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noun
Axis  n.  (pl. axes)  
1.
A straight line, real or imaginary, passing through a body, on which it revolves, or may be supposed to revolve; a line passing through a body or system around which the parts are symmetrically arranged.
2.
(Math.) A straight line with respect to which the different parts of a magnitude are symmetrically arranged; as, the axis of a cylinder, i. e., the axis of a cone, that is, the straight line joining the vertex and the center of the base; the axis of a circle, any straight line passing through the center.
3.
(Bot.) The stem; the central part, or longitudinal support, on which organs or parts are arranged; the central line of any body.
4.
(Anat.)
(a)
The second vertebra of the neck, or vertebra dentata.
(b)
Also used of the body only of the vertebra, which is prolonged anteriorly within the foramen of the first vertebra or atlas, so as to form the odontoid process or peg which serves as a pivot for the atlas and head to turn upon.
5.
(Crystallog.) One of several imaginary lines, assumed in describing the position of the planes by which a crystal is bounded.
6.
(Fine Arts) The primary or secondary central line of any design.
Anticlinal axis (Geol.), a line or ridge from which the strata slope downward on the two opposite sides.
Synclinal axis, a line from which the strata slope upward in opposite directions, so as to form a valley.
Axis cylinder (Anat.), the neuraxis or essential, central substance of a nerve fiber; called also axis band, axial fiber, and cylinder axis.
Axis in peritrochio, the wheel and axle, one of the mechanical powers.
Axis of a curve (Geom.), a straight line which bisects a system of parallel chords of a curve; called a principal axis, when cutting them at right angles, in which case it divides the curve into two symmetrical portions, as in the parabola, which has one such axis, the ellipse, which has two, or the circle, which has an infinite number. The two axes of the ellipse are the major axis and the minor axis, and the two axes of the hyperbola are the transverse axis and the conjugate axis.
Axis of a lens, the straight line passing through its center and perpendicular to its surfaces.
Axis of a microscope or Axis of a telescope, the straight line with which coincide the axes of the several lenses which compose it.
Axes of coordinates in a plane, two straight lines intersecting each other, to which points are referred for the purpose of determining their relative position: they are either rectangular or oblique.
Axes of coordinates in space, the three straight lines in which the coördinate planes intersect each other.
Axis of a balance, that line about which it turns.
Axis of oscillation, of a pendulum, a right line passing through the center about which it vibrates, and perpendicular to the plane of vibration.
Axis of polarization, the central line around which the prismatic rings or curves are arranged.
Axis of revolution (Descriptive Geom.), a straight line about which some line or plane is revolved, so that the several points of the line or plane shall describe circles with their centers in the fixed line, and their planes perpendicular to it, the line describing a surface of revolution, and the plane a solid of revolution.
Axis of symmetry (Geom.), any line in a plane figure which divides the figure into two such parts that one part, when folded over along the axis, shall coincide with the other part.
Axis of the equator, Axis of the ecliptic, Axis of the horizon (or other circle considered with reference to the sphere on which it lies), the diameter of the sphere which is perpendicular to the plane of the circle.
Axis of the Ionic capital (Arch.), a line passing perpendicularly through the middle of the eye of the volute.
Neutral axis (Mech.), the line of demarcation between the horizontal elastic forces of tension and compression, exerted by the fibers in any cross section of a girder.
Optic axis of a crystal, the direction in which a ray of transmitted light suffers no double refraction. All crystals, not of the isometric system, are either uniaxial or biaxial.
Optic axis, Visual axis (Opt.), the straight line passing through the center of the pupil, and perpendicular to the surface of the eye.
Radical axis of two circles (Geom.), the straight line perpendicular to the line joining their centers and such that the tangents from any point of it to the two circles shall be equal to each other.
Spiral axis (Arch.), the axis of a twisted column drawn spirally in order to trace the circumvolutions without.
Axis of abscissas and Axis of ordinates. See Abscissa.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Axis" Quotes from Famous Books



... possibilities of animal organization, there is a certain monotony of structure in the Radiate plan, in which the body is divided into a number of identical parts, bearing definite relations to a central vertical axis. But while all admit that Vertebrates are highest and Radiates lowest, how do the Articulates and Mollusks stand to these and to each other? To me it seems, that, while both are decidedly superior to the Radiates and inferior to the Vertebrates, we cannot predicate absolute ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IX., March, 1862., No. LIII. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics, • Various

... cold it is!" He shivered, and buttoned up his coat, and continued, looking about him on the vast snow-field dotted with hummocks of ice which lay bleak and lifeless about him: "Ah, I suppose either the Gulf Stream has got diverted, or the earth's axis has shifted and we are ...
— The Mummy and Miss Nitocris - A Phantasy of the Fourth Dimension • George Griffith

... states was strong enough to control and subjugate the rest, alliances were formed. The most favoured union was the north-south axis; it struggled against an east-west league. The alliances were not stable but broke up again and again through bribery or intrigue, which produced new combinations. We must confine ourselves to mentioning the most important of the events that took ...
— A history of China., [3d ed. rev. and enl.] • Wolfram Eberhard

... 121:24 rule that the greater controls the lesser. The sun is the central stillness, so far as our solar system is concerned, and the earth revolves about the sun once a year, besides 121:27 turning daily on its own axis. ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy

... an axis is simply that of a body turning entirely round upon its own centre. The only centre around which the moon performs a revolution is very far from its own proper axis, being situated at the centre of the earth, the focus of its orbit, and as it has no other rotating motion around ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, October, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... children soothed and exhilarated my drooping spirits, and my attention to their education and interest was amply rewarded by their proficiency and duty. In them every hope, every pleasure, now centres. They are the axis on which revolves the temporal felicity of their mother. Judge, then, my dear, how anxiously I must watch, how solicitously I must regard, every circumstance which relates to their welfare and prosperity! Exquisitely alive to these sensations, your letter awakens ...
— The Coquette - The History of Eliza Wharton • Hannah Webster Foster

