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Hot air   /hɑt ɛr/   Listen
Hot air

noun
1.
Air that has been heated and tends to rise.
2.
Loud and confused and empty talk.  Synonyms: empty talk, empty words, palaver, rhetoric.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Hot air" Quotes from Famous Books



... love-making," he went on. "Now there was Antony, who threw a world away. What's that! One world! I'd tell her I'd throw away a universe of worlds. Why not be extravagant! It's all," he laughed again softly, "it's all 'hot air,' anyway." ...
— Katrine • Elinor Macartney Lane

... all off by then, seein' as how I hadn't rung the bell at any crack. That's why I was so free with the hot air. Mr. Pepper, he squints at me good and hard, and then pushes ...
— Torchy • Sewell Ford

... All of which was true enough, and some of the first balloonists cast upon their fires substances like sulphur and pitch in order to produce a thicker smoke, which they believed had greater lifting power than ordinary hot air. ...
— Aircraft and Submarines - The Story of the Invention, Development, and Present-Day - Uses of War's Newest Weapons • Willis J. Abbot

... breathe; it was like inhaling flame. Sparks flew about in all directions, dense stifling smoke filled every room. Not a man remained in the hall, when Redwald rushed down the gallery, holding his breath, for the hot air scorched the lungs; when, just as he arrived, the staircase fell with a huge crash, and the flames shot up in his face, igniting hair and beard, and scorching his flesh. He rushed back to the opposite end of the passage, only to meet another blast of fire and smoke—for they had ...
— Edwy the Fair or the First Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake

... for us in this," said Edmund, at last. "We are being carried by the current into a region where the contending winds may play havoc. It is the place where the hot air from the sunward side begins to be chilled and to descend, meeting the colder air from the night side. It must form a veritable belt of storms, which may be as difficult to pass, circumstanced as we are, as the crystal ...
— A Columbus of Space • Garrett P. Serviss

... all this grandeur, Madariaga interrupted him. "Lies . . . nonsense . . . hot air!" The very idea of a gringo talking to him about nobility! . . . He had left Europe when very young in order to cast in his lot with the revolting democracies of America, and although nobility now seemed to him something out-of-date and incomprehensible, ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... of the ground The hot air trembles. In pale glittering haze Wavers the sky. Along the horizon's rim, Breaking its mist, are peaks of coppery clouds. Keen darts of light are shot from every leaf, And the whole landscape droops in sultriness. With languid ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various

... his furnaces at the moment; that was his pig-iron running out into the moulds as magically as an electric advertisement writes itself upon the London sky at night. The sense of possession is the foible of many who have won all they have; the ironmaster almost looked upon the hot air dancing over the white-hot bars as his too. The whole sulphurous prospect, once a green pasture, had long been his to all intents and purposes, and no second soul would ever take his pride in it; to his children it would never be more than the means of livelihood; ...
— The Camera Fiend • E.W. Hornung

... brainless men are disposed to seek out the effeminate and the frail in preference to the rugged and the well-endowed, then she must suffer the consequences. If a young lady, compelled to toil for support, will prefer the factory or the store, with its hot air and depressing associations, to work in the home, because she hopes in the store or factory to secure the hand and heart of a husband sooner than elsewhere, she must suffer accordingly. But if woman will unite in securing a reform ...
— The True Woman • Justin D. Fulton

... on, going for some distance in silence, the hot air of the valley being occasionally brushed from their faces by a cool breeze, which wound its way along ravines leading ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy

... 14 tons in December and 14 more in January. A. We are glad to receive these data, which correspond quite closely with some obtained by recent accurate experiments. The estimate given in the SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN also agrees well with experiments on the use of hot air heaters for very small buildings or rooms. Of course, the larger the space to be heated, the more economically it can generally ...
— Scientific American, Volume 40, No. 13, March 29, 1879 • Various

... into which they went was very warm. It was called the wire-room. A workman who was there told them that it was filled with hot air night and day, so that no damp should come in and spoil ...
— Chambers's Elementary Science Readers - Book I • Various

... constructed parachutes by which people could safely descend from great heights, but he made some attempts in the direction of ballooning. I have seen small bags of thin silk, covered with a fine varnish made of gum to render them air-tight, which, being inflated with hot air and properly ballasted, rose high above the earth, and were wafted out of sight by the wind. Many people supposed that in the course of time Solomon would be able to travel through the air, and from this idea was derived the tradition ...
— The Vizier of the Two-Horned Alexander • Frank R. Stockton

... Hot Air.—Hot air at 150 deg. C. destroys all bacteria, spores, etc:, in about thirty minutes; a momentary exposure to a temperature of 175 deg. to 180 deg. C. will effect the same result and offers the more convenient method of sterilisation. This method is only applicable to ...
— The Elements of Bacteriological Technique • John William Henry Eyre

... would happen? Why, they would have to hire a shed out in the suburbs of Albany for a headquarters, unless the Democratic National Committee put up for the campaign expenses. Tammany's got the votes and the cash. The Hill crowd's only got hot air. ...
— Plunkitt of Tammany Hall • George Washington Plunkitt

