily passed over the head. It should fall somewhat below the knees. The sleeves are flowing and of ...
— The Worship of the Church - and The Beauty of Holiness • Jacob A. Regester

... action. I will explain this by stating a fact relative to the bee, one of the animals upon which instinct is most powerful in its action. There is a certain large moth, called the Death's-head moth, which is very fond of honey. It sometimes contrives to force its way through the aperture of the hive, and gain an entrance. The bees immediately attack it, and it is soon destroyed by their stings; but the carcass is so large, that they cannot carry it out of the hive, as they invariably do the bodies of the smaller insects which may have ...
— Masterman Ready - The Wreck of the "Pacific" • Captain Frederick Marryat

... were annular spaces of small cross section and contained approximately 33 cubic inches. The illustration shows the cap of the steam chamber secured by bolts. The steam outlet pipe "A" is a pipe of one inch diameter, the water entering through a similar aperture at the bottom. One of these boilers was for a long time at the Stevens Institute of Technology at Hoboken, and is now in the Smithsonian Institute ...
— Steam, Its Generation and Use • Babcock & Wilcox Co.

... chamber was by means of an aperture so low that we had to lie flat on the ground, and so narrow that even I found it hard ...
— At the Point of the Sword • Herbert Hayens

... proprietor—the former having manifestly been a pedant and desirous of symmetry, and the latter having wished only for comfort. Consequently he (the proprietor) had dispensed with all windows on one side of the mansion, and had caused to be inserted, in their place, only a small aperture which, doubtless, was intended to light an otherwise dark lumber-room. Likewise, the architect's best efforts had failed to cause the pediment to stand in the centre of the building, since the proprietor had had one of its four original columns removed. ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol

... study, presenting as it does a series of independent actions, whereby the bones composing the upper jaw and palate are loosely articulated, or rather attached, to one another by elastic and expansive ligaments, whereby the aperture is made conformatory, or enlarged at will—any one part being untrammeled and unimpeded in its action by its fellows. The recurved, hook-like teeth are thus isolated in application, and each venom fang independent of ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 421, January 26, 1884 • Various

... shelter there. There was a shot from below, and the bullet spattered itself on the heavy base of rock. Holding his hand, Garth awaited a second shot. He saw a tiny white puff at last, and marked the aperture whence it issued. The bullet hurtled whiningly overhead. Steadying his gun on the edge of the rock, he took careful aim—but the other spoke first. It was a marvellous shot—or a chance one. The bullet splintered the edge of the stone protecting Garth's head, and sang off. A jagged ...
— Two on the Trail - A Story of the Far Northwest • Hulbert Footner

... half-broken mule, named Independence, was procured, and the colonel mounted. But Independence refused to obey orders, and a battle ensued. The mule ran off with his rider, and ascended a high bank, on the side of which stood a coal-house, filled with coal through an aperture in the top. At length, Independence, in the hope of clearing himself of his encumbrance, entered the coal-house at full speed, the colonel firmly keeping his seat, and both came down an inclined plane of coal, not less than thirty feet in height. On reaching the ground without injury, Burr ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis

... or following day; one not till three months; and four were never discovered. Four escaped from the airing-court; three while out with a walking party; and four from breaking the window-guard; while one escaped from his bedroom by making an aperture in the wall. An attendant connived at one patient's escape, was prosecuted, and convicted. I may add that prior to the opening of Broadmoor, the proportion of escapes of criminal lunatics detained in England ...
— Chapters in the History of the Insane in the British Isles • Daniel Hack Tuke

... smothered fires, at early dawn plunged, perspiring, into the ice-cold river. The heat and smoke were further utilized to dry and cure the long strips of fish hanging from the roof, and it was through the narrow aperture that served as a chimney that the odor escaped which Martin had detected. He knew that as the bathers only occupied the house from midnight to early morn, it was now probably empty. ...
— A Drift from Redwood Camp • Bret Harte

... offer differences as decided as those existing between the most strongly marked forms of the Caucasian and African crania in the human species. The orbits vary in width and height, the cranial ridge is either single or double, either much or little developed, and the zygomatic aperture varies considerably in size. This variation in the proportions of the crania enables us satisfactorily to explain the marked difference presented by the single-crested and double-crested skulls, which have been thought to prove the existence of two large species of Orang. The external ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley

... to operate on the same general principle—that of forcing wet clay, of the consistency of that used in brick-making, through apertures of the desired shape and size. To make the mass thus forced through the aperture, hollow, the hole must have a piece of metal in the centre of it, around which the clay forms, as it is pushed along. This centre piece is kept in position by one or two thin pieces of iron, which of course divide ...
— Farm drainage • Henry Flagg French

... impressions intact to the grave. In this tomb there was nothing so impressive as this view across the well and through the entrance in the opposite wall. At one's feet lay the dark pit; around one the gaudy paintings gleamed; and through the window-like aperture before one, a dim suggestion could be obtained of a white-pillared hall. The intense eagerness to know what was beyond, and, at the same time, the feeling that it was almost desecration to climb into those halls which had stood silent for thousands of years, cast a spell over the ...
— The Treasury of Ancient Egypt - Miscellaneous Chapters on Ancient Egyptian History and Archaeology • Arthur E. P. B. Weigall

... an arrow through a thick layer of vines and thorny brambles that tore his face and hands and landed heavily in a sitting posture on a bed of stones. Raising his eyes, he saw the sky through the hole he had made in falling through. This aperture might betray him, and he crawled along carefully on hands and knees at the bottom of this ditch beneath the covering of interlacing branches, going as fast as he could and getting away from the scene of the skirmish. Presently he stopped and ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant

... objects, gives the following description of them: "The general ground of both consists of large tracts and patches of nebulosity in every stage of resolution, from light irresolvable, in a reflector of eighteen inches aperture, up to perfectly separated stars like the Milky Way, and clustering groups sufficiently insulated and condensed to come under the designation of irregular and in some cases pretty rich clusters. But ...
— The Story of the Heavens • Robert Stawell Ball

... of the voice may be more easily understood by a study of Fig. 150. We have here the larynx, viewed from behind, with all the soft parts in connection with it. On looking down, the folds forming the true vocal cords are seen enclosing a V-shaped aperture (the glottis), the ...
— A Practical Physiology • Albert F. Blaisdell

... manhandled for my carelessness. There was a deal of "raffle" under the bunks—sea-boots, little bundles of clothing, and I know not what else; but thanks to Cape Horn everything was happily as damp as water itself. There was therefore nothing to kindle, nor was there any aperture through which the burning spirit could run below into the hold; so by degrees the flaming stuff consumed itself, and in about ten minutes' time the planks were black again. I went on deck and reported ...
— The Honour of the Flag • W. Clark Russell

