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Corrosive   /kərˈoʊsɪv/   Listen
Corrosive

adjective
1.
Of a substance, especially a strong acid; capable of destroying or eating away by chemical action.  Synonyms: caustic, erosive, mordant, vitriolic.
2.
Spitefully sarcastic.



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"Corrosive" Quotes from Famous Books



... latter-day Ibsen is naturally somewhat taken aback to find the grim poet of Doubt, whose task it seems to be to apply a corrosive criticism to modern institutions in general and to marriage in particular, gravely defending the "marriage of convenience." And his amazement is not diminished by the sense that the author of this plea for the loveless marriage, which poets have ...
— Love's Comedy • Henrik Ibsen

... over the horrid scene—the deep pool or tarn sending up oilily its bubbles of accusation; the shadowy wood with its bulging mound of earth and leaves swept by revealing rains and winds; the moldy vat of corrosive liquid eating away the damning evidence; the box with its accursed stains, shipped anywhere away from the fatal spot, by boat or ship, to be relentlessly traced back—and he shivered in fearful wonder as to how the crime had been committed. In some way, he felt sure, ...
— Double Trouble - Or, Every Hero His Own Villain • Herbert Quick

... otherwise they do not make such good specimens. When the specimens are dried and placed in the herbarium they must be protected from insects. Some are already infested with insects which the process of drying does not kill. They must be either poisoned with corrosive sublimate in alcohol, or fumigated with carbon disulphide, and if the latter it must be repeated one or two times at an interval of a month to catch those which were in the egg state the first time. When placed ...
— Studies of American Fungi. Mushrooms, Edible, Poisonous, etc. • George Francis Atkinson

... sensitive to the presence of certain substances in the fluid in which they are growing. Growth may be inhibited by the smallest trace of some of the metallic salts, as corrosive sublimate, although the bacteria themselves are not destroyed. If small pieces of gold foil be placed on the surface of prepared jelly on which bacteria have been planted, no growth will take place in the ...
— Disease and Its Causes • William Thomas Councilman

... of a famous traveller, in the days when there were continents with unexplored interiors. His papers on the fauna and flora made him known to scientific societies. And now he had come to a country practice—from choice. The penetrating power of his mind, acting like a corrosive fluid, had destroyed his ambition, I fancy. His intelligence is of a scientific order, of an investigating habit, and of that unappeasable curiosity which believes that there is a particle of a general truth in ...
— Amy Foster • Joseph Conrad

... revenge,—and here the grim Doctor broke out into a strange passion and zeal of anathema against this deadly sin, making a dreadful picture of the ruin that it creates in the heart where it establishes itself, and how it makes a corrosive acid of those genial juices. Then he told the boy that the condition of all good was, in the first place, truth; then, courage; then, justice; then, mercy; out of which principles operating upon one another would come all brave, noble, high, unselfish actions, ...
— Doctor Grimshawe's Secret - A Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... phosgene also exert a strongly corrosive action on metals, so that the metal parts of arms must be ...
— Military Instructors Manual • James P. Cole and Oliver Schoonmaker

... bread a yellow color and an alkaline taste, and doing mischief to the delicate coating of the stomach. Alkalies, the class of chemicals to which soda and salaratus belong, when pure and strong, are powerful corrosive poisons. The acid used with the alkali to liberate the carbonic-acid gas in the process of bread-making, if rightly proportioned, destroys this poisonous property, and unites with it to form a new compound, which, although not ...
— Science in the Kitchen. • Mrs. E. E. Kellogg

... her—this man who loved nothing and nobody living, not even himself. He loved her—this man whose life was all behind him, and whose heart was of stone, and whose speech was acrid as the most corrosive element known to chemistry. But a few "passes" of sweet Sorceress Lilith's magical wand and the stone heart had split to fragments, pouring forth, giving release to, a warm well-spring. A well-spring? A ...
— The Sign of the Spider • Bertram Mitford

... the work of carrying away the cliffs, in which they were aided and abetted by giant derricks and the fiends of dynamite and nitro-glycerin. Limekilns burned all the time, turning the companionable gray ledges into something offensive and corrosive. One must now board a street-car, and ride away beyond Lynhurst Park before one could find the good and pure little Brushy ...
— Aladdin & Co. - A Romance of Yankee Magic • Herbert Quick

... content my self to taste them only, but fruitlesly pour'd on them acid Liquors, to try if they contain'd any Volatile Salt or Spirit, which (had there been any there) would probably have discover'd it self by making an Ebullition with the affused Liquor. And now I mention Corrosive Spirits, I am minded to Informe you, That though they seem to be nothing else but Fluid Salts, yet they abound in Water, as you may Observe, if either you Entangle, and so Fix their Saline Part, by making them Corrode some idoneous ...
— The Sceptical Chymist • Robert Boyle

... The blocks also serve as base for a skeleton framework of the same material which surrounds and supports the section. Of course the wood has to be specially treated to withstand the acid. A special non-corrosive terminal is used. A coned bolt draws the lug ends of adjacent cells together, fitting in a corresponding tapered hole in the lugs, and thus increasing the contact area. The positive and negative tapers being different, a cell cannot be connected up ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... he lie, for in a few days, the powder which was of a corrosive nature, destroyed and ate away his eye, so that he became, and ...
— One Hundred Merrie And Delightsome Stories - Les Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles • Various

... thrust into the human body as into a prison, for punishment of past offenses. But the worst prison is the body of an indolent epicure, whose blood is inflamed by fermented liquors and high sauces, or rendered putrid, sharp, and corrosive by a stagnation of the animal juices through sloth and indolence; whose membranes are irritated by pungent salts; whose mind is agitated by painful oscillations of the nervous system, and whose nerves are mutually affected by the irregular passions of his mind. This ferment ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner

... could walk about on Dara. They could work on Dara. They could loot with impunity and all contamination must remain outside the suits, and on their return to their ships they would simply stand in the airlocks while corrosive gases swirled around them, killing any possible organism of disease. Then, for extra assurance, when air from Weald filled the airlock again, the men would burn the outer plastic covering and step into ...
— This World Is Taboo • Murray Leinster

... street, no magistrate can imprison or otherwise restrain its members on the ground that their immorality may corrupt their neighbors. He can prevent any citizen from carrying certain specified weapons, but not from handling pokers, table-knives, bricks or bottles of corrosive fluid, on the ground that he might use them to commit murder or inflict malicious injury. He has no general power to prevent citizens from selling unhealthy or poisonous substances, or judging for themselves what substances are unhealthy and what wholesome, ...
— The Shewing-up of Blanco Posnet • George Bernard Shaw

... have been liberally baptized with Spree-water, for the instantaneous, corrosive Berlin wit was a large part of his endowment. His cool irony associated him more closely to the Schlegels than to Novalis, with his life-and-death consecrations. His absurd play-within-a-play, Puss in Boots (1797), is delicious in its bizarre ragout ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke

... floated a cigar-shaped mangrove-bud, bobbing vertically, through the ocean, until it chanced to touch the new-risen coral reef. The mangrove, alone of all trees, will sprout and grow in salt water. The mangrove's trunk, alone of all trunks, is impervious to the corrosive ...
— Black Caesar's Clan • Albert Payson Terhune

... and nail to his small job, because he needed most desperately the twelve dollars a week it brought him; the city editor regarding him and all his manifold reportorial sins of omission, commission and remission with a corrosive, speechless venom; and the rest of us in the city room divided in our sympathies as between those two. We sympathized with Devore for having to carry so woful an incompetent upon his small and overworked crew; we sympathized with the kindly, gentle, tiresome old major for his bungling, vain ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb

... tackled his subject. And that is why he and Shakib begin to quarrel. The idea! That a fledgling should presume to pick flaws. To Shakib, who is textual to a hair, this is intolerable. And that state of oneness between them shall be subject hereafter to "the corrosive action of various unfriendly agents." For Khalid, who has never yet been snaffled, turns restively from the bit which his friend, for his own sake, would put in his mouth. The rupture follows. The two for a while wend their way in opposite directions. Shakib still cherishing ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani

... Emetic, followed by white of egg or Corrosive sublimate { milk; soothing drinks; tannic acid (bichlorid of mercury) { freely; castor oil to ...
— The Mother and Her Child • William S. Sadler

... a while to show me Doolan's pig, which was taking the air outside. "And that," he remarked, "is corrosive ividence of what I'm tellin' ye." The pig grunted his compliments, and ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, November 18, 1914 • Various

... remember, youngster. The men who go to the top in journalism, the big men of power and success and grasp, come through with a contempt for the public which they serve, compared to which the contempt of the public for the newspaper is as skim milk to corrosive sublimate." ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams

... attempt to climb either foot-hills or mountains. It leveled them. It ate into their bases at its own level; the undermined masses, small and large, collapsed into the foul, corrosive semi-liquid and were consumed. Nor was there much raising of the golop's level, even when the highest mountains were reached and miles-high masses of solid rock broke off and toppled. There was some raising, ...
— The Galaxy Primes • Edward Elmer Smith

... desert their eggs, and how they can be prevented.—[They cannot be "prevented." The most common cause is insect vermin. If these are found, burn all the old nests, use Persian powder freely on the birds, and paint the cracks in the cages with corrosive sublimate, and then ...
— Little Folks (Septemeber 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various

... their happy voyage might not be Without Time's shortener, heaven-taught melody, (Music that lent feet to the stable woods, And in their currents turn'd the mighty floods, Sorrow's sweet nurse, yet keeping Joy alive, Sad Discontent's most welcome corrosive, The soul of art, best loved when love is by, The kind inspirer of sweet poesy, Least thou shouldst wanting be, when swans would fain Have sung one song, and never sung again,) The gentle shepherd, hasting to the shore, ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan

... To be corrosive as he was, to have within himself a will of steel, a hate of diamond, a burning curiosity for the catastrophe, and to burn nothing, to decapitate nothing, to exterminate nothing; to be what he was, a force of devastation, a voracious animosity, a devourer ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo

... "Gentlemen," said Barbicane, "we must now take into consideration the metal to be employed. Our cannon must be possessed of great tenacity, great hardness, be infusible by heat, indissoluble, and inoxidable by the corrosive action ...
— Jules Verne's Classic Books • Jules Verne

... however the latter might scold and threaten, still the stone was in a few minutes lying firm over the opening of the fountain. Undine leaned thoughtfully over it, and wrote with her beautiful fingers on the flat surface. She must, however, have had something very sharp and corrosive in her hand, for when she retired, and the domestics went up to examine the stone, they discovered various strange characters upon it, which none of them had ...
— Undine - I • Friedrich de la Motte Fouque

... dissolv'd Sal Tartari seem'd but to Praecipitate, and thereby to Unite and render Conspicuous the particles of the Black mixture that had before been dispers'd into very Minute and singly Invisible particles by the Incisive and resolving power of the highly Corrosive Oyl of Vitriol. ...
— Experiments and Considerations Touching Colours (1664) • Robert Boyle

... the processes of digestion. How real is the pretended power which the deicide chemists are alleged to wield? What faith can we put in the tales of evoked larvae killing a designated person to order with corrosive oil and blood virus? None, unless one is extremely credulous, and ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans

... middle-classes. To my mind these coursing massacres should be made every whit as illegal as dog-fighting or bull-baiting, for I can assure our legislators that the temptation offered by the chances of rapid gambling is eating like a corrosive poison into the young generation. Surely Englishmen, even if they want to bet, need not invent a medium for betting which combines every description of noxious cruelty! I ask the aid of women. Let them set their faces against ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman

... reduce it to a state of charcoal, or cinders, you char it. If you burn it to ashes, you incinerate it. (This word is learned and but little used in ordinary discourse.) If you burn a dead body to ashes, you cremate it. If you burn or sear anything with a hot iron or a corrosive substance, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor

... and dangerous a nature, that it must be used only with the utmost caution. It is a liquid; it must be heated, and you must allow the steam to pass into your eyes. Your highness must be very, very careful. The substances in this mixture are so strong, so corrosive, that if you approach too near the steam, it will not only endanger your eyes, but your face and your voice. You must keep your mouth firmly closed, and your eyes at least ten inches above the vessel from which the steam is rising. Will your highness remember all ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach

... of ardent thought. Heyst remained alone in the big room. The girl seeing him take up a book, had retreated to her chamber. Heyst sat down under his father's portrait; and the abominable calumny crept back into his recollection. The taste of it came on his lips, nauseating and corrosive like some kinds of poison. He was tempted to spit on the floor, naively, in sheer unsophisticated disgust of the physical sensation. He shook his head, surprised at himself. He was not used to receive his intellectual impressions ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad

... dead; and it was imagined to lick its cubs into proper shape: hence the expression "unlicked cub," applied to a raw, awkward, unpolished youth. The saliva of the Lama, which when angry it ejects, has been erroneously supposed to possess a corrosive quality. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 19. Issue 539 - 24 Mar 1832 • Various

... 1835:—"Petrarque rapporte dans ses lettres latines que le laurier du Capitole lui avait attire une multitude d'envieux; que le jour de son couronnement, au lieu d'eau odorante qu'il etait d'usage de repandre dans ces solennites, il recut sur la tete une eau corrosive, qui le rendit chauve le reste de sa vie. Son historien Dolce raconte meme qu'une vieille lui jetta son pot de chambre rempli d'une acre urine, gardee, peut-etre, pour ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch

... presence of some form of mercury, too. In that terrible moment my brain worked with the incredible swiftness of light. In a flash I knew that if I added malic acid to the mercury—perchloride of mercury or corrosive sublimate—I would have calomel or subchloride of mercury, the only thing that would switch the poison out of my system ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds

... Mrs. Smith neglected to mention in her circular the instruction in entomology her pupils receive; probably because they are, as 'the Autocrat' says every traveler is, self-taught. I wish she would omit a few lessons in the 'Use of the Globes,' and teach the servants the use of hot water, corrosive sublimate, and roach-poison. ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No. 2, August, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... close promptly, an irritant Egyptian ointment containing verdigris and alum among other things should be applied to them. In the cure of old fistulous tracts near the teeth he employs not only this Egyptian ointment but also arsenic and corrosive sublimate. What he has to say with regard to the filling of the teeth is, however, most important. He says it with extreme brevity, but with the manner of a man thoroughly accustomed to doing it. "By means of a drill or file the putrefied or corroded ...
— Old-Time Makers of Medicine • James J. Walsh

... performed in a scorifier, which is a shallow open-mouthed dish about 2-1/2 inches across, with a very thick bottom to enable it to withstand the corrosive action of the slag. A charge of more than 3 or 5 grams of the ore cannot be worked in one, and with such small charges the unavoidable variations have a serious effect on the figures reported. A difference of one milligram on the weight of the button ...
— A Textbook of Assaying: For the Use of Those Connected with Mines. • Cornelius Beringer and John Jacob Beringer

... was an evil to be avoided by all honest means, however, no man was more ready to avow: concealed poverty particularly, which he said was the general corrosive that destroyed the peace of almost every family; to which no evening perhaps ever returned without some new project for hiding the sorrows and dangers of the next day. "Want of money," says Dr. Johnson, "is sometimes concealed under pretended ...
— Anecdotes of the late Samuel Johnson, LL.D. - during the last twenty years of his life • Hester Lynch Piozzi

... should be observed not to allow this very corrosive acid to come into contact with the skin, as an ulcer will be the consequence that will be extremely ...
— A System of Instruction in the Practical Use of the Blowpipe • Anonymous

... lacerated wound, as from the bite of a dog, or from a very minute wound poisoned by the bite of a venomous reptile. Local inflammations may arise from scalds, burns, the application of caustics, arsenic, corrosive sublimate, cantharides, powerful acids, abrasions of the surface by injuries, and ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce

... ferried across the busy Scheldt, the white blaze of his passion cooled; but the biting irony of his estate ate, corrosive, into his soul. Hollow-eyed he glared vacantly into space, pale lips unmoving, ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance

... cricket, serene; but now, his mind, to apply the universal cant, was "in a transition state." A year's practice had chilled the youthful valour which used to scatter Epsom salts or oxalic acid, magnesia or corrosive sublimate. An experiment or two by himself and his compeers, with comments by the coroner, had enlightened him as to the final result on the human body of potent chemicals fearlessly administered, leaving him dark as to their distinctive qualities applied remedially. What ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade

... box filled with a very strong acid," said the colonel. "Probably the box was made of soft metal, through which the acid would eat in a few hours. It was placed in the safe, and in time the corrosive worked through——" ...
— Jack O' Judgment • Edgar Wallace

... living round about the swamps of Louisiana were observed to use it with great success. A writer who records this says: "The patient should be forced to swallow the juice. This fluid is of so pungent and corrosive a nature that it cuts out the diphtheria mucous and causes it ...
— Food Remedies - Facts About Foods And Their Medicinal Uses • Florence Daniel

... insoluble mercury compounds of the fatty acids, a change which can be readily seen to occur in such a soap by the rapid development on keeping, of a dull slaty-green appearance. Numerous processes have been suggested, and in some cases patented, to overcome this difficulty. In the case of corrosive sublimate, Geissler suggested that the soap to which this reagent is to be added should contain an excess of fatty acids, and would thereby be rendered stable. This salt has also been incorporated with milled soap ...
— The Handbook of Soap Manufacture • W. H. Simmons