... and generous flues, with the result that the more wood was piled upon the blaze the more they blistered their toes and at the same time chilled their backs. For it is evident that when we secure such a strong, unobstructed current of hot air up the chimney, enough cool air to take its place must be drawn into the room through every opening and crevice. The result is a mighty draft that rushes past those unfortunate enough to be sitting about the fire and carries rapidly ...
— Making a Fireplace • Henry H. Saylor

... able, involves something more significant in education than merely the command of the tool we call reading. A teacher of a class in physics who suggested to his pupils that they find out which was the more economical way to heat their homes,—with hot air, with steam, or with hot water,—evidently hoped to have them use whatever power of investigation they possessed, as well as to have them come to understand and to remember the principles of physics which were involved. In many schools ...
— How to Teach • George Drayton Strayer and Naomi Norsworthy

... flung themselves upon the ground: there were the thundering roar of an earthquake, coupled with a deafening clatter, as though the whole place were falling about their ears, and a whirling hurricane of hot air and steam. ...
— The Triple Alliance • Harold Avery

... dry and warm. The Maple-leaf was not at all comfortable, high in the hot air, and he said to his mother, "Mother- tree, won't you let me go down by the ...
— The Story Hour • Nora A. Smith and Kate Douglas Wiggin

... they would burn his feet. So he leaped to the first rock and from there began jumping from one to the other in quick succession. A withering wave of heat at once enveloped him, and for a time he feared he would suffocate before he could cross the cavern; but he held his breath, to keep the hot air from his lungs, and maintained ...
— Rinkitink in Oz • L. Frank Baum

... electrical properties, which caused it to be repelled from the ground. It is scarcely necessary now to point out that the true cause of the upward tendency lay in the rarefaction of the air by the heat of the fire, and that hot air has a tendency to rise because its bulk is greatly increased beyond the same quantity of ...
— Up in the Clouds - Balloon Voyages • R.M. Ballantyne

... a great straw gypsy hat on her arm, by the strings, when she left Long Branch, which she bent down over her head like an umbrella with herself for a handle; over that she spread a broad yellow parasol that blazed in the hot air ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens

... established a short time ago and the Indians are not yet very friendly to them. The country was wilder, vaster and more barren than ever, with fewer streams and broader divides. Tantalizing showers flying across the distant mountains did not cool the dry, hot air. At noon we began to see a long detached ridge, an advanced post of the Rockies, called Rawhide Peak, and at night we camped on Rawhide Creek, a rather desolate stream, without timber, bordered only with shrubs and weeds. It seemed cheerful, however, upon its stony banks with ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various

... alarmed. It's only the signal that our time is up," said the Hatter. "We must get out now and make room for others who may wish to use the cars. Nobody can monopolise anything under our system. I will now take you to see our Gas and Hot Air Plant. It is one of the seven ...
— Alice in Blunderland - An Iridescent Dream • John Kendrick Bangs

... through unbroken forest oppressed by low brush and an underfooting of brakes. There had been hills. Our clothes were wringing wet, to the last stitch; even the leather of the tump-line was saturated. The hot air we gulped down did not seem to satisfy our craving for oxygen any more than lukewarm water ever seems to cut a real thirst. The woods were literally like an oven in their hot dryness. Finally we skirted a little hill, and at the base of that hill ...
— The Forest • Stewart Edward White

... 'innards' with a bayonet, and killing him by the gentler way of poisoning his liquor? What's the difference between poisoning the enemy's drinking water and poisoning the enemy's air with the new-fangled French explosive—Turpinite? It's all hot air talking of the enemy's barbarism—scratch the veneer off any of us and we're back into the stone age. If I had a free leg or free wing, I'd drop arsenic in every reservoir in Germany. Why, we're even prevented ...
— The Sequel - What the Great War will mean to Australia • George A. Taylor

... the introduction of hot water, hot air, and steam pipes, as a means of heating buildings, cuts off one avenue of danger from fire. This is an error. Iron pipes, often heated up to 400°, are placed in close contact with floors and skirting-boards, supported by ...
— Fires and Firemen • Anon.

... warming three rooms, at pleasure, with one fire. A small stove in the library will keep that comfortable. Or, in place of all this, the whole house may be heated by any of the approved modes, in the use of hot air, hot ...
— Woodward's Country Homes • George E. Woodward

... and they resolved to try whether a large balloon, some thirty-three feet in diameter, filled with smoke vapours, would rise in the air. Their experiment was successful. On the 5th of June 1783 they filled their balloon with smoke (and therefore with hot air) over a fire of chips and shavings; it rose easily, and travelled to a distance of about a mile and a half before it cooled and sank. The fame of this experiment quickly reached Paris, the centre of science and fashion, and awakened rivalry. Under the direction of Professor Charles, ...
— The War in the Air; Vol. 1 - The Part played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force • Walter Raleigh

... highest point of this section of the Coast Range. The air drank fresh with the cool of elevation. We went out to shoot supper; and so found ourselves on a little knoll fronting the brown-hazed east. As we stood there, enjoying the breeze after our climb, a great wave of hot air swept by us, filling our lungs with heat, scorching our faces as the breath of a furnace. Thus was brought to our minds what, in the excitement of a new country, we had forgotten,—that we were at last on the eastern slope, ...
— The Mountains • Stewart Edward White

... ashore. At once the reflected coolness of the water deserted us; the heady heat off the dusty land hit our flesh like the hot air from an oven; and a glare from the white, trampled dust and the white canvas tents troubled our eyes and set our temples aching. And the rolling hills, empty of growth, except grass burnt brown and thistles burnt yellow, gave us ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond

... William, but this car is hot!" I myself had been uncomfortably warm for some time, and had been dimly conscious, too, of the conductor frequently wiping his face, and casting anxious glances in the direction of the kitchen, whence came blasts of hot air heavily laden with the ...
— A Lover in Homespun - And Other Stories • F. Clifford Smith

... her round of solitude She used to haunt a dead sea-wood Where among boulders lifeless trees Stuck rigid fingers to the breeze— That stream of faint hot air that flits Aimless at noon. 'Tis there she sits Hour after hour, and as a dove Croons when her breast is ripe for love, So sings this exile, quiet, sad chants Of love, yet knows not what she wants; And ...
— Helen Redeemed and Other Poems • Maurice Hewlett

... Mexico, from whence this current comes, were a great caldron or boiler, on purpose to keep warm the North Atlantic, which is traversed by it for a distance of two thousand miles, as some large halls in winter are by hot air tubes. Its mean breadth being about two hundred leagues, it comprises an area larger than that of the whole Mediterranean, and may be deemed a sort of Mississippi of hot water flowing through the ocean; off ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville

... and flashes of light also came from the low hills on the shore. Here Mark Antony's soldiers were stationed, and the sunbeams reflected from the helmets, coats of mail, and lance-heads of the infantry, and the armour of the horsemen quivered with dazzling brilliancy in the hot air of the first day ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... should be followed: the assay should be mixed with metaphosphate of soda, formed by heating the microcosmic salt to dull redness. The mass must then be placed in an open glass tube, in such a position that there will be an access of hot air from the flame. Thus aqueous hydrofluoric acid is formed, which can be recognized by its smell being more suffocating than chlorine, and also by the etching produced by the condensation of vapor in the tube. Moist Brazil paper, applied to the extremity of the ...
— A System of Instruction in the Practical Use of the Blowpipe • Anonymous

... derisively. "That's all talk; hot air, you might say. Don't believe there's any truth in it, any more'n that story about ghosts, and queer noises that Herb and his crowd tell about. Anyhow, I never let a ...
— The Strange Cabin on Catamount Island • Lawrence J. Leslie

... from the window, and the hot air of the room again smote him. The smoking lamp had blackened the chimney, and as he bent to turn it down, he caught his reflection in a small mirror over the table. What the bruises and swelling had left undone the cheap mirror completed. He started back. Was ...
— Sandy • Alice Hegan Rice

... we can still plainly hear a distant cannonade sullenly booming in the hot air. We have breathing space, but they, poor devils are still being thundered at. No one can understand how they have ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale

... sound was unintelligible, for it was the first of the kind they had ever heard, but the young Indians appeared fully to understand its import. Starting from their lethargy, they sprang abruptly to their feet, and giving a sharp answering yell, stamped upon the green turf, and snuffed the hot air, with distended nostrils, like so many wild horses let loose upon the desert. Nor was the excitement confined to these, for, all along the line of encampment, the same wild notes were echoed, and forms came bounding again to the front, until the ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson

... The story is the same in every country. The separate dwelling, where it remains, is being absorbed into a system. In America, the experimental laboratory of the future, the houses are warmed from a common furnace. You do not light the fire, you turn on the hot air. Your dinner is brought round to you in a travelling oven. You subscribe for your valet or your lady's maid. Very soon the private establishment, with its staff of unorganised, quarrelling servants, of necessity either over or underworked, ...
— Tea-table Talk • Jerome K. Jerome

... floors. This is cholera. These people, lying so quietly upon their hard pillows, have cholera. It is not spectacular. All are poor folk, fishermen, sailors, farmers, shopkeepers, all the ignorant, the stupid, who were not afraid. One is dying. Nose pinched, gasping, bathed in sweat. The hot air can't warm ...
— Civilization - Tales of the Orient • Ellen Newbold La Motte

... thick and 2 inches wide. By using two laths nailed together the framework can be stiffened and larger trays made if desirable. This form can be suspended from the ceiling over the kitchen range or over a clear burning oil, gasoline, or gas stove, and it will utilize the hot air which rises during the cooking hour. It can be raised out of the way or swung to one side by a pulley or by a crane made of lath. When the stove is required for cooking, the frame is lowered or swung back to utilize the heat which otherwise would be wasted. Still ...
— Three Acres and Liberty • Bolton Hall

... were strolling about and losing their unity now came together, and joined each other in a long stare over the yellow and green patches of the heated landscape below. The hot air danced across it, making it impossible to see the roofs of a village on the plain distinctly. Even on the top of the mountain where a breeze played lightly, it was very hot, and the heat, the food, the immense space, and perhaps some less well-defined cause produced a comfortable drowsiness and ...
— The Voyage Out • Virginia Woolf

... bell up at Mr. Pettigrew's I has something besides hot air to shove at Perkins. He qualifies in the old fam'ly servant class right off, for as soon as he lamps the name printed on the envelope corner he swings the door wide open, and inside of two minutes I'm bein' announced impressive in the library ...
— Wilt Thou Torchy • Sewell Ford