... logs after raising, of a suitable width, and putting upright pieces of timber at the sides. The shutter is made of clapboards, pinned on cross pieces, hung by wooden hinges, and fastened by a wooden latch. A similar aperture, but is wider made at one end for the chimney. The men of the settlement, when notified, collect and raise the building. Four stout men with axes are placed on the corners to notch the logs together, while the rest of the company lift them up. After the roof is on the body of the building, it ...
— A New Guide for Emigrants to the West • J. M. Peck

... te, kai, hagisteuomena.][664] The mountain of Parnassus is a place of great reverence; having many caverns, and other detached spots, highly honoured and sanctified. At Taenarus was a temple with a fearful aperture, through which it was fabled that Hercules dragged to light the dog of hell. The cave itself seems to have been the temple; for it is said, [665][Greek: Epi tei akrai Naos eikasmenos spelaioi.] Upon the top of the promontory stands a temple, in ...
— A New System; or, an Analysis of Antient Mythology. Volume I. • Jacob Bryant

... a dwarf H. haemastoma in shape; it is of a porcelain white except at the aperture, which has a broad reflexed lip of a deep brown-black hue, both within and without. It is a very interesting species, indicative of the Indian affinities of the New Guinea fauna. A single specimen was taken in August 1849, on a breadfruit tree in Brumer ...
— Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John MacGillivray

... means," said Mr. Walters, who had closed the shutter, and was surveying, through an aperture that had been cut, the turbulent mass below. "Look out ...
— The Garies and Their Friends • Frank J. Webb

... On half holidays the company would escape out of bounds by different ways and assemble at headquarters. The cabin consisted of one large earthen floor room with a loft above. The stairs leading up to this loft had been cut away and a light ladder that could be easily hauled up, substituted. The aperture closed down by a rough trap door made for the purpose. This was done to afford concealment, in case any of the professors should come looking for them, or protection against a rival organization of larger boys, known as the "Wild Hens." When ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton

... a corner of the table. Its sides were perforated with small brass-rimmed holes; near the top on one side was a small square aperture covered with a wire mesh through which one might look into the interior. Altogether, from the outside, the bag looked much like those used for ...
— The Girl in the Golden Atom • Raymond King Cummings

... bedspread made a beautiful carpet for the aisle. The only thing needed now was a pulpit, and soon Lenora appeared in triumph from the kitchen, dragging an old wash-stand. It had a round opening in the top, in which the wash-basin fitted, and when she climbed up and let herself down into this aperture she looked as like Mr. Scott in his pulpit, her admiring sister declared, ...
— Treasure Valley • Marian Keith

... She would forget, that is, to show them straight into the pretty sitting-room which lay just opposite her kitchen. She often found herself regretting that the heavy old mahogany door of the Trellis House lacked the tiny aperture which in Berlin is so well named a "stare-hole," and which enables the person inside the front door to command, as it ...
— Good Old Anna • Marie Belloc Lowndes

... perpendicularly, or overhanging, craggy and bare; and in others they are clothed with luxuriant shrubs and stately trees. From the bottom of these cliffs, on the east bank of the river, issues the Bristol Hot Well water. The spring rises out of an aperture in the solid rocks and is computed to discharge about forty gallons in ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 390, September 19, 1829 • Various

... as they stood gazing at the tiny aperture, there was a slight click at the back of them, and, turning round quickly, they saw a platter of food and jug of water inside the cell, and close against the wall; but of the aperture through which it had been passed they could ...
— Across the Spanish Main - A Tale of the Sea in the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood

... for the plug that fitted in a hole in the bottom of the boat, through which aperture the water could be drained out when the craft ...
— The Outdoor Girls of Deepdale • Laura Lee Hope

... had pasted a strip of paper over the electric bulb to reduce the light, leaving only a tiny aperture in ...
— With Haig on the Somme • D. H. Parry

... there had been no need for his silence, for the boy's rapt preoccupation was sound-proof. Caleb heard voices coming from behind the shrubbery and just as he, a little perplexed, turned to follow the direction of that fascinated gaze, Allison himself squeezed through a narrow aperture in the box hedge and hailed him jovially from the far edge of the lawn. And Caleb Hunter's brows drew together in a bit of a frown when a slender figure in kilted black velvet and bright-buckled low shoes, hatless and with thick, gleaming hair bobbed short in ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans

... counterfeit of Petropavlovsk. Inside each house place a brick stove or oven, four or five feet square and six feet high. Locate this stove to present a side to each of two or three rooms. In each side make an aperture two inches square that can be opened or closed at will. The amount of heat to warm the rooms is regulated by means of ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox

... from the Bastille, but I fancy he could not have been lodged in my cell. I could tell by the window that the walls were tremendously thick, while the door was of iron, and fastened on the outside by massive bolts. Still I was not altogether discouraged, and, dragging the table beneath the aperture, I climbed to the top. Crash! I had forgotten the broken leg, and fell to the ground, wrecking the table and giving myself a ...
— My Sword's My Fortune - A Story of Old France • Herbert Hayens

... dark aperture straight into the fellow's arms. In the darkness he could not make out who ...
— The Cruise of the Dry Dock • T. S. Stribling

... down the chair from his shoulders. The panel had splintered from its joining at the bottom. He could just push it forward a little, making a slight aperture. ...
— Sally Bishop - A Romance • E. Temple Thurston

... to start, the Engine-man should only slightly open the regulator, and let the train run for several yards, before he opens it, by slow degrees, to the full extent. The object of thus giving a slight aperture to the regulator in starting, is to avoid any jerk to the carriages, by which passengers might be annoyed, or even the coupling-irons broken; to prevent the slipping of the driving-wheels, from their adhesion being unequal to the inertia of the train, when the full power of the Engine is suddenly ...
— Practical Rules for the Management of a Locomotive Engine - in the Station, on the Road, and in cases of Accident • Charles Hutton Gregory

... few of the steps, which led to the lower part of the house, she looked into the garden, through one of the apertures that had been left in the wall for the admission of light. Behind a statue of Erato, she was sure that she saw coloured drapery floating in the moonlight. Moving on to the next aperture, she distinctly perceived Eudora standing by the statue; and instead of the graceful serpent, Alcibiades knelt before her. His attitude and gesture were impassioned; and though the expression of Eudora's countenance ...
— Philothea - A Grecian Romance • Lydia Maria Child

... we rose refreshed and eager to examine our two captives. Attached to Tomerl's cottage was a diminutive barn, from which we removed the door, and nailing strong laths across the aperture, managed to improvise a large and roomy cage. A couple of rabbits furnished a luxurious breakfast, which was devoured with extraordinary voracity. The hen-bird, as is the case with all birds of prey, was considerably larger and stronger ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, April 1875, Vol. XV., No. 88 • Various

