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Projectile   /prədʒˈɛktəl/  /prədʒˈɛktaɪl/   Listen
Projectile

adjective
1.
Impelling or impelled forward.  "A projectile missile"






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Projectile" Quotes from Famous Books



... this apparatus? How fetter this stupendous engine of destruction? How anticipate its comings and goings, its returns, its stops, its shocks? Any one of its blows on the side of the ship may stave it in. How foretell its frightful meanderings? It is dealing with a projectile, which alters its mind, which seems to have ideas, and changes its direction every instant. How check the course of what must be avoided? The horrible cannon struggles, advances, backs, strikes right, strikes left, retreats, passes ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various

... in loading the piece, especially in getting the projectile home. It was supposed that this not being done properly ...
— Henry Ossian Flipper, The Colored Cadet at West Point • Henry Ossian Flipper

... head one morning, and flattened itself against the wall, where it adhered in the form of a convex mass in alto rilievo. The master looked round and saw the young butcher's arm in an attitude which pointed to it unequivocally as the source from which the projectile had taken its flight. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 5, No. 28, February, 1860 • Various

... is supported by a rod which is usually a meter in height. The vessels of the squadron successively fire their large guns at this target, which moves at a definite velocity. The shell, on dropping into the water, raises an immense jet, which entirely hides the balloons when the projectile falls in a line with and sufficiently ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 664, September 22,1888 • Various

... is not scientifically designed to obtain the greatest efficiency of propulsion, but its simplicity in this respect is one of its chief advantages. If the self-propelled rocket becomes the projectile of the future, as some have ventured to predict, much consideration must be given to the design of the orifice through which the gases violently escape in order that the best efficiency of propulsion may be attained. There are other details in which improvements may be made. The combustion ...
— Artificial Light - Its Influence upon Civilization • M. Luckiesh

... Oneida, receiving a VII-inch rifle shell, which passed through her chain armor and into the starboard boiler, where it burst, the larger part of the watch of firemen being scalded by the escaping steam. About the same moment a similar projectile burst in the cabin, cutting both wheel-ropes, while her forward XI-inch gun and one of the VIII-inch were disabled. In this condition the Oneida was pulled past the forts by ...
— The Gulf and Inland Waters - The Navy in the Civil War. Volume 3. • A. T. Mahan

... would not have been so astonished at the range of the Zuendnadel guns being 800 yards, if he had seen, as I have, a plain English two-grooved rifle range 1200 yards, with a proper elevation for the distance, and a conical projectile ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 51, October 19, 1850 • Various

... the pillows of persons who were afraid of ghosts. The tract shops exhibited in their windows bullet-dinted testaments, mothers' gifts to their soldier sons whose lives had been saved by it; for the muzzle-loaders of those days could not drive a projectile through so many pages. ...
— Back to Methuselah • George Bernard Shaw

... are of the simplest character. The German method is for the aerial craft to fly over the position, and when in vertical line therewith to discharge a handful of tinsel, which, in falling, glitters in the sunlight, or to launch a smoking missile which answers the same purpose as a projectile provided with a tracer. This smoke-ball being dropped over the position leaves a trail of black or whitish smoke according to the climatic conditions which prevail, the object being to enable the signal to be ...
— Aeroplanes and Dirigibles of War • Frederick A. Talbot

... knives. Two pieces of feather, properly bound at the lower end of the shaft, gave the arrow a rotary motion as it passed through the air, and insured a greater accuracy. It is a principle that has been adopted by manufacturers of modern rifle guns to impart to the projectile a spinning motion in ...
— Short Sketches from Oldest America • John Driggs

... effective measures for weakening the enemy was the method of attacking the Central Powers from within by propaganda designed to incite the masses to rebellion and to drive wedges between Germany and Austria. As George Creel says, "The projectile force of the President's idealism, its full military value may be measured by the fact that between April 6 and December 8, 1917, sixteen States, great and small, declared war against Germany, or severed diplomatic relations with her. From the very first the Allies accepted ...
— Woodrow Wilson as I Know Him • Joseph P. Tumulty

... beam, the mizzen topmast was shot away. At the same time the wheel was hit and shattered, so that the ship had to be steered from below, a matter that soon became of little importance. A couple of minutes more, eight marines were carried off by a single projectile, while standing drawn up on the poop, whereupon Nelson ordered the survivors to be dispersed about the deck. Presently a shot coming in through the ship's side ranged aft on the quarter-deck towards ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. II. (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan

... of the Defence of the Realm Regulations, it is an offence for any person having found any bomb, or projectile, or any fragment thereof, or any document, map, &c., which may have been discharged, dropped, &c., from any hostile aircraft, to forthwith communicate the fact to a Military Post or to a Police Constable ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, April 4, 1917 • Various

