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Convertible   /kənvˈərtəbəl/   Listen
Convertible

noun
1.
A car that has top that can be folded or removed.
2.
A corporate security (usually bonds or preferred stock) that can be exchanged for another form of security (usually common stock).  Synonym: convertible security.
3.
A sofa that can be converted into a bed.  Synonym: sofa bed.



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"Convertible" Quotes from Famous Books



... been issued, for the most part, on the one or the other of two conditions, namely: as irredeemable, when it has been made to rest on the vague obligation of some government to pay it some time or other in property; or as convertible into gold and silver on demand. But under both conditions it seems to have been impossible to preserve it from excess and consequent depreciation. Nothing would appear to be safer and sounder, on the face of it, than a money-obligation backed by all the responsibility and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various

... and we have to think of what rules the Essay on Criticism laid down. The poet was to be cautious, "to avoid extremes": he must be conventional, never "singular"; there was constant reference to "Wit," "Nature," and "The Muse," and these were convertible terms. A single instance is luminous. We have the positive authority of Warburton for saying that Pope regarded as the finest effort of his skill and art as a poet the insertion of the machinery of the Sylphs into the revised edition of The Rape of the Lock (1714). ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse

... necessary to run in circulum, partly because definitio rei was primum et immediatum principium, and seeing primo non est Prius, a man must of necessity come backward, and partly because definitio and definitum be naturae reciprocae, the one convertible, answering unto the question made upon the other. As for example, if one asked: 'What is a man?' you will say: 'He is a creature reasonable and mortal'; but if you ask again: 'What is a creature reasonable and mortal?' ...
— Studies from Court and Cloister • J.M. Stone

... to-morrow, you would have to pay down at least three hundred thousand francs before you could borrow on those lands. Your liabilities are five hundred thousand. To meet them you have assets that are very promising, very productive, but not convertible at present; you must fail within a given time. My opinion is that it is better to jump out of the window ...
— Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau • Honore de Balzac

... served to stimulate it, the foreign intercourse of the country was every day more widely extended;' 'the flourishing condition of the nation was seen in the wealth and population of its cities,' etc. It is a redundant currency, even if gold or convertible into gold, that produces these evils, although ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3 No 2, February 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... represents a cotton fiber, and 2, 3, 4, 5 those of flax, as they appear under the acid treatment. Every textile amylaceous fiber is convertible into these forms, more or less, by strong sulphuric acid. The fibers of cotton, flax, and ramie are examples of amylaceous cellulose, that is to say, these fibers are converted into starchy matter by treatment with the last-named acid. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 530, February 27, 1886 • Various

... the most unfortunate of their unfortunate daughters has preserved the memory of their domestic despotism. Throughout all England it was the same, from palace to castle, and from castle to hovel; and father and tyrant were convertible terms. Youth must have been but a dreary time in those old days. Scott's Sir Henry Lee, according to his son, kept strict rule over his children, and he was a type of the antique knight, not of the debauched cavalier, and would be obeyed, with or without reason. The letters ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864 • Various

... branch of the government in the infancy of its existence. But when his opposition extended beyond that point, when it was apparent that he wished to render odious, and of course to subvert (for in a popular government these are convertible terms) all those deliberate and solemn acts of the legislature which had become the pillars of the public credit, his conduct deserved to be regarded with a still severer eye." It was also said to be peculiarly unfit for a person remaining ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 4 (of 5) • John Marshall

... produced.'[52] Ricardo, meanwhile, and the economists had from the first applied to agriculture the principles which Huskisson applied to manufactures.[53] Huskisson's melancholy death has left us unable to say whether upon this matter he would have been as convertible as Peel. In any case the general principle of free trade was as fully adopted by Huskisson and Canning as by the Utilitarians themselves. The Utilitarians could again claim to be both the inspirers ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen

... than of an Orator. Though he had acquired some reputation in public causes, he appeared to most advantage and was most courted and employed in private ones.—C. Piso, who comes next in order, had scarcely any exertion, but he was a Speaker of a very convertible style; and though, in fact, he was far from being slow of invention, he had more penetration in his look and appearance than he really possessed.—His cotemporary M. Glabrio, though carefully instructed ...
— Cicero's Brutus or History of Famous Orators; also His Orator, or Accomplished Speaker. • Marcus Tullius Cicero

... rhinosceros, the zebra, the ostrich, and other curious animals, which the wilds of Africa furnished, were all brought together within the circuit of the arena. Not satisfied with the rich productions of the earth, the sea must also become tributary to their amusements. The arena was convertible into a sheet of water; and, at length, the two elements concluding a marriage, as on the Chinese theatre, produced a race of monsters which, according to the Latin poet's[12] description, might vie with ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow

