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Buoyancy   Listen
noun
Buoyancy  n.  (pl. buoyancies)  
1.
The property of floating on the surface of a liquid, or in a fluid, as in the atmosphere; specific lightness, which is inversely as the weight compared with that of an equal volume of water.
2.
(Physics) The upward pressure exerted upon a floating body by a fluid, which is equal to the weight of the body; hence, also, the weight of a floating body, as measured by the volume of fluid displaced. "Such are buoyancies or displacements of the different classes of her majesty's ships."
3.
Cheerfulness; vivacity; liveliness; sprightliness; the opposite of heaviness; as, buoyancy of spirits.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Buoyancy" Quotes from Famous Books



... comparison the chipmunk is a demure, preoccupied, pretty little busybody who often watches you curiously, but never mocks you or pokes fun at you; while the gray squirrel has the manners of the best-bred wood-folk, and he goes his way without fuss or bluster, a picture of sylvan grace and buoyancy. ...
— The Wit of a Duck and Other Papers • John Burroughs

... speed of his engine and Ned, who was at the wheel, gave it a little twist. Then, with a suddenness that was startling, the blazing canvas airship began to settle swiftly toward the water. It had lost much of its buoyancy. ...
— Tom Swift and his Motor-boat - or, The Rivals of Lake Carlopa • Victor Appleton

... chirp'd merrily in its cage on the wall. How slight a circumstance will sometimes change the whole current of our thoughts! The music of that bird abstracting the mind of the poet but a moment from his sorrows, gave a chance for his natural buoyancy ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman

... their proper perspective. A complete reading of his letters — published and unpublished — and of his writings, combined with the reminiscences of his friends in Baltimore, Macon, and elsewhere, will convince any one of the essential vigor and buoyancy of his nature. He would have resented the expression "poor Lanier", with as much emphasis as did Lamb the condescending epithet used by Coleridge. He was ever a fighter, and he won many triumphs. He had the power of meeting all ...
— Sidney Lanier • Edwin Mims

... My most intimate friend in the Theological School, James Freeman Clarke, was her constant companion in exploring the rich gardens of German literature; and from his descriptions I formed a vivid image of her industry, comprehensiveness, buoyancy, patience, and came to honor her intelligent interest in high problems of science, her aspirations after spiritual greatness, her fine aesthetic taste, her religiousness. By power to quicken other minds, she showed how living was her own. Yet more ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. II • Margaret Fuller Ossoli

... will startle one; this comes from some defenseless fruit-eating animal, which is pounced upon by a tiger-cat or stealthy boa-constrictor. Morning and evening the howling monkeys make a most fearful and harrowing noise, under which it is difficult to keep up one's buoyancy of spirit. The feeling of inhospitable wildness, which the forest is calculated to inspire, is increased tenfold under this fearful uproar. Often, even in the still hours of midday, a sudden crash will be heard resounding ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates

... buoyancy o' youth, And a' its joys are gane— My children scatter'd far and wide, And I am left alane; For she who was my hope and stay, And soothed me when distress'd, Within the narrow house of death Has lang been laid ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume III - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various

... unknown seas, amidst all kinds of perils and hardships; the fortitude with which he bore up against an accumulation of mental and bodily afflictions, enough to have disheartened and destroyed the most youthful and robust, and the irrepressible buoyancy of spirit with which to the last he still rose from under the ruined concerns and disappointed hopes and blasted projects of one enterprise, to launch into another, ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving

... sixteen-year-old specimen of Young American impudence and independence, said further of her, in the spring of '94, that if Floy's sleeves were only inflated with gas she could float on air as easily as she did on water, and on water Miss Allison was buoyancy personified. On water, too, and in her dainty bathing-dress, Miss Allison's wings were discarded and her true proportions more accurately defined. She was anything but slender. She was simply deliciously, exquisitely rounded now; but the question which so disturbed her feminine friends as to call ...
— A Tame Surrender, A Story of The Chicago Strike • Charles King

... cork to the mountainous seas that followed in her wake, and, considering her size, she was wonderfully free of water on the upper deck. With a heavy following sea, however, she was, owing to her buoyancy, extremely lively, and rolls of more than 40 were often recorded. The peculiar shape of the stern, to which reference has been made, was now well tested. It gave additional buoyancy to the after-end, causing the ship to rise more quickly to ...
— The Voyages of Captain Scott - Retold from 'The Voyage of the "Discovery"' and 'Scott's - Last Expedition' • Charles Turley

... schools throughout the country, and in the next place the young people of Japan, so far as I have been able to arrive at an opinion in the matter, are almost if not quite as enthusiastic in regard to various forms of outdoor sport as are those of this country. The buoyancy and enthusiasm of youth are, indeed, very much the same all over the world. It is only when youth comes to what are very often erroneously described as years of discretion that artificiality begins to assert itself. Base-ball, lawn-tennis, bicycling, and rowing are all ...
— The Empire of the East • H. B. Montgomery

... few weeks the disastrous day of Aughrim, it is impossible from the Irish point of view, not to recall with admiration, mixed indeed with alloy, but still with largely prevailing admiration, the extraordinary energy, buoyancy and talents of ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee

... came back. "Fanny believes that this is the night of crisis," he said slowly. All the buoyancy had left his voice. "But—but Elwyn, I hope you won't mind—the fact is she's set her heart on your seeing him. I told her what you told me about yourself, I mean your illness as a child, and it's cheered her up amazingly, poor girl! Perhaps you could tell her a ...
— Studies in love and in terror • Marie Belloc Lowndes