... the next fortnight; for I am compelled to turn up my nose at you much against my own inclination. You need never want an illustration of the naso adunco of Horace again; I'm a living example of it. That, and the doctrine of projectile forces, have been exemplified in a manner that will prevent me from ever relishing these subjects in future. No king can consider himself properly such until after he has received the oil of consecration; ...
— The Poor Scholar - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton

... sank down as if the blow had been too severe for her. But, almost immediately recovering herself, she launched a last projectile at her adversary. ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... form of mortar, and all such pieces are designed to lob a projectile instead of throwing it. The advantage of using these instruments when you are besieging permanent works is that you can hide them behind an obstacle, such as a hill, and that the heavy gun in the fortress cannot get its shell on to them because that shell has a flatter trajectory. The disadvantage ...
— A General Sketch of the European War - The First Phase • Hilaire Belloc

... sides. No helicopters swung their blades above; there were only the bulge of a conning tower and the heavy inset glasses of the lookouts. Nor were there wings of any kind. It might have been a projectile for some ...
— Astounding Stories, May, 1931 • Various

... bullets. On the forecastle was mounted the latest model breech-loading cannon, very heavy of barrel and narrow of bore, a weapon that would figure in the Universal Exhibition of 1867. Made in America, this valuable instrument could fire a four-kilogram conical projectile an average distance of sixteen kilometers without the ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne

... forty-eight hours of liberty, only their special guardian spirits were in a position to explain, but they kept discreetly silent. The men in Durand's room could truthfully declare that they had not had a thing to do with the launching of that extraordinary projectile and also that Durand was not in his room. It was not necessary to be too explicit, they felt, and twenty minutes later all were over at Middie's Haven, Guy Bennett and Richard Allyn, to Juno's secret disgust, ...
— Peggy Stewart at School • Gabrielle E. Jackson

... "Atlanta" has two guns of eight-inch bore, 24 feet long, sending out a projectile of 300 pounds which explodes on striking,—firing correctly five miles. It costs $150 to to ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, August 1887 - Volume 1, Number 7 • Various

... a motion, which must soon, Just as the earth detached the moon And gave her locomotive birth, Detach some twenty miles of earth, And send it swinging in the air, The Devil only could tell where! Then came the probability With what increased facility The Greeks, by this projectile power, Might land on Ilion's highest tower, All safe and sound, in battle array, With howitzers prepared to play, And muskets to the muzzles rammed;— Why, the town would be utterly smashed and jammed, And positively, as the phrase is Vernacular, ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various

... was going to hit a rook that was flying athwart me,—it was queer with what projectile silence that jumped upon me out of nothingness, and I yelled helplessly, "Get out of the way!" The bird doubled itself up like a partly inverted V, flapped, went up to the right abruptly and vanished from my circle of interest. Then I saw the shadow of my aeroplane keeping a fixed distance ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells

... own heartbeats. Each time he got back, it faded away, and all he remembered was the excitement. But each time he went through it, it was worse. Just standing and waiting in the silence, praying they weren't spotted—staring at the unmoving firmament and knowing he was a projectile hurtling two miles each second straight at a clump of metal and flesh that was the enemy. Knowing the odds were twenty to one against their scoring a kill ... unless ...
— Slingshot • Irving W. Lande

... as I had pitched into space, with equal suddenness did I emerge from the fog, out of which I shot like a projectile from a cannon into clear daylight. My speed was so great that I could see nothing about me but a blurred and indistinct sheet of smooth and frozen snow, that rushed past ...
— Pellucidar • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... charge of his Majesty's ships. The boatswain and carpenter are merely practical men; but the gunner, sir, is, or ought to be, scientific. Gunnery, sir, is a science—we have our own disparts and our lines of sight—our windage, and our parabolas, and projectile forces—and our point blank, and our reduction of powder upon a graduated scale. Now, sir, there's no excuse for a gunner not being a navigator; for knowing his duty as a gunner, he has the same mathematical ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Frederick Marryat

... a matter of fact the path of a projectile in vacuo is only approximately a parabola. It is instructive to remember that it is really an ellipse with one focus very distant, but not at infinity. One of its foci is the centre of the earth. A projectile is really a minute satellite of the earth's, and in vacuo it accurately obeys all ...
— Pioneers of Science • Oliver Lodge

... generation of vipers," of an "untoward generation," of "a stubborn generation," of "the iniquity of the past visited upon the children unto the third and fourth generation?" So that the text comes to-day with the force of a projectile hurled from mightiest catapult: "Whose son art thou, thou ...
— The Wedding Ring - A Series of Discourses for Husbands and Wives and Those - Contemplating Matrimony • T. De Witt Talmage

... dull-red sun was barely sinking. It moved slowly along the horizon as it dipped, but presently a gray cast come over the colorings in the forest. Flying things came clattering homeward through the masses of fern-fronds overhead. He saw a projectile-like thing with a lizard's head and jaws go darting through an incredibly small opening. It seemed to have no wings at all. But then, in one instant, a vast wing-surface flashed out, made a single gigantic flap—and the thing was a projectile again, darting through a cheraux-de-frise of interlaced ...
— The Fifth-Dimension Tube • William Fitzgerald Jenkins