... figure, while the hands are pressed as before against the waist, with the elbows thrown well away from the body, the performer sways the pelvis and central axis of the trunk in a circular or elliptical orbit, a movement, which, carried to the extreme, is ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson

... cacique perceiving that the admiral was much gratified by this information, told him he would give orders to bring a great quantity of gold from a place called Cibao, where it was to be had in great abundance. Afterwards, when the admiral was on shore, the cacique invited him to eat axis and cazabi, which formed the principal diet of the Indians[7]. He likewise presented him with some masks or vizors, having their eyes, noses, and ears, made of gold, and many pretty ornaments of that metal which the ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. III. • Robert Kerr

... ten-thousandth part of a second. It would be snapped upward, as a drop of water from a grindstone. Upward and upward; but the heavier wheel would have deflected it a little from the vertical. Upward and northward it would rise, therefore, till it had passed the axis of the world. It would, of course, feel the world's attraction all the time, which would bend its flight gently, but still it would leave the world more and more behind. Upward still, but now southward, till ...
— The Brick Moon, et. al. • Edward Everett Hale

... lion, the panther and leopard, the cheetah, and various other large Jelidae, roam through its jungly coverts; the wild elephant, the rhinoceros, and gyal, are found in its forests; and the sambur and axis browse on its grassy glades. Venomous snakes, hideous lizards, and bats, with the most beautiful of birds and butterflies, all find a home in ...
— The Plant Hunters - Adventures Among the Himalaya Mountains • Mayne Reid

... pipe passes up to the roof, on which is a large cast iron reservoir, capable of holding some thousand gallons of water, for the use of the prison. This reservoir is filled by means of forcing pump machinery below, connected with the principal axis which works the machinery of the mill; this axis or shaft passes under the pavement of the several yards, and working by means of universal joints, at every turn communicates with the ...
— The Olden Time Series, Vol. 5: Some Strange and Curious Punishments • Henry M. Brooks

... placed symmetrically to the metal cover, and the space between should, of course, not be too small, certainly not less than, say, five centimetres, but much more if possible; especially the two sides of the zinc box, which are at right angles to the axis of the coil, should be sufficiently remote from the latter, as otherwise they might impair its action and be a ...
— Experiments with Alternate Currents of High Potential and High - Frequency • Nikola Tesla

... third patent (the second of the steam-engine series), "for certain new methods of applying the vibrating or reciprocating motion of steam or fire engines, to produce a continued rotative motion round an axis or centre, and thereby to give motion to the wheels of mills or other machines." One of these methods was that commonly known as the sun-and-planet wheels; they were five in all. A favorite employment of his in the workshops at Soho, in the later months of 1783 and earlier ones of 1784, ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 6 of 8 • Various

... the axis of the earth, on which it turns as on a hinge. The origin of hinge is hang. It is what ...
— England's Antiphon • George MacDonald

... rigid with the axis of their ship. He looked through it, moved their controls, and brought the cross-hairs of his instrument to ...
— Astounding Stories, May, 1931 • Various

... looked, the punt struck a submerged sandbank and beached on it. Chips' little body bent on the pole, but except to swivel the punt on its axis it ...
— Colorado Jim • George Goodchild

... seen in fig. 8; but this circumstance mainly depends on the changed direction of the meatus. The inter-parietal bone (see fig. 9) differs much in shape in the several skulls; generally it is more oval, or has a greater width in the line of the longitudinal axis of the skull, than in the wild rabbit. The {118} posterior margin of "the square raised platform" [271] of the occiput, instead of being truncated, or projecting slightly as in the wild rabbit, is in most lop-eared rabbits pointed, as in fig. 9, C. The paramastoids ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Vol. I. • Charles Darwin

... part, started toward them, then wheeled and sped away in the direction that would lead them off Weary's trail. That is, he sped for ten rods or so. After that he seemed to revolve on an axis, and there was an astonishing number of revolutions to ...
— The Lonesome Trail and Other Stories • B. M. Bower

... was the chap who made things hum! HE was the drumstick and the drum! HE was the shirt bosom and the starch! HE was the keystone in the arch! HE was the axis of the earth! Nothing existed before his birth! But when he was off from work a Nobody knew ...
— It Can Be Done - Poems of Inspiration • Joseph Morris

... being inclined at an angle of 45 degrees to the course of the wind, the ship is impelled onwards in a direction at right angles to that of the wind: the only difference in the two cases being this—namely, that in the sails of the ship, the axis of inclination, represented by the mast, is vertical, creating horizontal movement; while, in the wings of the air-ship, the axis of inclination—the pivot on which they turn—is horizontal, creating vertical movement. Were there but one pair of screws, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 431 - Volume 17, New Series, April 3, 1852 • Various

... those given at the foot of Plate VI., with details from the chart. It is to be noted that Mars varies in presentation, not only as respects the greater or less opening out of his equator towards the north or south, but as respects the apparent slope of his polar axis to the right or left. The four projections as shown, or inverted, or seen from the back of the plate (held up to the light) give presentations of Mars towards the sun at twelve periods of the Martial year,—viz., at the autumnal and vernal equinoxes, ...
— Half-hours with the Telescope - Being a Popular Guide to the Use of the Telescope as a - Means of Amusement and Instruction. • Richard A. Proctor

... right hand transversely by the tips of the left, and upon the wrist—cut off the ends; (8) then cut upon the left hand, still held in the same position, with the right, the cuts being parallel to the longitudinal axis of the palm—split; (9) both hands closed in front of the body, about four inches apart, with forefingers and thumbs approximating half circles, palms toward the ground, move them forward so that the back of the hand comes forward and the half circles ...
— Sign Language Among North American Indians Compared With That Among Other Peoples And Deaf-Mutes • Garrick Mallery

... principles in virtue of which the world is conceived as a unity. There are many, indeed, who cannot see the wood for the trees, as there are others who cannot see the trees for the wood. Carlyle cared nothing though science were able to turn a sunbeam on its axis; Ruskin sees little in the advance of invention except more slag-hills. And scientific men have not been slow to return with interest the scorn of the moralists. But a more comprehensive view of the movement of human ...
— Browning as a Philosophical and Religious Teacher • Henry Jones

