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Compression   Listen
noun
Compression  n.  
1.
The act of compressing, or state of being compressed. "Compression of thought."
2.
(Computers) Reduction of the space required for storage (of binary data) by an algorithm which converts the data to a smaller number of bits while preserving the information content. The act of compressing (3). Note: Compression may be lossless compression, in which all of the information in the original data is preserved, and the original data may be recovered in form identical to its original form; or lossy compression, in which some of the information in the original data is lost, and decompression results in a data form slightly different from the original. Lossy compression is used, for example, to compress audio or video recordings, and sometimes images, where the slight differences in the original data and the data recovered after lossy compression may be imperceptable to the human eye or ear. The JPEG format is produced by a lossy compression algorithm.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Compression" Quotes from Famous Books



... these three paragraphs contains matter necessary to the completion of the tale in Hawthorne's style. It is probable that a modern writer would have condensed them into a single paragraph, because of the modern demand for extreme compression; but with the possible exception of the last two sentences of 44 there is nothing irrelevant in the conclusion. In "The Birthmark," and "Young Goodman Brown," Hawthorne uses but a single paragraph ...
— Short Story Writing - A Practical Treatise on the Art of The Short Story • Charles Raymond Barrett

... the doctor, "by which the polar compression of the earth has been found out. One is by the measurement of arcs on the earth's surface; the other is by experiments with pendulums or weights with regard to the earth's gravity at different places. The former of these methods is, perhaps, ...
— A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder • James De Mille

... I knew what I was about—rather, what was happening to me—each moment. I struggled to reach the knife I wore at my belt; but every second I grew weaker. The compression around my chest was like that of a tightening band ...
— Swept Out to Sea - Clint Webb Among the Whalers • W. Bertram Foster

... change and dominate all the affairs of men, but to Filmer it is very doubtful whether it appeared in anything but a narrow and personal light. Several people heard him pacing in the small hours—for the vast place was packed with guests by a proprietor editor who, before all understood compression. And about five o'clock, if not before, Filmer left his room and wandered out of the sleeping house into the park, alive by that time with sunlight and birds and squirrels and the fallow deer. MacAndrew, who was also an early riser, met him near the machine, ...
— Twelve Stories and a Dream • H. G. Wells

... conclusions and have not, up to this time, changed them." It seems that the invention consisted in the introduction of longitudinal keys and clamps in the lower chords, to prevent their elongation, and iron socket bearings instead of wooden for the braces and bolts, to avoid compression and shrinkage of the timber, which was the great defect in the original invention, and the adoption of single instead of double intersection in the arrangement of the braces, the latter being the arrangement ...
— Cleveland Past and Present - Its Representative Men, etc. • Maurice Joblin

... In compression of the brain from any cause, such as apoplexy, or a piece of fractured bone pressing on it, there is loss of sensation. If you tickle the feet of the injured person he does not feel it. You cannot arouse him so as to get an answer. The pulse is slow and laboured; ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous

... upon writers who hoard and store up their thoughts for the betterment of their printed works? Lowell's treasury can stand the drafts of both speech and composition. Judged by his works, as a poet in the end must be, he is one who might gain by revision and compression. But think, as is his due, upon the high-water marks of his abundant tide, and see how enviable the record of a poet who is our most brilliant and learned critic, and who has given us our best native idyll, ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell

... Dyke, with a compression of the lips. "I would hunt these scoundrels down without one cent reward. Nicholson was my friend, and a good one. He helped me once, when to do so was of great inconvenience to himself. It is my duty to see that his cowardly assassins are ...
— Dyke Darrel the Railroad Detective - Or, The Crime of the Midnight Express • Frank Pinkerton

... by a net work of strong cordage, had been manufactured and provided by the New York Submarine Company. These buoys, when inflated and working in pairs, had a lifting capacity of 30 tons a pair. Reservoirs of air, provided with powerful compression pumps, always accompanied the buoys. To attach the latter, in a collapsed condition, with strong chains to the sides of the vessels which were to be lifted, a diving apparatus was necessary. This also the New York Company had provided, ...
— All Around the Moon • Jules Verne

... proportion, grace, and spontaneity! So far it is Greek;—but then add, O! what wealth, what wild ranging, and yet what compression and condensation of, English fancy! In truth, there is nothing in Anacreon more perfect than these thirty lines, or half so rich and imaginative. They form ...
— Literary Remains, Vol. 2 • Coleridge

... the aid of small metal spheres fixed in tubular supports by movable levers to which are communicated the motions of compression and dilatation of the air in the pump chamber. They oscillate in a plane whose direction may be varied according to the arrangement of the sphere, as seen in the two apparatus of this kind shown in Fig. 1. Fig. 2 will give an idea of the general ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 315, January 14, 1882 • Various