... securing my anchorage, the handle of my hatchet went right through the cornice on which we stood, and, on withdrawing it, I could see through the aperture into the cloud-crammed gulf below. We continued ascending until we reached a rock protruding from the snow, and here we halted for a few minutes. Lauener looked upward through the fog. "According to all description," he observed, ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume VI • Various

... too big for him, rose in a sort of hood at the back of his neck; as he bowed something happened to the centre stud of his shirt, and it disappeared into an aperture shaped like a ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Various

... there came a knock or a call from the outside, to respond without offering easy entrance to an unwelcome visitor. In the days when there was considerable danger of Indian attacks no windows were constructed, for the householder could defend only one aperture. Later, square holes which could be securely barred at night and during cold weather were made to serve as windows. Flat pieces of sandstone, if they could be found, were used in building the great fireplace; otherwise, thick timbers heavily covered with clay were made ...
— The Old Northwest - A Chronicle of the Ohio Valley and Beyond, Volume 19 In - The Chronicles Of America Series • Frederic Austin Ogg

... seemed empty of human movement. The several men in this huge circular dome-room were dispersing to their affairs: three of them sat whispering by what I now saw was a pile of gold ingots stacked crosswise. But the fellow at the microscope held his place, his eye glued to its aperture as he watched the vanishing figures of Polter and Babs ...
— Astounding Stories, March, 1931 • Various

... where the bottom of it was let into the masonry, three or four feet above the ground. Upon it, one of the two men lolled, half sitting and half lying, with his knees drawn up, and his feet and shoulders planted against the opposite sides of the aperture. The bars were wide enough apart to admit of his thrusting his arm through to the elbow; and so he held on negligently, for his ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens

... to drag out one of the seines and unroll it on the floor of the loft, when the cow below them broke into distressful bawling. Peering down a square aperture, through which hay was lifted by machine forks in the season of storing, they saw that the calf had got in between the wheels of two buggies which were housed on one side ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten

... a heating stove with its fuel door way or aperture, B, below, and forward of its flame or combustion chamber and contiguous to or adjoining its fire box, A, in manner substantially as and for the purposes herein ...
— Scientific American, Vol. 17, No. 26 December 28, 1867 • Various

... guests—her hair hung about her shoulders in true Indian style; and altogether she was a genuine sample of backwoods' civilization. We were placed in a good bed—the state-bed of course—and as we lay, paid our devotions to Urania, and contemplated the beauties of the starry firmament, through an aperture in the roof which would ...
— A Ramble of Six Thousand Miles through the United States of America • S. A. Ferrall

... There were many kinds of embalming, varying according to the means of the family of the deceased. The process employed for the wealthy was a long and expensive one. First, an official called a scribe marked on the side of the corpse where an aperture should be made; this was cut by another person, who after doing so fled, pursued with execrations and pelted with stones, as although necessary the operation was considered a dishonorable one and as an ...
— The Cat of Bubastes - A Tale of Ancient Egypt • G. A. Henty

... concentric ridges or combinations of both. Univalves are conical and spiraling, with a series of whorls coming down like widening steps from the tiny nucleus on top. Univalves may have spines on their shoulders. The opening, called the aperture, has a delicate right-hand rim called the lip and a heavy, left-hand edge called ...
— Let's collect rocks & shells • Shell Oil Company

... loud gusts of wind. Cylinders loosely charged with seed and small shot, lifted now at one end, now at the other, so as to allow the contents to fall in a pattering stream, represented the noise of hail and rain. The moon was formed by a circular aperture cut in a tin box containing a powerful Argand lamp, which was placed at the back of the scene, and brought near or carried far from the canvas as the luminary was supposed to be shining brightly or to be veiled by clouds. These contrivances, from a modern ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook

... strange crash and rumble within the tree suddenly interrupted his reply. From the lower aperture there burst out a strange ruddy dust, after which there resounded a second crash, louder ...
— In Desert and Wilderness • Henryk Sienkiewicz

... of the female sex organs, is a mouth shaped aperture, located laterally between the forward part of the thighs. In shape, size and structure, it much resembles the external parts of the mouth proper. It begins just in front of the anus, and extends forward above the pubic bone and a little ways up the belly. Its entire ...
— Sane Sex Life and Sane Sex Living • H.W. Long

... No details of his life are known; but it is asserted, that he wrote more than five hundred works upon the philosopher's stone and the water of life. He was a great enthusiast in his art, and compared the incredulous to little children shut up in a narrow room, without windows or aperture, who, because they saw nothing beyond, denied the existence of the great globe itself. He thought that a preparation of gold would cure all maladies, not only in man, but in the inferior animals and plants. He also imagined ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay

... misfortune," said they all; and some suggestions were added, that he could have some little hurt to help him to get his earthly bread until the Madonna gave him the heavenly. Conversation such as this filled him with alarm; he crept through the aperture which served for window to his dormitory; slid down the wall, and made his escape. He ran as fast as he could, and found himself at length ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various

... aperture in the wall, and the bricks and stones about it were loose, and admitted of removal. It was such a private way of passage as schoolboys know of. On getting through, Agellius found himself in a neglected garden or small close. Everything was silent about them, as if the inhabitants ...
— Callista • John Henry Cardinal Newman

... is divided by vertical partitions from top to bottom, leaving open chambers between, while in the centre hangs the digestive cavity connecting by an opening in the bottom with all these chambers; at the top is an aperture which serves as a mouth, surrounded by a wreath of hollow tentacles, each one connecting at its base with one of the chambers, so that all parts of the animal communicate freely with each other. But though the structure of the Coral is identical in all its ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various

... the diameter, the whorl flattened with six spiral raised substriae, which are transversely divided into blackish purple beads with white interspaces, the apex rather acute; the base, rather convex, axis imperforated; the aperture subquadrangular, inside furrowed; the base of the columella lip with a prominent tooth and distinct groove behind it, the upper part rugose; axis eight-twelfths, diameter six-twelfths of an inch. This shell does not appear to be uncommon on ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia] [Volume 2 of 2] • Phillip Parker King

... stumbled down a couple of steps, nearly falling on my face. While I was holding out my hand to save Pedro from doing the same, the door was shut behind us, and barred and bolted as before. We found ourselves in almost total darkness, a small aperture near the ceiling alone affording a dim gleam of light, which served to show us the gloomy horrors of the place. Two massive pillars supported the low arched roof, which seemed covered with moisture. The size of the place we could not tell, as the darkness prevented our seeing the walls at ...
— Manco, the Peruvian Chief - An Englishman's Adventures in the Country of the Incas • W.H.G. Kingston

... the right for Beaman to get more views. None of his photographs of the rapids came out well as the plates were too slow. Up a gulch on the right we could see a remarkable topographic feature, nothing less than a gigantic aperture, or natural arch, in the cliff. It had a span of at least 300 feet with a height of about half as much. It was 1500 or 1800 feet above the river. Hundreds of cedar trees grew around the arch on the ledges of the huge wall through which it was cut ...
— A Canyon Voyage • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh

