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Impact   /ɪmpˈækt/  /ˈɪmpækt/   Listen
Impact

verb
(past & past part. impacted; pres. part. impacting)
1.
Press or wedge together; pack together.
2.
Have an effect upon.  Synonyms: affect, bear on, bear upon, touch, touch on.



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"Impact" Quotes from Famous Books



... announced by the steamship company to apply to the Titan: She would steam at full speed in fog, storm, and sunshine, and on the Northern Lane Route, winter and summer, for the following good and substantial reasons: First, that if another craft should strike her, the force of the impact would be distributed over a larger area if the Titan had full headway, and the brunt of the damage would be borne by the other. Second, that if the Titan was the aggressor she would certainly destroy ...
— The Wreck of the Titan - or, Futility • Morgan Robertson

... as the two men met—and the other reeled back before the impact. Onto him Jimmie Dale sprang, and his hands flew for the other's throat. It was an officer in uniform! Jimmie Dale had felt the brass buttons as they locked. In the darkness there was a queer smile on Jimmie Dale's tight lips. It was no doubt THE officer whom he ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard

... was springing at him, and the weight of his impact drove the man back for a yard or two; but he recovered himself, got a grip, and then a desperate struggle commenced at the edge of the rugged shelf of rock just where the kopje went down for some fifty feet almost perpendicularly, while a pile of heaped-up fragments which had ...
— The Kopje Garrison - A Story of the Boer War • George Manville Fenn

... substance, filling all space, which can vibrate as light, which can be sheared into positive and negative electricity, which in whirls constitutes matter, and which transmits by continuity and not impact every action and reaction of which matter ...
— Ancient and Modern Physics • Thomas E. Willson

... observe that the breath moves lazily out of the mouth and curls upward not more than an inch from the face. The idea that this breath, which has not a particle of force after leaving the vocal cords, can be directed against the hard palate with an impact sufficient to affect tone quality is the limit of absurdity. If the writer had spoken of directing the sound waves to the front of the mouth there would have been an element of reasonableness in it, for sound waves can be reflected as well as light waves; but breath and sound ...
— The Head Voice and Other Problems - Practical Talks on Singing • D. A. Clippinger

... gun and the passing of the shot. The deck of the monitor, being almost awash, was no mark at all for the artillerists in the fort, and it would be the merest chance if a ricochet shot struck it. If it did, the very low angle of impact made it fly off without doing any harm. The turret was dented with some centre shots, as I saw when I visited the vessel later, but it was practically impregnable to the ordnance the Confederates used. On the other hand, the direct fire from the ship was limited in its effect to the ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V2 • Jacob Dolson Cox

... from within indicated that his presence had been observed. The next instant two maids tried to issue from the door at the same instant and stuck there in the doorway, fighting to get out, until both were shot out as from the mouth of a cannon by the impact of the body of a man, coming behind them down the stairs. They rolled down the steps, picked themselves up, and rushed out of the gate and up the street, closely followed by the man in shirt sleeves, shouting wildly that it was only a drop he had taken for ...
— The Campfire Girls Go Motoring • Hildegard G. Frey

... all that she had heard on this subject from the Percival family flashed through Darsie's brain. The gates were frail, so eaten by long action of water, that at the impact of a heavy mass they would almost certainly burst apart, and then—what would happen to the punt and to its hapless occupant? Would she be hurled against a broken boulder, wedged helplessly beneath the debris, or rushed forward ...
— A College Girl • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... one among many present things—one competitor among others, all of which are equal and some of which seem better. 'Whoever speaks two languages is a rascal,' says the saying, and it rightly represents the feeling of primitive communities when the sudden impact of new thoughts and new examples breaks down the compact despotism of the single consecrated code, and leaves pliant and impressible man—such as he then is—to follow his unpleasant will without distinct guidance by hereditary morality and hereditary ...
— Physics and Politics, or, Thoughts on the application of the principles of "natural selection" and "inheritance" to political society • Walter Bagehot

... a bell ring twice, and then to his horror the boat changed her course. It was barely two hundred yards away, and bore straight down on him. He dived and swam for his life to avoid direct impact.... At that moment a man saw him and yelled out something to the Captain. The latter peered over the ...
— Colorado Jim • George Goodchild

... the form of Captain Grantly, who grunted at the impact. Then, as Lieutenant Larson tried to get up, he, too, was bowled over by a rush of some ...
— Dick Hamilton's Airship - or, A Young Millionaire in the Clouds • Howard R. Garis

... he dropped into the saddle. With both hands he clung to the horn. Up went the bronco on its hind legs. It pitched, bucked, sun-fished. In sheer terror Bob clung like a leech. The animal left the ground and jolted down stiff-legged on all fours. The impact was terrific. He felt as though a piledriver had fallen on his head and propelled his vital organs together like a concertina. Before he could set himself the sorrel went up again with a weaving, humpbacked twist. The rider ...
— The Fighting Edge • William MacLeod Raine

... up again. Even ships that carried towers he would dash one upon another; he would pull them up and [Sidenote: (FRAG. 56^31?)] LIFTING THEM HIGH WOULD LET GO ALL IN A MASS so that when they fell into the water they were sunk by the impact. At last in an incredible manner he destroyed the whole Roman fleet by conflagration. By tilting a kind of mirror toward the sun he concentrated the sun's beams on it; and as the thickness and smoothness of the mirror cooeperated to ignite the air from these beams he kindled a great ...
— Dio's Rome, Volume 1 (of 6) • Cassius Dio