... Pretention" is a view of a flying-machine. In the midst of a frame of light wood sits the operator, steadying himself with one hand, and with the other fuming a cremaillere, which appears to give a very quick rotatory movement to two glass globes revolving upon a vertical axis. The friction of the globes is supposed to develop electricity to which his ...
— Wonderful Balloon Ascents - or, the Conquest of the Skies • Fulgence Marion

... lens. But, if this cannot be done, it were surely better to submit to some trifling exaggeration than to absolute deformity and error. MR. S. says also, that as we mainly judge of distance, &c. by the convergence of the optic axis of our eyes (Query, How do persons with only one eye judge?), so, in short or medium distances, it were better to let the camera radiate from its centre to the principal object to be delineated. The result of this must ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 203, September 17, 1853 • Various

... landscape. Far to the southward Mount Whitney lifts its granite summit four or five hundred feet higher than Shasta, but it is nearly snowless during the late summer, and is so feebly individualized that the traveler may search for it in vain among the many rival peaks crowded along the axis of the range to north and south of it, which all alike are crumbling residual masses brought into relief in the degradation of the general mass of the range. The highest point on Mount Shasta, as determined by the State Geological Survey, ...
— Steep Trails • John Muir

... the excess of weight which almost every rider puts on the near side of her saddle; this good effect being due to the fact that the off attachment of the balance strap is farther away from the centre line (axis) of the animal's body than the near attachment; and consequently the pull of the balance strap on the off side acts to greater mechanical advantage than the pull on ...
— The Horsewoman - A Practical Guide to Side-Saddle Riding, 2nd. Ed. • Alice M. Hayes

... right into the lavender-stem. Its square shape supplies a firmer hold than a round stalk would do. With this one and only prop, the animal's body juts out stiffly, at full length, with legs folded. It forms a right angle with the supporting axis, so much so that the whole weight of the insect, which has turned itself into the arm of a lever ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre

... Minnie Finley, who were born in Ohio and examined by him. They were fused together in a common longitudinal axis, having one pelvis, two heads, four legs, and four arms. One was weak and puny and the other robust and active; it is probable that they had but one rectum and one bladder. Goodell accompanies his description by the mention of several analogous ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould

... myself horizontally, I planted my feet against one of the great ribs of the ship, and rested the end of the stick between them. I now stretched myself out at full length, and guiding the rod so as to keep it parallel to the axis of my body, I brought it across my forehead, and beyond. With my fingers I could tell the point that was opposite the crown of my head, and carefully marking this point, I afterwards notched it with the knife. I now possessed a four-foot rule, ...
— The Boy Tar • Mayne Reid

... the southern hemisphere presents the same glorious phenomenon. Once every year the life of the earth pulsates; now there is an abounding vitality, now a desolation. But what is the cause of all this? It is only mechanical. The earth's axis of rotation is inclined to the plane of her orbit of revolution ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper

... Bey's mob was now probably trying to make our donkey-boys and arabeah-men join in the fight or the siege. "Mr. Neill Sheridan will kindly lead the whole party to the sanctuary, which his knowledge of architecture will enable him to find, on the axis of the temple. Down that passage, please! In fifteen minutes the surprise will be ready, and you will receive the signal to return, from Mr. Bronson, American Consul at Asiut—no ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson

... detriment. Your neighbours are so invariably, though perhaps insensibly, actuated by self-interest—self-interest—[Mr. Tomlinson is wrong here; but his ethics were too much narrowed to Utilitarian principles.—EDITOR.]—is so entirely, though every twaddler denies it, the axis of the moral world—that they fly into a rage with him who seems to disregard it. When a man ruins himself, just hear the abuse he receives; his neighbours take ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... This is one of the most delightful kinds of sport in Ceylon. The game is the axis or spotted deer, and the open plains in many parts of the low country afford splendid ground ...
— The Rifle and The Hound in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker

... latitude widens, longitude lengthens; Asia, Africa, Europe, are to the east—America is provided for in the west; Banding the bulge of the earth winds the hot equator, Curiously north and south turn the axis-ends; Within me is the longest day—the sun wheels in slanting rings—it does not set for months. Stretched in due time within me the midnight sun just rises above the horizon, and sinks again; Within me zones, seas, cataracts, plants, volcanoes, groups, Malaysia, Polynesia, ...
— Poems By Walt Whitman • Walt Whitman

... the Physical Schools of his day occupied with the discussion of final causes, and solving difficulties in material nature by means of them; if he found it decided, for instance, that the roots of trees make for the river, because they need moisture, or that the axis of the earth lies at a certain angle to the plane of its motion by reason of certain advantages thence accruing to its inhabitants, I should not wonder at his exerting himself for a great reform in the process of inquiry, ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman

... as no one cared much for his monologues on the future of the town, the attendance was often light. He issued circulars referring to our village as "the Queen City of the Prairies," and on the circulars was a map, showing that the Queen City of the Prairies was "the railroad axis of the West." There was one road running into the town; the others old Alphabetical indicated with dotted lines, and explained in a foot-note that they ...
— In Our Town • William Allen White

... this can be modified together with result of fractures: two forms predominate, the plate and the needle; these forms falling through air assume definite position—the plate falls horizontally swaying to and fro, the needle turns rapidly about its longer axis, which remains horizontal. Simpson showed excellent experiments to illustrate; consideration of these facts and refraction of light striking crystals clearly leads to explanation of various complicated halo phenomena such as recorded and such as seen ...
— Scott's Last Expedition Volume I • Captain R. F. Scott

... heart in the body of a living animal, he will perceive not only all the particulars I have mentioned, viz., the heart becoming erect, and making one continuous motion with its auricles; but farther, a certain obscure undulation and lateral inclination in the direction of the axis of the right ventricle, as if twisting itself slightly in performing its work. And indeed everyone may see, when a horse drinks, that the water is drawn in and transmitted to the stomach at each movement of the throat, which movement ...
— The Harvard Classics Volume 38 - Scientific Papers (Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology) • Various