... darkness doubly terrible. The thunders bellowed over the wild waste of waters, and were echoed and prolonged by the mountain waves. As I saw the ship staggering and plunging among these roaring caverns, it seemed miraculous that she regained her balance, or preserved her buoyancy. Her yards would dip into the water: her bow was almost buried beneath the waves. Sometimes an impending surge appeared ready to overwhelm her, and nothing but a dexterous movement of the helm preserved ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck

... its trunk, about eighteen inches from the ground. One round was enough to put it in the water, each explosion removing several cubic feet of wood. By repeating this process on other trees they soon had enough large timber for buoyancy, so that they had but to superimpose lighter cross-logs and bind the whole together with pliable branches and creepers to form a substantial raft. The doctor climbed on, after which Bearwarden and Ayrault cast off, having prepared ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds • J. J. Astor

... not herself have explained the sense of buoyancy which seemed to lift and swing her above the sun-suffused world at her feet. Was it love, she wondered, or a mere fortuitous combination of happy thoughts and sensations? How much of it was owing ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton

... most impressive and deplorable nature—in constant association with death and contact with disease—his noble spirit, in the ardour of his search after professional information, still retains its buoyancy and freshness; and he wreaths with roses the hours which he passes in the dissecting-room, although the world in general looks upon it as a rather unlikely locality for those flowers to ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various

... departed for the main land. When they had accomplished about one league, being one-third of the distance, the clouds suddenly gathered and threatened a storm. Just as this danger impended, the air which acted in giving buoyancy to the boat, by some accident, began to escape. A man was immediately stationed at the bellows and it required his constant aid to supply the portion which steadily escaped. Colonel Fremont then ordered the men to pull for their lives and try thus to escape the danger of the impending ...
— The Life and Adventures of Kit Carson, the Nestor of the Rocky Mountains, from Facts Narrated by Himself • De Witt C. Peters

... employed in various ways, but especially for stopping vessels containing liquids, and, on account of its buoyancy in water, in the construction of life boats. It is also used in the manufacture of life preservers and cork jackets. The greatest quantities are brought from Catalonia, in Spain. The uses of Cork were well ...
— A Catechism of Familiar Things; Their History, and the Events Which Led to Their Discovery • Benziger Brothers

... they descended on a level stretch of prairie near a small bustling city. Here the gasoline supply in the tanks was replenished. The basket had been stored with over a hundred gallons of this in separate packages, without embarrassing the buoyancy of the machine, as the young aviators were far below ...
— Dave Dashaway and his Hydroplane • Roy Rockwood

... half away but she said nothing. Tavernake, with a sudden impulse which had in it nothing of passion—very little, indeed, of affection—lifted her fingers to his lips and passed out of the room. He descended the stairs, filled with a wonderful sense of elation, a buoyancy of spirit which he could not understand. As he walked blithely to his hotel, however, he began to realize how much he had dreaded this interview. He was a free man, after all. The spell was broken. He could think of her now as she deserved to be thought ...
— The Tempting of Tavernake • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... awful water-way, with more than the swiftness of an arrow, shot the boat, or skiff, right into the jaws of the pool. A monstrous breaker curls over the prow—there is no hope; the boat is swamped, and all drowned in that strangling vortex. No! the boat, which appeared to have the buoyancy of a feather, skipped over the threatening horror, and the next moment was out of danger, the boatman—a true boatman of Cockaigne, that—elevating one of his skulls in sign of triumph, the man hallooing, and the woman, a true Englishwoman that—of a certain class—waving her shawl. ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas

... had taught him, even in boyhood, was that braving of trial which alone can bring about the most perfect manliness. With a stout heart, and with limbs not less so, the difficulties before him had no thought in his mind; there was buoyancy enough in the excitement of his spirit, at that moment, to give even a pleasurable aspect to the obstacles that rose ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms

... and of others, perhaps, beyond them again, when she too had been young, and beloved, and happy. There are some lives which, in their even tenour of mild happiness, seem to glide smoothly from one scattered sorrow to another, so that to the very end some of the hopefulness and buoyancy of youth are retained; but there are others in which are concentrated in one brief space those keen joys and keener sorrows that no one quite survives, which, in passing over us take from us our strongest vitality, our young ...
— My Little Lady • Eleanor Frances Poynter

... that set the Donatello of to-day irreconcilably at odds with him of yesterday. His very gait showed it, in a certain gravity, a weight and measure of step, that had nothing in common with the irregular buoyancy which used to distinguish him. His face was paler and thinner, and the lips ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume II. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... buoyancy of youth asserted itself; she reasoned that a long hard apprenticeship had been the lot of many authors, and determined that she would write a page a day for years, if need be, until her tardy faculty had been coaxed from its hard soil and ...
— The Californians • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton

... wore on. Every man drank. They drank when they won. They drank when they lost. In the former case it was out of the buoyancy of their spirits, in the latter because they wished to elevate them. Whatever excuse they required they found, and when difficulty in that direction arose, there was always Silas Rocket ...
— The One-Way Trail - A story of the cattle country • Ridgwell Cullum

... bladders or skin bags filled with air. A great many boats surround a whale and stick him with as many harpoons as possible. If successful, they will so encumber him that his strength is not equal to the buoyancy of the bladders, and in this condition he is finished with a lance. A great feast is sure to follow his capture, and every interested native indulges in whale-steak ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox

... eaten amid the best of feeling. The assembled scouts forgot for the time being all their troubles. Lame feet failed to ache, and tired knees had all the buoyancy of youth again. ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts on a Tour - The Mystery of Rattlesnake Mountain • George A. Warren

... over to John Hammond. With the buoyancy of childhood, William Gilmore, which was the best that could be made of what he gave as his name, soon felt at home in the fisherman's cottage. It was a pleasant change to him after having been a wanderer with his father for as far back as ...
— By Conduct and Courage • G. A. Henty