... it was burning up, carried the stovepipe and the box of fuel upstairs. Then I returned for the stove, inside which the charcoal was now beginning to glow brightly. I fixed on the extra length of pipe and, with my hand, felt the stream of hot air—or rather hot carbon dioxide gas—pouring out of its mouth. I tried the pipe against the opening and found that it would rest comfortably on the lower edge; and then, very slowly and cautiously, I drew back the sliding panel about six inches. The ruffians were still wrangling ...
— The Uttermost Farthing - A Savant's Vendetta • R. Austin Freeman

... carpet or rug can be had, then take off your coat, shawl, or cloak and use it instead. Keep the flame as much as possible from the face, so as to prevent the entrance of the hot air into the lungs. This can be done by beginning at the neck and ...
— A Practical Physiology • Albert F. Blaisdell

... eight to twelve inches square) at the top and bottom of each room, opening into the chimney-flue: then, even if a stove is used, the flue can be kept heated by the extension of the stove-pipe some distance up within the chimney, and the ascending current of hot air will draw the foul air from the room into the flue. This, as before stated, must be completed by a fresh-air opening into the room on another side: if no other can be had, the top of the window may be lowered a little. The stove-pipe extension within the chimney would better be of cast-iron, ...
— The Easiest Way in Housekeeping and Cooking - Adapted to Domestic Use or Study in Classes • Helen Campbell

... Italian work by Bartolomeo Scappi, published first at Rome in 1572, and afterwards reprinted at Venice in 1622, which gives a complete account of the kitchens of the time and the utensils used in them. In the plates several roasting-jacks are represented, one worked by smoke or hot air and one by ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys

... hot air, such howls of utter fear and agony, as I hope never to hear again. The little figure, held high in the huge paws, writhed and tossed, to ...
— Astounding Stories, May, 1931 • Various

... announced the ill-tidings. No sooner were the words out of his mouth, than the shrieks of mothers, sisters, and babes, resounded through the hitherto silent cabin in the wildest confusion. Men were aroused from their dreaming cots to experience the hot air of the approaching fire. The pilot, being elevated on the hurricane deck, at the instant of perceiving the flames, put the head of the boat shoreward. She had scarcely got under good way in that direction, than the tiller ropes ...
— Diary in America, Series Two • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)

... above the wall glistened the white dome of a zowia, flanked by a spear-like minaret and the tall heads of a few date palms whose long leaves hung motionless in the hot air. ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini

... 1783 that Montgolfier conceived the idea of utilizing the lifting power of hot air and invited the Assembly of Vivarais to watch an exhibition of his invention, when a balloon, 10 feet in circumference, rose to a height of 6,000 feet in under ten minutes. This was followed by a demonstration before Louis XVI at Versailles, when a balloon carrying a sheep, a cock, and a duck, ...
— Aviation in Peace and War • Sir Frederick Hugh Sykes

... of modern knowledge, it seems strange that the brothers did not know that the reason the bags rose, was not because of any special gas being used, but owing to the expansion of air under the influence of heat, whereby hot air tends to rise. Every schoolboy above the age of twelve knows that hot air rises upwards in the atmosphere, and that it continues to rise until its temperature has become the same as that ...
— The Mastery of the Air • William J. Claxton

... become more savage and uncontrollable than any one. I suppose it was the irritating, monotonous sound of the war drum that did it, jarring my nerves, and the peculiar Indian odor in the stifling hot air of the close room, enhanced by the exhilarating sensation of threatening danger, and that in the presence of the adored sex. Assuredly all this was more than enough to set me off, as I am naturally impulsive and ...
— Tales of Aztlan • George Hartmann

... forty-seven minutes the steak was not only dressed, but almost dry. Another beef-steak, similarly placed, was rather overdone in thirty-three minutes. In the evening, when the heat was still more elevated, a third beef-steak was laid in the same place, and as they had noticed that the effect of the hot air was greatly increased by putting it in motion, they blew upon the steak with a pair of bellows, and thus hastened the dressing of it to such a degree, that the greatest portion of it was found to be pretty well ...
— The Miracle Mongers, an Expos • Harry Houdini

... Nick Johnson and Johnnie Morgan to be at the window. A rough bench was drawn up near the opening, and the two knelt thereon and let the hot air—cool compared with the general atmosphere of the prison—blow softly on their faces. They were not allowed to put their heads too near the blessed inlet, for that would shut out the light from their comrades. Their joint occupation of the room had been lengthy ...
— Sea-Dogs All! - A Tale of Forest and Sea • Tom Bevan

... laughing, and finally tore himself away. And when he stepped from the car outside of Blake's Restaurant and was met by a blast of hot air, laden with the breath of fried onions, he felt himself very much alone. He ate his supper dreamily and retrospectively. The vacant chair across the little table added to the plaintiveness. He had liver and onions and a chocolate eclair and ...
— Stubble • George Looms

... the rush of hot air, pent upon the winding stair, drawn downward by the draught from the open door, catches his breath. He staggers against the wall. Then the strong man shook himself together—again ...
— The Italians • Frances Elliot

... understand what happened, I must first explain a bit about the nature of the hot air balloon which is used for parachute jumping. If you have ever witnessed such a jump, you will remember that directly the parachute was cut loose the balloon turned upside down, emptied itself of its smoke and heated air, flattened out and fell straight down, ...
— Dutch Courage and Other Stories • Jack London