... and friable, and below lay a bed of silicious tufa; therefore, even without tools, the aperture deepened quickly. It soon became evident that a man, or men, clinging to the sides of the "pah," were cutting a passage into its exterior wall. What could be the object? Did they know of the existence of the prisoners, or was it some private ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne

... had left. Finding the door unfastened, he took the lamp and lighted himself out, and along a cavernous passage ending in a blank wall, against which his heart knocked and fell, for his sensation was immediately the terror of imprisonment and helplessness. Mad with alarm, he tried every spot for an aperture. Then he sat down on his haunches; he remembered hearing word of Barto Rizzo's rack:—certain methods peculiar to Barto Rizzo, by which he screwed matters out of his agents, and terrified them into fidelity. His personal dealings with Barto were of ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... with iron nails which is invariably shut. The main entrance takes in all the scant breadth of the truncated angle which looks towards the monastery. Immediately over it is a great window, above that another, and, highest of all, under the pointed gable, a round and unglazed aperture, within which there is inky darkness. The windows of the first and second stories are flanked by huge figures of saints, standing forth in strangely contorted attitudes, black with the dust of ages, black as all old Prague is black, with the smoke of the brown Bohemian coal, ...
— The Witch of Prague • F. Marion Crawford

... often at our house, father got him to go also; and so," continues Francesco, "I mounted behind my father, and we went. We descended to where the statues were. My father immediately exclaimed, 'This is the Laocooen spoken of by Pliny!' They made the workmen enlarge the aperture or excavation, so as to be able to draw them out, and then, having seen them, we returned ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects, and Curiosities of Art, (Vol. 2 of 3) • Shearjashub Spooner

... hands up, hurrahing at the top of his voice. This disgusting, drunken idiot was picked up out of the cart by two men, who put a ticket into his hand, carried him to the window (he was too drunk to stand), shoved him up and raised his arm into the aperture; his vote received, he was tumbled ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various

... the curtain was drawn so low. From experiments of his own he knew there was small chance of those inside seeing him through the two-inch slit, and he raised himself boldly until his eyes were on a level with the aperture. ...
— The Flaming Forest • James Oliver Curwood

... animal : besto. ankle : maleolo. anniversary : datreveno. announce : anonci. annoy : cxagreni, gxeni. annual : cxiujara. annul : nuligi. anoint : sanktolei, sxmiri. anonymous : anonima, sennoma ant : formiko. anthem : antemo. anvil : amboso. anxious : maltrankvila. apathetic : apatia. aperture : malfermajxo, aperturo. apologise : peti pardonon. apparatus : aparato. appeal : alvoki; (law) apelacio. appear : aperi; sxajni. appearance : vidigxo; sxajno, mieno. appetite : apetito. applaud : aplauxdi. apply : almeti; sin turni al. appoint : nomi, difini. appreciate ...
— The Esperanto Teacher - A Simple Course for Non-Grammarians • Helen Fryer

... leaving only the central mass of glass. Having such a mass, there is no trouble in breaking it up into pieces of all desirable purity, and sufficiently large for moderate-sized telescopes. But when a great telescope of two feet aperture or upward is to be constructed, very delicate and laborious operations have to be undertaken. The outside of the glass has first to be chipped off, because it is filled with impurities from the material of the pot itself. But this is not all. Veins of unequal density are always ...
— Side-lights on Astronomy and Kindred Fields of Popular Science • Simon Newcomb

... mornings were free, he rode down to the office with Lilly, eagerly insistent to pay her car fare and cram a return Subway ticket into the warm pink aperture of flesh where her ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst

... the buildings which they destroyed—caught the nice eye of Sir Walter Scott. "I can conceive," we find him saying, in one of his letters of the period, "no sight more grand or terrible than to see these lofty buildings on fire from top to bottom, vomiting out flames, like a volcano, from every aperture, and finally crashing down one after another, into an abyss of fire, which resembled nothing but hell; for there were vaults of wine and spirits which set up huge jets of flames whenever they were called into activity by the fall of these massive fragments. Between ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller

... room. For the cardboard disc was substituted a light carriage, riding upon rigid parallel vertical wires and bearing a miniature ground-glass bulb enclosing an incandescent electric light of 0.5 c.p. This was encased in a chamber with blackened surfaces, having at its center an aperture one centimeter in diameter, which was covered with white tissue paper. The subdued illumination of this disc presented as nearly as possible the appearance of that used in the preceding series of experiments. No other object than this spot of moving light was visible to the observer. ...
— Harvard Psychological Studies, Volume 1 • Various

... when I reached the end of the path across the cabbage-patch. The cottage door was still open. In the aperture stood the younger of the two women, Briggs's sister. She waved to me and smiled. It was evident that it had struck her that I ought to have been thanked for my services, and she was expressing this, cordially if belatedly. ...
— Observations of an Orderly - Some Glimpses of Life and Work in an English War Hospital • Ward Muir

... at the honey, they set to work to gnaw off the ridges of the lid above alluded to; in doing this they pushed one another into the bucket, and had to crawl out by the spout. As they passed out by this narrow aperture, they had to rub against the anthers and so carried off the pollen. When a bee so charged gets into another bucket, or into the same bucket a second time, and has to crawl out, he brushes against the stigma, and leaves the pollen on it. I might well have adduced this ...
— Creation and Its Records • B.H. Baden-Powell

... views of Mars with anything like the distinctness I have here given to them. If he place the plate at a distance of six or seven yards he will see the views more nearly as Mars is likely to appear in a good three-inch aperture. ...
— Half-hours with the Telescope - Being a Popular Guide to the Use of the Telescope as a - Means of Amusement and Instruction. • Richard A. Proctor

... the crevice which was too narrow to permit the passage of his bulky head and body. His sharp claws caught in the edges of the break; the decayed wood crumbled away. Encouraged, he began to claw at the sides of the aperture, his excitement increasing until he was tearing at it frantically with no other thought than to escape from the trap into which ...
— The Black Phantom • Leo Edward Miller

... aperture. Then he saw the Persian, who was still on his knees, hang by his hands from the rim of the opening, with his pistol between his teeth, and slide ...
— The Phantom of the Opera • Gaston Leroux

... to think of the window as a refuge. Surely nothing outside could be so terrible as this house itself. The black aperture seemed friendly; it beckoned to ...
— A Poor Wise Man • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... fella leg stop 'm along him," the ancient grinned, exposing a horrible aperture of toothlessness ...
— Michael, Brother of Jerry • Jack London

... my guardians, whereupon the gaoler opened a door and I was thrust into a narrow stone cell, the floor of which was an inch deep in slime, faintly lit by a tiny aperture, heavily barred, about ten feet ...
— The Minister of Evil - The Secret History of Rasputin's Betrayal of Russia • William Le Queux