... the ward he struggled bravely to bring his usual buoyancy to his command; but if the attempt was a sad failure it passed unnoticed, for the instant he came within sight ...
— The Story of Leather • Sara Ware Bassett

... what we have been; and we fancy, changed as we are, all we love can no longer regard us as formerly. Such are among the trials of woman, unknown, frequently unsuspected, by her nearest and dearest relations; and bitter indeed is it when such trials befall us in early youth, when liveliness and buoyancy are expected, and any departure therefrom is imagined to proceed from causes very opposite to the truth. Such at present were the trials of the orphan; but they were softened by the kindness and sympathy ...
— The Mother's Recompense, Volume I. - A Sequel to Home Influence in Two Volumes. • Grace Aguilar

... It is worse; for you cannot sit motionless in the heart of these perils, because the boat is rocking like a cradle, and you are pitched one way and the other, without the slightest warning; and only by a certain self-adjusting buoyancy and simultaneousness of volition and action, can you escape being made a Mazeppa of, and run away with where the all-seeing sun himself ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville

... engulfed; but the boat lived. The south-westerly gale had its birthplace above the Antarctic Continent, and its freezing breath lowered the temperature far towards zero. The sprays froze upon the boat and gave bows, sides, and decking a heavy coat of mail. This accumulation of ice reduced the buoyancy of the boat, and to that extent was an added peril; but it possessed a notable advantage from one point of view. The water ceased to drop and trickle from the canvas, and the spray came in solely at the well in the after part ...
— South! • Sir Ernest Shackleton

... those who are trying to build up gain about one-half pound each week after they have gotten rid of all the unhealthy unnecessary tissue, those underweight frequently losing five pounds before they begin to show any gain. It will surely bring back youthful buoyancy and insure your health and figure for the future. After you have succeeded in getting down to the right poundage you can go on my balanced diet for those who have reduced, but you will still have to do about ten minutes of my exercises every morning, ...
— The Art of Stage Dancing - The Story of a Beautiful and Profitable Profession • Ned Wayburn

... was drawn still more closely to the stricken man. He longed to bring back to that sad face the smile that he remembered on the Far West, when Latimer's buoyancy had been like wine to his lonely heart. He felt confident that the friendship of one man for another could reach the heart of his friend, now closing against ...
— A Man of Two Countries • Alice Harriman

... says that "the man is not wholly lost who can laugh at his own misfortunes." Tom laughed and immediately felt better. His natural buoyancy reasserted itself. But he had imbibed a prejudice against alarm clocks that promised to last for the ...
— Army Boys on the Firing Line - or, Holding Back the German Drive • Homer Randall

... them,—it stamped her at once with the hall-mark of unworthiness. Yet he knew that he was disappointed; disappointment was, perhaps, a mild word. He had walked through the streets with Ellison, after that meeting with her at the theatre, conscious of an unwonted buoyancy of spirits, feeling that he had drawn into his life a new experience which promised to be a ...
— Berenice • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... by a nameless traveller, is an evidence of the courage and buoyancy of heart with which the United Empire Loyalists faced the toils and privations of life ...
— The United Empire Loyalists - A Chronicle of the Great Migration - Volume 13 (of 32) in the series Chronicles of Canada • W. Stewart Wallace

... and the lieutenant's spirits rose, for he saw nothing to prevent the full success of the dream which had inspired and thrilled him so long. His buoyancy was infectious, and he brought a smile to the beauteous countenance by his merry sallies, and his picture of the happy future that ...
— A Waif of the Mountains • Edward S. Ellis

... at the happy age of innocence and buoyancy of spirit, when, after the first moment of embarrassment was over, a situation of awkwardness, like that in which she was suddenly left to make acquaintance with a handsome youth, not even known to her by name, struck her, in spite of ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott

... the most notable features of the fox is his large and massive tail. Seen running on the snow, at a distance, his tail is quite as conspicuous as his body; and, so far from appearing a burden, seems to contribute to his lightness and buoyancy. It softens the outline of his movements, and repeats or continues to the eye the ease and poise of his carriage. But, pursued by the hound on a wet, thawy day, it often becomes so heavy and bedraggled ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various

... the tanks. When full, we still have three hundred pounds reserve buoyancy, and would have to go ahead and steer down. But we won't go ahead. Come forward, and ...
— The Wreck of the Titan - or, Futility • Morgan Robertson

... down again: down into a dim deep pool of sleep. He lay there for a long time, in a silent blackness far below light and sound; then he gradually floated to the surface with the buoyancy of a dead body. But his body had never been more alive. Jagged strokes of pain tore through it, hands dragged at it with nails that bit like teeth. They wound thongs about him, bound him, tied weights to him, tried to pull him down with them; but still he floated, floated, ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton

... devoted to his profession, he soon became a thorough seaman; while the buoyancy of youth, and his playful, fearless spirit, prompted him continually to feats of extraordinary daring. In the spring of 1775, General Burgoyne took his passage to America in the Blonde, and when he came alongside, the yards were manned ...
— The Life of Admiral Viscount Exmouth • Edward Osler

... chill began to creep into the air. A little breeze, too, sighed over the sea, ruffling its surface, died away, then softly came again. As he moved into the darkness Maurice was conscious that the buoyancy of his spirits received a slight check. The night seemed suddenly to have changed, to have become more mysterious. He began to feel its mystery now, to be aware of the strangeness of being out in the sea alone at such an hour. Upon the shore he saw ...
— The Call of the Blood • Robert Smythe Hichens