... hastily as he might, he saw nothing, heard nothing, heard nothing but the electric bells on the floors above and floors below calling for the elevator: "buzz, buzz—buzz; buzz, buzz—buzz." He walked along State Street at the busy hour of noon and all about him in the throngs was the dull impact of canes upon the pavement, "thud, thud—thud; thud, thud—thud." As he rode home in the street car at nightfall, back of him in the train at street corner after corner he heard passengers jingle the bell for stopping, "ding, ...
— The Strange Adventures of Mr. Middleton • Wardon Allan Curtis

... Andy Green lives to tell lies," snapped Pink, throwing the saddle on his horse with a grunt at the weight of it. The horse flinched away from its impact, and Pink swore at it viciously. "Yuh might uh gone down and made sure, ...
— The Happy Family • Bertha Muzzy Bower

... the Protocol on Environmental Protection to the Antarctic Treaty was signed 4 October 1991 and entered into force 14 January 1998; this agreement provides for the protection of the Antarctic environment through five specific annexes: 1) marine pollution, 2) fauna and flora, 3) environmental impact assessments, 4) waste management, and 5) protected area management; it prohibits all activities relating to mineral ...
— The 2001 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... be manufactured by artificial light, as exposure to sunlight always results in an explosion. You have noticed that their bullets explode when they strike an object? Well, the opaque, outer coating is broken by the impact, exposing a glass cylinder, almost solid, in the forward end of which is a minute particle of radium powder. The moment the sunlight, even though diffused, strikes this powder it explodes with a violence which nothing can withstand. If you ever witness a night battle you will note the absence ...
— A Princess of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... instantaneous lifting and bending of the legs under the horse, the first to touch it is that of one of the hind legs (Pl. I, fig. 4), which is pushed very far forward, forming an acute angle with the body. The shock of the horse's impact on the ground is thus received by the hind leg, which reaches obliquely forward beneath the body like an elastic <- spring. Since the instantaneous photographs have become generally known artists have ceased to represent the ...
— More Science From an Easy Chair • Sir E. Ray (Edwin Ray) Lankester

... when, owing to the sudden and violent lurch of the ship, he had been hurled athwart the deck and against the lee rail of the poop, the impact of his body upon the hard wood was so severe that the breath was completely knocked out of him, while the pain must have been so great as practically to paralyse him for the moment and render him quite unable to do anything to help himself. Hence the probability was that, ...
— The First Mate - The Story of a Strange Cruise • Harry Collingwood

... strange, said the young lady, passing with startling suddenness from Sentiment to Science, "that the mere impact of certain coloured rays upon the Retina should give us ...
— Sylvie and Bruno • Lewis Carroll

... she was scrubbing him, to drive her spoken condemnations home. Accordingly, it was a long, long time of duplex agony before the spanking finally achieved itself, and Scott, clean, but tingling from the slipper's impact, was told to go out and sit down on the doorstep and think over what a bad, ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray

... made the cheek the color of an old-fashioned peony, and the jar caused the nose to bleed a little as the astonished Billy staggered back under the impact of a clenched fist. ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VI. (of X.) • Various

... His knuckles stung from the impact of the blow he had delivered in Milligan's place. He hungered to have one of these three stir a hand and ...
— Gunman's Reckoning • Max Brand

... energy, and therefore, has mass. It exerts pressure, the impact of its moving units of energy—photons. We have electrons and protons of matter, and photons of light. Now we know that the mass of protons and electrons will attract other protons and electrons, and hold them near—as in a stone, or in a solar system. ...
— The Black Star Passes • John W Campbell

... his horse around an impracticable slope of shale stuff and went on. The herder followed. When he was within twelve feet or so of the bottom, there was a sound of pebbles knocked loose in haste, a scrambling, and then came the impact of his body. Andy teetered, lost his balance, and went to the bottom in one glorious slide. He landed with the bug-killer on top—and the bug-killer failed to remove his person as speedily ...
— Flying U Ranch • B. M. Bower

... had to be dumped straight ahead in the middle of the platform and the concrete shoveled into the forms. This method was also objectionable when the bucket was dumped, inasmuch as the force of the impact of a whole batch of concrete dumped from such a height into the forms, not only tended to throw the conduits out of line, and to break them, but also caused considerable strain on ...
— Transactions of the American Society of Civil Engineers, vol. LXVIII, Sept. 1910 - The Bergen Hill Tunnels. Paper No. 1154 • F. Lavis

... marshal tried to rise, a huge object ploughed through the hedge beside him, and the next instant he was knocked flat and breathless by the impact of ...
— Anderson Crow, Detective • George Barr McCutcheon

... succeeding the Civil War,—pioneer humor, such as convulsed the readers of Peck's Bad Boy, Mr. Bowser, Sut Lovingood. The favorite dramatic properties of such writers were the hornets' nest, the falling ladder, the banana peel. They cultivated the humor of contusions, the wit of impact. This style still holds the stage ...
— Birthright - A Novel • T.S. Stribling

... But what is of much more importance, Hobbes builds nothing on the principle which he had announced. He does not even announce it, as differing in any respect from the general laws of material motion and impact: nor was it, indeed, possible for him so to do, compatibly with his system, which was exclusively material and mechanical. Far otherwise is it with Des Cartes; greatly as he too in his after writings (and still more egregiously his followers De la Forge, ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... The impact of a dollar upon the heart Smiles warm red light, Sweeping from the hearth rosily upon the white table, With the hanging cool velvet shadows Moving softly ...
— War is Kind • Stephen Crane