... ejected materials are so much heavier. The same force that would throw a volcanic bomb a mile high on the earth could throw it six miles high on the moon. The giant cannon that we have placed in one of our coast forts, which is said to be able to hurl a projectile to a distance of fifteen miles, could send the same projectile ninety miles on the moon. An athlete who can clear a horizontal bar at a height of six feet on the earth could clear the same bar at a height of thirty-six feet on the moon. In other words, ...
— Other Worlds - Their Nature, Possibilities and Habitability in the Light of the Latest Discoveries • Garrett P. Serviss

... in early life had soured its disposition and it had declared war upon the whole world. To say that it would butt anything accessible is but faintly to express the nature and scope of its military activity: the universe was its antagonist; its methods that of a projectile. It fought like the angels and devils, in mid-air, cleaving the atmosphere like a bird, describing a parabolic curve and descending upon its victim at just the exact angle of incidence to make the most ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8 - Epigrams, On With the Dance, Negligible Tales • Ambrose Bierce

... proclaim'd the ALMIGHTY LORD, Astonish'd Chaos heard the potent word;— 105 Through all his realms the kindling Ether runs, And the mass starts into a million suns; Earths round each sun with quick explosions burst, And second planets issue from the first; Bend, as they journey with projectile force, 110 In bright ellipses their reluctant course; Orbs wheel in orbs, round centres centres roll, And form, self-balanced, one revolving Whole. —Onward they move amid their bright abode, Space without bound, THE BOSOM OF ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin

... golf links out of the green scrub and sand; with a comfortable clubhouse at one end of it and this primeval monument at the other. They did not actually use this archaic abyss as a bunker, because it was by tradition unfathomable, and even for practical purposes unfathomed. Any sporting projectile sent into it might be counted most literally as a lost ball. But they often sauntered round it in their interludes of talking and smoking cigarettes, and one of them had just come down from the clubhouse to find another gazing ...
— The Man Who Knew Too Much • G.K. Chesterton

... gun emplacement, the gun firing smokeless powder; simultaneously with the discharge of the gun at A a powder flask of black powder will be exploded at B, a hill in the rear, leading us to direct our projectile on B. Careful calculation with a watch, however, will defeat ...
— History of the War in South Africa 1899-1902 v. 1 (of 4) - Compiled by Direction of His Majesty's Government • Frederick Maurice

... of something blacker, raised high in the air like the threatening head of some great gliding serpent. Suddenly there came a sharp puff of lighter smoke that seemed like a forked tongue, and then a hollow report, and we could see a great black projectile hurled into the air, and falling a quarter of a mile away from us, in the woods. I did not at once learn that this first shot killed two of the Maine men, and wounded two more. This was fired wide, ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson

... some time in the early part of the ninth century,[4] and the art of book-binding was known as early as A. D. 750.[5] The application of Gunpowder as a projectile was made in 1225; and the invention of the Loom is dated ...
— Kathay: A Cruise in the China Seas • W. Hastings Macaulay

... sides of the kopje with jets of round white balls of smoke, while every now and then the deeper note of the 4.7 was followed by a huge cloud of dust and yellowish vapour thrown up, and off, by the explosion of the lyddite in the huge projectile. How many Boers held that hill will probably never be known; only four were found. But a strange spectacle ensued. Emerging from the cover on the far side, rode, ventre-a-terre, a solitary horseman. Immediately two companies extended in our front opened ...
— The Second Battalion Royal Dublin Fusiliers in the South African War - With a Description of the Operations in the Aden Hinterland • Cecil Francis Romer and Arthur Edward Mainwaring

... Mercury turned into the straight stretch of back road, on the second time around, there sounded a sharp report, the car staggered perilously, and a tire tore itself loose from a rear wheel to hurtle, a vicious projectile of rubber and steel, far across the stubble fields. Reeling, but held to its course by the driver's trained hand, the Mercury slackened its flight and was brought to a stop. Rupert was already leaning over ...
— From the Car Behind • Eleanor M. Ingram

... of the Paracuta to cut away the rope. Of a sudden the knife he held was snatched out of his hand, the rope broke, and the grapnel, like a projectile, shot off in the ...
— An Antarctic Mystery • Jules Verne

... rushing over the ground toward the glittering, silver-winged projectile that was the Baikal. A glowering officer waved me on, and I dashed up the slant of the gangplank and into the ship; the port dropped and I heard a ...
— The Worlds of If • Stanley Grauman Weinbaum

... desert of the sea are found Arabian fountains of Ishmael and Isaac! Are these fountains poisoned for the poor victim of fever, because they have to travel through a contagion of waters not potable? Oh, no! They bound upwards like arrows, cleaving the seas above with as much projectile force as the glittering water-works of Versailles cleave the air, and rising as sweet to the lip as ever mountain torrent that comforted ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey

... will utter no word of blame, this one word only, Wo is me! The noble warhorse that once laughed at the shaking of the spear, how is he doomed to toil himself dead, dragging ignoble wheels! Scott's descent was like that of a spent projectile; rapid, straight down; perhaps mercifully so. It is a tragedy, as all life is; one proof more that Fortune stands on a restless globe; that Ambition never yet ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Vol. V (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland III • Various

... encouraging results. There are two kinds, both being designed to be attached to kite lines and drawn over the water by the power of the kite. The simpler variety is merely a long wooden tube about three inches in diameter and shaped very much like a gun projectile, with a cone of tin dragging behind to give steadiness. It is for use only when the wind is blowing in exactly the direction in which it is designed to send a message or carry a rope. It will be observed that, in a large number of ...
— McClure's Magazine, March, 1896, Vol. VI., No. 4. • Various

... which it meets, simply because its rapid motion is the vehicle by which the energy of the gunpowder is transferred from the gun to where the blow is to be struck. Had the cannon been directed vertically upwards, then the projectile, leaving the muzzle with the same initial velocity as before, would soar up and up, with gradually abating speed, until at last it reached a turning-point, the elevation of which would depend upon the initial velocity. Poised for a moment at the summit, the cannon-ball may then ...
— Time and Tide - A Romance of the Moon • Robert S. (Robert Stawell) Ball

... Oxford Street; they weighed fifteen pounds, and carried seven drachms of powder without a disagreeable recoil. The bullet was a blunt cone, one and a half diameter of the bore, and I used a mixture of nine-tenths lead and one-tenth quicksilver for the hardening of the projectile. This is superior to all mixtures for that purpose, as it combines hardness with extra weight; the lead must be melted in a pot by itself to a red heat, and the proportion of quicksilver must be added a ladle-full at a time, and stirred quickly with a piece ...
— The Albert N'Yanza, Great Basin of the Nile • Sir Samuel White Baker

... fit to drive a car!" she snapped; and for further answer she threw the speed lever into the intermediate gear and released the clutch. Like a projectile hurled from a catapult, the swift little roadster shot away down the cottonwood avenue, and with a jerk of the lever into the "high" the second ...
— The Honorable Senator Sage-Brush • Francis Lynde

... battery near containing two or three mortars, and a shell was thrown at the boat as it held its daring course for the shore. It was not a hundred yards from me at the moment. I heard the scream of the projectile, saw it describing its flaring parabola in my direction, and with my last energies dived to avoid it. The sound of its explosion rang in my ears as I went under. When I came up again, the boat was ...
— Under the Dragon Flag - My Experiences in the Chino-Japanese War • James Allan

... that when again the black squatted for his shot, Jerry deemed he was near enough to rush. The rifle was coming to shoulder when he sprang forward. Swiftly as he sprang, he made no sound, and his victim's first warning was when Jerry's body, launched like a projectile, smote the black squarely between the shoulders. At the same moment his teeth entered the back of the neck, but too near the base in the lumpy shoulder muscles to permit the fangs to penetrate ...
— Jerry of the Islands • Jack London

... be better, of course. In that case, I set my flitter into a projectile trajectory like this, whose objective is the center of the vortex, there. See? Ten seconds or so away, at about this point, I take my instantaneous readings, solve the equations at that particular warped surface for some certain ...
— The Vortex Blaster • Edward Elmer Smith

... comparatively few accumulator cells, darted away entirely with a stupendous acceleration. A few of them, however, received the unimpeded flow of complete batteries. Those projectors tore loose from even their massive supports and crashed through anything opposing them like a huge, armor-piercing projectile. It was a spectacle to stagger the imagination, and Stevens grinned as he turned to the girl, who ...
— Spacehounds of IPC • Edward Elmer Smith

... soldiers did not see the men whom they were killing. An officer with a telescope watched where the shells from the cannon were falling and telephoned to the captain in charge to change the aim a trifle for his next shots. The men put in the projectile, closed and fired the gun. Once in a while, a shell from the invisible enemy, two, three, or four miles away, fell among them, killing and wounding. When a regiment of Austrians were ordered to charge the Russian trenches, ...
— The World War and What was Behind It - The Story of the Map of Europe • Louis P. Benezet

... have come from there? Looking down upon the window-ledge, there lay the mysterious missile—a little misshapen ball. He opened the window and took it up. It was a small handkerchief tied into a soft knot, and dampened with water to give it the necessary weight as a projectile. ...
— The Heritage of Dedlow Marsh and Other Tales • Bret Harte

... applied in accordance with the character of the vessel. After a study of the various types of mines in existence, there was produced an American mine believed to involve all the excellent points of mines of whatever nationality, while another extraordinary invention was the non-ricochet projectile. The ordinary pointed projectile striking the water almost horizontally is deflected and ricochets. A special type of shell which did not glance off the surface of the ocean was developed early in 1917 and supplied to all vessels ...
— Our Navy in the War • Lawrence Perry