... "But that's all hot air. She's running with the University boys, that's what she's doing. She needs lots of sleep and can't go to the theatre with me, but she can dance all hours with them. I've heard it pretty straight that she goes to all ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London

... about noon, as the hot air quivered over the plain, the blue and red uniforms of the enemy's cavalry appeared in sight. They approached, a vast horde thronging up in the distance. Column after column of infantry appeared following the ...
— The Young Rajah • W.H.G. Kingston

... sunlight. Shining drifts from the outlying sand dunes, blown across the ill-paved roadway, radiated the heat in the faces of the few loungers like the pricking of liliputian arrows, and invaded even the cactus hedges. The hot air visibly quivered over the dark red tiles of the tienda roof as if they were undergoing a second burning. The black shadow of a chimney on the whitewashed adobe wall was like a door or cavernous opening in ...
— A Protegee of Jack Hamlin's and Other Stories • Bret Harte

... converting heat into motive power, has up to the present met with little success. This is due to the fact that the arrangement of the motors of this class that have hitherto been constructed has been such as to render them but slightly practical. In the Benier hot air engine (illustrated herewith), however, obstacles that were once considered insurmountable have been overcome, and the motor presents many advantages over all the types that have preceded it. Among such advantages we shall cite the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 623, December 10, 1887 • Various

... remarkable method of communication. Each fire was set smoking fiercely a few seconds after its neighbour had started. Finally, the columns of smoke united, and ascended together in the form of a huge pyramid, going up a tremendous height into the still, hot air. The meaning of these signals was explained to me. They indicated to the people on the mainland that the advance guard had found Gunda and his family; that they had a great man with them; and that, furthermore, they might expect us to return all together almost immediately. By this time, thanks ...
— The Adventures of Louis de Rougemont - as told by Himself • Louis de Rougemont

... of truth in that, Mr. Hastings," said Kelly, who was nothing if not judicial. "But Dorn's mighty plausible. I hear sensible men saying there's something more'n hot air in his facts and figgures." Kelly paused, and ...
— The Conflict • David Graham Phillips

... discourse on such a sorrowful subject, For men's hearts are easily overshadow'd by terror, And by care, more odious far to me than misfortune. Now let us go to a cooler place, the little back-parlour; There the sun never shines, and the walls are so thick that the hot air Never can enter; and mother shall forthwith bring us a glass each Full of fine Eighty-three, well fitted to drive away trouble. This is a bad place for drinking; the flies will hum round the glasses." So they all went inside, enjoying themselves in the coolness. Then in a well-cut flask the mother ...
— The Poems of Goethe • Goethe

... being taken off when it ascends the sides of mountains; it at the same time attracts heat from the summits of those mountains, or other bodies which happen to be immersed in it, and thus produces cold. Hence he concludes that the hot air at the bottom of the Andes becomes temperate by its own rarefaction when it ascends to the city of Quito; and by its further rarefaction becomes cooled to the freezing point when it ascends to the snowy regions on the summits ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin

... fierce in its intensity. Bob, in common with the others, had given up trying—or indeed caring—to protect himself. His clothes smoked, his face smarted and burned, his skin burned and blistered. He breathed the hot air in gasps. Strangely enough, he did not feel ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White

... his speech when, right beside our boat, an old bull whale showed his nose out of the water and sent a blast of hot air out of his spout-holes, which was blown back ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten

... these railroad properties," he went on. "We must make Pendleton and Halliday bid each other up to our figure. And there'll be no 'salting down' done, either—yet awhile. I hope things won't shrink too much in the washing; but the real-estate hot air of the past few years must cause some trouble when the payments deferred begin to make the heart sick. The Trust Company will be called on to make good some of its guaranties—and must do it. The banks must be kept strong; and with two millions to sweeten the pot we shall be with 'em to the finish. ...
— Aladdin & Co. - A Romance of Yankee Magic • Herbert Quick

... little house that Jess had learned to love as she had never loved a spot before, but around them lay the flood of sunshine shimmering like golden water; and beyond the red line of the fence at the end of the garden, where the rich pomegranate bloom tried to blush the roses down, the hot air danced merrily above the rough stone wall like a million microscopic elves at play. Peace! everywhere was peace! and in it the full heart of Nature beat out in radiant life. Peace in the voice of the turtle-doves among the willows! peace in the play of ...
— Jess • H. Rider Haggard

... out of it. Now and then he shouted, "Ho! Any one there?" No one answered. The rooms never came to an end. All was deserted, silent, splendid, sinister. It realized the fables of enchanted castles. Hidden pipes of hot air maintained a summer temperature in the building. It was as if some magician had caught up the month of June and imprisoned it in a labyrinth. There were pleasant odours now and then, and he crossed currents of perfume, as though ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo

... there, as he passes through the air at the rate of twenty miles an hour, finds himself chilled to the very bones. That is my first complaint. But as the boats are made for Americans, and as Americans like hot air, I do not put it forward with any idea that a change ought to be effected. My second complaint is equally unreasonable, and is quite as incapable of a remedy as the first. Nine-tenths of the travelers carry children with them. They are not tourists engaged ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope

... him the greatest discomfort. The disgust with which the pork shop had filled him came back in a still more intolerable fashion. He almost sickened as he passed these masses of fish, which, despite all the water lavished upon them, turned bad under a sudden whiff of hot air. Even when he shut himself up in his office his discomfort continued, for the abominable odour forced its way through the chinks in the woodwork of the window and door. When the sky was grey and leaden, the little room remained quite dark; and then ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola

... I'm so hot, and it doesn't get cool at night. And the food is so hot too and so greasy, and the pallid young man with the red mouth who sits opposite me at dinner melts visibly and continuously all the time, and Wanda coming round with the dishes is like the coming of a blast of hot air. Kloster says I'm working too much, and wants me to practise less. I said I didn't see that practising less would make Wanda and the young man cooler. I did try it one day when my head ached, and you've no idea what a long day it seemed. So empty. Nothing to do. Only Berlin. And one ...
— Christine • Alice Cholmondeley

... her strength Katherine hauled at the rope. She was sitting now with her feet braced against the thwarts, and with every muscle tense she strained and strained until the perspiration streamed down her face, and the hot air of the swamp as it rose up seemed to ...
— A Countess from Canada - A Story of Life in the Backwoods • Bessie Marchant

... we might make a sort of stage about four feet above the fire and keep some logs up there. We might pile them so that the hot air and smoke could go up through them. They would dry a great deal faster there than merely lying down on ...
— In The Heart Of The Rockies • G. A. Henty

... keep some experiments on different kinds of plants in there at special low temperatures. You might have let in hot air ...
— The Revolt on Venus • Carey Rockwell

... under some circumstances, due to structural conditions, will be found more suitable. Anyway, whatever the position of the stove, allowance must be made for a temperature up to 400 deg. F. to be raised. In old-fashioned ovens the heat is applied by means of external flues, in which hot air or steam is circulated, but this system is generally unsatisfactory, the supply of heat having to be controlled by dampers or stop-cocks, and this has given place to the gas apparatus. Another simple form of oven, though not one which I shall recommend, ...
— Handbook on Japanning: 2nd Edition - For Ironware, Tinware, Wood, Etc. With Sections on Tinplating and - Galvanizing • William N. Brown

... heartily, and the little party moved on as well as they could for the great fissures about the rim, some of which went down into profound depths, from whence rose up strange hissings and whisperings of escaping gases, and breathings of intensely hot air. ...
— Fire Island - Being the Adventures of Uncertain Naturalists in an Unknown Track • G. Manville Fenn

... ironing-blankets; a mangle in one corner, and clothes-horses for drying and airing; cupboards for holding the various irons, starch, and other articles used in ironing; a hot-plate built in the chimney, with furnace beneath it for heating the irons; sometimes arranged with a flue for carrying the hot air round the room for drying. Where this is the case, however, there should be a funnel in the ceiling for ventilation and carrying off steam; but a better arrangement is to have a hot-air closet adjoining, heated by hot-air pipes, and lined with iron, with proper arrangements ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton

... requires to keep himself up because he has to get along. The buoyancy might have been given at once, if nature had wanted that only; she might have blown the feathers up with the hot air of the breath, till the bird rose in air like a cork in water. But it has to be, not a buoyant cork, but a buoyant bullet. And therefore that it may have momentum for pace, it must have weight to carry; and to carry that weight, the wings must deliver their blow ...
— Love's Meinie - Three Lectures on Greek and English Birds • John Ruskin

... in Manitou, through which the Indian tribes were wont noiselessly to defile when on the war-path in the brave days of old; gorges where currents of hot air breathe in your face like the breath of some fierce animal. There are brilliant and noisy cataracts and cascades that silver the rocks with spray; and a huge winding cavern filled with mice and filth and the blackness of darkness, and out of which one emerges looking like a tramp ...
— Over the Rocky Mountains to Alaska • Charles Warren Stoddard

... Tenth, Eleventh and Fourteenth Alabama Regiments, to the left and occupied the ravine. There was no shade or water in this ravine, while the men were exposed nearly four hours to a scorching sun. The heat was almost beyond human endurance. Strong men fainted and were carried to the rear. The waves of hot air at times were almost suffocating. For the first and only time the men were told what was expected of them. General Saunders explained the situation to the officers of the regiments. Each captain spoke to his men, urging them to retake the salient, or Petersburg ...
— The Black Phalanx - African American soldiers in the War of Independence, the - War of 1812, and the Civil War • Joseph T. Wilson

... was hidden in the haze where the gray day and the white night were mixed. Across the bottom on the dim, watery green of the eastern slope, the thorn trees were in flower. The hot air held them like still water. It quivered invisibly, loosening their scent and scattering it. And of a sudden she saw them as if thrown back to a distance where they stood enchanted in a great stillness and clearness ...
— The Three Sisters • May Sinclair

... a pile of exercise-books. The sweat streamed from her sallow forehead, and her face was white and drawn. She could give no rational account of herself, but offered two hypotheses as equally satisfactory; either she had taken a bad chill, or else the hot air from the water-pipes had turned her faint. Rhoda picked up the pile of exercise-books and led her into the dressing-room, and Miss Quincey was docile and ridiculously grateful. She was glad that Miss Vivian ...
— Superseded • May Sinclair

... retained more, and becomes converted, by the agency of the heat, into an empyreumatic oil, which renders the meat less fitted for delicate stomachs, and more difficult to digest. The meat is, in fact, partly boiled in its own confined water, and partly roasted by the dry, hot air of the oven. The loss by baking has not been estimated and reduced to ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous

... more and he would have been safe. But hardly were his legs over the rail when the explosion came. There was a stunning shock, the whole ship seemed to melt beneath him. A blast of hot air struck him, and the next thing he knew ...
— On Land And Sea At The Dardanelles • Thomas Charles Bridges

... fire, I have a word to say of earthly, artificial fires. Furnaces, whether of hot water, steam, or hot air, are all healthy and admirable provisions for warming our houses during the eight or nine months of our year that we must have artificial heat, if only, as I have said, fireplaces keep up a current ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various

... "there is no difficulty about that. The vapor from a fire is carried up by the warm air, no doubt. Air swells when it is heated, and so becomes lighter, and rises; and the hot air from the top of the chimney carries the vapor up with it, no doubt. After it rises a little way, and becomes cool, it ceases to ascend, but floats away horizontally. Perhaps it begins to descend when it gets cool, though very slowly; and perhaps all clouds are really descending ...
— Rollo's Philosophy. [Air] • Jacob Abbott

... atoms of the air near the earth apart and make it lighter; so that the air close to the surface of the heated ground becomes less heavy than the air above it, and rises just as a cork rises in water. You know that hot air rises in the chimney; for if you put a piece of lighted paper on the fire it is carried up by the draught of air, often even before it can ignite. Now just as the hot air rises from the fire, so ...
— The Fairy-Land of Science • Arabella B. Buckley

... russet tufts of summer grass, I watch the world through hot air as through glass, And by my face ...
— Poems of To-Day: an Anthology • Various

... as a man's head, that knotted themselves together in the sun. There is a certain herb which snakes do not love which we rubbed on our ankles, but we could hear them rustle and hiss as we ran, and the hot air was all a-click and a-glitter with insects' wings; ... also there were trumpet flowers, dusky-throated, that made me think of my girl at Flint Ridge... Then we would come out on long ridges where oak and hickory shouldered one another like the round-backed ...
— The Trail Book • Mary Austin et al

... with due ceremony—it would decide which of them were to have the distinction of being the first Terrestrians to set foot on Venus. Arcot and Morey won, and they quickly put on the loose-fitting ventilated cooling suits that they might live comfortably in the hot air outside—for the thermometer registered ...
— The Black Star Passes • John W Campbell

... do anything of the kind," protested Marny. "Joppy's all right—best lad I know. Let him talk; doesn't hurt anybody and keeps everything alive. A little hot air now and then ...
— The Veiled Lady - and Other Men and Women • F. Hopkinson Smith

... established, they at last began their descent down the deep shaft into the tomb. The hot air which ascended in puffs from the depths below scorched their faces. Meg felt stifled. Still hotter air met them as ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer

... twinkle overhead, the mosquito sings through the hot air, the village dogs bark at imaginary foes, and from one crowded nest after another rises a childish voice telling some tale, old yet ever new,—tales that were told in the sunrise of the world, and will be told in ...
— Tales Of The Punjab • Flora Annie Steel

... 48 ft. the walls were spanned between with steel plates. This area was used for heating sand. Another space of 48 ft. was covered with 1 in. steel rods arranged to form a grid; this space was used for heating the broken stones. The grid proved especially efficient, as it permitted the hot air to pass up through the stones, while a small cleaning door at the ground allowed the screenings which dropped through the grid to be raked out and added to the mixture. A fire from barrel staves and refuse wood built under the tank end was sufficient ...
— Concrete Construction - Methods and Costs • Halbert P. Gillette

... gave me a quiet happiness never known before. The nights brought the greater light; but the days too had their glories. I would climb the rugged sides of the mountain, and emerging into a colder world sit beneath an overhanging rock and see the hot air quivering over leagues of plain; while in the nearer distance, far down beneath my feet, the rice-fields shone like emerald and the palm-fringed pools like shields of silver. Or I would stretch myself at early afternoon ...
— Apologia Diffidentis • W. Compton Leith

... rush and a roar and a rattle and a long dazzling flash of lighted carriage windows, a smell of smoke, and blast of hot air, the train hurtled by, clanging and jangling and echoing in the vaulted roof of the tunnel. Phyllis and Bobbie clung to each other. Even Peter caught hold of Bobbie's arm, "in case she should be ...
— The Railway Children • E. Nesbit

... inserting a permanent plug of cotton wool in one of the leading tubes. The efficiency of this method is greatly increased by using about one foot of thin copper tube, bent into a helix, and heated by means of a Bunsen burner; the hot air (previously filtered) is passed directly into the flask, bottle, or whatever the apparatus may be. This has proved so convenient that a copper coil is now permanently fastened to the wall in one of ...
— On Laboratory Arts • Richard Threlfall

... drily proses, Creaking the hot air to sleep, Bounteous orange flowers and roses, Yield the wealth of love they keep, To the sun's imperious ardour in ...
— What I Remember, Volume 2 • Thomas Adolphus Trollope

... midshipman, was of course a gunner. While training a quarter-deck gun on the Trekroner battery his hat was blown from his head and he was knocked down by the rush of wind from a grapeshot. Seeing this, Brock exclaimed, "Ah, poor Savery! He is indeed dead." But, to use his own words, it was only "the hot air from the projectile that had 'floored' him." Previous to this he had driven Isaac almost demented by stating his intention of joining the storming party and sharing his brother's danger. "Is it not enough that one ...
— The Story of Isaac Brock - Hero, Defender and Saviour of Upper Canada, 1812 • Walter R. Nursey