... brilliance of noonday the bristle of detail is too bewildering to carry in one clutch of the senses. The eye is distracted by the abysses between buildings, by the uneven elevation of the summits, by the jumbled compression of the streets. In the vastness of the scene one looks in vain for some guiding principle of arrangement by which vision can focus itself. It is better not to study this strange and disturbing outlook too minutely, lest one lose what knowledge of it one has. Let one do as the veteran prowlers of ...
— Pipefuls • Christopher Morley

... lay three miles above the town. When they were seated in the carriage, Alexander began to question his assistant further. If it were true that the compression members showed strain, with the bridge only two thirds done, then there was nothing to do but pull the whole structure down and begin over again. Horton kept repeating that he was sure there could be nothing wrong ...
— Alexander's Bridge and The Barrel Organ • Willa Cather and Alfred Noyes

... as a natural philosopher and a chemist, and his inventions demonstrate his profound knowledge of those sciences, and that peculiar characteristic of genius, the union of them for practical application. The steam engine before his time was a rude machine, the result of simple experiments on the compression of the atmosphere, and the condensation of steam. Mr. Watt's improvements were not produced by accidental circumstances or by a single ingenious thought; they were founded on delicate and refined experiments, ...
— James Watt • Andrew Carnegie

... wish, for example, to obtain, in animals under experiment, a state of complete immobility. But did the first surgeon who thought of trepanning the skull in order to exert on the brain, by means of a sponge, a certain degree of compression, ever imagine that an analogous procedure had long been employed in the insect world, and that these clumsy methods were merely child's play beside the astonishing feats ...
— Fabre, Poet of Science • Dr. G.V. (C.V.) Legros

... the earth grew old and humanity multiplied, peoples themselves became the greatest barriers to any massive migrations, till in certain countries of Europe and Asia the historical movement has been reduced to a continual pressure, resulting in compression of population here, repression there. Hence, though political boundaries may shift, ethnic boundaries scarcely budge. The greatest wars of modern Europe have hardly left a trace upon the distribution of its peoples. Only in the Balkan Peninsula, ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park

... compressed his lips. The compression finished the sentence. If come he did, no power of hers, or of any one else, would budge him an inch until he saw Margaret and had ...
— The Paliser case • Edgar Saltus

... maiden tribute from Athens to be sacrificed to the Cretan minotaur. The drawings are remarkable for the pose—that of the left-hand resembling an attitude assumed in boxing, whilst the dress—a kind of maillot or "tights"—is gripped round the waist by a firm ring (like a table-napkin ring), the compression of which is no doubt exaggerated. This fresco and many others of extraordinary interest, as well as much beautiful pottery and the whole of the plan of the city, its public buildings, granaries, library and sewers at several successive ages (the remains lying in layers one over the other), were ...
— More Science From an Easy Chair • Sir E. Ray (Edwin Ray) Lankester

... twelve-and-a-half-cents-Chatham-square mirror, and a disjointed chair may, in the lively imagination of boardinghouse proprietresses, be considered furniture. How double, triple, and even quintuple beds in single rooms, and closets into which he only succeeds in effecting entrance by dint of violent compression between the 'cot' and wall, are esteemed highly eligible accommodations for single gentlemen. How partitions (of a purely nominal character) may in no wise prevent the occupants of adjoining rooms from holding conversation ...
— The Secrets Of The Great City • Edward Winslow Martin

... the signal for a wild rush of rough men to surround her chair. The curtain is lifted, insolent faces stare, her personal appearance is commented upon in vile terms, her feet being specially noticed because the artificial compression of this member has resulted in giving it sexual importance in a woman's appearance. Ai Do had a normal, unbound foot, and had to listen to lewd insinuations levelled at her on this subject. All the while she must patiently sit and wait until the appointed women of the bridegroom's ...
— The Fulfilment of a Dream of Pastor Hsi's - The Story of the Work in Hwochow • A. Mildred Cable

... unbecoming; it seems to imply a strength of will that may possibly be without harshness, when the eyes and mouth have their gentlest expression. His firm step becomes quicker, and the corners of his mouth rebel against the compression which is ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot

... romantic visions. Critically considered, his work is the best commentary on the "Saxon Chronicle" to the year 977; at which period one of the MSS. which he seems to have followed, terminates. Brevity and compression seem to have been his aim, because the compilation was intended to be sent abroad for the instruction of a female relative of high rank in Germany (22), at her request. But there are, nevertheless, some circumstances recorded ...
— The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle • Unknown