... judging of the common events of life, and has often been used by the greatest natural philosophers. The undulatory theory of light, for instance, has thus been arrived at; and the belief in the revolution of the earth on its own axis was, until lately, supported by scarcely any direct evidence. It is no valid objection to the Darwinian theory of the origin of species that science as yet throws no light on the far higher problem of the essence or origin of life. Neither has any one explained what ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIV • John Lord

... triangulation prove that the globe is an oblate spheroid flattened at the poles, and this form we know, by strict mathematical demonstrations, is precisely the one which a fluid body revolving round its axis, and become solid at its surface by the slow dissipation of its heat or other causes, would assume. I suppose, therefore, that the globe, in the first state in which the imagination can venture to consider it, was a fluid mass with an immense atmosphere revolving in space round the sun, and ...
— Consolations in Travel - or, the Last Days of a Philosopher • Humphrey Davy

... promulgation of the accepted system of astronomy, called the Copernican system, which represents the earth as revolving on its axis and considers the sun as the centre of motion for the earth and other planets, marked the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various

... was about the whole time. As if she wasn't leading him on!" Because that is the attitude of mind of the correct human person in such a case made and provided. That is, if an inevitable automatic action can be called an attitude of mind. Is rotation on its axis an attitude of a wheel's mind? To be sure, though, a wheel may turn either of two ways. A ratchet-wheel is ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan

... Nmes is the Roman Amphitheatre, the most perfect extant. In form it is elliptical, of which the great axis measures 437 ft., and the lesser 433 ft., and the height 70 ft. Around the building are two tiers of arcades, each tier having 60 arches, and all the arches being separated from each other by a Roman Doric column. ...
— The South of France—East Half • Charles Bertram Black

... of his voice cleared his mind and strengthened his resolve. It was odd how the word seemed to shape the act, though one knew how ancillary it really was. As he talked, it was as if the globe had swung around, and he himself were upright on its axis, with Mr. Spence underneath, on his head. Through the ensuing interchange of concise and rapid speech there sounded in Millner's ears the refrain to which he had walked down Fifth Avenue after his first talk with Mr. Spence: ...
— Tales Of Men And Ghosts • Edith Wharton

... feel weight. The ship was going into rotation. The feeling increased until he felt normally heavy again. There was no other sensation, even though the space cruiser was now spinning on its axis through space at unaltered speed. The centrifugal force produced by the spinning gave them an ...
— Rip Foster in Ride the Gray Planet • Harold Leland Goodwin

... struck up a lively two-step, and soon the floor was covered with couples, each turning on its own axis, and all revolving around a common centre, in obedience perhaps to the same law of motion that governs the planetary systems. The dancing-hall was a long room, with a waxed floor that glistened with the reflection of the ...
— The Wife of his Youth and Other Stories of the Color Line, and - Selected Essays • Charles Waddell Chesnutt

... among In wintry region saddest, In Sunday's choir he always sung, Of all the world the gladdest: "The axis stout It turns about, Falls not the poorest home without, For ...
— Poems and Songs • Bjornstjerne Bjornson

... petty miseries and all the little felicities of life. He concealed under a deluge of commonplaces his native incapacity, his total want of education, and a weakness of character which can only be expressed by the old word "weathercock." Be not uneasy: the weathercock had for its axis the beautiful Madame Beauvisage, Severine Grevin, the most ...
— The Deputy of Arcis • Honore de Balzac

... the position of the child, for several weeks before birth, is one in which its long axis is parallel to the long axis of her body. This remains true no matter whether the head or the buttocks are to precede at the time of birth. In ninety-seven out of a hundred cases, however, the ...
— The Prospective Mother - A Handbook for Women During Pregnancy • J. Morris Slemons

... available supply of pure water is that for the boiler feed, and the condensed steam is pumped directly back to the boiler, as shown in Fig. 48, the delivery from the condensed-water pumps may be carried to an elevation 10 feet above the axis of the glands, where a tank should be provided of sufficient capacity that the water may have time to cool considerably before being used. In most of these cases, if so desired, the oil-cooling water may come from ...
— Steam Turbines - A Book of Instruction for the Adjustment and Operation of - the Principal Types of this Class of Prime Movers • Hubert E. Collins

... with us, but I do not expect to convince them. They never were known to be convinced of anything. You can easily learn to distinguish an individual of this class by the shape of his head. Here is one I carry for illustration. He argues that the world is flat and does not revolve on its axis once in 24 hours, because, if it did, the water would all be spilled out of the Mississippi river. Life is too short to argue with this class, and I can only promise them that before I leave this platform they will be in the same category that a fellow was once who went ...
— How to Become Rich - A Treatise on Phrenology, Choice of Professions and Matrimony • William Windsor

... a whirlwind is a column of air which turns upon its own axis, and which advances comparatively slowly, for, as a rule, a person can keep up with it at a walking pace. This whirling column of air is both caused and set in motion ...
— New and Original Theories of the Great Physical Forces • Henry Raymond Rogers

... smaller-sized leaves, close by the side of their like. Round the axis compress'd ...
— The Poems of Goethe • Goethe

... Phrygiae turba, laceratis comas miserumque tunsae pectus effuso genas fletu rigatis? levia perpessae sumus, si flenda patimur. Ilium vobis modo, mihi cecidit olim, cum ferus curru incito mea membra raperet et gravi gemeret sono Peliacis axis pondere Hectoreo tremens. tunc obruta atque eversa quodcumque accidit torpens malis rigeusque sine sensu fero. iam erepta Danais coniugem sequerer meum, nisi hic teneret: hic meos animos domat morique prohibet; cogit hic aliquid ...
— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler

... slowly the ponderous top began to revolve upon its axis. Faster, faster, till it was nothing but a blur. Faster yet, until only its outlines were visible. Cliff pressed a ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, November, 1930 • Various