... who weeps his heart out when no human comfort avails and wakes the next day without an apparent trace of the recent grief—Jean le Negre, in the course of the next twenty-four hours, had completely recovered his normal buoyancy of spirit. The sees-tee franc were gone. A wrong had been done. ...
— The Enormous Room • Edward Estlin Cummings

... business remained so good, for many officers dined at her table and, by Continental standards, paid her well and abundantly for what she fed them; but I think a better reason lay in the fact that she had within her an innate buoyancy ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb

... Land. Lightness of skeleton is a walking or running or flying adaptation, and not at all a swimming one; a swimming animal needs gravity in its skeleton, because sufficient buoyancy in the water is always afforded by the lungs and soft tissues of the body. The extraordinary lightness of these dinosaur vertebrae may therefore be put forward as proof of supreme fitness for the propulsion of an enormous frame during occasional ...
— Dinosaurs - With Special Reference to the American Museum Collections • William Diller Matthew

... pages are unluckily those wherein we miss the friction—friction of water to the oar, friction of air to the pinion—friction that sensibly proves the use, the buoyancy, the act of language. Sometimes an easy eloquence resembles the easy labours of the daughters of Danaus. To draw water in a sieve is an easy ...
— Hearts of Controversy • Alice Meynell

... was Tressamer, who found Prescott awaiting him anxiously, and trying, with poor success, to get through the wing of a fowl. He (Prescott) looked pale and dejected; but Tressamer rushed into the place in a state of exaggerated buoyancy, and loudly called for a bottle ...
— The Queen Against Owen • Allen Upward

... no whit keener than that of his fellows, nor his sufferings any more poignant; yet with the buoyancy of inexperienced youth, hope was not entirely crushed in the heart of any one of the young scouts. So absolute was their faith in their leader, so astonishing had been the good fortune that so far had attended their efforts, that each ...
— The Secret Wireless - or, The Spy Hunt of the Camp Brady Patrol • Lewis E. Theiss

... But the preposterous buoyancy of youth! The cold water that splashed away the clamminess of bed washed, too, the more vapoury fears from George's brain; the chilly splashings that braced his system to a tingling glow braced ...
— Once Aboard The Lugger • Arthur Stuart-Menteth Hutchinson

... good many people always buoyant in spirit and mirthful in appearance as if born optimists. There are also no fewer persons constantly crestfallen and gloomy as if born pessimists. The former, however, may lose their buoyancy and sink deep in despair if they are in adverse circumstances. The latter, too, may regain their brightness and grow exultant if they are under prosperous conditions. As there is no evil however small but may cause him to groan under it, who has his heart undisciplined, so there is no calamity ...
— The Religion of the Samurai • Kaiten Nukariya

... we saw that she had been driven clear of the boughs which held her and was floating away, but at the same moment the branches above us began to descend slowly, for the tree was rolling over, the buoyancy of the boat wedged in among the branches having kept it ...
— Rob Harlow's Adventures - A Story of the Grand Chaco • George Manville Fenn

... skin is not, as in most animals, strictly connected with the flesh, but is attached by separate elastic fibres; and, like the frigate-bird, it can force in under the skin, and into various cellular passages in the body, air which is rarefied by its animal heat, and contributes greatly to its buoyancy. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various

... more to be said," cried Irene, yielding somewhat to his buoyancy. "Shall we go on, or wait here for the kafila ...
— The Wheel O' Fortune • Louis Tracy

... street light and graceful as a fawn. Not since spring had he seen her, though in the night watches he had often heard the sound of her gay voice, seen the flash of her bright eyes, and recalled the sweet and gallant buoyancy that was the dear note ...
— A Man Four-Square • William MacLeod Raine

... secureness, security; reassurance. good omen, good auspices; promise, well grounded hopes; good prospect, bright prospect; clear sky. assumption, presumption; anticipation &c. (expectation) 507. hopefulness, buoyancy, optimism, enthusiasm, heart of grace, aspiration. [person who is ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget

... to which he had been subjected had not, however, conquered Quin's buoyancy. He was still tremendously vital, and when he wanted anything he wanted it inordinately and immediately. Just now, when every muscle in him was keeping time to that soul-disturbing music, he heard his own imperative desire voiced at ...
— Quin • Alice Hegan Rice

... girl was never the same in appearance after she left her Virginia home. A deep pall seemed to have been thrown over her spirit, and her hopes and happiness lay buried beneath it. Her disposition had lost its buoyancy, and her face wore a sad, pensive look. She tried to do her duty here as before, and her skill and neatness made her a favorite. But there was no one here to care for her and love her as Mammy Grace ...
— Step by Step - or, Tidy's Way to Freedom • The American Tract Society

... en rapport now with my surroundings, and was carried on a vast stream where I felt the buoyancy of His hand who made all the worlds. I realized the mathematical truth of their motions, so well known that astronomers compile tables of their positions through the years and the days, and the minutes of a day, ...
— Sailing Alone Around The World • Joshua Slocum

... Chinese Ambassador, it is the siege of Paris and the struggle of the Communists which seem to the author most important. His style even, his swift and limpid prose—the prose which somehow corresponds to the best vers de societe in its brilliancy and buoyancy—is the style of one who lives at the centre of things. Cardinal Newman once said that while Livy and Tacitus and Terence and Seneca wrote Latin, Cicero wrote Roman; so while M. Zola on the one side, and M. Georges Ohnet on the other, may write French, M. ...
— Parisian Points of View • Ludovic Halevy

... heart. In your place I should have walked myself out of that house as quickly as I had entered, but all the same—that would not be my advice. However, this is not the serious part of the story." Even Zoya's buoyancy became restrained as she concluded: "All Rome is asking what you have done with the duke. He followed you out of the room and has not been seen since. Giovanni is said to have spoken of seeing him at the club—and ...
— The Title Market • Emily Post