... The hills, range after range, were now crowned with forts. Fifty thousand of Russia's best soldiers were behind those batteries, many of which were provided with casemates impenetrable [Page 188] to any ordinary projectile. General Stoessel, a man of science, courage and experience, was in command; and he held General Nogi with a force of sixty or seventy thousand at bay for eleven months. Prodigies of valour were performed on both sides, ...
— The Awakening of China • W.A.P. Martin

... obeying Harriet's direction or the instinct of the swimmer, she closed her lips tightly and held her breath. Her little body flashed through a thick growth of bushes that hung over the chute at one point. She had seen the bushes coming at her like a projectile and instinctively lowered her head before reaching them. But she quickly raised her head again, uttering an exclamation, as the skin was neatly peeled from ...
— The Meadow-Brook Girls in the Hills - The Missing Pilot of the White Mountains • Janet Aldridge

... the Washington gun factory an experimental 6-inch rapid-fire gun, different from the rapid-fire guns we have now in service, which are supplied with what is termed fixed ammunition. The powder and projectile to be used in the experimental gun will be separate, and two operations consequently will have to be employed in loading. This can be done so quickly that it is expected that a very ...
— Porto Rico - Its History, Products and Possibilities... • Arthur D. Hall

... idea, and he accordingly developed his designs for a torpedo, and for a method of firing it under water from a gun carried in the bow of a boat, and suitably opening to allow the discharge of the torpedo projectile. This was Ericsson's so-called "Destroyer" system, and was embodied finally in a boat called the "Destroyer," which he built in company with his friend, Mr. C.H. Delamater, and with which he carried on numerous experiments. In the ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIV • John Lord

... is discretely silent about these things, what can the more venturesome and less responsible imagination suggest? Would a huge "runaway sun,'' like Arcturus, for instance, make such an opening if it should pass like a projectile through the Milky Way? It is at least a stimulating inquiry. Being probably many thousands of times more massive than the galactic stars, such a stellar missile would not be stopped by them, though its direction of flight might be altered. It would drag the small stars lying close ...
— Curiosities of the Sky • Garrett Serviss

... law—so openly stated as restrictions by Mr. Ricardo—are brought forward by Mr. Malthus as so many objections of his own to upset that law. The logic, as usual, is worthy of notice; for it is as if, in a question about the force of any projectile, a man should urge the resistance of the air, not as a limitation of that force, but as a capital objection to it. What I here insist on, however, is its extreme disingenuousness. But this is a subject which it is unpleasant to pursue; and the course of our subject will of itself ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey

... line y cx, the machine draws the parabola y cx squared / 2. This is the path of a projectile, as the space fallen is as the area of the triangle between the inclined line, the axis of ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 288 - July 9, 1881 • Various

... of smoke from what, if she had been a "sea" ship, would have been her bow, and a projectile sang by the Golden Eagle. "That was a warning shot, Frank," cried Ben; "the next ...
— The Boy Aviators' Treasure Quest • Captain Wilbur Lawton

... war, now trivial, now gigantic—always awesome in the power and volition it revealed. One passed from the sight of a brown puddle, scooped in the surface of the street by an exploding shell, to a view of a magnificent ash tree splintered by some projectile. It is a very rare thing to see a sinister landscape, but this whole road was sinister. I used to discuss this sinister quality with a distinguished French artist who as a poilu was the infirmier, or medical service man, attached to a squad of engineers working in ...
— A Volunteer Poilu • Henry Sheahan

... to fire at 500 to 700 yards, which means that at this range the track or "wake" of a projectile would be discernible for, say, twenty-five to thirty seconds—not much time, indeed, for any ship to get out of the way. At 100 yards' range or less they do not care to fire unless compelled to, as the torpedo is nearly always discharged ...
— Aircraft and Submarines - The Story of the Invention, Development, and Present-Day - Uses of War's Newest Weapons • Willis J. Abbot

... the object of the feeling. Fig. 10 depicts just such a thought-form after it has left the astral body of its author, and is on its way towards its goal. It will be observed that the almost circular form has changed into one somewhat resembling a projectile or the head of a comet; and it will be easily understood that this alteration is caused by its rapid forward motion. The clearness of the colour assures us of the purity of the emotion which gave birth to this thought-form, while the precision ...
— Thought-Forms • Annie Besant

... could not set his dice in motion, nor start the action of his centrifugal force without the help of rotation. Newton discovered the law of gravitation; but gravitation alone would soon reduce the universe to a motionless mass; he was compelled to add a projectile force to account for the elliptical course of the celestial bodies; let Newton show us the hand that launched the planets in ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau

... shells burst a little too short of the earthworks, and again a slight modification in the range was made. Now missiles began to descend in and around the distant redoubt, and each as it exploded dealt out shattering destruction to the dummy men which represented an enemy. One projectile smashed against the side of Oke Tor, and sent back the ringing sound of ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts

... platform, the silhouette of the rocket cruiser Polaris stood out boldly against the pale evening sky. Resting on her directional fins, her nose pointed skyward, her gleaming hull reflecting the last rays of the setting sun, the ship was a powerful projectile ready to blast off for ...
— The Space Pioneers • Carey Rockwell

... Uncle Boz showed us an apparatus for sending a line on board a stranded ship, whether invented or improved by him I am not prepared to say, nor whether the projectile was a rocket or a shot, or both, fired from a gun. Hollis, the eldest of our party, who had considerable mechanical talent, seemed clearly to understand ...
— Tales of the Sea - And of our Jack Tars • W.H.G. Kingston

... the depths of the Revolving Beryl and adjusting the enlarging device which brought back, life size, the infinitesmal individuals mirrored in the Beryl, he watched her go—a trim white figure which flashed across the void, from mountain-top to her valley home, like a very white projectile from another world. Very white, and ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science July 1930 • Various

... was killed by a stray bullet in the front line. There was some slight shelling of back areas with "Little Willies," German field gun shells, but these did no damage, and gave us in consequence a useful contempt for this kind of projectile. Trench mortars were not yet invented, and we were spared all heavy shells, so that, when on the 9th we left Armentieres, we felt confident that trenches, though wet and uncomfortable, were not after all so very dreadful, and that, if at any time we should be asked ...
— The Fifth Leicestershire - A Record Of The 1/5th Battalion The Leicestershire Regiment, - T.F., During The War, 1914-1919. • J.D. Hills

... him she always told herself, and usually after two or three empty Sundays there would come a happy one, with the new car which was built like a projectile, purring in the road, George and Alice shouting greetings as they came in the gate, Louise excitedly attempting to outdo herself on the dinner, and the sunburned noisy babies shrieking themselves hoarse as they romped ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris

... Maxim sounded the deep, sharp bang of Redgrave's gun, as he sent ten pounds weight of Rennickite, as he had christened it, into the Martian air-ship. There was the roar of an explosion which shook the air for miles around. A blaze of greenish flame and a huge cloud of steamy smoke showed that the projectile had done its work, and, when the smoke drifted away, the spot on which the air-ship had lain was only a deep, red, jagged gash in the ground. There was not even a fragment of the ...
— A Honeymoon in Space • George Griffith

... justice and common sense. It is the fundamental law of the world in which we live that truth shall grow, first the blade, then the ear, after that the full corn in the ear. A person who complains of the men of 1688 for not having been men of 1835 might just as well complain of a projectile for describing a parabola, or of quicksilver for being ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... at the first sound had started running for all they were worth. Dick's bat flew like a projectile itself, fortunately hitting no one, and Prescott was running like Greek of ...
— The High School Pitcher - Dick & Co. on the Gridley Diamond • H. Irving Hancock

... proprietor of collieries at Newcastle-on-Tyne, conceived the idea that if a bullet were made to receive the projectile force in the interior of the bullet, but beyond the centre of gravity, it would continue its flight without deviation. Having satisfied himself of the truth of this theory, he sent the mould to the Board ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray

... a rising wave of voices from the crowd. Some men came forward for weapons; Rynason saw others drawing knives and hatchets, and a few of them had heavy guns, projectile type. Rynason watched with narrowed eyes; it had been a filthy maneuver on Manning's part to organize this mob, and his open acceptance of their temper was dangerous. Once they were turned loose, what could ...
— Warlord of Kor • Terry Gene Carr

... ballistics by B. Robins, Count Rumford and Charles Hutton, the velocity of a projectile was found by means of the ballistic pendulum, in which the principle of momentum is applied in finding the velocity of a projectile (Principles of Gunnery, by Benjamin Robins, edited by Hutton, 1805, p. 84). It consisted of a pendulum of considerable ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various

... from us, and, if we had, in visiting the plant, any suggestions to make, he wanted to hear them. The plant employs twelve thousand, one-half women and the remainder men. The product is shells, cartridges, fuses, and detonators. We were told that this is the only place in France where a projectile is entirely completed, ready to fire. We met Andre Foulcher, engineer of the plant. The production of this plant is twenty-eight thousand shells and twenty-five thousand fuses daily. We were told that here the women were more efficient than the men. At these works ...
— A Journey Through France in War Time • Joseph G. Butler, Jr.