... was filled with scrap and soon sparks were flying wildly as the searing beam of Stevens' welding projector bit viciously into the stubborn alloy of noble metals; fashioning a smooth, solid floor where the yawning aperture had been. Then, lifted with his tools and plates to the roof, the man ...
— Spacehounds of IPC • Edward Elmer Smith

... engineers and stokers in the almost insufferable atmosphere below. But it was absolutely imperative that not a glimmer of light should appear. Even the binnacle was covered, and the steersman had to see as much of the compass as he could through a conical aperture carried almost up to ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 2 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris

... bottomless tubs; and others, with a greater appearance of taste, ornamented with thick, circular ropes of straw, sewed together like bees' skeps, with a peel of a briar; and many having nothing but the open vent above. But the smoke by no means escaped by its legitimate aperture, for you might observe little clouds of it bursting out of the doors and windows; the panes of the latter being mostly stopped at other times with old hats and rags, were now left entirely open for the purpose of giving it ...
— The Hedge School; The Midnight Mass; The Donagh • William Carleton

... not slept long, when I was awakened by the noise of merriment within an adjoining booth. It was the itinerant theatre, rudely constructed of boards and canvas. I peeped through an aperture, and saw the whole dramatis personae, tragedy, comedy, pantomime, all refreshing themselves after the final dismissal of their auditors. They were merry and gamesome, and made their flimsy theatre ring with laughter. I was astonished to see the tragedy ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving

... rifle in the house but no balls could be found. In this extremity one of the women took a musket-ball and placing it between her teeth bit it into pieces. Her eyes streaming with tears, she loaded the rifle and took her position at an aperture from which she could watch the motions of the savages. She dried her tears and thought of vengeance on her husband's murderers and of saving the innocent babes which ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler

... with the invitation, I squeezed myself in at the small aperture. His Majesty, graciously handing me a little three- legged stool on which I took my seat in a ...
— Reprinted Pieces • Charles Dickens

... of its place, and then pulled it bodily from the wall. The inner surface was plastered over. He tried another, which he got out more easily, and it told the same tale. Then he went to work in earnest, and had soon dug a hole large enough to admit his body. Leaning over into the aperture, with his candle at arm's length, the place looked dark and empty, with faint masses of lighter shadow. Then, with a certain indescribable awe, Henley commenced crawling through the breach. Stepping upon an earthern floor, he found himself in a vault-like chamber—damp, mouldy, ...
— The Ghost of Guir House • Charles Willing Beale

... around cautiously, and then tried to peer down through the small square aperture, guarded by iron rods, that opened into the cage just back of the seat they were sitting on. Then he turned slowly around to the driver, and asked, in a voice sunk to a whisper: "How did you know that I was runnin' away? Did he tell you?" ...
— Toby Tyler • James Otis

... the chief to which Rutherford and his comrades were taken was the largest in the village, being both long and wide, although very low, and having no other entrance than an aperture, which was shut by means of a sliding door, and was so much lower even than the roof that it was necessary to crawl upon the hands and knees to ...
— John Rutherford, the White Chief • George Lillie Craik

... Coelentera into a group Hydrozoa, in which the sexually produced embryos were usually set free from the surface of the body, and a group Actinozoa, in which the embryos are detached from the interior of the body and escape generally by the oral aperture. Huxley's Actinozoa comprised the sea-anemones, corals and sea-pens, on the one hand, and the Ctenophora on the other. Later investigations, whilst confirming the general validity of Huxley's conclusions, have slightly altered the limits and definitions of his groups. (See ANTHOZOA, ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... tobacco-smoking must never be permitted in any building where an escape of raw acetylene is possible, because the temperature of a lighted cigar, &c., exceeds 480 deg. C.; secondly, a light must never be applied to a pipe delivering acetylene until a proper acetylene burner has been screwed into the aperture; thirdly, if any appreciable amount of acetylene is present in the air, no operation should be performed upon any portion of an acetylene plant which involves such processes as scraping or chipping ...
— Acetylene, The Principles Of Its Generation And Use • F. H. Leeds and W. J. Atkinson Butterfield

... glistened fairly in the light of the moon; and where the sharp line of the shadows commenced, the ruddy glow of a fire burst from an oblong aperture. There was the estufa of the Koshare. From it issued the sound of hollow drumming intermingled with the cadence of a chorus of hoarse voices. A thrill went through Say, she stopped again and listened. Was not her husband's voice among them? Certainly he was there, doing his ...
— The Delight Makers • Adolf Bandelier

... stage, which is pierced by a circular aperture, is a diaphragm. This regulates the quantity of light which is to be transmitted by means of the silvered reflector shown in ...
— The Story of the Cotton Plant • Frederick Wilkinson

... to obtain it for daily use, a hollow reed was inserted into a small, inconspicuous aperture, left open for the purpose, and covered by a stone when the reed was not in use. The water was drawn up by suction,—the women performing the operation by applying their lips to the upper end of the reed, filling the mouth with ...
— The Giraffe Hunters • Mayne Reid

... fleshy substance, in such sort that there appears nothing without, by which its true situation may be known. When there is nothing but the single skin which makes the closure, the operation is very easy, and the children may do very well; for then an aperture or opening may be made with a small incision-knife, cross-ways, that it may the better receive a round form, and that the place may not afterwards grow together, taking care not to prejudice the ...
— The Works of Aristotle the Famous Philosopher • Anonymous

... of horrors! what a scene met his appalled gaze! One portion of the floor of the room had fallen in, and the flames were rushing up through the aperture from the gulf of fire beneath. The two boys, standing at the open door, were spell-bound ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth

... stones, climbing up precipices, and crawling round the projecting rocks, which consumed an hour, we found ourselves on a small ledge in front of the outer aperture, which was nearly circular and about fifty feet high. We were now in a cavern apparently of no great extent, and as I could not discover any other passage, I began to fancy that it was for this paltry hole we had undergone so much fatigue, and had had our ...
— A Peep into Toorkisthhan • Rollo Burslem

... which he always retreats when disturbed. Aware of his habits, the fisherman walks knee-deep in the water, and at every step he plunges the broad end of the basket quickly to the bottom. He immediately feels the fish strike against the sides, and putting his hand down through the aperture in the top of the basket he captures him, and deposits him in a basket ...
— The Rifle and The Hound in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker

... Mrs F—'s family resided, there happened to be a hole in the thatch of the fowl-house. A fox, finding it out, sprang down through the aperture, and slew and feasted all the night to his heart's desire. The intruder, however, had not reflected that he might be unable to secure his retreat by the way through which he had entered—facilis ...
— Stories of Animal Sagacity • W.H.G. Kingston