... he was remarkably joyous; nature had blessed him with a buoyancy of spirits, and even when suffering, he deceived the partial observer. He delighted many of the strangers he met in his saunterings through the cloisters, arrested and riveted the attention of the passer by, whom, like his "Ancient Mariner," he ...
— The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - 1838 • James Gillman

... had happened, something which had caused him to change his mind, or which had made it physically impossible for him to return. Now, after the first warmth and delight of the meeting had passed, a certain pre-occupation restrained the buoyancy so natural ...
— The Heart of Unaga • Ridgwell Cullum

... was about sixty, looked forty, and at first you might have guessed she weighed nearly three hundred, but the lightness of her smile and the actual buoyancy which she somehow imparted to her whole dominion lessened that by at least a hundred-weight. She ballooned out to the horse-block with a billowy rush somewhere between bounding and soaring; and Miss Betty slid down from the colt, who shied violently, to find herself enveloped, in ...
— The Two Vanrevels • Booth Tarkington

... last night, Roger—and the first thing she did was to ask about you, whom she believed I hated!" Again he laughed, with a buoyancy that had not been in his ...
— Where the Souls of Men are Calling • Credo Harris

... from the fact. The Gillespies rose to the occasion with the same dauntless buoyancy that they had shown in ever attempting the undertaking, and then blithely defying public opinion with a servant and a cow. The sense of their unfitness which had made the young men uneasy now gave way to secret wonder as the doctor pitched the tent ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner

... her former buoyancy in Kate's manner. Her eyes had something of their old-time sparkle as she reached inside the blousing front of her flannel shirt and laid in Mrs. Toomey's hand a packet of crisp banknotes ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart

... unshaken waters, but at once Upon some earth-awakening day of spring Do pass from gloom to glory, and aloft Winnow the purple, bearing on both sides Double display of starlit wings which burn Fanlike and fibred, with intensest bloom: E'en so my thoughts, ere while so low, now felt Unutterable buoyancy and strength To bear them upward through the trackless fields Of undefin'd existence far ...
— The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Tennyson

... fallacies have all been disposed of; and if you lived more in the world, more in contact with public opinion, and less within that charmed circle which you think the world, but which is anything but the world—if you gave way less to the excitement of clubs, less to the buoyancy which arises from talking to each other as to the effect of some smart speech in which the minister has been assailed, you would see that it is mere child's play to attempt to balk the intelligence of the country on this great question, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... reigned in North America—the ominous calm before a storm which was soon to shake the Continent. The Castle of St. Louis now became a centre of gaiety, despite the grey hairs of its distinguished occupant, whose spirits and buoyancy were still unquenched. Quebec was giving unmistakable signs of a social revolt against the rigorous subjection in which the Church had held her. Exiled from Fontainebleau, the officers of the Governor's suite did their best to improvise a counterpart, and the ladies of the ambitious ...
— Old Quebec - The Fortress of New France • Sir Gilbert Parker and Claude Glennon Bryan

... streams, shadowed by forests, studded with the olive and mulberry, and with vines bearing the luscious grape for the vintage. The constant change of scene and the daily renewal of objects of interest and novelty, combined with the elasticity of youth, brought back some degree of my former buoyancy and gayety. My uncle was so evidently delighted with the return of my old cheerfulness, and exerted himself so much to heighten it in every way, that I knew he sincerely loved me, and was doing what he really thought would in the end contribute ...
— Adele Dubois - A Story of the Lovely Miramichi Valley in New Brunswick • Mrs. William T. Savage

... Byron before him, and in his serious moments he had endeavoured to accomplish in prose what the mysterious and melancholy poet of the preceding generation had done in verse. The general effect of this Byronism, in spite of a certain buoyancy which carried the reader onwards, had been apt to be wearisome, in consequence of the monotony of effort. The fancy of the author had been too uniformly grandiose, and in the attempt to brighten it up he had sometimes passed over into positive failure. The most unyielding admirers ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse

... days before Hugh regained his old vigor and buoyancy; then it came to life like an Antaeus flung down to mother earth. His hour of doubt, of self-distrust, of compunction, was whirled away like an uprooted tree on the flood of his happiness. He flung reason and caution to the four winds; he dared Bella or Pete to betray ...
— Snow-Blind • Katharine Newlin Burt

... my own powers and importance, I shall have such confidence in the wisdom of my intended acts that there will seem to be no ground for delay. Furthermore the increased action of the heart, due to the effect of pleasure, gives me a feeling of buoyancy and invigoration which adds appreciably to the tendency ...
— Increasing Efficiency In Business • Walter Dill Scott

... Mary Braddock. It was addressed to Christine. The mother's heart cried out in the opening pages. David, at least, could read between the lines. There were the tenderest protestations of love and the most confident of prophecies, uttered with a buoyancy of spirit that convinced and delighted the girl, who had been so hungry for reassuring words. A new radiance enveloped her. But he saw beyond the wistful, carefully considered sentences. He saw the shadow of Thomas Braddock ...
— The Rose in the Ring • George Barr McCutcheon

... a buoyancy of spirits in Newton when he once more found himself clear of the frigate. He acknowledged that he had been well treated, and that he had not been unhappy; but still it was emancipation from forced servitude. It is hard to please where there are so many masters; and petty tyranny will exist, and ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat

... give the words of my journal, for one exclamation in it has a sort of schoolboy ring that recalls the buoyancy of youthful spirits, the spirits indeed to which in early life we owe our ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke

... which too much work and too much responsibility were bringing Helen Darley, when the new master came and lifted so much of the burden that was crushing her as must be removed before she could have a chance to recover her natural elasticity and buoyancy. Many of the noblest women, suffering like her, but less fortunate in being relieved at the right moment, die worried out of life by the perpetual teasing of this inflamed, neuralgic conscience. So subtile is the line which separates the true and almost ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... Effi had gradually become more composed, and the consciousness of having made a felicitous escape from a danger of her own creation restored her countenance and buoyancy. ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various

... invalid chair. There, propped up in cushions, lay a fat travesty of the old Saradokis. This was a Sara whose tawny hair was turning gray with suffering; whose mouth, once so full and boyish, was now heavy and sinister, whose buoyancy had changed to the bitter irritability of ...
— Still Jim • Honore Willsie Morrow

... of her bereaved parents;—naturally of a most amiable disposition, and of that lively temperament which gives a peculiar zest to life and all its passing enjoyments, she diffused around her somewhat of the buoyancy and sunshine which seemed ever to attend her own steps. Thus attractive and admired, and drinking largely of the cup of present pleasures, the thoughts of the future appear to have had but little place in her mind. In a state of excellent health, she ...
— The Annual Monitor for 1851 • Anonymous

... a Universalist, and Dante was a Catholic Calvinist. There was a determined optimism about Hunt, and a buoyancy as of a cork or other light body, sometimes a little exasperating to men of less sanguine temperament.[22] He ends by protesting that Dante is a semi-barbarian and his "Divine Comedy" too often an ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers

... rose at each sea, but still she struggled towards Deal, as the wounded stag comes home to die. Her fore and after air-boxes were full of water, for a man could creep into the rent in her bows, and she had lost much of her buoyancy. Still she had a splendid reserve in hand, from the air-boxes ranged along and under her deck, and thus fighting her way with her freight of thirty-two souls, at last she grounded on the sands off Deal, and the lifeboatmen leaped ...
— Heroes of the Goodwin Sands • Thomas Stanley Treanor

... the buoyancy of her son. She stepped outside, so as to be beyond the hearing of the ...
— The Daughter of the Chieftain - The Story of an Indian Girl • Edward S. Ellis

... of modern landscape all around, and even compared with other followers of the Barbizon school, seems somewhat somber, as compared with the vital buoyancy of Redfield and others of Redfield's type. His range of idealistic landscape subjects is intimate, but not characterized by the stirring suggestion of outdoors which Inness, Wyant, and others of his school possess. Keith's marvelous dexterity ...
— The Galleries of the Exposition • Eugen Neuhaus

... trees just shimmering into green and the skyey intervals over them. This was the pictured landscape she had worked on, framed by these wide, low windows, for all the years she had lived here, doing her wifely duties soberly, and her motherly ones with a hidden and ecstatic buoyancy. ...
— Country Neighbors • Alice Brown

... care to talk about. They thought it interesting, though foolhardy to let it bring those lines. Katie was not a beauty, they said among themselves, and could not afford lines. Her charm had always been her freshness, her buoyancy and her blitheness. Now ...
— The Visioning • Susan Glaspell

... With the buoyancy of childhood he had forgotten his trouble by the morning, and ran idly about the ship as before, until in the afternoon they came in sight of Dimport. Mr. Legge, who had a considerable respect for the brain hidden in that small head, pointed it out to him, and with some curiosity ...
— Light Freights • W. W. Jacobs

... out his hand, when a step was heard on the stair. It echoed up to the room, the door opened. And an elderly labouring man came stumping in. He walked with difficulty, almost like a bather who has been swimming and floating all morning and misses the buoyancy of the water when he has come to land. He stumped up to the table without speaking and there at once caught sight of ...
— Tales of Three Hemispheres • Lord Dunsany

... been placed in the centre. Then the structure floated in all its parts, and I was glad to see that its equilibrium had been correctly calculated. The piano was not a heavy load for the raft, for it floated well out of water, and had buoyancy enough to sustain the ...
— Field and Forest - The Fortunes of a Farmer • Oliver Optic

... of a ship so loosened in her frame, either by age, weakness, or some great strain from grounding amidships, as to droop at each end, causing the lines of her sheer to be interrupted, and termed hogged. It may result from fault of construction, in the midship portions having more buoyancy, and the extreme ends too much weight, as anchors, boats, guns, ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth

... confronted the northeast wind, their shrunken and ridiculous outlines were cruelly exposed. He was sensitive about these members, and he thought she had glanced furtively in their direction. However, with his usual buoyancy he continued: ...
— The Pines of Lory • John Ames Mitchell

... o'clock next morning when the marquis called upon Alfonso Harris at the Hotel Holland. He found him busy answering important letters from the coast. The marquis was not long in detecting that Alfonso lacked his usual buoyancy of spirits, and so rightly concluded that the meeting with Christine the night before ...
— The Harris-Ingram Experiment • Charles E. Bolton

... unhallowed intercourse with evil spirits. This treatment, operating upon a sensitive mind and a body debilitated both by labour and scanty and unwholesome food, had the natural effect of robbing him of hope and buoyancy of spirits. In a fit of desperation he enlisted in the militia, and with other Helpstone youths was marched off to Oundle, a small town lying between Peterborough and Northampton. He remained at Oundle for a few weeks, at the end of which time the regiment ...
— Life and Remains of John Clare - "The Northamptonshire Peasant Poet" • J. L. Cherry