... odd, nameless trifles, bought for the sake of buying, because they were cheap. A babel of broken conversation, questions and replies, jests and laughter, drowned the cries of the dealers, and a strong, penetrating odour of human sweat rose on the hot air. From time to time a block occurred, and the crowd stood motionless, waiting patiently until they could move ahead. In one of these sudden blocks Chook, who was craning his neck to watch the vegetable stalls, felt someone pushing, ...
— Jonah • Louis Stone

... could have heard you say that. If you wouldn't come in for the running of your life my name's not Polly Howland. You'd suit some of the boys back yonder, but not our bunch. Of all the hot air! Stella, is ...
— Peggy Stewart at School • Gabrielle E. Jackson

... lowered, by the admission of air, to about 350 deg. C., and the air stream containing the small percentage of chlorine is led off to a second cylinder of pills, which have just been treated with ammonium chloride vapour and are ready for the hot air current. With four cylinders the process is continuous (L. Mond, British ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various

... deep pink. Not enough of red to suggest the sensual, nor yet lacking in it when the full moment of ripeness comes. How delicately pink it is, and yet how unfadingly it stands the summer's sun, the hot air, the drought! How quickly it responds to the Autumn showers, and long after the honeysuckle has died, and the bees have forgotten its rank memory, this beautiful creature of love blooms in the ...
— The Bishop of Cottontown - A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills • John Trotwood Moore

... set a hot glass upside down on the oilcloth table cover, the oilcloth bulges up into it when the hot air and steam shrink and leave a partial ...
— Common Science • Carleton W. Washburne

... bread which repaid the toil of heart and brain from the coarse palms which offered it in the world's rude market. It was not for herself alone that she had bartered away the life of her youth, that she had breathed the hot air of schoolrooms, that she had forced her intelligence to posture before her will, as the exigencies of her place required,—waking to mental labor,—sleeping to dream of problems,—rolling up the stone of education for an endless ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... bathing-day—a cold, damp April day. No steam on; I tried the radiators, but there was no hot air to come. The young teacher—in whom I was so much interested, and whose name I will not give here, as she always begged me not to mention her name—she stood with me at the radiator trying to find some heat. The Doctor came in and I say, "Doctor, ...
— Diary Written in the Provincial Lunatic Asylum • Mary Huestis Pengilly

... time will be of no service, for the gases being comparatively cool cannot be burned unless the air is highly heated. After all the moisture has been driven off from the coal, the distillation of hydrocarbons begins, and a considerable portion of them escapes unburned, owing to the deficiency of hot air, and to their being chilled by the relatively cool heating surfaces of the boiler. During all this time great volumes of smoke are escaping from the chimney, together with unburned hydrogen, hydrocarbons, and carbonic oxide, all fuel gases, while at the same time soot ...
— Steam, Its Generation and Use • Babcock & Wilcox Co.

... one, therefore, who may happen to receive a burn, apply ink to it immediately, and he will soon witness the good effects of the application. Thirty-three years' experience has proved to me that stoves in any school are a nuisance: the common fire place is better than heating with hot air, hot water, or stoves of any description that I have yet seen. The grate being low, as at railway stations, is an improvement and answers well. Had theorists seen the white faced dull eyed children that I have seen, where stoves ...
— The Infant System - For Developing the Intellectual and Moral Powers of all Children, - from One to Seven years of Age • Samuel Wilderspin

... white-frocked girls, the respectful gardeners, the red motor-buses flitting past behind the screen of bushes in the distance, even the butler in his majestic and invulnerable self-conceit—the whole systematized scene of correctness and tradition trembled as if perceived through the quivering of hot air. Gladys, reliant on the male and feeling that the male could no longer be relied on, went 'off her game,' with apologies; the experience of Miss Horton asserted itself, and the hard-fought set was lost by George and his partner. He reminded the company that he had only come ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett

... your fingers off to buy coal to heat the house if you go an' let out all the hot air over night?" she demanded. "They've filled up yer head with fool notions, but I tell you right now, you ain't goin' to work 'em off on us. You kin just tell that old maid Stanley that when she's had three husbands and five children an' a step, an' managed to live on less'n ...
— Calvary Alley • Alice Hegan Rice

... The hot air scorched like a furnace blast From the very mouth of Hell: — The blue gums caught and blazed on high Like flaming pillars into the sky; . . . The grey horse ...
— An Anthology of Australian Verse • Bertram Stevens

... by his paws and hind feet, he swung him to and fro. Then as the wolf swung toward the red flames, Iktomi let him go. Once again the coyote fell through space. Hot air smote his nostrils. He saw red dancing fire, and now he struck a bed of cracking embers. With a quick turn he leaped out of the flames. From his heels were scattered a shower of red coals upon Iktomi's bare arms and shoulders. Dumbfounded, Iktomi thought he saw a spirit ...
— Old Indian Legends • Zitkala-Sa



Words linked to "Hot air" :   hokum, palaver, empty talk, air, nonsense, nonsensicality, meaninglessness, bunk



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