... circumstances somewhat similar to those in which a cricketer "fields" a ball; he puts his hand in the way of the moving ball and catches it, and, knowing the distance of the batsman, he perhaps recognises, by the hard impact of the ball, that the batsman has strong muscles, but he cannot be said to see the batsman by that impact, nor can he gain thereby any idea as to his character. So it is with objective intuition; we ...
— Science and the Infinite - or Through a Window in the Blank Wall • Sydney T. Klein

... else but him. She saw his head go back as from the actual impact of the sight of her. She saw the look, unmistakable as a blast from a trumpet, that flamed into his face. And then her world swam. Paula wasn't singing now, "Hither, my love! Here I am! Here!" Nor ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster

... praises of Rumple's action in breaking the old lady's fall; but Nealie was secretly uneasy as to whether he had received more damage from the impact than had at first appeared. So, when she had been assured that Mrs. Barrow, who apparently weighed about fourteen stone, was only shaken, and not otherwise hurt, she hurried back again to satisfy herself that Rumple was sound in ...
— The Adventurous Seven - Their Hazardous Undertaking • Bessie Marchant

... decided that each combatant should use his own shoulder-holster weapon. All three were nearly enough alike—small weapons, rather heavier than they looked, firing a tiny ten-grain bullet at ten thousand foot-seconds. On impact, such a bullet would almost disintegrate; a man hit anywhere in the body with one would be killed instantly, his nervous system paralyzed and his heart stopped by internal pressure. Each of the pistols carried ...
— Last Enemy • Henry Beam Piper

... content, distinguishing the Newtonian theory even from that of Democritus, with which it had so much in common. Although Democritus had sought to avoid the element of purposiveness in the older hylozoism by referring the motions of bodies as far as possible to the impact of other bodies, he nevertheless attributed these motions ultimately to weight, signifying thereby a certain downward disposition. Now it is true that in his general belief Newton himself is not free from hylozoism. He thought of the motions of the planets ...
— The Approach to Philosophy • Ralph Barton Perry

... so near the palace where the Belgian Queen was sleeping as to destroy the glass in the windows and scar the walls. The bombs were large, containing smaller bombs of the size of shrapnel. Like shrapnel, on impact they scattered bullets over a radius of forty yards. One man, who from a window in the eighth story of a hotel watched the air-ship pass, stated that before each bomb fell he saw electric torches ...
— With the Allies • Richard Harding Davis

... trotted slowly toward one another, but presently the knights urged them into full gallop, and when the two iron men on their iron trapped chargers came together in the center of the glade, it was with all the terrific impact of full charge. ...
— The Outlaw of Torn • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... I did, I thought it must indeed be a free, wild spirit to meet the blow of Kishimoto San's will and not be crushed by the impact. My interest in the girl increased in proportion to his vehemence. I ventured to ask for details. They came ...
— The House of the Misty Star - A Romance of Youth and Hope and Love in Old Japan • Fannie Caldwell Macaulay

... majestic Sioux Chief, gazed out on Bannister Field. There, on the twenty-yard line, the two lines of scrimmage had crashed together and Bannister's backfield had smashed into Ballard's stonewall defense with terrific impact, to be hurled back for a five-yard loss. The mass of humanity slowly untangled, the moleskin clad players rose from the turf, all but one. He, wearing the gold and green, lay ...
— T. Haviland Hicks Senior • J. Raymond Elderdice

... the two opposing forces dashed together a bolt of lightning gleamed over them, turning the upraised sabres for an instant into swords of fire. The crash of thunder followed so swiftly that it appeared to result from the impact of the two charging lines. An impression of annihilation was given, but so far was it from being realized, that the slope was seen to be alive with a struggling, seething mass, waving back and forth, ...
— Miss Lou • E. P. Roe

... the general din, as they exploded and showered around us pieces of jagged iron. When a shell bursts, its fragments strike the ground obliquely, with a forward movement; therefore our comparative safety behind our rock, which often shook from the terrific impact of missiles on its outer side. So many had now sought its shelter that some extended beyond its protection, and before the cannonade was over two were killed outright, almost within reach of my arm. Many of the wounded, in going to the rear, were struck down before ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe

... It landed with an impact that was loud and not agreeable to the ear. The dog dropped with a frightful howl and, yelping madly, fled. Simultaneously, cries arose about the ringside, and the dog's owner, an alcoholic blaze in his eye, spat bitterly into his two palms ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison

... other side of it, and the next instant there arose a more than usually piercing chorus of shrieks, while the great bulk of the savages at that particular point appeared to melt away suddenly, and I heard the heavy impact of a number of bodies falling headlong into ...
— Turned Adrift • Harry Collingwood

... were those of an elderly man, not quite coordinated with his tongue. In a breath, a space too short for thought, Weldon flung himself across the gap between them and drove his head and shoulders straight at the rounded, broadcloth vest: under his impact the elaborate swivel-chair slipped, swayed, crashed to the ground, and they went down together, Weldon's ...
— The Strange Cases of Dr. Stanchon • Josephine Daskam Bacon