... painting here only a fragment of it. That world, indeed, does not exist, it can have neither defined customs nor a general character. It is composed of exceptions and of singularities. We are so naturally creatures of custom, our continual mobility has such a need of gravitating around one fixed axis, that motives of a personal order alone can determine us upon an habitual and voluntary exile from our native land. It is so, now in the case of an artist, a person seeking for instruction and change; now in the case ...
— Cosmopolis, Complete • Paul Bourget

... I got the impression that I was living in an easy drowsy world, as no doubt the editor meant me to. It was only when the Montreal Star arrived by post that I felt that the world was still revolving pretty rapidly on its axis and that there ...
— My Discovery of England • Stephen Leacock

... was not due east and west, neither did it directly face Ludgate Hill. Owing to the lie of the land cleared away, both of these peculiarities were increased by the surveyor, and the axis of the New St. Paul's was swung some seven degrees further north than the Old. He thereby made the best of his somewhat cramped site, and avoided the foundations of the old walls. The excavations were not completed nor the site fully cleared ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of St. Paul - An Account of the Old and New Buildings with a Short Historical Sketch • Arthur Dimock

... remark, may be applied to geometry. Round, square, oblong, &c. &c., may be easily taught. It may also be used in teaching geography. The shape of the earth may be shewn by a ball, the surface by the outside, its revolution on its axis by turning it round, and the idea of day and night may be given by a ball and a ...
— The Infant System - For Developing the Intellectual and Moral Powers of all Children, - from One to Seven years of Age • Samuel Wilderspin

... charge of my case, who at last relented and presented me with a good, whole lead pencil. By so doing he placed himself high on my list of benefactors; for that little shaftlike implement, magnified by my lively appreciation, became as the very axis of the earth. ...
— A Mind That Found Itself - An Autobiography • Clifford Whittingham Beers

... cut-off valve stem itself, which must be so connected with the eccentric rod as to admit of being turned; and in most cases the valve stem extends through both ends of the steam chest, so that it must both slide endwise and turn upon its axis in two stuffing boxes, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 415, December 15, 1883 • Various

... me of Jules Verne's story of the men who planned to shift the axis of the earth by the discharge of a great cannon. Everything was arranged. The calculations were exact to the most minute fraction. The world stood aghast at the impending explosion. But the men of science, whose figures were otherwise so ...
— London to Ladysmith via Pretoria • Winston Spencer Churchill

... how a little Lacertilian, the Conolophus subcristatus, conducts its work of mining and digging. It establishes its burrow in a soft tufa, and directs it almost horizontally, hollowing it out in such a way that the axis of the hole makes a very small angle with the soil. This reptile does not foolishly expend its strength in this troublesome labour. It only works with one side of its body at a time, allowing the other side to rest. For instance, the right ...
— The Industries of Animals • Frederic Houssay

... boats and the main camp. Within five minutes the boats were over the crack and close to the tents. The trouble was not caused by a blow from another floe. We could see that the piece of ice we occupied had slewed and now presented its long axis towards the oncoming swell. The floe, therefore, was pitching in the manner of a ship, and it had cracked across when the swell lifted the centre, leaving the two ends comparatively unsupported. We were now on ...
— South! • Sir Ernest Shackleton

... building is on the south side of the choir of the cathedral, with its longest axis north and south. It measures 72 feet in length by 17 feet in width between walls, but was originally longer, a piece having been cut off at the south end, where the entrance now is, and where the library is now terminated by a stone wall of ...
— The Care of Books • John Willis Clark

... all wanted to have specimens of my productions. They would give any price for them. The peeries were turned with perfect accuracy, and the steel shod, or spinning pivot, was centred so as to correspond exactly with the axis of the top. They could spin twice as long as the bought peeries. When at full speed they would "sleep," that is, revolve without the slightest waving. This was considered high ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth

... of these parts are the whirlwinds—the tourbillons,—each revolving with terrific rapidity round its own axis and raising to the sky a cylindrical column of dust. They further move along the country in a spasmodic manner, but never so fast that they cannot be avoided. The diameter of the wind columns I observed by the dust carried with it, varied from 3 ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor

... as having been seen in 1802, near the spot where Columbus can be computed to have been at this time. Columbus was in fact within that extensive prairie of floating seaweed which is known as the Sargasso Sea, whose principal longitudinal axis is found in modern times to lie along the parallel of 41 deg. 30', and the best calculations which can be made from the rather uncertain data of Columbus's journal seem to point to about ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: Explorers • Various

... were distributed with perfect equality, the Lorenz curve would coincide with the 45 degree line and the index would be zero; if income were distributed with perfect inequality, the Lorenz curve would coincide with the horizontal axis and the right vertical axis and the index ...
— The 2003 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency

... through e and f with the external winding. The same arrangement is repeated for the tertiary currents, M, and the quaternary ones, o, p. In the annexed example all the lines that run parallel with the axis of the streets are closed through the earth, while those that have a direction perpendicular thereto enter the houses of subscribers and form a closed circuit. In the interior of these houses the wires, as well as the induction coils, are insulated and applied to ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 455, September 20, 1884 • Various

... can say? Many courses of the sun were needed before men could take the full historic measures of Luther, Calvin, Knox; the measure of Loyola, the Council of Trent, and all the counter-reformation. The center of gravity is forever shifting, the political axis of the world perpetually changing. But we are now far enough off to discern how stupendous a thing was done when, after two cycles of bitter war, one foreign, the other civil and intestine, Pitt and Washington, within a span of less than a score of years, ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein

... Cornelia, to rest upon them the left wing of the church, and built new foundations for the right wing only. His architect seems to have been rather negligent in his measurements, because the tomb of S. Peter did not correspond exactly with the axis of the nave, and was not in the centre of the apse, being ...
— Pagan and Christian Rome • Rodolfo Lanciani