... Symptoms in general, Emetic with lead; none with Copperas, same as in arsenical copper and iron; white of Green vitriol, poisoning. With lead eggs in abundance with Sugar of lead, and mercury there may copper; with iron and lead Corrosive be a metallic taste in give epsom salts freely; sublimate, the mouth. afterwards, oils, flour, and Bedbug poison. water. No emetic with mercury; raw eggs; ...
— A Practical Physiology • Albert F. Blaisdell

... weight of Hg, and explain. See page 12. Hg is either a monad or a dyad. Symbolize its ous and ic oxides and chlorides. Which of the following are is salts, and which are ous, and why? HgNO3, Hg(NO3)2, HgCl, HgCl2? Calomel, HgCl or Hg2Cl2, used in medicine, and corrosive sublimate, HgCl2, are illustrations of the ous and ic salts. The former is insoluble, the latter soluble. All soluble compounds of Hg are virulent poisons, for which the antidote is the white of egg, albumen. With it they coagulate or form an ...
— An Introduction to Chemical Science • R.P. Williams

... as black as a coal, and throw them hissing hot into the stew-pan, to give a brown colour to their broths. These ingredients, under the appearance of a nourishing gravy, envelope our food with stimulating acid and corrosive poison. ...
— The Cook's Oracle; and Housekeeper's Manual • William Kitchiner

... a new use for gold by inventing a process by which it could be hardened and tempered, assuming a wonderful toughness and elasticity without losing its non-corrosive property, and in this form it rapidly took ...
— The Moon Metal • Garrett P. Serviss

... them in a few days, after the following manner. She placed a dish of cracked shagbarks (of which they are more fond than of anything else) in the closet. They soon gathered upon it in troops. She then put some corrosive sublimate in a cup; ordered the dish to be carried carefully to the fire, and all its contents brushed in; while she swept the few that dropped upon the shelf into the cup, and, with a feather, wet all the ...
— The American Frugal Housewife • Lydia M. Child

... cried Tom. "Someone bored a hole in the propeller, and put in some sort of receptacle, or capsule, containing a corrosive acid. In due time, which happened to be when we took our first flight, the acid ate through whatever it was contained in, and then attacked the wood of the propeller blade. It weakened the wood so that the force used in ...
— Tom Swift and his Aerial Warship - or, The Naval Terror of the Seas • Victor Appleton

... by removing all decayed wood and washing the interior surface with a solution of copper sulfate and lime, in order to destroy any fungi that may remain. The edges of the cavity are cut smooth in order to allow free growth of the cambium after the cavity is filled. Any antiseptic, such as corrosive sublimate, creosote, or even paint, may answer the purpose; creosote, however, possesses the most penetrating powers of any. The method of filling the cavities depends to a great extent on their size and form. Very large cavities with great openings are generally bricked on the ...
— Manual of Gardening (Second Edition) • L. H. Bailey

... a close orbit around the planet. It seemed nothing but a fearsome forest of oxydized spikes rising in corrosive silence, with here and there a lean slash of valley. There was no indication of life, no vegetation visible or revealed by the scopes. One of the valleys had a thin mouth of water stretching down the length of its face. Kelly set the speed and the controls and ran for the ...
— Has Anyone Here Seen Kelly? • Bryce Walton

... beheld a thing to set his heritage of soldier blood dancing through his veins. Standing fair in the midst of the ax-and-shovel havoc and clearing a wide circle to right and left with the sweep of his old service cavalry saber, was the Major, coatless, hatless, cursing the invaders with mighty and corrosive soldier oaths, and crying them to come on, the unnumbered host ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde

... two successful treatments for scab in potatoes. One is dipping in a solution of corrosive sublimate. Dissolve one ounce in eight gallons of water and soak the seed potatoes in this solution for one and one-half hours before cutting. This treatment kills the scab spores which may be upon ...
— One Thousand Questions in California Agriculture Answered • E.J. Wickson

... plug, if the engineer did not know it was there, so if you must use one, attend to it, and every time you clean your boiler scrape the upper or water end of the plug with a knife, and be careful to remove any corrosive matter that may have collected on it, and then treat your boiler exactly as though there was no such a thing as a safety plug in it. A safety plug was not designed to let you run with any lower gauge of water. It is placed there to prevent ...
— Rough and Tumble Engineering • James H. Maggard

... though no such gross salt, was by the same operation so fixt, as to stay behind: Besides that the same, by a competent heat yeilded a substance, though not insipid, yet not at all of the taste of Sea-salt, or of any other pungent one, much less having the highly corrosive acidity of ...
— Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society - Vol 1 - 1666 • Various

... bacteria which are found attached to the hairs of the part in agglutinated masses. The axilla is the favorite site. Treatment consists of frequent soap-and-water washings, and the application of boric acid, resorcin, and corrosive sublimate lotions. ...
— Essentials of Diseases of the Skin • Henry Weightman Stelwagon

... upon a valuable preservative against microbes, when they infused Cinnamon with other spices in their mulled drinks. Mr. Chamberland says, "no disease germ can long resist the antiseptic powder of essence of Cinnamon, [391] which is as effective to destroy microbes as corrosive sublimate." ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie

... be promptly resorted to. Suffocation, from Substances in the Throat. Common Cuts. Wounds of Arteries, and other severe Cuts. Bruises. Sprains. Broken Limbs. Falls. Blows on the Head. Burns. Drowning. Poisons:—Corrosive Sublimate; Arsenic, or Cobalt; Opium; Acids; Alkalies. Stupefaction from Fumes of Charcoal, or from entering a Well, Limekiln, or Coalmine. Hemorrhage of the Lungs, Stomach, or Throat. Bleeding of the ...
— A Treatise on Domestic Economy - For the Use of Young Ladies at Home and at School • Catherine Esther Beecher