... writes: "Denmark.—Some (criminals) of the lower sort, as watchmen, coachmen, etc., are punished by being led through the city in what is called 'The Spanish Mantle.' This is a kind of heavy vest, something like a tub, with an aperture for the head, and irons to enclose the neck. I measured one at Berlin, 1ft. 8in. in diameter at the top, 2ft. 11in. at the bottom, and 2ft. 11in. high.... This mode of punishment is particularly dreaded, and is one cause that night robberies are never heard ...
— Bygone Punishments • William Andrews

... himself down by the side of an uprooted shrub of small size and about his own length. He covered himself as usual with his long, dark-blue robe, and pretended to go to sleep. He kept his eyes, however, on the alert through an aperture beneath his cloth, and observed particularly the direction in which the camel upon which he had set his mind wandered into the bushes. The darkness came on a very few minutes after they had halted, and when the Arabs had once settled round their fire Cuthbert very quietly shifted the robe from ...
— The Boy Knight • G.A. Henty

... steps, and 13 steps in marble, and 23 in wood. The number of steps, therefore, from the floor into the ball is 528; the only difficult part being the vertical bronze bear-like ladder in the lantern, which is not worth ascending, as little can be seen (and that little with difficulty) from an aperture in the ball. But the view from the gallery at the top of the dome is truly magnificent. Florence and neighbourhood lie stretched out below like on a map, and as the clearness of the Italian air admits of the smallest objects being seen ...
— The South of France—East Half • Charles Bertram Black

... upon her. Her susceptibilities were tensely alert as she watched Loder search for his key and insert it in the lock. With mingled dread and curiosity she saw the door yield, and gape open like a black gash in the dingy wall; and with a sudden sense of desertion she saw him pass through the aperture and ...
— The Masquerader • Katherine Cecil Thurston

... mode of copying consists in driving a steel punch through the substance to be cut, either by a blow or by pressure. In some cases the object is to copy the aperture, and the substance separated from the plate is rejected; in other cases the small pieces cut out are the objects of the ...
— On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures • Charles Babbage

... to render the bag impervious to the gas—a very essential object in balloon manufacture—it was covered with a varnish composed of gum elastic dissolved in spirits of turpentine. It had but one aperture, like the neck of a bottle, into which was fastened the stop-cock for the convenience of introducing and stopping-off the gas. It was constructed and inflated near the Place of Victories, in August, 1783, and after being inflated, which was then no easy task, occupying several ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various

... poles and rafters being secured to them by chords of cedar bark which pass through wholes made in the boards at certain distances for that purpose; the rough roof is then covered with a double range of thin boards, and an aperture of 2 by 3 feet left in the center of the roof to permit the smoke to pass. these houses are sometimes sunk to the debth of 4 or 5 feet in which cace the eve of the house comes nearly to the surface of the earth. ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al

... the audience looked, they saw the panel slide back, and first of all Hamar's head, and then his body, wriggle through the aperture thus made. ...
— The Sorcery Club • Elliott O'Donnell

... drift, we came to the Spanish line, passed five sets of timbers still uninjured, and found the earthquake. Here was as complete a chaos as ever was seen—vast masses of earth and splintered and broken timbers piled confusedly together, with scarcely an aperture left large enough for a cat to creep through. Rubbish was still falling at intervals from above, and one timber which had braced others earlier in the day, was now crushed down out of its former position, showing that the caving and settling of the tremendous mass was ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... for Ben? They might have been there before her. The cabin was dark, and she tapped timidly upon the kitchen door. Only a great snore from the sleeping Ben inside answered her. Trying the latch, it lifted in her fingers, and she crept stealthily through the narrow aperture, encircling the child ...
— Tess of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White

... indefinitely, without divergence, diffusion, or loss, the direction in which it emerges. Therefore, by collecting the current from the generator in a vessel cased with antapergic material, and leaving no other aperture, its entire volume might be sent into a conductor. By cutting across this conductor, and causing the further part to rotate upon the nearer, I could divert the current through any required angle. Thus I could turn the repulsion upon the resistant body (sun or planet), and so propel the ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg

... affairs, Bob Transit had climbed up and perched himself upon a beam to make observations; while the original fomenter of the strife, that mad wag Eglantine, had with myself made our escape through an aperture into the next house, and having secured our persons from violence were enabled to become calm observers of the affray, by peeping through the breach by which we had entered. In the violence of the struggle, poor Teddy O'Rafferty was doomed to experience another upset before his remains ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle

... interference, or the want of correspondence of the wave lengths due to divergence; the same phenomenon being also observed in convergent light. This is practically illustrated in the hazy definition of the reduced aperture of telescopes, and its peculiarities shown in the spectral rings within and beyond ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 441, June 14, 1884. • Various

... lever"—Evans pointed at the box—"a vacuum is created. Instantly the powder becomes a gas, which shoots forth through this aperture with the speed of a projectile, taking the form of a beam of absolute blackness. Or it can be discharged from cylinders in such a way as to extend over a large area ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, October, 1930 • Various

... steps from the vessel there was a seal-hole, a kind of circular crevice cut out by the teeth of that amphibious animal, hollowed out from underneath, and through which the seal comes up to breathe on to the surface of the ice. To keep this aperture from closing up he has to be very careful because the formation of his jaws would not enable him to bore through the hole again from the outside, and in a moment of danger he would fall a prey to his enemies. Pen and Warren ...
— The English at the North Pole - Part I of the Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne

... plunging movement to its foundations. The deep niches of the windows are all aglow with color. They have been repainted with red and blue, relieved with gold figures; and each of them looks more like the royal box at a theatre than like the aperture of a palace dark with memories. For all this, however, and in spite of the fact that, as in some others of the chateaux of Touraine, (always excepting the colossal Chambord, which is not in Touraine!) there is less vastness than one had expected, the least hospitable aspect of Blois ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James

... on his own folly proceeded to refill his pipe. This he did by scraping off, with a five-inch steel needle, some opium from the lid of a tiny shell box, rolling the paste into a pill, and then, after heating it in the blaze of a lamp, depositing it within the small aperture of his pipe. Several short whiffs followed; then the smoker would remove the pipe from his mouth and lie back motionless; then replace the pipe, and with fast-glazing eyes blow the smoke slowly through his pallid nostrils. As ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 30. September, 1873 • Various

... behold, an orchard dropping blossoms and ripe golden fruits, streams flowing through it over sands, and brooks bounding above glittering gems, and long dewy grasses, profusion of scented flowers, shade and sweetness. So he let himself down to the ground, which was an easy leap from the aperture, and walked through the garden, holding the Lily behind him, for here it darkened all, and the glowing orchard was a desert by its light. Presently, his eye fell on a couch swinging between two almond trees, and advancing to it he beheld the black-eyed Queen gathered up, folded temptingly, like ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... tail receives its owner's, or rather its owner's owner's, most careful consideration. The unfortunate bird is kept in a very small wicker cage, so small that he can't turn round, the long tail feathers escaping through an aperture and drooping to the ground. Once a day the bird is taken out and allowed to exercise for a short time ...
— Ranching, Sport and Travel • Thomas Carson