... of earth which no being would think of scaling on such a night as this, even were he to hear the most pathetic cries issuing hence that could be uttered by a spectre-chased soul. I reach a central mound or platform—the crown and axis of the whole structure. The view from here by day must be of almost limitless extent. On this raised floor, dais, or rostrum, harps have probably twanged more or less tuneful notes in celebration of daring, strength, or cruelty; of worship, superstition, love, birth, and ...
— A Changed Man and Other Tales • Thomas Hardy

... an ephemeral glory about life's vanishing points, Wherein you burn... You of unknown voltage Whirling on your axis... Scrawling vermillion signatures Over the night's velvet hoarding... Insolent, towering spherical To ...
— The Ghetto and Other Poems • Lola Ridge

... an elevation of 30 degrees, and less as the balls are less; the range is furthest when fired from west to east in the direction of the earth's motion, which for the diurnal rotation on its axis, is at the rate of 1,037 miles per hour, and in its orbit, ...
— Burroughs' Encyclopaedia of Astounding Facts and Useful Information, 1889 • Barkham Burroughs

... projected on each side a broad, oblong, slightly curved sheet of metal, very thin, but strengthened by means of wire braces, till it was as rigid as a plate of solid steel, although it only weighed a few ounces. These air-planes worked on an axis amidships, and could be inclined either way through an angle of thirty degrees. At the pointed stern there revolved a powerful four-bladed propeller, and from each quarter, inclined slightly outwards from the middle line of the vessel, projected ...
— The Angel of the Revolution - A Tale of the Coming Terror • George Griffith

... geographers, has preserved the oblong form of the lake Cassipa for his lake Parima, although this form is entirely different from that of the ancient lake Parima, or Rupunuwini, of which the great axis was directed from east to west. The ancient lake (that of Hondius, Sanson, and Coronelli) was also surrounded by mountains, and gave birth to no river; while the lake Parima of La Cruz and the modern geographers communicates with the Upper Orinoco, ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V3 • Alexander von Humboldt

... smaller streams, and the courses of these are fixed by the conformation of land—just as a river's flow is turned right or left, and sometimes backward in eddies, by the form of its banks and bottom. Trade winds, and the earth's motion on its axis, still further modify the streams, both as ...
— The Island Queen • R.M. Ballantyne

... his customary perspicacity, made it plain that one of the chief causes of temptation was hot weather, which causes immoderate thirst. In order to lessen the amount of thirst in the population he suggested that it might be feasible to shift the axis of the earth, so that the climate of the United States would become perceptibly cooler and the torrid zone would be transferred to the area of the North Pole. This would have the supreme advantage of melting all the northern ...
— In the Sweet Dry and Dry • Christopher Morley

... itself to the bottom of the still, where it burns, and gives a very bad taste to the whiskey. In order to remedy this inconvenience, it has been imagined to stir the flour incessantly, by means of a chain dragged at the bottom of the still, and put in motion by an axis passing through the cap, and turned by a workman until the ebullition takes place. This axis, however well fitted to the aperture, leaves an empty space, and gives an issue to the spirituous vapors, which escaping with rapidity, thereby ...
— The Art of Making Whiskey • Anthony Boucherie

... peril, I set out for the south shore. By water, it is from a mile and a half to three miles across Green Lake. By land, it is many times farther. From road to road of those parallel with the major axis of the lake, it is four miles at the narrowest, and it is three miles from the end of the lake before you reach the first north and south road connecting the parallels. Ten miles, then, after you leave the end of the lake on the side ...
— The Strange Adventures of Mr. Middleton • Wardon Allan Curtis

... "to hold the chucks. The chucks have got to be these same bearings, because nothing else will stand the speed. And we got to cut out the bed plate of any lathe we find. Hm. We got to do our spinning with the shaft lined up with the earth's axis, too." ...
— Space Platform • Murray Leinster

... traced the consequences of the law of gravitation. He showed that the earth must be an oblate spheroid, formed by the revolution of an ellipse round its lesser axis. He showed how the tides were caused by the moon, and how the effect of the moon's action upon the earth is to draw its fluid parts into the form of an oblate spheroid, the axis of which passes through the moon. He also applied the law of gravitation to explain irregularities in the ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IX. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton

... to a deplorable state of depression, with regard to "matrimonial transactions;" it is now of vital importance to young ladies, who have an ambition to distinguish themselves at the altar of Hymen, that they take "masculine tastes," as the axis around which is to revolve, in graceful motion, the actions of their daily lives; but for this no one need think of censuring Ottawa's noble women, their conduct is not so servile or dependent as the unfair critic would ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera

... in the centre of a grindstone to protect the hole in the centre from the action of the axis; it is a charge frequently borne on escutcheons of ...
— The Manual of Heraldry; Fifth Edition • Anonymous

... determined, and the apparent solar time obtained. The clock consisted of a spy-glass, having a nichol or double-image prism for an eye-piece, and a thin plate of selenite for an object-glass. When the tube was directed to the North Pole—that is, parallel to the earth's axis—and the prism of the eye-piece turned until no colour was seen, the angle of turning, as shown by an index moving with the prism over a graduated limb, gave the hour of day. The device is of little service in a country where watches are reliable; but ...
— Heroes of the Telegraph • J. Munro

... strongly that my thoughts completely overpowered me, and ere I knew it I was living at the mercy of indescribable emotions. All this continued during many revolutions of the Earth on its axis. I felt as Columbus must have felt when he was moving over strange waters. Then occurred the most notable event of my life. In the twinkling of an eye I was caught away from the Earth and, without any effort of my own, I was darting through space ...
— Life in a Thousand Worlds • William Shuler Harris

... knew another little plaything, the thaumatrope. Dr. Paris had invented it in 1827. It shows two pictures, one on the front, one on the rear side of a card. As soon as the card is quickly revolved about a central axis, the two pictures fuse into one. If a horse is on one side and a rider on the other, if a cage is on one and a bird on the other, we see the rider on the horse and the bird in the cage. It cannot be otherwise. It is simply the result ...
— The Photoplay - A Psychological Study • Hugo Muensterberg