... the peril in which Joe stood on her account, nor consider that the future still held for both of them a trial which would test Joe's strength as the corrosive tooth of acid challenges the purity of gold. It was enough for her that sunny afternoon, and sufficient to her shallow soul, to know that she was safe. She lay warm and restful in her bed while the neighbor ...
— The Bondboy • George W. (George Washington) Ogden

... the oil and the solution blend and form a soap; and they are said to attract each other chemically or to have a chemical affinity for each other. It is a general character of chemical combination that it changes the qualities of the bodies. Thus, corrosive and pungent substances may become mild and tasteless; solids may become fluids, and solids and ...
— The World's Greatest Books - Volume 15 - Science • Various

... drawn into one predominant idea, whilst the decaying energies of his frame received a new impulse to second the resolutions of his working mind. The cold and unnatural atrocity of Gomez Arias burned in his brain; he felt the agonized throb of his injury run corrosive through his veins, and impart an uncontrollable desire of revenge; the fever of excitement rose superior to that which had laid him prostrate, and he seemed impatient at the weakness that confined ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio

... the upper surface, and the deposit of dirt and cobwebs. Mr. Heath Wilson, after careful examination, pronounces that not only time, but the wilful hand of man, re-painting and washing the delicate tint-coats with corrosive acids, ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds

... notoriety; the gnawing conviction that every show of respect is an effort of courtesy, which recalls, while it represses, a contrary feeling;—this is the ever trickling flow of wormwood and gall into the wounds of pride,—the corrosive 'virus' which inoculates pride with a venom not its own, with envy, hatred, and a lust for that power which in its blaze of radiance would hide the dark spots on his disc,—with pangs of shame personally undeserved, and therefore felt ...
— Literary Remains, Vol. 2 • Coleridge

... is the monument I've reared: Come, tempests, with your bitterness assailing; And thou, corrosive blasts of time, by all things mortal feared, Thy buffets and thy ...
— Echoes from the Sabine Farm • Roswell Martin Field and Eugene Field

... down from those slopes too to change both mountains and river, and elk and panther vanished. And if along the Potomac's North Branch there was once a fine coal boom, there is now the boom's legacy in the form of gray dour towns and dark sad streams corrosive with mine acids. ...
— The Nation's River - The Department of the Interior Official Report on the Potomac • United States Department of the Interior

... of the face opposite him and the stoop of the shoulders, Manuel read a need for an active antidote against the corrosive ...
— The Lighted Match • Charles Neville Buck

... woke him suddenly up to apply new tests: he sent him on irksome errands when he was staggering with weariness; he tried the temper, the sense, and the health; and it was only when every severest test had been applied and endured, when the most corrosive aquafortis had been used, and failed to tarnish the ore, that he admitted it genuine, and, still in clouded silence, stamped it with his ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte

... of a skillful physician. For every man—and especially for every boy, who has hardly entered his teens—to take this poison into his own hands, and determine for himself how much he will use, is as preposterous, as if he were to take upon himself to deal out arsenic, corrosive sublimate, or calomel. ...
— A Disquisition on the Evils of Using Tobacco - and the Necessity of Immediate and Entire Reformation • Orin Fowler

... New South Wales, perhaps the difference of soil may in some measure be traced. That of Norfolk Island is light and porous: it rots and turns into mould in two years. Besides its hardness that of Port Jackson abounds with red corrosive gum, which contributes its ...
— A Complete Account of the Settlement at Port Jackson • Watkin Tench

... cutting, sarcastic, caustic, scathing, bitter, satirical, pungent, piquant; nipping, blasting; erosive, corrosive, acrid, mordant. ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming

... with mastic and turpentine twice distilled and white or, if you like, lime, and put it in a frame so that it may expand and shrink according to its moisture and dryness. Then give it [a coat] of aqua vitae in which you have dissolved arsenic or [corrosive] sublimate, 2 or 3 times. Then apply boiled linseed oil in such a way as that it may penetrate every part, and before it is cold rub it well with a cloth to dry it. Over this apply liquid varnish and white with a stick, then wash it with urine when it is dry, and dry it again. Then pounce ...
— The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, Complete • Leonardo Da Vinci

... &c (strengthen) 159. strike home, into home, hard home; make an impression. Adj. strong, energetic, forcible, active; intense, deep-dyed, severe, keen, vivid, sharp, acute, incisive, trenchant, brisk. rousing, irritation; poignant; virulent, caustic, corrosive, mordant, harsh, stringent; double-edged, double-shotted^, double- distilled; drastic, escharotic^; racy &c (pungent) 392. potent &c (powerful) 157; radioactive. Adv. strongly &c adj.; fortiter in re [Lat.]; with telling effect. Phr. the steam is up; vires acquirit eundo [Lat.]; the race by vigor ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... speculation, but as usual I was compelled to wait for the talk I wanted. For some moments she would be only the tired owner of the Arrowhead Ranch—in the tea gown of a debutante and with too much powder on one side of her nose—and she must have at least one cup of tea so corrosive that the Scotch whiskey she adds to it is but a merciful dilution. She now drank eagerly of the fearful brew, dulled the bite of it with smoke from a hurriedly built cigarette, and relaxed gratefully into one of those chairs which are ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson

... object and say that the air obtained according to Sec. 29 is perhaps nothing else than a dry acid of nitre converted into elastic vapours. But if this opinion had any foundation, this air should not only be corrosive, but should also produce nitre anew with alkalies. This, however, does not occur. Nevertheless, this objection would possess considerable weight were I not able to prove that several substances produce the same air as the acid of nitre does during distillation. But proof ...
— Discovery of Oxygen, Part 2 • Carl Wilhelm Scheele

... to oppose, not contrary argument, but the naked undeniable fact, the obvious testimony, the certain and irrefragable example. "Is it," he would ask them, "to repulse their enemies that certain caterpillars smear themselves with a corrosive product? But the larva of the Calosoma sycophanta, which feeds on the Processional caterpillar of the oak-tree, pays no heed to it, neither does the Dermestes, which feeds on the entrails of the Processional caterpillar of ...
— Fabre, Poet of Science • Dr. G.V. (C.V.) Legros