... habitual with him now, and stepping into his barouche at the station had been driven up Brampton Street behind his grays, looking neither to the right nor left. His reddish chop whiskers seemed to cling a little more closely to his face than formerly, and long years of compression made his mouth look sterner than ever. A hawk-like man, Isaac Worthington, to be reckoned with and feared, whether in a frock coat ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... Forbes:—"His scientific glory is different in kind from that of Young and Fresnel; but the discoverer of the law of polarization of biaxial crystals, of optical mineralogy, and of double refraction by compression, will always occupy a foremost rank in the intellectual history of the age." In addition to the various works of Brewster already noticed, the following may be mentioned:—Notes and Introduction to Carlyle's translation of Legendre's Elements of Geometry (1824); Treatise ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various

... machines, for which there is a large and increasing demand. The peculiarity known as "bird's eye," and which causes a difficulty in working the wood smooth, owing to the little pieces like knots lifting up, is supposed to be due to the action of boring insects. Its resistance to compression across the grain is higher than that of most other woods. Ranges from Maine to Minnesota, abundant, with birch, in the region of the ...
— Seasoning of Wood • Joseph B. Wagner

... obstacles, this "touch at a distance," enables a person to tell when he is passing tall buildings, fences, trees, and many other obstructions. Mr. Hawkes says: "The sixth sense, if such it be, probably depends upon three conditions—sound, the compression of the air, and whether the face be free to use its sensitive feelers. This subject is still in its infancy, and time may reveal many interesting facts concerning it; but for our purpose it is enough that the blind have a sense of obstacles, and let us regard it as another proof that we ...
— Five Lectures on Blindness • Kate M. Foley

... chief practical objections to air-engines is the great bulk of the working substance in relation to the amount of heat that is utilized in the working of the engine. To some extent this objection may be reduced by using the air in a state of compression, and therefore of greater density, throughout its operation. Even then, however, the amount of operative heat is very small in comparison with that which passes through the steam-engine, per cubic foot ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... bellows are squeezed together the air molecules within are crowded closer together and the air is compressed. The greater the compression the greater, of course, is the pressure with which the enclosed air seeks to escape. That it can do only by lifting up, that is by blowing out, the two elastic strips which close the end of ...
— Letters of a Radio-Engineer to His Son • John Mills

... rum set-out," said Hilary, getting up, and then bending down to have a rub at his legs, which still suffered from the compression of the cord. "Hang it all! what a mess my uniform is in with this ...
— In the King's Name - The Cruise of the "Kestrel" • George Manville Fenn

... repeal of the acts which imposed civil disabilities on those who professed his religion. But, if he attempted to subdue the Protestant feeling of England by rude means, it was easy to see that the violent compression of so powerful and elastic a spring would be followed by as violent a recoil. The Roman Catholic peers, by prematurely attempting to force their way into the Privy Council and the House of Lords, might lose their mansions ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... their prison walls, so that every square inch of the vessel is subjected to a rising pressure. We may compare the action of the steam molecules to that of bullets fired from a machine-gun at a plate mounted on a spring. The faster the bullets came, the greater would be the continuous compression of the spring. ...
— How it Works • Archibald Williams

... sat and contemplated one of the grandest efforts of creation, this wonderful compression of a vast river into a narrow gorge, we realised how small is the power of man compared with the mighty strength of nature. See how the waves, which can be likened only to the waves of the sea in time of storm, as if in fury at their sudden compression, rush over that rock, then curl ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie

... manifold discrepancies was easily developed into the tranquil fulness and light variety of epic poetry, so afterwards it readily responded to the demands which the tragic writers made upon it for earnestness, energy, and compression; and whatever in this sifting process of transformation fell out as inapplicable to tragedy, afforded materials for a sort of half sportive, though still ideal representation, in the subordinate species called ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black

... generally to lower the blood pressure by absolute rest and moderated diet, but a cure is rarely effected except by operation, which, fortunately, is now resorted to more promptly and securely than was previously the case. Without trying the speculative and dangerous method of treatment by compression, or the application of an india rubber bandage, the surgeon now without loss of time cuts down upon the artery, and applies an aseptic ligature close above the dilatation. Experience has shown that this method possesses great advantages, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 2, Part 1, Slice 1 • Various

... cases the torture lasted five or six consecutive hours; in others, it rarely exceeded an hour. Hippolyte de Marsillis, the learned and venerable jurisconsult of Bologna, who lived at the beginning of the fifteenth century, mentions fourteen ways of inflicting torture. The compression of the limbs by special instruments, or by ropes only; injection of water, vinegar, or oil, into the body of the accused; application of hot pitch, and starvation, were the processes most in use. Other means, which were more or less applied according to the fancy of the magistrate and the tormentor ...
— Manners, Custom and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period • Paul Lacroix

... conflict between two opposite principles, Light and Darkness, Compression and Expansion, will be found to underlie all the ancient religions of the world, and it is conspicuous throughout our own Scriptures. But it should be borne in mind that the oppositeness of their nature does not necessarily mean conflict. The ...
— The Law and the Word • Thomas Troward