... preserved; his slightly curling gray hair sets off in pleasing contrast his bronzed yet clear complexion, his bright eye, and genial smile. He is somewhat over the medium stature, possessed of a compact and well-knit frame, carries his head erect, and moves about with a buoyancy and animation perfectly marvelous in one of his years and experience. His address is that of the well-bred, well-educated French gentleman that he is. His manner is winning, his voice clear and under most excellent control, as all those who have listened to his admirable lectures on the Canal ...
— Scientific American, Vol.22, No. 1, January 1, 1870 • Various

... looking out at the familiar landscape, was a great relief, a consciousness of escape from what might have been a miserable, crushing mistake for him and for her. And with this a growing sense of freedom, of buoyancy. It seemed wicked to feel like that. Then it came to him, the thought that Madeline, doubtless, was experiencing the same feeling. And he did not mind a bit; he hoped she ...
— The Portygee • Joseph Crosby Lincoln

... impressed by their courage, buoyancy, animal spirits, or whatever it is that enables them to face their uncertain future so unconcernedly. Multitudes live like the birds, not knowing where their next year's nest will be, or how to-morrow's food ...
— Success With Small Fruits • E. P. Roe

... to keep her interested, and if, despite their efforts, it was seen that a morose mood was invading her otherwise cheerful disposition, they took her out to the merry-go-round, and in a short time her wonted buoyancy ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann

... keep articles from readily tumbling off it. The next measure was to cut all the sails from the yards, and to cut loose all the rigging and iron that did not serve to keep the wreck together. The reader can easily imagine how much more buoyancy I obtained by these expedients. The fore-sail alone weighed much more than I did myself, with all the stores I might have occasion to put on my platform. As for the fore-top-sail, there was little of it left, the canvass having mostly ...
— Miles Wallingford - Sequel to "Afloat and Ashore" • James Fenimore Cooper

... more ambitious work would have been forgotten. Again, he chooses his subjects with a fine disregard of what other men have done or decided that it was impossible to do, and painted them in a manner wholly independent and original. No other artist has so conveyed on canvas the weight and buoyancy and enormous force of water; no one else approaches his as an interpreter of ...
— American Men of Mind • Burton E. Stevenson

... Brainerd was afflicted with misshapen form, yet he was very quick and active upon his feet, and bounded along over the rocks, and across the chasms like a deer, with such a buoyancy of ...
— The Huge Hunter - Or, the Steam Man of the Prairies • Edward S. Ellis

... now gave his attention to his injured craft. A close examination revealed the fact that one of the buoyancy tanks had been punctured, but the ...
— Thuvia, Maid of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... lifted high out of the water; and then the fish would try to drag it underneath, but was prevented by its great buoyancy. In the meantime Yamba and I swam safely ashore, and watched the struggles of the "evil spirit" from the shore, among a ...
— The Adventures of Louis de Rougemont - as told by Himself • Louis de Rougemont

... But he was a broken-down preacher, old before his time; and knowing the answer was not at all the same as having the answer. So he had been brought home from Hillcrest, mind-weary and much cast down. Nor did he regain any of his old buoyancy of spirit until the day when they told him J. W, would be ...
— John Wesley, Jr. - The Story of an Experiment • Dan B. Brummitt

... justices seems strangely untroubled by questions of faith or ritual. There is, to be sure, plenty of religion and controversy in the literature of the time, but the drama as a whole is singularly non-religious. It reflects rather that freedom from restraint, that buoyancy of spirit, that lively interest in experience, which had their full course in the few years when the old garment was off and the new not quite fitted. The immense intellectual and imaginative activity of the period consists precisely in this freedom ...
— The Facts About Shakespeare • William Allan Nielson

... and myself, together with two or three non-descripts, formed the winter establishment. Having just quitted the scenes of civilized life, I found my present solitude sufficiently irksome; the natural buoyancy of youthful spirits, however, with the amusements we got up amongst us, conspired to banish all gloomy thoughts from my mind in a very short time. We—my friend Mac and myself—soon became very intimate with two or three French families who resided in the village, who were, though in an humble ...
— Service in the Hudson's Bay Territory • John M'lean

... is made, not born. Care and despondency come of themselves, and groove their own furrows. Hope and intelligence and interest and buoyancy must be wooed for their gentle and genial touch. A mother must battle against the tendencies that drag her downward. She must take pains to grow, or she will not grow. She must sedulously cultivate ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton

... her hands clasped between her knees, her face drawn and momentarily older, her lips set, her eyes tracing absently the arabesques chased on the coffee-urn, she was inwardly urging her spirit to the buoyancy that cannot sink, to the vitality that rides on chaos. She was not actively or consciously doing this; in the strictest sense she was not doing it at all; it was doing itself, obscurely and spontaneously, by the ...
— The Street Called Straight • Basil King

... a flavor of mist in it, poured into the stuffy compartment. Every breath was joy. Andrews felt a crazy buoyancy bubbling up in him. The rumbling clatter of the train wheels sang in his ears. He threw himself on his back on the dusty blue seat and kicked his heels in ...
— Three Soldiers • John Dos Passos

... Love and the buoyancy of spirit attendant upon intoxication are its less holy pleasures—the price of which, to those souls who make choice of "Al Aaraaf" as their residence after life, is final death ...
— Edgar Allan Poe's Complete Poetical Works • Edgar Allan Poe

... went to see Bunter on board, and sympathized with him on his prospects for the voyage. He was subdued. I suppose a man with a secret locked up in his breast loses his buoyancy. And there was another reason why I could not expect Bunter to show a great elasticity of spirits. For one thing he had been very seedy lately, and ...
— Tales Of Hearsay • Joseph Conrad

... Buoyancy was provided for by having several tanks for the introduction of compressed air, and there was an emergency arrangement so that a collapsible aluminum container could be distended and filled with a powerful gas. ...
— Tom Swift and his Submarine Boat - or, Under the Ocean for Sunken Treasure • Victor Appleton