... that conduct the tears after they have done their office in moistening and cleaning the ball of the eye into a sack, which is called the lacrymal sack; and from which there is a duct, that opens into the nostrils: the aperture of this duct is formed of exquisite sensibility, and when it is stimulated by odorous particles, or by the dryness or coldness of the air, the sack contracts itself, and pours more of its contained moisture on the organ ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. I - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin

... and filthy, pestilential-looking blankets, for covering. Two families (sometimes eight and ten in number) reside in one of these huts, which are mere wooden frames pinned, as it were, to the earth by a brick chimney outside, whose enormous aperture within pours down a flood of air, but little counteracted by the miserable spark of fire, which hardly sends an attenuated thread of lingering smoke up its huge throat. A wide ditch runs immediately at the back of these dwellings, which is filled and emptied ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble

... useful soldier, outside, introduced the end of his musket 'through a broken pane of glass.' This does not seem plausible. Again, the Gazette d'Utrecht (August 1, 1780) says that Jeanne made a hole in the wall of her room, but failed to get her body through that aperture. Was that the hole through which, in the English translation published after Jeanne's death, the soldier introduced the end of his musket? There are difficulties in both versions, and it is not likely that Jeanne gave a truthful account ...
— Historical Mysteries • Andrew Lang

... Gerald. "Stay just where you are, for a moment, while I explore this—aperture. Ha! the steps continue. You don't mind if I leave you in the dark for just ...
— Fernley House • Laura E. Richards

... submissive, his chastened and penitent wife,—yes, on those terms; yes, she could see it, the future, like a sunny garden which one could only reach by squeezing oneself through some painfully narrow aperture. The fountains, the flowers, the lawns were still hers—if she would stoop and crawl; and for Imogen the mere imagining of herself in such a posture brought a hot blush to her forehead. Not only would she have scorned ...
— A Fountain Sealed • Anne Douglas Sedgwick

... fear of waking Gian Battista, who slept on the ground floor. In the wood-cellar at the back was a little grated window, opening on the canal and not more than four feet from the ground. He remembered that the rusty grating had broken away on one side; by pushing a little he could make an aperture wide enough to ...
— The Gadfly • E. L. Voynich

... as at a d, never turned as at c d, or the paper will be dark. Then you will see the landscape, bit by bit, through the circular hole. Match the colors of each important bit as nearly as you can, mixing your tints with white, beside the aperture. When matched, put a touch of the same tint at the top of your paper, writing under it: "dark tree color," "hill color," "field color," as the case may be. Then wash the tint away from beside the opening, and the cardboard will be ready ...
— The Elements of Drawing - In Three Letters to Beginners • John Ruskin

... the bolt, while a second bar has no longitudinal motion, but prevents the cartridges from moving to the rear in the magazine tube after they have been moved forward by the other bar. The magazine is loaded through an aperture in the butt plate, the opening of the spring cover of which causes the two ratchet bars to be depressed, so that the magazine can be filled by passing the cartridges along a smooth middle bar. The act of ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 601, July 9, 1887 • Various

... to do. I told her in a whisper to keep still. In a fair, stand-up fight with two men, I should be instantly vanquished, and it was necessary for me to obtain the advantage of a surprise, if possible. The rear window of the carriage was open. Though the aperture was small, it was large enough for me to crawl through, and I worked myself out upon the baggage-rack. The jar which I communicated to the vehicle by this movement attracted the attention of ...
— Seek and Find - or The Adventures of a Smart Boy • Oliver Optic

... the "sea canary." It is a playful creature and is apparently attracted by man's presence. Before its confidence in him was shaken it used to linger about wharves and ships. But, in spite of the extremely small aperture of its ear, it is very sensitive to sound and modern man with his fire arms and clatter of machinery frightens it away. In 1752 the Intendant Bigot issued special instructions to check the use of firearms on the point at Riviere Ouelle, in order that the beluga ...
— A Canadian Manor and Its Seigneurs - The Story of a Hundred Years, 1761-1861 • George M. Wrong

... succeeding the stomach. The duodenum is separated from the stomach by a ring-like muscular valve, the pylorus; this valve belongs to the class of muscles called sphincters, which, under ordinary circumstances, are closed, but which relax to open the circular central aperture. The valve at the anus, which retains the faeces, is ...
— Text Book of Biology, Part 1: Vertebrata • H. G. Wells

... broad beech-tree which arched the entrance to the glen. It was now quite dark and the new, moon shone in the sky, but its weak rays served only to lend a strange appearance to the objects they occasionally touched through an aperture between the branches. Frederick followed close behind his uncle; his breath came fast and, if one could have distinguished his features, one would have noticed in them an expression of tremendous agitation caused by imagination rather ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various

... inaccessible face of which he and his follower had taken refuge in a small cavern. The muzzles of their rifles were seen protruding from the entrance. Lieutenant Rousseau therefore crept up warily, until he reached a ledge above the aperture, from which point he challenged the farmer to surrender, telling him the reason of his being there, and assuring him ...
— Six Months at the Cape • R.M. Ballantyne

... that he could not see ahead more than a few yards at a time. He noticed tracks of wildcats and rabbits in the dusty floor. At every turn he expected to come upon a huge cavern full of little square stone houses, each with a small aperture like a staring dark eye. The passage lightened and widened, and opened at the foot of a ...
— Riders of the Purple Sage • Zane Grey

... barrack, and returned with it. To wrench by their united efforts, one bar from its place, and to fasten the rope to another, was the work of an instant. Space was just left them to creep through the aperture. Sir Henry was the first to breathe the confined air of the sepulchre. A voice warned him in what direction to proceed; and not waiting for the domestic, he groped his way forward through a narrow passage. At first, Delme thought there was a wall on either side ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman

... placed inside a black box, with an aperture at the top. By means of an inclined mirror, light may be thrown down upon the sensitive ...
— Response in the Living and Non-Living • Jagadis Chunder Bose

... same evening, Thursday, July 22d, two astronomers attached to the Naval Observatory sat in the half darkness of the meridian-circle room watching the firmament sweep slowly across the aperture of the giant lens. The chamber was as quiet as the grave, the two men rarely speaking as they noted their observations. Paris might be taken, Berlin be razed, London put to the torch; a million human beings might be blown into eternity, or the shrieks ...
— The Man Who Rocked the Earth • Arthur Train

... had placed it, he went softly to the door, which, like the window, stood in a recess—in this case the prolongation of the passage. A brief scrutiny satisfied him that escape that way was impossible, and he turned, after a cursory glance at the floor and ceiling, to the dark, windy aperture which yawned at the end of the apartment. Placing the lanthorn on the table, and covering it with his cloak, he mounted the window recess, and, stepping to the ...
— Count Hannibal - A Romance of the Court of France • Stanley J. Weyman