... state, the whole body and all its organs of relation and movement are in tension. The cerebro-spinal axis virtually excites the whole muscular and peripheral system in such a way that relaxation or relative repose becomes impossible. But the brain, with all its dependencies and appendices, is not only the organ of thought, but ...
— Myth and Science - An Essay • Tito Vignoli

... never do, and so the missionary had to take him in hand again and give him another lesson. This time he used his large ball-like globe, swung on its axis in its frame, which was supported on three feet. Patiently the minister showed him how the world was like a great ball, round in every direction. Attentively the Indian listened, and carefully examined the globe and the frame in which ...
— Winter Adventures of Three Boys • Egerton R. Young

... I saw that it was revolving upon an axis that lay parallel to the surface of Pellucidar, so that during each revolution its entire surface was once exposed to the world below and once bathed in the heat of the great sun above. The little world had that which Pellucidar could not have—a day and night, and—greatest ...
— Pellucidar • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... penetration diminishes under a very obscure law, but so rapidly that no conceivable strength of current would affect an object protected by an intervening sheet half an inch in thickness. On the other hand, it prefers to all other lines the axis of a conductive bar, such as may be formed of [undecipherable] in an antapergic sheath. However such bar may be curved, bent, or divided, the current will fill and follow it, and pursue indefinitely, without divergence, diffusion, or loss, the direction ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg

... grief within grief, multiplied to infinitude; and the wider and more diffusive the circle, the less powerful was the concentration of sickening heart and brain on that which was the more immediate axis of ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson

... Antithesis antitheses Apex apices Appendix appendixes or appendices Arcanum arcana Automaton automata Axis axes Basis bases Beau beaux or beaus Calx calces or calxes Cherub cherubim or cherubs Crisis crises Criterion criteria Datum data Diaeresis diaereses Desideratum desiderata Effluvium effluvia Ellipsis ellipses Emphasis emphases Encomium ...
— English Grammar in Familiar Lectures • Samuel Kirkham

... eggs of a small snail-like shell-fish. One of these specks magnified proves to be a crystalline sphere with an opaque mass in its centre. And while you are looking, the opaque mass begins to stir, and by-and-by slowly to turn upon its axis like a forming planet,—life beginning in the microcosm, as in the great worlds of the firmament, with the revolution that turns the surface in ceaseless round to the source ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... rifles have the box central magazine, but placed in different positions as regards the shoe and the axis of the bore. In the original pattern of the Jarman (Sweden and Norway), the magazine is affixed to the upper part of the shoe, inclined at a considerable angle to the right hand (see vertical cross section, Fig. 11). Here the operation of gravity obviates the necessity of a magazine ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 601, July 9, 1887 • Various

... for a moment. We have left the earth, and are many thousands of miles away from it. You know that which causes night and day on the earth is the rotation of it on its axis. Half the time the part we are living on is turned away from the sun, and the other half of the time turned toward the sun. Now, the sun is fixed in space. We are also in space, and we are so comparatively small that there will never be any shadows to cause night. We are like a small ...
— Through Space to Mars • Roy Rockwood

... axis, and the difficulty is obviated. The image will be formed in the pierced space, which will itself serve as a tube to look through. Now I ...
— The Diamond Lens • Fitz-James O'brien

... the arena, though not quite in its axis, runs a low broad wall called the "backbone," bearing various sculptures along its summit and in the middle an obelisk, now standing in the Piazza del Popolo, which Augustus had brought from Egypt after his conquest of that country. On the extremities of ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker

... developed the grade of spiritual vision which opens the Desire World to him and he looks at the same object, he will see it both inside and out. If he looks closely, he will perceive every little atom spinning upon its axis and no part or particle will be ...
— The Rosicrucian Mysteries • Max Heindel

... rapidly under the water, as a sounding of over two thousand fathoms was obtained by the 'Aurora' at a distance of eight miles from the east coast. The trend of the island is about eleven degrees from true north; the axis lying north by east to south by west. At either end are the island-groups already referred to, and their connexion with the mainland may be traced by the sunken rocks indicated by the breaking seas on the ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson

... first instance and finishing up carefully with a file till the angle is exact. Solder to the end a piece of tin, and cut and file this to the precise shape of the elliptical end. Detach by heating, scribe a line along its longest axis, and attach it by a small countersunk screw to the ...
— Things To Make • Archibald Williams

... certain that Joshua's words are absolutely at variance and irreconcileable with the present state of astronomical knowledge? Astronomers allow that the sun is the centre and governing principle of our system, and that it revolves on its axis. What readier means, then, could Joshua have found for staying the motion of our planet, than by commanding the revolving centre, in its inseparable connexion with all planetary ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 69, February 22, 1851 • Various

... not logical, or good, or just; nor is he any other distinct thing; and this through the force of his own fatal actions, through the influence of the deviation in the earth's axis, or for whatsoever other equally amusing cause. Everything individual is always found mixed, full of absurdities of perspective and picturesque contradictions,—contradictions and absurdities that shock us, because ...
— Caesar or Nothing • Pio Baroja Baroja

... Indivisibles, or Newton's Fluxions, or Liebnitz's Calculus. The door of entrance was some forty-nine feet from its base, and 300 inches East of the centre, so as at once to express the tilt of the earth's axis from the plane of its orbit, and by its height from the ground express the Precession of the Equinoxes. What a witness outwardly, when complete, of polished marble, covering some thirteen and a half acres, within and without clean and free from idolatrous marks. But ...
— The Lost Ten Tribes, and 1882 • Joseph Wild

... difficult and complex analysis by means of his balance and finely-graduated weights. It is not that the action of the scales in the one case, and the balance in the other, differ in the principles of their construction or manner of working; but the beam of one is set on an infinitely finer axis than the other, and of course turns by the addition of a much ...
— The Method By Which The Causes Of The Present And Past Conditions Of Organic Nature Are To Be Discovered.—The Origination Of Living Beings • Thomas H. Huxley