... but the trouble attracted the attention of the teacher, and under adverse legislation a period of liquidation set in. The distress was great. Many found themselves with property which was not convertible into photographs or anything else. To make matters worse, the discovery was made that the big boys had left school to begin the spring's work, and no one wanted the photographs. Bankrupt and disillusioned, we returned to the realities of kites, marbles, and knives, ...
— Aladdin & Co. - A Romance of Yankee Magic • Herbert Quick

... the Shekinah, or the Divine Presence. The world of the profane is without the temple; the world of the initiated is within its sacred walls. Hence to enter the temple, to pass within the porch, to be made a Mason, and to be born into the world of masonic light, are all synonymous and convertible terms. Here, then, the symbolism of the ...
— The Symbolism of Freemasonry • Albert G. Mackey

... entertain. Besides, a perception of the comic seems to be a balance-wheel in our metaphysical structure. It appears to be an essential element in a fine character.—A rogue alive to the ludicrous is still convertible. If that sense is lost, his fellow-men can do little ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes

... would have thought essential to render a young girl like her presentable. There were a few heirlooms of old date, however, which she had kept as curiosities until now, and which she looked over until she found some lace and other convertible material, with which she enlivened her costume a little for the evening. As she clasped the antique bracelet around her wrist, she felt as if it were an amulet that gave her the power of charming which had been so long obsolete in her lineage. At the bottom of ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... attribute of poetry. A poet participates in the eternal, the infinite, and the one; as far as relates to his conceptions, time and place and number are not. The grammatical forms which express the moods of time, and the difference of persons, and the distinction of place, are convertible with respect to the highest poetry without injuring it as poetry; and the choruses of Aschylus, and the book of Job, and Dante's Paradise, would afford, more than any other writings, examples of this fact, if ...
— English literary criticism • Various

... did not then know the reason for the crash, and the knowledge of those who did, brought little comfort. But, gradually, the country recognised that the prosperity of a nation is not increased in proportion to the quantity of paper money issued, unless such currency be maintained at its full value, convertible, at pleasure, into hard cash—the money standard of ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander

... brook no longer ago than when he was rehearsing his parable of the fishes. The strawberries had been kept on the vines a day or two, for the occasion, and were in perfection. Eggs figured on the table in every shape into which those most convertible things could turn themselves; and, being praised, the lady of the house said that she must tell them of Ralph, a boy of fourteen, whom her husband had taken to look after his horse and garden, giving him his tuition in Latin and other branches, for his services. Ralph ...
— Bertha and Her Baptism • Nehemiah Adams

... duty is to save the women, the rest can bide until they are free. How about the money? Are your stocks readily convertible? If ...
— In Her Own Right • John Reed Scott

... monotony, and all apparently the outcome of a theory that to be wayward is to be creative, that human interest is a matter of apophthegms and oracular sentences, and that axiomatic and dramatic are identical qualities and convertible terms. This is the opinion of those adventurers in whom defeat has generated a sense of injury and an instinct of antagonism. Others less fortunate still have found Landor a continent of dulness and futility—have come to consider the Seven Volumes as ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley

... separated by that mighty and mysterious thing, life, is that the height of wisdom, or the depth of folly? And how such a central paralysis of the mental retina spreads its darkness, as, for example, in the affirmation that as oxygen and hydrogen are reciprocally convertible with water, so are water, ammonia, and carbolic acid convertible into and resolvable from living protoplasm!—a statement said to be as false in chemistry as it certainly is in physiology. An ordinary merchant's accountant will, ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith

... host shouted. Then the friends arose Of Polypoetes valiant chief, and bore 1050 His ponderous acquisition to the ships. The archers' prize Achilles next proposed, Ten double and ten single axes, form'd Of steel convertible to arrow-points. He fix'd, far distant on the sands, the mast 1055 Of a brave bark cerulean-prow'd, to which With small cord fasten'd by the foot he tied A timorous dove, their mark at which to aim. [27]Who strikes the dove, he conquers, and shall bear These double axes ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer

... it is an illustration of a portable tent," explained Ernest. "The canvas folds up and can be carried in the pocket, while the pole also folds and is convertible into a walking-stick by day. Thus you are able to camp where you will; throw ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, October 20, 1920 • Various

... gradually recognized the inevitable. In 1893, nearly fifteen years after this offer had been made, more than $1,000,000 of the old bonds were still outstanding. In 1901, a New York firm presented to the State of South Dakota ten of the class which had been made convertible at twenty-five cents on the dollar. That State brought suit in the Supreme Court of the United States and collected the amount sued for.[1] No progress has been made in collecting the special tax bonds issued during ...
— The New South - A Chronicle Of Social And Industrial Evolution • Holland Thompson