... We may imagine a ghost going through a keyhole, but is it possible to imagine broiled fish and honeycomb going through the same aperture? Or is the stomach of a ghost capable of ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (Second Series) • George W. Foote

... Allsop of Woodlands, who proved an estimable acquaintance. This lasted four or five days, and we then went on to Edensor.—On Aug. 15th Herschel wrote to me, communicating an offer of the Duke of Northumberland to present to the Cambridge Observatory an object-glass of about 12 inches aperture by Cauchaix. I wrote therefore to the Duke, accepting generally. The Duke wrote to me from Buxton on Aug. 23rd (his letter, such was the wretched arrangement of postage, reaching Bakewell and Edensor on the 25th) and on the 26th I drove ...
— Autobiography of Sir George Biddell Airy • George Biddell Airy

... for a flash of lightning had shone down through the aperture beneath which Kallias had stationed the bride and bridegroom, followed by a loud peal of thunder. "See!" cried the Daduchus, raising his hand to heaven, "Zeus himself has taken the nuptial-torch, and sings the ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... the lavatory basin, the gritty deposit in the bath, the verdigris on all the taps, the foul opacity of the windows, are among the trivialities that somehow stamped themselves upon my mind. One of the windows was open at the top, had been so long open that the aperture was curtained with cobwebs at each extremity, but in between I got quite a poignant picture of the Thames as I went upstairs. It was only a sinuous perspective of sunlit ripples twinkling between wooded gardens ...
— Mr. Justice Raffles • E. W. Hornung

... little sobbing cry; but the warning came too late. A hideous yellow face, with oblique squinting eyes, appeared in the aperture. ...
— The Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer

... light to reach the end of the instruments, or in a ventilated hood with the walls perforated in a like manner. By lining the wall or partition on both sides with asbestos paper, and inserting a plate of plane glass in the aperture through which the light passes, the increase of temperature from the radiation of the lamp will be still further avoided. With the lamps separated from the instruments in this manner, the space in which the instruments are ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 822 - Volume XXXII, Number 822. Issue Date October 3, 1891 • Various

... and was steadily steaming down the harbour, apparently perfectly water-tight, when suddenly the sea broke through the foremost hatch and she went to the bottom immediately. He said he did not know how he escaped. He imagined that after the vessel had filled he had managed to escape through the aperture by which the water got in; all the rest of the poor fellows were drowned. Not that my friend seemed to think anything of that, for human life was very little thought of in those times. This vessel was afterwards got up, when the bodies of her crew were still in her hold. I imagined ...
— Sketches From My Life - By The Late Admiral Hobart Pasha • Hobart Pasha

... court, I looked about me, and perceived that the cloister was a gallery, with wooden beams supporting the roof, running round three sides of the building, the basement being built in stone, at one part of which a hollowed tree shoved in an aperture formed a spout for a stream of clear cool water. The Igoumen, or superior, received us at the foot of the wooden staircase which ascended to the gallery. He was a sleek middle-aged man, with a new silk gown, and seemed out of his wits with delight at my arrival in this secluded ...
— Servia, Youngest Member of the European Family • Andrew Archibald Paton

... concerns. During the lifetime of the fifth Lord Byron, there was found in the lake at Newstead,—where it is supposed to have been thrown for concealment by the monks,—a large brass eagle, in the body of which, on its being sent to be cleaned, was discovered a secret aperture, concealing within it a number of old legal papers connected with the rights and privileges of the foundation. At the sale of the old lord's effects in 1776-7, this eagle, together with three candelabra, found at the same time, was purchased by a watch-maker ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.) - With his Letters and Journals. • Thomas Moore

... the parish sexton. Bob Martin was held much in awe by truant boys who sauntered into the churchyard on Sundays, to read the tombstones, or play leap frog over them, or climb the ivy in search of bats or sparrows' nests, or peep into the mysterious aperture under the eastern window, which opened a dim perspective of descending steps losing themselves among profounder darkness, where lidless coffins gaped horribly among tattered velvet, bones, and dust, which time and mortality had strewn there. Of such horribly curious, and otherwise enterprising juveniles, ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 4 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

... feeling decidedly uncomfortable, but, after a quick examination of her situation, saw a small aperture, upon which ...
— Minnie's Pet Cat • Madeline Leslie

... unsettled state of the times, something alarmed, at the earnest and repeated knocking with which the gate was now assailed. Mrs Wilson ran in person to the door, and, having reconnoitred those who were so clamorous for admittance, through some secret aperture with which most Scottish door-ways were furnished for the express purpose, she returned wringing her hands in great dismay, exclaiming, "The ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... convenient height above the ground by depending them from the necks of his subordinates. He then rigged his rope around the stakes in such a way that the runners, entering the wide end of the V, would be shepherded one by one through a narrow aperture at the bottom, thus avoiding all suspicion of overcrowding in giving out the tickets. He explained his plan of campaign to his party and took up his post at ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, June 25, 1919 • Various

... some industrious labour thus expended, he dismantled behind and a little above it a narrow passage, into which he crept, partly to satisfy his love of "exploring," partly in the hope that it might afford him an egress in the direction of the village. The aperture thus exposed had not, in fact, escaped the eye of St. Aubyn, when about an hour afterwards the search for the lost boy was renewed. But one of his guides, after a brief inspection, declared the recess into which it opened empty, and the party, satisfied with his ...
— Dreams and Dream Stories • Anna (Bonus) Kingsford

... he asked, as he rose to his feet; and Garret, flinging back his priest's hood, looked fearlessly in at the aperture. ...
— For the Faith • Evelyn Everett-Green

... The south corner of the triangle is shut off by a vertical slab, in which is cut a window 29 inches by 17. Through this is seen a shrine (?) consisting of a box (d) made of five well-cut slabs of stone, the front being open. The aperture by which F is entered was evidently intended to be closed with a slab of stone from the inside of F, for it was rebated on that side, and there are holes to be used in securing the slab. When the entrance was ...
— Rough Stone Monuments and Their Builders • T. Eric Peet

... request absently, and applied her eye to the aperture. The author of the anonymous letters had chosen her moment only too well. As soon as the door of the studio was closed, the Countess rose to approach Lincoln. She entwined around the young man's neck her arms, which gleamed through ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... the floor of the valley, so that neither storm nor winter flood could send water into it, and its own floor was fairly smooth, with a roof eight or ten feet high. It could be easily defended with their three rifles, the aperture being narrow, and they expected, with skins and pelts, ...
— The Masters of the Peaks - A Story of the Great North Woods • Joseph A. Altsheler



Words linked to "Aperture" :   camera, eye, opening, micropyle, hole, regulator, stoma, embouchure, pupil, oculus, stomate, telescope, optic, pore, scope, mouthpiece, photographic camera



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