... with the long beard is Cope, the inventor of the Cope gun. He's a wonder. He was out here in the employ of the Porsslanese Government. Most of their artillery was designed by him. What a useful man he has been to his country! First he invented a projectile that could go through any steel plate then known, and all the navies had to build new steel-clad ships on a new principle that he had invented to prevent his projectiles from piercing them. Then what does he do, but invent a new projectile that could ...
— Captain Jinks, Hero • Ernest Crosby

... that I first saw the German minnewafers and trench mortars at work. The shells thrown from the minnewafers are as much feared as any German weapon of war. They are thrown from a large gun with a smooth bore and short barrel. The projectile is shaped like a rolling pin, though it is much larger. In each end, or handle of the shell, is a cap, which explodes as the handle strikes the ground. As the projectile somersaults as it travels, one handle or the other is sure to hit the earth, so there are no "duds" that I saw among ...
— In the Flash Ranging Service - Observations of an American Soldier During His Service - With the A.E.F. in France • Edward Alva Trueblood

... Lady Queenie had said that if she was to do war-work without disaster to her sanity she must have the right environment. Thus the putting together of Lady Queenie's nest had proceeded concurrently with the building of national projectile factories and of square miles of offices for the girl clerks of ministries and departments ...
— The Pretty Lady • Arnold E. Bennett

... post-office, or to do a little shopping, wonder how it is that their pedestrian friends can compass so many weary miles and not fall down from sheer exhaustion; ignorant of the fact that the walker is a kind of projectile that drops far or near according to the expansive force of the motive that set it in motion, and that it is easy enough to regulate the charge according to the distance to be traversed. If I am loaded to carry only one mile and am compelled to walk three, I generally feel more fatigue than ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs

... would get there in one and a half second; a projectile fired from a gun would arrive in eight days, five hours; an express-train would be due in eight months, twenty-two days. It is only the 1/388 part of the distance that separates us from the Sun, and only the ...
— Astronomy for Amateurs • Camille Flammarion

... down the lid and watched the sealant ooze around the seam. For a few hours, she was welded into her projectile until a workman with a short cutting arc would remove her after she had ...
— The Game of Rat and Dragon • Cordwainer Smith

... on the morning of the fourth of May. From then on until dusk the intensity of a furious all-day bombardment by every known variety of projectile had been broken only at intervals to allow of the nearer approach of the enemy's attacking infantry. The worst was the enfilade fire of two batteries on our right which with six-inch high explosive shells tore our front line to fragments so that we ...
— The Escape of a Princess Pat • George Pearson

... nature of the ground, trenches should, if practicable, be so located as to avoid stony ground, because of the difficult work entailed and of the danger of flying fragments, should the parapet be struck by an artillery projectile. ...
— Manual of Military Training - Second, Revised Edition • James A. Moss

... size and character, depending on the size and quality of the projectile and also the tissue injured. They are so seldom met with in our animals that an extended reference to them seems unnecessary. If a wound has been made by a bullet a careful examination should be made to ascertain whether the ball has passed through or out of the body. If ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture

... but in sight, as were the German trenches about 2000 yards to our front. At times the fire would come in salvos quickly repeated. Bursts of fire would be made for ten or fifteen minutes at a time. We got all varieties of projectile, from 3 inch to 8 inch, or perhaps 10 inch; the small ones usually as air bursts, the larger percussion and air, and the ...
— In Flanders Fields and Other Poems - With an Essay in Character, by Sir Andrew Macphail • John McCrae

... him when they were about fifty feet from the boy. Shooting by on his side, with a long stroke and the plunge of his body like a projectile, the dark face with the long black hair plastering it turned towards his own, in fierce triumph Silver Tassel ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... artillery fire by any means. Fritz had a large and varied assortment of "Minenwerfer" with which to entertain us at all hours, day and night. A good many people, even among the soldiers themselves, think that Minenwerfer or "Minnie" for short, is the name of the projectile or torpedo, while, as a matter of fact, it is the instrument which throws it; a literal translation being "mine-thrower." In the same way they often speak of the shells thrown by trench mortars as "trench mortars" ...
— The Emma Gees • Herbert Wes McBride

... Mr. Roumann again. "I have studied it all out, and I think the projectile, shaped somewhat like a great shell, such as they use in warfare, or, more properly speaking, built like a cigar or a torpedo, is the only feasible means of reaching Mars. We shall go in a projectile, two hundred feet long, and ten feet ...
— Through Space to Mars • Roy Rockwood

... and, after I had left it behind, discover the dynamite capable of blasting it. 'Twas a tiny grain at first, an insignificant ball rolling and increasing as it went. From one slope to the other of the theorems, it grew to a heavy mass; and the mass became a mighty projectile which, flung backwards and retracing its course, split the darkness and spread it into one ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre

... was not more successful than that of Tudor Brown—for it fell short two or three hundred yards. But the combat was now begun, and the firing became regular. An American projectile cut the large sail yards of the "Alaska," and it fell upon the deck killing two men. A small bomb from the Swedish vessel fell upon the bridge of the "Albatross," and must have made great havoc. Then other projectiles skillfully thrown lodged ...
— The Waif of the "Cynthia" • Andre Laurie and Jules Verne

... be assembled and placed under arms at a few days' notice. This kind of defense would also prove a delusion, for a hundred acres of soldiers armed with rifles and field artillery would be powerless to drive away even the smallest ironclad or stop a single projectile from one. In fact, neither of these plans, nor both together, would be much more effective than the windmills and proclamations which Irving humorously describes as the means adopted by the early Dutch governors of New York to defend that city ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 841, February 13, 1892 • Various