... moveable on each other; third, there is the bilateral or molluscan type of life,—life embodied in a form in which there is a duality of corresponding parts, ranged, as in the cuttle-fishes, the clams, and the snails, on the sides of a central axis or plane; and fourth, there is the vertebrate type of life,—life embodied in a form in which an internal skeleton is built up into two cavities placed the one over the other; the upper for the reception of the nervous centres, cerebral and spinal,—the lower ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller

... excite our surprise, does nothing more than give play to springs unknown to mortals, there is, then, nothing in nature, which, in this sense, may not be looked upon as a miracle; because the cause by which a stone falls is as unknown to us, as that which makes our globe turn on its own axis. Thus, to explain the phenomena of nature by a miracle, is, in other words, to say we are ignorant of the actuating causes; to attribute them to the Divinity, is to agree we do not comprehend the resources of nature: it is little better than accrediting magic. To attribute to a sovereignly intelligent, ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 2 • Baron D'Holbach

... divisions, for estimating areas, or revising maps, a finely divided prismatic ivory rule, c, can be placed under the glass, B, and will do good service. In this case the plane of the lens must be perpendicular to the axis of the tube. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 611, September 17, 1887 • Various

... through all the simpler forms of life, fragments of an eloquent prophecy about the [78] human mind. The whole of nature he regards as a development of higher forms out of the lower, through shade after shade of systematic change. The dim stir of chemical atoms towards the axis of crystal form, the trance-like life of plants, the animal troubled by strange irritabilities, are stages which anticipate consciousness. All through the ever-increasing movement of life that was shaping itself; every successive phase of life, in its unsatisfied ...
— Appreciations, with an Essay on Style • Walter Horatio Pater

... made by a dab of clay placed at right angles to the axis of the cylinder, at a distance from the bottom determined by the ordinary length of a cell. This wad is not a complete round; it is more crescent-shaped, leaving a circular space between it and one side of the tube. Fresh layers are swiftly added ...
— Bramble-bees and Others • J. Henri Fabre

... similar to the large ruin described above in all respects except size, and peculiarities of ground plan attendant on size. The rooms are always rectangular, generally oblong, and arranged without regularity as regards their longer axis. Except the one last described, the ruins consist of compact masses of rooms, without evidences of interior courts, all of very small size, and all located without reference to defense. The last-described ruin differs from the others only in the arrangement of rooms. There is practically no standing ...
— Aboriginal Remains in Verde Valley, Arizona • Cosmos Mindeleff

... of two separately adjustable cutter heads in a single machine, so that the axis of one cutter may be at the angle of the other at a different angle, and both cutters operating at the same time upon the ...
— Scientific American, Vol. 17, No. 26 December 28, 1867 • Various

... whole twenty-four hours. A diurnal flower closes at night; a diurnal motion is precisely coincident with the astronomical day. In poetry, however, diurnal is often used for daily. "Give us this day our bread." "The rotation of the earth on its axis is the cause of our day and night." "Fred and I went for our ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor

... what could I do? with inquiring, Talking, collating the journals, go fever my brain about things o'er Which I can have no control. No, happen whatever may happen, Time, I suppose, will subsist; the earth will revolve on its axis; People will travel; the stranger will wander as now in the city; Rome will be here, and the Pope the custode of Vatican marbles. I have no heart, however, for any marble or fresco; I have essayed it in vain; 'tis vain as yet to essay it: But I may haply resume ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 7, May, 1858 • Various

... catches in succession are knocked on one side by a pin, and the contents of the vessel fall into the water. There are several methods available for operating the pins. The rising-holder bell may be made to actuate a train of wheels which terminate in a disc revolving horizontally on a vertical axis somewhere just below the catches; and this wheel may bear an eccentric pin which hits each catch as it rotates. Alternatively the carbide boxes may be made to revolve horizontally on a vertical axis by the movements of ...
— Acetylene, The Principles Of Its Generation And Use • F. H. Leeds and W. J. Atkinson Butterfield

... of Saturn's axis of rotation is much the same as our own. Hence we conclude that the seasons of this planet are analogous to ours in relative intensity. Only upon this far-off world each season lasts for seven years. At the distance at which it gravitates in space, the heat and ...
— Astronomy for Amateurs • Camille Flammarion

... countryside. The orderly fields stretched away toward gentle slopes on which cows were grazing. Here and there a village abruptly spread out its roofs, which rotated on the axis of a spire. All the windows gave back the light of late afternoon; and far off, against a hollow between two hills, like wine in a cup, there was a ruddy flash of water. It was the Sound; and beyond ...
— Sacrifice • Stephen French Whitman

... pause). "By the bye, Pratt, Kate has us completely. What fools we two are! Mr. Rumgudgeon, the matter stands thus: the earth, you know, is twenty-four thousand miles in circumference. Now this globe turns upon its own axis—revolves—spins around—these twenty-four thousand miles of extent, going from west to east, in precisely twenty-four hours. ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 6 • Charles H. Sylvester

... revolves on a Bay Area-to-Boston axis; about half of the hard core seems to live within a hundred miles of Cambridge (Massachusetts) or Berkeley (California), although there are significant contingents in Los Angeles, in the Pacific Northwest, ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0

... engine and planes hard to beat. There are self-priming oil pumps, an auxiliary exhaust, and the machine follows the lines of the lowest gasoline consumption. Remember the triple axis conditions, Dashaway. One controls the fore and aft axis, producing tipping. The second is the vertical axis, producing turning. The third is the lateral ...
— Dave Dashaway and his Hydroplane • Roy Rockwood



Words linked to "Axis" :   axis of rotation, rachis, principal axis, stalk, axial, sterling bloc, alignment, pivot, axis vertebra, major axis, x-axis, line, semiminor axis, off-axis reflector, sterling area, optic axis, rotor head, alliance, alinement, rotor shaft, stem, coalition, mechanism, y-axis, pin, coordinate axis, odontoid process, minor axis, cervical vertebra, bloc, spadix, stele, neck bone, z-axis



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