... apprehensible audible cessible coercible compatible competible comprehensible compressible conceptible contemptible contractible controvertible convertible convincible corrigible corrosible corruptible credible decoctible deducible defeasible defensible descendible destructible digestible discernible distensible divisible docible edible effectible eligible eludible enforcible evincible expansible expressible extendible extensible ...
— Division of Words • Frederick W. Hamilton

... altogether deny that such an object is at all desirable, even if it could be attained. I know, indeed, that all paper ought to circulate on a specie basis; that all bank-notes, to be safe, must be convertible into gold and silver at the will of the holder; and I admit, too, that the issuing of very small notes by many of the State banks has too much reduced the amount of specie actually circulating. It may be remembered that I called the ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster

... race, also, is thought to have come over from Spain, a conjecture which is rather confirmed by the etymology of the names of some Irish towns, where the letters gh, as in Drogheda and Aghada, if so convertible, have the same pronunciation as the Spanish j in Aranjuez and Badajoz, and also by the expression and cast of features marked in many of the peasants of the south-west of Ireland, which strikingly resemble those of the ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 79, May 3, 1851 • Various

... occasionally into the lips, is the most powerful, if not absolutely the sole spell, which rivets my interest in woman. "Romance, provided my readers fully comprehended what I would here imply by the word—"romance" and "womanliness" seem to me convertible terms: and, after all, what man truly loves in woman, is simply her womanhood. The eyes of Annie (I heard some one from the interior call her "Annie, darling!") were "spiritual grey;" her hair, a light chestnut: this is all I had time ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... founded by the authority of Heaven, penetrating every department and entering into every detail of life, and enforced by strictly religious penalties. One has well said that Hinduism and caste are convertible terms. ...
— India, Its Life and Thought • John P. Jones

... supporting it. I know of no considerable authority in the seventeenth century which has been adduced on the other side, save that of Henderson, whose statement, however, is rather inferential than direct. In fact, the eldership is used in the Second Book of Discipline itself as a convertible term with presbytery, and is often so used in the acts of contemporary assemblies. When presbyteries came to be set up, they are sometimes designated by the name of eldership, and sometimes by that of presbytery; and where our present authorised version of Scripture ...
— The Scottish Reformation - Its Epochs, Episodes, Leaders, and Distinctive Characteristics • Alexander F. Mitchell

... the control is liable to vary, and be thrown on to one side or the other, also has an analogy in the hypnoidal state of Boris Sidis—this being an intermediate state (so it is thought) which is convertible either into ordinary sleep, on the one hand, or into hypnotic sleep on the other. It all depends upon how this state is handled and controlled. It may be the same here; the medium may sink into internal reverie, or introspective ...
— The Problems of Psychical Research - Experiments and Theories in the Realm of the Supernormal • Hereward Carrington

... of Es-sex, Sus-sex, and Middle-sex are the localities of the East-Saxons, the South-Saxons, and the Middle-Saxons, respectively; that in the sixth and seventh centuries there was a Kingdom of Wes-sex, or the West-Saxons; that Angle and Saxon were nearly convertible terms; and that Anglo-Saxon is the name of the English Language in its oldest known stage. How these names came to be so nearly synonymous, or how certain south-eastern counties of England and a German Kingdom on the frontier of Bohemia, bear names so much alike as Sus-sex and Sax-ony, ...
— The Ethnology of the British Islands • Robert Gordon Latham

... vital energy turned into, or was anyhow convertible into, inorganic energy, if it were true that a dead body had more inorganic energy than a live one, if it were true that 'these inorganic energies' always, or ever, 'reappear on the dissolution of life,' then, undoubtedly, ...
— God and the World - A Survey of Thought • Arthur W. Robinson

... settled to my satisfaction, that Mr. Beamish and the great uncloaked were "convertible terms," I set about making the 'amende' in the most handsome manner possible. I wrote to the alderman a most pacific epistle, regretting that my departure from Cork deprived me of making reparation before, ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Vol. 1 • Charles James Lever

... were true that vital energy turned into or was anyhow convertible into inorganic energy, if it were true that a dead body had more inorganic energy than a live one, if it were true that "these inorganic energies" always or ever "reappear on the dissolution of life," then undoubtedly cadit quaestio; ...
— Life and Matter - A Criticism of Professor Haeckel's 'Riddle of the Universe' • Oliver Lodge

... Silas Blackburn told you when he came back," Paredes said. "He may have believed it at first or he may not have. I daresay he wanted to, for he came back with his brother's money as well as his own—the cash and the easily convertible securities that were all men would handle in that hell. But he never forgot that his brother's wife was alive, and when he ran from Panama he knew she was about ...
— The Abandoned Room • Wadsworth Camp