... perfect tempest, and he only laughed. The new Roland, the bold and marvelous knight, is already revealed in the letters to be given below. On the 16th he departed on his rounds, carrying, as observer, Lieutenant de Lavalette. His airplane was hit by a shell projectile in the right wing. On the 17th his machine returned with eight wounds, two in the right wing, four in the body, and in addition one strut and one longitudinal spar hit. On the 18th he returned from a reconnaissance with ...
— Georges Guynemer - Knight of the Air • Henry Bordeaux

... forward with a rapidity which in a few seconds must have brought it to the foot of the walls. All gazed on for an instant in breathless suspense,—but only for an instant. The catapult was discharged,—a loud booming noise in the air accompanied the progress of its deadly projectile,—and, in a moment afterwards, a tremendous crash, mingled with the shrieks of the victims and the shouts of the soldiers from the walls, declared the destruction of the huge machine. It had been hit so truly, that the stone passed through the roofs, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 569 - Volume XX., No. 569. Saturday, October 6, 1832 • Various

... horizontal surface—say from air on to glass or water—the velocity of the light-particles, when they came close to the surface, is, according to Newton, also accelerated. Approaching such a surface obliquely, he supposed the particles, when close to it, to be drawn down upon it, as a projectile is deflected by gravity to the surface of the earth. This deflection was, according to Newton, the refraction seen in our last lecture (fig. 4). Finally, it was supposed that differences of colour might be due to differences in the 'bigness' of the particles. ...
— Six Lectures on Light - Delivered In The United States In 1872-1873 • John Tyndall

... or eight feet in (p. 117) thickness; a mass of earth which the heaviest shell can hardly pierce through. We have been told that the German trenches are even more secure, and are roofed with bricks, which cause a concussion shell to burst immediately it strikes, thus making the projectile lose most of its burrowing power. One of our heaviest shells struck an enemy's dug-out fashioned on this pattern, with the result that two of the residents were merely scratched. The place was packed ...
— The Red Horizon • Patrick MacGill

... soldier, and, after that, unbounded obedience. The Rupun swore by Tibetan matchlocks, which he believed to be the most serviceable weapons on earth. According to him, as long as you had powder enough, you could use anything as a projectile. Pebbles, earth, or nails did as good work as ...
— An Explorer's Adventures in Tibet • A. Henry Savage Landor

... like to see again the picture showing the working of the bomb-dropping device, and I would like to have the film stopped exactly at the moment that the projectile leaves the tube. I wish to examine the action ...
— L. P. M. - The End of the Great War • J. Stewart Barney

... Tobe's spirits rising, plate after plate hurtled across the table; the air fairly bristled with flying crockery. Mrs. Cullum, after the first shock of surprise, continued calmly to eat her supper, moving her head from right to left or ducking to avoid an unusually well-aimed projectile. ...
— Southern Lights and Shadows • Edited by William Dean Howells & Henry Mills Alden

... continued to carry on most pleasantly, Mrs. Dalrymple, I could perceive, did not entirely sympathize with our projects of amusement. As an experienced engineer might feel when watching the course of some storming projectile—some brilliant congreve—flying over a besieged fortress, yet never touching the walls nor harming the inhabitants, so she looked on at all these demonstrations of attack with no small impatience, ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever

... kicked Manuel in the shins; the poor boy saw stars. He gave a cry of pain and then, furious, seized a plate and sent it flying at the agent's head; the latter ducked and the projectile crossed the dining-room, crashed through a window pane and fell into the courtyard, where it smashed with a racket. The salesman grabbed one of the coffee-pots that was filled with coffee and milk and hurled ...
— The Quest • Pio Baroja

... Liber Studiorum; the boys scrambling after their kites in the woods of the Greta and Buckfastleigh; and the notable and most pathetic drawing of the Kirkby Lonsdale churchyard, with the schoolboys making a fortress of their larger books on the tombstone, to bombard with the more projectile volumes; and passing from these to the intense horror and pathos of the Rizpah, consider for yourself whether there was ever any other painter who could strike such an octave. Whether there has been or not, in other walks of art, this power of sympathy is unquestionably in landscape unrivalled; ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin

... spoke, he indicated the wall opposite the window, which obviously could not have been struck by a projectile entering with such extreme obliquity; and I was about to point out this fact when I fortunately remembered ...
— The Red Thumb Mark • R. Austin Freeman



Words linked to "Projectile" :   weapon, arm, test instrument vehicle, pellet, throw stick, seeker, round shot, research rocket, rocket engine, spitball, dynamical, cannonball, vehicle, cannon ball, dynamic, step rocket, shot, boomerang, slug, throwing stick, test rocket, arrow, weapon system, dart, bullet, multistage rocket



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