... that do not blind the vision, but reveal vistas, and that do not impress as high lights added for effect, but as organic parts of the whole. It scintillates with wit, though it lacks humor. It is the just medium of expression for his characters, those types of modern intellectuals, affected by the corrosive skepticism of the period and in turn buoyed by the light-hearted temperament and depressed by the passive melancholy that are indigenous to Vienna. It is this literary excellence that renders works like ...
— The German Classics, v. 20 - Masterpieces of German Literature • Various

... polished plate of metal. Georgiana assented; but, on looking at the result, was affrighted to find the features of the portrait blurred and indefinable; while the minute figure of a hand appeared where the cheek should have been. Aylmer snatched the metallic plate and threw it into a jar of corrosive acid. ...
— Mosses from an Old Manse and Other Stories • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... admiration for his genius as a writer. Nor was that feeling based on his books alone. So far as one could learn at the time, no great dissimilarity existed between the author and the man. We all remember Byron's corrosive remark on the sentimentalist Sterne, that he "whined over a dead ass, and allowed his mother to die of hunger." But Dickens' feelings were by no means confined to his pen. He was known to be a good father and a good ...
— Life of Charles Dickens • Frank Marzials

... account of a wound which he had received when he was a youth, some of the bones of his skull had to be removed, and from this time forth he never dared to remain long with his head uncovered. When he was fifty-nine he swallowed a certain corrosive poison, which did not kill him, but left him toothless. He was likewise round-shouldered, a stammerer, and subject to constant palpitation of the heart; but in compensation for these defects ...
— Jerome Cardan - A Biographical Study • William George Waters

... caused a sweet and innocent lady to marry you against her will—Oho, beyond doubt, your intentions were immaculate; but the outcome remains in its stark enormity, and the hand of an inquisitive child is not ordinarily salved by its previous ignorance as to the corrosive properties of fire. You have betrayed confiding womanhood, an act abhorrent to all notions of gentility. There is but one conclusive proof of your repentance.—Need I mention that I allude ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell

... I shall be sure I have done wrong in having applied a corrosive to eat away the proud flesh of a wound, that is not yet so thoroughly digested, as to bear a painful application, and requires balsam and a gentler treatment. But when we were at Bath, I remember what you said ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson

... altogether pleasant to be out of doors; but wood had to be chopped, and coal had to be brought in by the wagon-load. Roosevelt had a mine on his own ranch some three or four miles south of Chimney Butte. It was a vein of soft lignite laid bare in the side of a clay bluff by the corrosive action of the water, carving, through the centuries, the bed of the Little Missouri. He and his men brought the coal in the ranch-wagon over the frozen bed of the river. The wheels of the wagon creaked and sang in the bitter cold, ...
— Roosevelt in the Bad Lands • Hermann Hagedorn

... which, welling from the heart, Burns where its drop corrosive falls, And makes each nerve, in torture, start, At feelings it ...
— Poems • (AKA Charlotte, Emily and Anne Bronte) Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell

... Corrosion—Where there is a corrosive action because of the presence of acid in the water or of oil containing fatty acids which will decompose and cause pitting wherever the sludge can find a resting place, it may be overcome by the neutralization of the ...
— Steam, Its Generation and Use • Babcock & Wilcox Co.

... character. It is difficult to say whether the tragic or the comic predominated in the strange scene which was then acting. In the midst of all the great King's calamities, his passion for writing indifferent poetry grew stronger and stronger. Enemies all round him, despair in his heart, pills of corrosive sublimate hidden in his clothes, he poured forth hundreds upon hundreds of lines, hateful to gods and men, the insipid dregs of Voltaire's Hippocrene, the faint echo of the lyre of Chaulieu. It is amusing to compare what he did during the last months ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... is time the specimens should be preserved by plunging the dry plant in an alcoholic solution of corrosive sublimate (15 to 20 grammes for a litre of alcohol at 36 deg.), or to rub it with a pencil, then to dry it in a leaf of paper, which requires but a few instants. With this precaution, all the specimens sent may be preserved; and for ...
— Movement of the International Literary Exchanges, between France and North America from January 1845 to May, 1846 • Various

... wounds normal self-respect from injury fancied by oversensitiveness or feigned by arrogance; so that in its present form it is not the best safeguard of the sacred shrine of personality against invasion of ifs rights. If, as is claimed, it is some diversion from or fortification against corrosive sensuality, it has generally allied itself with excessive beer-drinking. Fencing, while an art susceptible of high development and valuable for both pose and poise, and requiring great quickness of eye, arm, and wrist, is unilateral and robbed ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall

... voice fell to a broken whisper, "there are some men to whom love is a passing breath, a gentle gale that beats on the face and sports in the hair, and then is gone. To me it is a wound, a deep, corrosive, inward wound ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine

... the rebellion itself, is one of the most repulsive in history. It is repulsive because you can watch, as it were, upon a dissecting-table the moral fibre of a people, from no inherent germ of decay, against reason, against nature, visibly wasting under a corrosive acid. Typical figures stand out: the strong figure of Fitzgibbon, voicing ascendancy in its crudest and ugliest form; at the other extreme the ardent but inadequate figure of Wolfe Tone, affirming in words which expressed the literal truth of the case that "to subvert the tyranny ...
— The Framework of Home Rule • Erskine Childers