... New York on the strength of a fashionable marriage; but, so all-pervading is the snobbishness there, one can get, by making a fashionable marriage, any quantity of that deferential respect from rich people which is, in some circumstances, easily convertible into cash ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various

... transparent and colorless crystals as the diamond, in black, opaque, metallic scales as graphite, and in shapeless masses and powder as charcoal, coke, lampblack, and the like. In the intense heat of the electric arc these forms are convertible one into the other according to the conditions. Since the third form is the cheapest the object is to change it into one of the other two. Graphite, plumbago or "blacklead," as it is still sometimes called, is not found in many places and more rarely found pure. The supply ...
— Creative Chemistry - Descriptive of Recent Achievements in the Chemical Industries • Edwin E. Slosson

... now run alone. So he invited Hope to England to guide him in what he loved better than steady business, viz., speculation. The truth is, Bartley could execute, but had few original ideas. Hope had plenty, and sound ones, though not common ones. Hope directed the purchase of convertible securities on this principle: Select good ones; avoid time bargains, which introduce a distinct element of risk; and buy largely at every panic not founded on a permanent reason or out of proportion. Example: A great district bank broke. The shares of a great district railway ...
— A Perilous Secret • Charles Reade

... can. All He sends you and appoints you is in love. There is a provision and condition wrapt up in the bosom of every affliction, "if need be;" coming from His hand, sorrows and riches are to His people convertible terms. If tempted to murmur at their trials, they are often murmuring at disguised mercies. "Why do you ask me," said Simeon, on his deathbed, "what I like? I am the Lord's patient—I cannot ...
— The Words of Jesus • John R. Macduff

... settled the matter by giving a horn to each of them. This trifling incident is mentioned as introductory to what follows, for it appeared on inquiry that these horns were highly valued, as being easily convertible into portable sheaths, or cases, for containing and keeping secure certain charms or amulets called saphies, which the negroes constantly wear about them. These saphies are prayers, or rather sentences, ...
— Travels in the Interior of Africa - Volume 1 • Mungo Park

... burden which a visit in this evil, hard winter would no doubt have been to you. As concerns myself, nothing can make my mood worse than it is. I am getting accustomed to all kinds of trouble, and the disagreeable and the necessary and natural are to me convertible terms. ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 2 • Francis Hueffer (translator)

... composed of love-poetry; but the part devoted to this is so very much the largest, and so very much the most characteristic, that popular and almost traditional opinion is scarcely wrong in considering love-poetry and Provencal poetry to be almost, and with the due limitation in the first case, convertible terms. ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury

... very fortunate for the hive, that this queen departs, for the bees incessantly attend her; nor do they ever think of procuring another while she remains; and if she was long of leaving them, it would be impossible to replace her; for the workers worms would exceed the term at which they are convertible into royal worms, and the hive would perish. Observe, that the eggs dropped by the mutilated queen can never serve for replacing her, for, not being deposited in cells, they ...
— New observations on the natural history of bees • Francis Huber

... secure. Interrogatio is merely the conclusio or syllogism put as a series of questions. Cf. Paradoxa 2, with T.D. II. 42 which will show that interrogatiuncula and conclusiuncula are almost convertible terms. See also M.D.F. I. 39. Nec dicendi nec disserendi: Cic.'s constant mode of denoting the Greek [Greek: rhetorike] and [Greek: dialektike]; note on 32. Et oratorum etiam: Man., Lamb. om. etiam, ...
— Academica • Marcus Tullius Cicero

... locusts appear, everything, men, cattle, food, property, etc., is carried off. These thieves seize everything convertible into money. Nothing is safe from them. At Cologne, they filled a church with coffee and sugar. At Aix-la-Chapelle, they carried off the finest pictures of Rubens and Van Dyck, the pillars from the altar, and the marble-slab from the tomb of Charlemagne, ...
— Germany from the Earliest Period Vol. 4 • Wolfgang Menzel, Trans. Mrs. George Horrocks

... to be made a 'platform of observation' for the Perso-Russian army to prepare for its descent upon Hindostan. The Afghans were tribes of hardy mountaineers, inhabiting a wild and thinly-peopled country. They consisted of soldiers, husbandmen, and shepherds, all convertible, at a moment's notice, into thieves and bandits; and through their formidable defiles flowed an uncertain stream of commerce, connecting India with the distant provinces of Persia and Russia. So little was known of these mountaineers, that in the early part of this century, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 425 - Volume 17, New Series, February 21, 1852 • Various



Words linked to "Convertible" :   transmutable, convert, adaptable, inconvertible, studio couch, day bed, cashable, car, sofa, convertible bond, translatable, machine, transformable, redeemable, security, auto, motorcar, couch, convertibility, davenport, convertible security, commutable, certificate, lounge, automobile



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