... fields, careless even of the praise which his parents had got into the habit of bestowing upon his pretended readings from the poets. This lasted for nearly a year, at the end of which time his own hopefulness, coupled with the natural buoyancy of youth, drove him again to his old pursuits. His spirits were raised additionally by the encouragement of a new friend, the parish-clerk of Helpston. The rumour had spread by this time that John was 'a scholar,' and was 'writing bits of books on paper,' and though the vox ...
— The Life of John Clare • Frederick Martin

... walked forth from its lair. It was composed of one piece of white cheese-cloth and two of Mary's most ardent freshman admirers. There was a certain wobbly buoyancy in its gait and a jauntiness about its waving white trunk,—which was locked at the end, as Mary explained, to guard against the ferocious assaults of this terrible man-eater,—which never failed to convulse the audience ...
— Betty Wales, Sophomore • Margaret Warde

... the process. The mental elations of the first three days had become changed by the fifth into a state of high nervous excitement; so that while on the whole there was a prevailing hopefulness of temper, and even some remaining buoyancy of spirits, arising chiefly from the certainty that already the quantity consumed had been reduced by more than two-thirds, the conviction had, nevertheless, greatly deepened, that the task was like to prove a much more serious one than I had anticipated. ...
— The Opium Habit • Horace B. Day

... it wonderful? Here I've been looking all over the world for you, only to find that you've been living around the corner from me all these years! It's positively staggering! Why," with a sudden burst of his unquenchable buoyancy, "we might have been married two years ago and saved all this trouble. Just ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon

... dwellings, her rudder, port, and counter boarded in, and now gazing hopelessly through her cabin windows upon the busy street before her. But still a ship despite her transformation. The faintest line of contour yet left visible spoke of the buoyancy of another element; the balustrade of her roof was unmistakably a taffrail. The rain slipped from her swelling sides with a certain lingering touch of the sea; the soil around her was still treacherous with its suggestions, and even the wind whistled nautically over her chimney. If, ...
— By Shore and Sedge • Bret Harte

... Simple Explanation of the Stability, Construction, Tonnage, and Freeboard of Ships. By THOS. WALTON, Naval Architect. With numerous Illustrations and additional Chapters on Buoyancy, Trim, and Calculations. ...
— A Textbook of Assaying: For the Use of Those Connected with Mines. • Cornelius Beringer and John Jacob Beringer

... would thereby have missed one of the greatest and most enduring pleasures of memory that he took back with him. For no one cared more for a friend, or was more stimulated and emancipated by one, than he. It may have been that he had passed the age of youthful buoyancy, of appetite for novelties; that he had begun to lack initiative. "I have seen many specimens of mankind," he wrote down, in a mood of depression, in one of his note-books, "but come to the conclusion that ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne

... and more energetic practical details especially, at first surmised but vaguely in the intervals of his visits to the tomb of Flavian, attained the coherence of formal principle amid the stirring incidents of the journey, which took him, still in all the buoyancy of his nineteen years and greatly expectant, to Rome. That summons had come from one of the former friends of his father in the capital, who had kept himself acquainted with the lad's progress, and, assured of his parts, ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume One • Walter Horatio Pater

... though he is, indeed, but of two or three years' standing. He said that my friend's bankruptcy is in to-day's Gazette. Of all men on earth, I had rather this misfortune should have happened to any other; but I hope and think he has sturdiness and buoyancy enough to rise up beneath it. I cannot conceive of his face otherwise than with a glow on it, like that of ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... of our country, to unprecedented immigration from Europe, increased agricultural products and manufactures, and to many other convincing proofs of solid advancement. But facts were of no avail in dealing with Reformers habitually, and on principle despondent. The sanguine buoyancy and plucky hopefulness indispensable to true statesmanship did not animate them to any extent. Unhappily events over which no statesman could then have control overtook Canada, while as yet things bounded along gaily in the States, and the ...
— The Dominion in 1983 • Ralph Centennius

... only that was weak and exhausted by disease, for my mind seemed singularly elastic, and I felt as if the weight of years and toil had dropped away, and I was entering on a new and higher plane of existence. An unwonted hopefulness, too, gave buoyancy to my waking thoughts. ...
— A Day Of Fate • E. P. Roe

... joyful days of childhood, then through the sorrowful days of womanhood when I was learning how to live, through the years of heartache and heart-break,—and through it all, though I actually suffer, there, is such an unspeakable lightness and buoyancy, such a lifting up, that even pain is a pleasure. I can't explain it all, unless it is the influence of this mysterious country, lulling and soothing, but ...
— Lady of the Decoration • Frances Little

... resting on the bottom. They were lifted by the explosion, which at the same time killed the whale; but the impetus of the vast form slided it to under the lifted keels, where it came to a stand. A dead whale floats, as we know. This whale being dead was bound to rise, and the buoyancy of the immense mass brought the two craft up with it, and there they were, poised by the gleaming surface of the whale, which was depressed by their weight, so that no portion of the head, tail, or ...
— The Honour of the Flag • W. Clark Russell

... After the age of twenty, a man does not devote more than two hours a day to new branches of learning; but two hours a day is sufficient time, if well employed, to keep his mind always young and vigorous; and it has been shown by this people that a person under such a system retains more of the buoyancy and freshness of youth at eighty than do we in Europe and America ...
— A Strange Discovery • Charles Romyn Dake



Words linked to "Buoyancy" :   buoyant, centre of buoyancy, airiness, liveliness, blitheness, weightlessness, sprightliness, inclination, center of buoyancy, cheerfulness, tendency



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