... George Elston of Interplanet Commerce. He's been looking for months for the right man. Frankly, I don't think it's you"—Latham felt the impact of Penger's scorn—"but he has a cruiser outside, and he can up gravs within half an hour ...
— One Purple Hope! • Henry Hasse

... and designers are aware of the whole set of problems, do reservoirs necessarily have to be weighty in their impact on the natural scene and the public interest. The quantities of stored water needed for the Basin's near future are relatively modest in comparison to potential supplies, and a multitude of good reservoir sites exist to be chosen from. ...
— The Nation's River - The Department of the Interior Official Report on the Potomac • United States Department of the Interior

... arms were bent up at the elbows; his legs at the knees. He was jumping, with the intention, I feared, of landing in our boat, and I prepared to avoid the impact. But he had judged his ...
— "And they thought we wouldn't fight" • Floyd Gibbons

... impending bodies, and straining overside in an effort to make them out, listening to the murmur of the stream, nervously fanned the fog with my hat in a ridiculous effort to clear it. Twice across our bows perilous shadows arose, sprinkled with stars, yet by some luck they drifted silently by us, and the impact we expected and were braced ...
— London River • H. M. Tomlinson

... other two tankettes struck almost simultaneously. One took a boulder squarely between its tracks, and stopped in a shower of rock fragments. The track cleats bit futilely at the ground. The vehicle stalled, the boulder jammed against it. The impact did not seem to have been particularly severe; but the entire body of the tankette had been buckled and accordioned. Possibly only the boulder's own bulk between the tracks had kept them from coming together like the knees of a gored ox. It was impossible to tell where, in that crushed ...
— The Barbarians • John Sentry

... moving too; it is not to be stationary, waiting for the arrival of the arrow, but passing at full speed; they can usually kill beasts, and their marksmen hit birds. If it ever happens that they want to test the actual impact on a target, they set up one of stout wood, or a shield of raw hide; piercing that, they reckon that their shafts will go through armour too. So, Lycinus, tell Hermotimus from us that his teachers fierce straw targets, and then say they have disposed of armed men; or paint ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata

... on the hub, the other on the tire, stepped to his shoulder, swung herself aloft, and crept up over the roof of the stage. Here he joined her, offering an arm to steady her as the stage shook under the impact ...
— Ailsa Paige • Robert W. Chambers

... continuous murmur of the sea, and are occasionally punctuated by sudden slaps and thuds as a blundering, hammer-head shark pursues a high-leaping eagle-ray, or the red-backed sea eagle dashes down upon a preoccupied bream, the impact of its firm breast embossing a white rosette on the ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield

... later two ambulances rolled out of the garage and took the four-mile winding ribbon of concrete which separated the Michaelville water impact range from the main front of the Aberdeen Proving Ground. On each ambulance was a hastily awakened and partially clothed medical officer. For three miles they tore along the curving road at high speed. Without warning the leading machine slowed ...
— Poisoned Air • Sterner St. Paul Meek

... wasn't yet five years old, and that it was monstrous. The two had to be reconciled. And they never could be reconciled. Always she would be between them, to reconcile them, and to be crushed by their impact. Always she would have to bear the burden of both of them. There could be no ease for her, no surcease from a tremendous preoccupation and responsibility. She could not change Samuel; besides, he was right! ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett

... sides still showed unmistakable traces of the impact of Turkish shells. Her grey paint was blotched, blistered, and stained. Her after funnel had plates of sheet-iron riveted to it to hide a gaping hole large enough to drive a stage-coach through. Her guns were worn out by sheer hard work. It was mainly on this account that she was homeward bound: ...
— The Submarine Hunters - A Story of the Naval Patrol Work in the Great War • Percy F. Westerman

... of man, and especially of the way in which one individual acts and reacts upon another in the complex web of human life. To depict the workings of the soul of man in a given situation is one thing—to depict the impact of ego upon ego is another. When we consider that the more poetical a poet is the more oblivious we expect him to be of the machinery of social life, it is no wonder that poetical dramatists are so rare. In drama, even poetic drama, the poet must leave the “golden clime” in which he ...
— Old Familiar Faces • Theodore Watts-Dunton

... the capacity of the radiator coil to exchange heat, are in the nature of properties. The capacity of the hammer to crack nuts, of the coil to condense steam, are in the nature of accidents—something that follows from the impact and the heat exchange because of the particular accidental conditions of operation. To select an accident as a basis of classification is contrary to the ...
— The Classification of Patents • United States Patent Office

... impressiveness is increased now. After standing still and spending a few minutes in adding its age to its size, and its size to its solitude, it becomes appallingly mournful in its growing closeness. A squally wind blows in the face with an impact which proclaims that the vapours of the air sail low to-night. The slope that I so laboriously clamber up the wind skips sportively down. Its track can be discerned even in this light by the undulations of the withered ...
— A Changed Man and Other Tales • Thomas Hardy

... just as I have since felt it in the presence of a great lean jungle-cat at the zoo. Here was a thing that crouched and purred—a mewing but terrific thing. Give it an obstacle to overcome—fling it something to devour; and lo! the crushing impact of its leap! ...
— The River and I • John G. Neihardt

... rush up the causeway, coming up it more than twenty strong, and at the double. Brown let one volley loose in the midst of them, then led his men at the charge down on them and drove them over the edge of the causeway by dint of sheer impact and cold steel. Not one of them reached the ground alive, and in the darkness it must have been impossible for the mutineers below to divine how ...
— Told in the East • Talbot Mundy