... waves of the troubled waters break everywhere,—they run over the flat plains and sweep over the mountains of secular strength and outward might, and worldly kingdoms, and human polities and earthly institutions, acting on them all either by slow corrosive action at the base, or by the tossing floods swirling against them, until they shall be lost in the ocean of time. For 'the history of the world is the judgment of the world.' When He wills the plains are covered and mountains disappear, but one rock stands fast—'The ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... even in the very soil of this land of his, where the Etruscans had once quarried the tombs of their dead, and as an art motive it absorbed his whole feeling. When, later in life, material success came to invade his nature, its influence as a corrosive at once appears in his art creation. The touch of ideal beauty leaves his figures; drawing, colour, composition become mere hasty repetition of ...
— Perugino • Selwyn Brinton

... glass bottle which thrown on the glowing coals hinders the combustion and clogs up the smoke exhausts. You can also use acids to corrode boiler tubes; acid fumes will ruin cylinders and piston rods. A small quantity of some corrosive substance, a handful of emery will be the end of oil cups. When it comes to dynamos or transformers, short circuits and inversion of poles can be easily managed. Underground cables can be destroyed by fire, ...
— The Red Conspiracy • Joseph J. Mereto

... the pyramid of Cestius overshadows and the heart of Shelley consecrates,—by none of these familiar gates of death did Crawford pass on; but, in the meridian of his powers and his fame, in the climax of his artistic career, in the noontide of his most genial activity, a corrosive tumor on the inner side of the orbit of the eye encroached month by month, week by week, hour by hour, upon the sources of life. Medical skill freed the brain from its deadly pressure, but could not divert its organic affinity. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various

... hardened lava. No sprout or shrub was to be seen, not a blade of grass peeped forth by the way-side, not a bird flew past, but a strong sulphurous smell, as from among the craters in Solfatara, filled the air. The copper roof of the church shone with corrosive green. ...
— Pictures of Sweden • Hans Christian Andersen

... personal accent of furious passion; he hisses and grinds his teeth;[31147] Sometimes, on a change of scene, he affects to shed tears.[31148] But his wildest outbursts are less alarming than his affected sensibility. The festering grudges, corrosive envies and bitter scheming which have accumulated in his breast are astonishing. The gall bladder is full, and the extravasated gall overflows on the dead. He never tires of re-executing his guillotined adversaries, ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine

... better to cut deep and remove every trace of decayed wood than it is to leave a smaller hole in an unhealthy state. The inner surface of the cavity should then be covered with a coat of white lead paint, which acts as a disinfectant and helps to hold the filling. Corrosive sublimate or Bordeaux mixture may be used as a substitute for the white lead paint. A coat of coal tar over the paint is the next step. The cavity is then solidly packed with bricks, stones and mortar ...
— Studies of Trees • Jacob Joshua Levison

... off of itself. Where great discharge ensues wash it off sound parts, and grease them to prevent the skin coming off. Don't believe in what is called "proud flesh." The granulations of new flesh are always called so, and burnt off as fast as they grow by corrosive sublimate or "oils as'll cut a broomstick ...
— Hints on Horsemanship, to a Nephew and Niece - or, Common Sense and Common Errors in Common Riding • George Greenwood

... Street, alighted before me, and secreted himself within the portico. It was midnight, and the street was deserted. My carriage stopped, I got out, and it then drove on to the mews. I was in the act of opening the door with my latch-key when, by an unknown hand, there was flung full into my eyes some corrosive fluid which burned terribly, and caused me excruciating pain. I heard a man's exultant voice cry, 'There! I promised you that, and you have it!' The voice I recognised as that of the blackguard standing before you. Since that moment," ...
— The House of Whispers • William Le Queux

... the stomach. Gastric, or stomach, indigestion is the better name, because it actually signifies the true condition. It is indigestion that causes a child to vomit, though it is possible to have a true inflammation caused by the taking of irritant or corrosive drugs. ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Volume IV. (of IV.) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • Grant Hague

... there might not have been any space without him. He had been extremely versatile during his long career, having been responsible for the so-called eternal metals—metal against which no temperature, corrosive, or combinations of corrosives would prevail. He was also the pioneer of telepower, the science of control over things mechanical through the electronic emanations of thought waves. Because of his investigations into this power, men were able to ...
— Mr. Chipfellow's Jackpot • Dick Purcell

... steels carry about 3-1/2 per cent nickel. Nickel is used in all gun and armor-plate steels, and in practically all other good steels except tool steels. It is also extensively alloyed with other metals, particularly with copper to form the strong non-corrosive metal (monel metal) used for ship propellers and like purposes. Nickel is also used for electroplating, for nickel coins, for chemicals, etc. Of the total production about 60 per cent is used in steels, 20 per cent in non-ferrous alloys ...
— The Economic Aspect of Geology • C. K. Leith

... the projects should be approached with care since they involve corrosive or explosive ...
— Things To Make • Archibald Williams

... boracic acid; in adults, he uses iodoform-gauze dressings. He finds cases unite in from three to ten days. Dr. Bernheim warns us against using antiseptics on infants or young children, in connection with the after-dressing of circumcision. Neither phenic acid, corrosive sublimate, nor iodoform are well borne by these young subjects, and he has seen serious results follow upon as light an application as a 1/100 solution of phenic acid. In a number of cases he reports operating with the galvano-cautery of Chardin, instead of the knife. These operations were ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino

... that rocks are everywhere slowly wasting away. They are broken in pieces by frost, by tree roots, and by heat and cold. They dissolve and decompose under the chemical action of water and the various corrosive substances which it contains, leaving their insoluble residues as residual clays and sands upon the surface. As a result there is everywhere forming a mantle of rock waste which covers the land. ...
— The Elements of Geology • William Harmon Norton

... more often than not barely discernible, spectral vessels reeling and dipping in the haze. The ceaseless whistle of wind in the rigging was punctuated by long-drawn howls which must have filled any conscientious banshee with corrosive envy. ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph

... the idea of a voluntary interview. There was indeed another affair which had been contemporary with this, that had once more brought these mortal enemies into a state of contest, and had contributed to raise into a temper little short of madness, the already inflamed and corrosive ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin

... contingencies which modify the calculations and plans of the engineer. Here liability to sudden freshets, there to overwhelming tides, now to the enormous weight of railway-trains, and again to the corrosive influence of the elements, must be taken into consideration; the navigation of waters, the exigencies of war, the needs of a population, the respective uses of viaduct, aqueduct, and roadway, have often to be included in the problem. These considerations influence not only the method of construction, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 74, December, 1863 • Various

... and functions of society an ample population of its own—such a stately and wide-branching tree of patronage, though delightful to the individuals who are to pluck its golden apples, sheds, like the manchineel, unwholesome and corrosive dews on the multitude who are to rest beneath its shade. It need not, however, be doubted, that Sir Alexander Ball would exert himself to preclude any such intention, by stating and evincing the extreme impolicy and injustice of the plan, as well as its utter inutility ...
— Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit etc. • by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... disinfectants must of necessity be antiseptic in their action, but not all antiseptics are disinfectants even when used in strong doses. Disinfectants have no place in dairy work, except to destroy disease bacteria, or preserve milk for analytical purposes. Corrosive sublimate or potassium bichromate are most frequently used for these purposes. The so-called chemical preservatives used to "keep" milk depend for their effect on the inhibition of bacterial growth. With ...
— Outlines of Dairy Bacteriology, 8th edition - A Concise Manual for the Use of Students in Dairying • H. L. Russell

... and the absence of catholic traditions and associations act also as a corrosive on the faith of Catholics, particularly of our young people. Like a strong acid it eats away the teachings of good Christian parents and the impressions of a Catholic home. Only those who have seen at close range these sad soul transformations ...
— Catholic Problems in Western Canada • George Thomas Daly

... unprofitable and stupid way of travelling, we there took the canal-boat to Kendal, and passed pleasantly through a country of that soft, that refined and cultivated loveliness, which, however much we have heard of it, finds the American eye—accustomed to so much wildness, so much rudeness, such a corrosive action of man upon nature—wholly unprepared. I feel all the time as if in a sweet dream, and dread to be presently awakened by some rude jar or glare; but none comes, and here in Westmoreland—but wait a moment, before ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli

... had striven, who was striving still, to draw near to the gates of heaven, but who had not come upon the path which led up the mountain-side to them. Sorrow was stamped on the face, and something else, too—the seal of that corrosive disease of the soul, ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens

... not quick to believe that this was meant for insolence. Madame Merle was very rarely insolent, and only when it was exactly right. It was not right now, or at least it was not right yet. What touched Isabel like a drop of corrosive acid upon an open wound was the knowledge that Osmond dishonoured her in his words as well as in his thoughts. "Should you like to know how I judge ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 2 (of 2) • Henry James

... and hates to act, is big with catastrophe. We have now to see how the inevitable law accomplished itself in the case of Rousseau. In many this brooding egoism produces a silent and melancholy insanity; with him it was developed into something of acridly corrosive quality. One of the agents in this disastrous process was the wearing torture of one of the most painful of disorders. This disorder, arising from an internal malformation, harassed him from his ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley

... a certain assumption of proprietary right in the way that Sanderson assisted Kate with the golden-rod that Anna recognized. She knew it, and falseness of it burned through, her like so much corrosive acid. She stood with the upturned pail at her feet, unable to recover her composure, her bosom heaving high, her eyes dilating. She stood there, wild as a startled panther, uncertain whether to fight ...
— 'Way Down East - A Romance of New England Life • Joseph R. Grismer

... and, being a natural man, he chose deliberately to drink when and how he pleased. Others had noticed this peculiar habit of his, but not so Dowsett and Letton; and Daylight's secret thought was: "They sure wouldn't bat an eye if I called for a glass of corrosive sublimate." ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London

... it had received and taken calomel, but that, having eaten a small piece of pickle shortly before, the conjunction of the vegetable acid with the calomel had formed, in the child's stomach, a precipitate of corrosive sublimate, ...
— Courts and Criminals • Arthur Train

... after the lapse of aeons instead of years. The arts of fire were slowly elaborated until man had produced the crucible and the still, through which his labours culminated in metals purified, in acids vastly more corrosive than those of vegetation, in glass and porcelain equally resistant to flame and the electric wave. These were combined in an hour by Volta to build his cell, and in that hour began a new era for ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - Invention and Discovery • Various

... assert itself in the world. The ardent advocates of its azure rival, woad, struggled long before they would allow its adoption. In 1577 the German government officially prohibited the use of indigo, denouncing it as that pernicious, deceitful and corrosive substance, the Devil's dye. It had, indeed, a worse fate in England, where hard names were supplemented by harsh acts, for in 1581 it was not only pronounced anathema maranatha by act of Parliament, but the people were authorized to institute search for it in their neighbors' ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, April, 1876. • Various

... can transfer your day's notes to safe keeping in your tin box. The sun glasses should not be smoked or dark-you can do nothing with them-but of the new amberol, the sort that excludes the ultra-violet rays, but otherwise makes the world brighter and gayer. Spectacle frames of non-corrosive white metal, not steel, are ...
— The Land of Footprints • Stewart Edward White

... distilled from fluor spar and vitriolic acid, in silver or leaden vessels, the receiver being kept very cold during the distillation, it assumes the form of a dense fluid, and in that state is the most intensely corrosive substance known. This seems to be the acid combined with a little water. It may be called hydro-fluoric acid; and Sir H. Davy has been led, from some late experiments on the subject, to consider pure fluoric ...
— Conversations on Chemistry, V. 1-2 • Jane Marcet

... into and kept in the reduced state only by artificial means. Between these extremes there are all possible degrees of transition, some metals more nearly resembling the 'noble', others more nearly the 'corrosive', metals. ...
— Man or Matter • Ernst Lehrs



Words linked to "Corrosive" :   mordant, corrosive sublimate, vitriolic, sarcastic, chemical compound, destructive, caustic, corrode, compound, erosive



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