... it. Each man's eye receives the straight impact of its universal beams. It is my sun, though it be the light that lightens all men that come into the world. 'My atmosphere'—will one man claim the free, unappropriated winds of heaven as his? Yes, for they will ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... heating a room, the mind of Siemens also passed to the maintenance of solar fires, and occupied itself with the supply of fuel to the sun. Some physicists have attributed the continuance of solar heat to the contraction of the solar mass, and others to the impact of cometary matter. Imbued with the idea of regeneration, and seeking in nature for that thrift of power which he, as an inventor, had always aimed at, Siemens suggested a hypothesis on which the sun conserves its heat by a circulation of its fuel in space. The elements dissociated in the intense ...
— Heroes of the Telegraph • J. Munro

... The flakes came fluttering to the windows like endless swarms of moths. Silently they touched the panes and then glided straight down to earth as though they had broken their wings in the impact. ...
— The Indian Lily and Other Stories • Hermann Sudermann

... streams met and mingled at a distance of about three feet beneath the cups. Then they fell into a metal basin which, although it must have been quite a foot thick, was cut right through by their constant impact, and apparently vanished down some pipe beneath. Out of this metal basin Tommy, who gambolled into the place ahead of us, began to drink in ...
— When the World Shook - Being an Account of the Great Adventure of Bastin, Bickley and Arbuthnot • H. Rider Haggard

... where after impact two broad bodies Suddenly spring apart, the air must crowd The whole new void between those bodies formed; But air, however it stream with hastening gusts, Can yet not fill the gap at once—for first It makes for one place, ere diffused through all. And then, if haply any think ...
— Of The Nature of Things • [Titus Lucretius Carus] Lucretius

... on speaking, without haste, unafraid although the hurrying steps were almost there, she could scarcely hear his voice, although it was urgent and puissant as the impact of his eyes. "You can't get away from this now. It is here. It has been said. It lives between us, and you are not strong enough, no power on earth is strong ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher

... has substantial oil resources and rich agricultural areas. Because the country exports primary products such as oil, bananas, and shrimp, fluctuations in world market prices can have a substantial domestic impact. Ecuador joined the World Trade Organization (WTrO) in 1996, but has failed to comply with many of its accession commitments. The aftermath of El Nino and depressed oil market of 1997-98 drove Ecuador's economy into a free-fall in 1999. The beginning of ...
— The 2003 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency

... against the silence with the impact of a blow. Nothing more undesirable could have happened. Again Mack bayed, and the echoing bell tones of his voice took on a strange similarity to a tocsin of warning. Rustling and crackling across the men's fancies the influences of the ...
— The Silent Places • Stewart Edward White

... monotony of rose-brown dust, the mills were jumbled in mile-long perspectives. Above the immediate noise of the train he could hear the sullen, blended roar of an infinity of strident sounds—the screaming of whistles, a choked, drumming thunder, rushing blasts of air, the shattering impact of steel rails, raw steam, and a multitudinous clangour of metal and jolting wheels and connective power. He passed rusting mountains straddled by giant gantries, the towering lifts of mammoth cranes, banks of chalk-white ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer

... their whole line swept forward over the grass to meet the men in gray who were coming so swiftly against them. He saw a thousand sabers uplifted, making a stream of light, and then the two forces crashed together. It seemed to him that it was the impact of one solid body upon another as solid, and then so much blood rushed to his head that he could not see clearly. He was conscious only of a mighty crash, of falling bodies, sweeping sabers, that terrible neigh again ...
— The Tree of Appomattox • Joseph A. Altsheler

... impact of war abroad makes it natural to approach "the state of the union" through a discussion ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... from the poop put a stunning period to our merriment. "Helm up, f'r God's sake! . . . Up!—oh God!—Up! Up!" A furious impact dashed us to the deck. Staggering, bruised, and bleeding, we struggled to our feet. Outside the yells of fear-stricken men mingled with hoarse orders, the crash of spars hurtling from aloft vied with the thunder of canvas, ...
— Great Sea Stories • Various

... through in order to make his exit from our sphere of consciousness into his. And naturally, of course to make his entrance too. If like a tenuous smoke he can get in, the probability is that he gets out in precisely the same fashion. For really, if you weren't consciously expecting the customary impact (you actually jerk forward in the act of resistance unresisted), you would not notice his going. I am afraid I must be horribly boring you with all these tangled theories. All I mean is, that if you were really ...
— The Return • Walter de la Mare

... fallen man and were spearing him from his knees back to the earth. In the twinkling of an eye, Tyee saw four of them cut down by the bullets of the Sunlanders. The fifth, as yet unhurt, seized the two rifles, but as he stood up to make off he was whirled almost completely around by the impact of a bullet in the arm, steadied by a second, and overthrown by the shock of a third. A moment later and Bill-Man was on the spot, cutting the pack-straps and picking ...
— Children of the Frost • Jack London

... turnpike-road, lay in the development of the sense of touch in the feet, which comes with years of night-rambling in little-trodden spots. To a walker practised in such places a difference between impact on maiden herbage, and on the crippled stalks of a slight footway, is perceptible through the thickest boot ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy

... folly in Brother Hecker. The impulse to talk about the conversion of America, to plan it and advocate it, to proclaim it possible and prove it so, and to philosophize on the profoundest questions of the human reason, was irrepressible. This he did with an air of matured conviction and with the impact of conscious moral authority, but in terms as strikingly eccentric as the thoughts were lofty and inspiring, and in execrable French, the declaimer being known as minus habens in his studies and utterly incapable. All this was the very make-up of ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott

... religion by the romance of miracles and paradises and torture chambers that makes it reel at the impact of every advance in science, instead of being clarified by it. If you take an English village lad, and teach him that religion means believing that the stories of Noah's Ark and the Garden of Eden are literally true on the authority of God himself, and if that boy becomes ...
— Back to Methuselah • George Bernard Shaw

... powder was not heavy enough. No harm was done. The impact of the shots had merely forced the sloping ...
— The Victim - A romance of the Real Jefferson Davis • Thomas Dixon

... the guessing, Monig. All right, maybe it's got a clockwork fuse that didn't break with the impact. Or a gyroscopic fuse. Stick a stethoscope on it and see if you pick up a ticking or anything that sounds like a ...
— One-Shot • James Benjamin Blish

... waist. The barber can then take a rush at him from the other side of the room, and drive the clippers up the full length of the spine, so as to come at the heavier hair on the back of the head with the impact of a lawn-mower driven into ...
— Literary Lapses • Stephen Leacock

... nuptial rites, because they knew no better. One of them hoped that his time would come, when he had pushed his great discovery; and if the art of photography had been known, his face would have been his fortune. For he bore at the very top of it the seal and stamp of his patent—the manifest impact of a bullet, diffracted by the power of Pong. The roots of his hair—the terminus of blushes, according to all good novelists—had served an even more useful purpose, by enabling him to blush again. Strengthened by Pong, they had defied the lead, ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore

... idiotic method of leaving the ground resulted in his being barely able to rise above the roofs of the near-by village and brought him into direct contact with the church spire. The spire being of solid construction withstood the impact; the aeroplane did not. So Killem and his companions, together with the wrecked Handley-Page and one thousand five hundred and sixty-eight pounds of undetonated bombs descended onto the street below—UNDETONATED. It was exceedingly fortunate for the inhabitants ...
— Night Bombing with the Bedouins • Robert Henry Reece

... decision when he suddenly remembered Pancha. The thought of her came with an impact, causing him to stiffen and give forth a low ejaculation. His mind ran with lightning speed over what he had been reading, then flashed back to her. Was this man, this hulking country Hercules, her "best beau," or was it the other one, Garland, the one who had the brains, and who was ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner

... by the movement of the child (foetus) in the womb. The impact of the enlarging womb, through the child (foetal) movements, against the abdominal wall about the sixteenth week of pregnancy gives rise to this sensation called quickening. Some women claim to have experienced ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter

... turf might be soft, he jumped. Fit though he was, and hardened by physical exercise, the impact almost stunned him. He came down like an acrobat—left foot, right foot, and then upon his hands, but nevertheless he lay there for a moment breathless and temporarily numbed ...
— Fire-Tongue • Sax Rohmer

... wipe out the lot in five minutes. Only ten years ago, at the battle of Liao-yang, as I watched a cloud of shrapnel smoke sending down steel showers over the little hill of Manjanyama, which sent up showers of earth from shells burst by impact on the ground, a Japanese ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer

... have long to wait. The second night after the drowning of the mate the little yacht was suddenly wracked from stem to stern. About one o'clock in the morning there was a terrific impact that threw the slumbering guests and crew from berth and bunk. A mighty shudder ran through the frail craft; she lay far over to starboard; the engines stopped. For a moment she hung there with her decks at an angle of forty-five degrees—then, with a sullen, rending sound, she slipped ...
— The Return of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... started to run, but his foot slipped upon an exposed root, and as he fell sprawling on the ground his head struck with a violent impact ...
— Tom Slade with the Colors • Percy K. Fitzhugh

... of a board moving in water in the manner of a paddle float, or in the case of moving water impinging on a stationary board, what will be the pressure produced by the impact? ...
— A Catechism of the Steam Engine • John Bourne

... holes, while at the other a billet of wood is suspended from a chain. The pastime consisted of riding on horseback and aiming a lance at one of the holes in the broad end of the crossbar. If the aim were true, the impact would swing the club around with violence, and unless the rider were agile he was liable to be unhorsed—rough and dangerous sport, but no doubt calculated to secure dexterity with the lance on horseback. This odd relic ...
— British Highways And Byways From A Motor Car - Being A Record Of A Five Thousand Mile Tour In England, - Wales And Scotland • Thomas D. Murphy

... worked gradually back to the door of the rear room, and Ned "accidentally" leaned against it. It was locked. With the impact of the boy's shoulder against the panels came a scraping of chairs on the floor of the ...
— Boy Scouts in a Submarine • G. Harvey Ralphson

... frigid anarchy increased its riot, and the men had to shout into one another's ears to be heard. Occasionally the racket from the back channel could be heard above the tumult. The island shuddered with the impact of an enormous cake which drove in squarely upon its point. It ripped a score of pines out by the roots, then swinging around and over, lifted its muddy base from the bottom of the river and bore down upon the cabin, slicing the bank and trees away like a gigantic knife. ...
— The God of His Fathers • Jack London

... stones set into movement by some quick, sharp action, an indistinct crash, but sudden, as of the impact of soft, heavy bodies, a strange wild sound preceded in rapid succession violent brushings and thumpings in the scrub of ...
— Tales of lonely trails • Zane Grey

... much greater than the visible that the visible may be ignored. There may, too, be hundreds of millions of dark bodies, extinct constellations far larger than our own sun. Any one of these could approach our solar system and annihilate it with its impact for, in passing the orbit of the earth on their way around the sun, they attain a regular velocity of 26-1/2 miles per second. If one of these dark comets should overtake the earth and strike it, the velocity of impact ...
— Betelguese - A Trip Through Hell • Jean Louis de Esque

... made a special study of that shot," he confided. "Yes, I can tell you how it's done, but it needs a lot of practice. It's done in turning over the wrists sharply just at the moment of impact. You get everything there is to be got into the stroke that way, and you keep ...
— The Pawns Count • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... possessed, hurled the knife straight at the fleeing figure. It flashed through the air, a savage gleam of steel, barely missing Mendez's shoulder, and buried itself in a log, quivering from the force of impact. With a yell of derision, his hands still bound, the desperate fugitive cast himself head-first through the opening. Without aim, scarcely aware of what she did, the girl flung up her weapon and fired. With ...
— The Strange Case of Cavendish • Randall Parrish

... bided the inevitable crash. Sudden I heard the roar of one of Penfeather's ever-ready pistols followed by his voice up raised in vicious sea-curses, and glancing up saw the black ship right aboard of us and braced myself for the impact; came a shock, a quiver of creaking timbers and the groan of our straining hawsers as the black ship, falling off, drifted by in a roaring storm of oaths and blasphemy. Now when her battered stern-gallery was nigh lost in the mist, bethinking ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol

... as speed; let him see them in magnificent action, their masters not more conscious of the situation and all that is asked and hoped from them—their heads tossing, nostrils in play, now distent, now contracted—limbs too dainty for the sand which they touch but to spurn—limbs slender, yet with impact crushing as hammers—every muscle of the rounded bodies instinct with glorious life, swelling, diminishing, justifying the world in taking from them its ultimate measure of force; finally, along with chariots, drivers, horses, let the reader see the accompanying shadows fly; and, with such distinctness ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace

... to give the public something better and finer. Had he not, himself, that very day, completed a perilous ordeal of suffering and sacrifice? And he was asked to laugh at a cross—eyed man posing before a camera that fell to pieces when the lens was exposed, shattered, presumably, by the impact of the afflicted creature's image! This, surely, was not art such as Clifford Armytage was rapidly fitting himself, by trial and hardship, to confer upon ...
— Merton of the Movies • Harry Leon Wilson

... for the Commissaire grasped my arm, and thrust himself in between us, his action so swift that the impact of his body thrust De Artigny back a step. I saw the hand of the younger man close on the knife hilt at his belt, but was quick enough to avert the hot words burning ...
— Beyond the Frontier • Randall Parrish

... decline was at times terrific. There were moments of impact with trees which left him bruised and beaten. There were moments when projecting roots threatened to hurl him headlong to invisible depths. Each buffet, each stumble, however, only hardened his resolve. These things were ...
— The Triumph of John Kars - A Story of the Yukon • Ridgwell Cullum

... hastening down the passage. The nearest of the trio, a tall dark savage with a deep scar across his cheek, was just reaching out his hand to seize Luella when I sprang forward and planted a blow square upon his chin. He fell back heavily, lifted almost off his feet by my impact, and lay like a ...
— Blindfolded • Earle Ashley Walcott

... off to admiration in the first amazement of impact, she carried them off equally to admiration in her meeting with Damaris. It was the prettiest ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet

... among gaseous molecules the electron soon attaches itself to one of these. In other words, it ionises a molecule of the gas or confers its electric charge upon it. The gaseous molecule may even be itself disrupted by impact of the electron, if this is moving fast enough, and ...
— The Birth-Time of the World and Other Scientific Essays • J. (John) Joly

... ground of the Russian positions on Mount Viatrovka and Mount Pustki in front of Biecz had been "prepared" by 21-centimeter (7-inch) Krupp howitzers and the giant Austrian 30.5-centimeter (10-inch) howitzers from the Skoda-Werke at Pilsen. The shells of the latter weigh nearly half a ton, and their impact is so terrific that they throw the earth up 100 feet high. Whatever had remained of the town of Gorlice in the shape of buildings or human beings was meanwhile being wiped out by a merciless spray of shells. Being the center ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various

... passed, and they neither saw nor heard anything in the forest. Then there was a rushing sound, a tremendous impact in front of them and something huge bounded and bounded again among the bushes. It was a great rock that had been rolled over the cliff above, in the hope that it would fall upon them, but the arch of stone over their heads was too deep. It struck fully five feet in front of them. ...
— The Texan Star - The Story of a Great Fight for Liberty • Joseph A. Altsheler

... left, the front and the rear and from the ground beneath and the air above they were beset by whole companies, battalions, divisions, armies, yea, tribes and nations of thick-set, sharp-billed little devils who had come to torment them before their time and whose every impact brought blood. There was needed no council of war to determine the course to pursue, so a hasty retreat was ordered—an ignominious flight, feeling that it were better to face the perils of the ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand

... became inevitable. The cutting edge was inaccessible and liable to injury which could not be easily repaired; much trouble was anticipated from the presence of Boer commandos in contact with the surfaces; the base did not appear to be sufficiently well designed to receive the impact of the propelling force; and there were grave doubts as to the soundness of the material of which an important section of the wedge, namely Ladysmith, ...
— A Handbook of the Boer War • Gale and Polden, Limited

... upon him with the unhurried but telling impact of an ocean tide. Two facts were salient from the mass: whatever he had done he had done because of Ram-tah; and he was going to Paris, where he would see the actual tomb of that other outworn shell ...
— Bunker Bean • Harry Leon Wilson

... one had thrown water on his face, and he found himself sitting up, but with his hands tied securely behind his back. His head ached terribly, and he felt that his hair was thick with blood. But he knew at once that it was only a glancing wound, and that the effects, caused by the impact of the bullet upon the ...
— The Riflemen of the Ohio - A Story of the Early Days along "The Beautiful River" • Joseph A. Altsheler

... bravely to the loch and make a good end. So there, where the shadow lay thickest under the arch, was a patch of still black water, confined in stagnancy by a sunk log on which alluvial mud had made a garden of whitish grasses like the beard of an unclean old man. The impact of the unchecked floods that rushed past made this black patch shake perpetually, and this irregular motion gave it a sort of personality. It suggested a dark man shaking with a suppressed passion of malice. It was like Mr. Philip. From some submerged rottenness ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West

... and stood stiffly, watching Sourdough with raised hackles. At the moment that the husky's fangs touched the skin of Micky's throat, Jan was upon him like a battering-ram, shoulder to shoulder, with an impact that sent the husky rolling, all four feet in the air, a position in which no barracks dog had ever before seen Sourdough, and one in which any of them would have given a day's food to find him. For that is the one position ...
— Jan - A Dog and a Romance • A. J. Dawson

... eyes!' cried Godwin. 'They merely lower a nictitating membrane which permits them to gaze at light without feeling its full impact.' ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing

... broken, but a part of the bark was abraded, and even torn up from the wood as if by the impact of some hard substance, as a stone thrown with great force. He examined the ground, but there was no stone visible, and on again looking at the bark he concluded that it had not been done with a stone at all, ...
— After London - Wild England • Richard Jefferies

... resolve. She raised the iron flap once more, and saying aloud and with a ring of defiance in her voice: "Deliberately, deliberately; I don't care," loosed her hold upon the letter. She heard it fall with a soft rustling impact upon the accumulated mail-matter in the bottom ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various

... stories has the sharp impact of an emotional crisis—the compressed quality of one of Margaret ...
— Glory of Youth • Temple Bailey

... France, the system of paying the taxes not in money but in kind. The system of the tithes, too, needed a complete overhauling, not with the mere object of abolishing the tithes, but in order that the gross inequalities which the Avis sets forth as existing, in regard to the impact of the tithes, both territorial and personal, might be done away with, and the support of religion put upon a sound basis. This led naturally to a demand for the release of great areas of valuable soil in Artois from the control ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert

... reformed through creation of the Regulatory Council, implementation of Executive Order 12044 and its requirement for cost-impact analyses, elimination of unnecessary regulation, and passage ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... upon the world in August, 1914, with a suddenness and an impact that dazed the world. When it seemed, in 1918, that mankind had habituated himself to war and that the bloody struggle would continue until the actual exhaustion and extinction of the nations involved, peace suddenly appeared. The debacle of the Teutonic alliance was both ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish

... disgusted that he could find no words for the moment, and he stood there watching the two old tree-trunks coming closer and closer, till the foremost just missed the cable, and directly after touched the brig's bows with a slow, dull, heavy impact which made her ...
— Old Gold - The Cruise of the "Jason" Brig • George Manville Fenn

... besides, the sudden assaults of strong temptations, of sense and flesh, or of a more subtle and refined character. If a man is standing loosely, in some careless degage attitude, and a sudden impact comes upon him, over he goes. The boat upon a mountain-locked lake encounters a sudden gust when opposite the opening of a glen, and unless there be a very strong hand and a watchful eye at the helm, is sure to be upset. Upon us there come, in ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... view—that which we call Matter is held to be merely an aggregation of atoms, which atoms themselves are merely a grouping of units of force, called electrons or "ions," vibrating and in constant circular motion. We kick a stone and we feel the impact—it seems to be real, notwithstanding that we know it to be merely what we have stated above. But remember that our foot, which feels the impact by means of our brains, is likewise Matter, so constituted of electrons, and for that matter so are our brains. ...
— The Kybalion - A Study of The Hermetic Philosophy of Ancient Egypt and Greece • Three Initiates

... in a fierce tropical downpour—a cloud-burst—when the very heavens had seemed to open. The Nevski, steaming forward at half speed, had come almost to a stop; struck by the masses of water, she had fairly staggered beneath the impact. Now she lay motionless, while every shroud and line dripped; the darkness had become inky. Only the light from cabin windows which lay on the wet deck like shafts of silver relieved that Cimmerian effect. The sea moaned from the lashing it had received—a faint undertone, however, ...
— A Man and His Money • Frederic Stewart Isham

... "a pace so slow that it could hardly be called a trot." General Hamley describes "the impetus of the enemy's column carrying it on, and pressing our combatants back for a short space," and the chronicler speaks of the Russians as surging forward after the impact, but without bearing back ...
— Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places • Archibald Forbes

... of feet up and down, back and forth along the bare floor, the thudding of heavy shoulders into an unexpected wall, the impact of fist against body. In the utter darkness the two men gripped each other, struck, swayed together, staggered apart, only to come together again to ...
— Man to Man • Jackson Gregory



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