... the velocity of sound enunciated by Newton on purely mechanical considerations, was found wrong by one-sixth. The error remained unaccounted for until the time of Laplace, who, suspecting that the heat disengaged by the compression of the undulating strata of the air, gave additional elasticity, and so produced the difference, made the needful calculations and found he was right. Thus acoustics was arrested until thermology overtook and aided it. When Boyle and Marriot had discovered the relation between ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer

... first sets of expansion nozzles. The chests, two in number, are on opposite sides of the machine. The valve-stems extend upward through ordinary stuffing-boxes, and are attached to the notched cross-heads by means of a threaded end which is prevented from screwing in or out by a compression nut on the lower end of the cross-head. Each cross-head is actuated by a pair of reciprocating pawls, or dogs (shown more plainly in the enlarged view, Fig. 18), one of which opens the valve and the other closes it. The several ...
— Steam Turbines - A Book of Instruction for the Adjustment and Operation of - the Principal Types of this Class of Prime Movers • Hubert E. Collins

... something so much distorted by the compression of his chin, and by his face being out of window, that his sister could not make it out. In answer to her sound of inquiry, he took down one hand, removed the other from his temple, and emitting ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge

... one of the whole family was giving continual shocks to Mr. Pilgrim's disciple, even when they felt most innocent; and though the mother was sometimes disposed to be angry, sometimes to laugh at the little shudder and compression of the lips she began to know, she perceived what an addition this must be to the unhappiness of the ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge

... lintel is that of resistance to transverse strains, and appears in all construction in which a cross-piece or beam rests on two or more vertical supports. The arch or vault makes use of several pieces to span an opening between two supports. These pieces are in compression and exert lateral pressures or thrusts which are transmitted to the supports or abutments. The thrust must be resisted either by the massiveness of the abutments or by the opposition to it of counter-thrusts from other arches or vaults. Roman builders used the first, ...
— A Text-Book of the History of Architecture - Seventh Edition, revised • Alfred D. F. Hamlin

... pictures were lying side by side on a little table. Suddenly an obscure noise in the room caught his attention. It was more vibration than noise, for small sounds could scarcely be heard above the whistle of the sun-ship. A slight compression of the air against his neck gave him the eery feeling that someone was standing close behind him. He wheeled and looked over his shoulder. Half ashamed of his startled gesture, he again turned to his pictures. Then a sharp cry ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science February 1930 • Various

... bit is useful,' he explained, 'if you know exactly how and where to put it. This compression ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood

... material. Although its breaking strain and elastic limit are higher than those of wrought iron, the latter metal is frequently preferred and selected for tensile members, even when steel is used under compression in the same structure. The Niagara cantilever bridge is a notable instance of this practice. When steel is used in tension its working strains are not allowed to be over fifty per cent. above those adopted for ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 613, October 1, 1887 • Various

... Bureau of Standards test for softening temperature, or critical temperature of plasticity under the specified load, the brick are tested on end. In testing fire brick for boiler purposes such a method might be criticised, because such a test is a compression test and subject to errors from unequal bearing surfaces causing shear. Furthermore, a series of samples, presumably duplicates, will not fail in the same way, due to the mechanical variation in the manufacture of the brick. Arches that fail through plasticity ...
— Steam, Its Generation and Use • Babcock & Wilcox Co.

... There is another peculiarity about cast iron, and likely other metals, which an exaggerated example renders more apparent than can be done by direct statement. Cast iron, when subject to a bending strain, acts like a stiff spring, but when subject to compression it dents like a plastic substance. What I mean is this: If some plastic substance, say a thick coating of mud in the street, be leveled off true, and a board be laid upon it, it will fit, but if two heavy weights be placed on the ends, the center will be ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 643, April 28, 1888 • Various

... point in the travel of the piston when the port is opened. Compression is the distance the piston travels after exhaust port closes before the live steam port opens. During this travel of the piston the exhaust port is closed so the moving piston compresses the steam ...
— The Traveling Engineers' Association - To Improve The Locomotive Engine Service of American Railroads • Anonymous

... men of genius as being less capable than other persons 'of fitting themselves, without hurtful compression, into any of the small number of moulds which society provides in order to save its members the trouble of forming their ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol III, Issue VI, June, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... into two cakes. These are stamped in the ordinary box moulds with two dies—top and bottom impressions—the die-plates, being removable, allow the impressions to be changed. This type of mould (Fig. 16) can be adjusted for the compression of tablets of varying thickness, the box preventing the escape of soap. We are indebted to E. Forshaw & Son, Ltd., for ...
— The Handbook of Soap Manufacture • W. H. Simmons

... the Judson part," my father answered, with that compression of the lips that sometimes kept back a smile, and sometimes ...
— The Price of the Prairie - A Story of Kansas • Margaret Hill McCarter

... Sigrun's brother takes vengeance. The space is scant enough for all that is told in it; scant, that is to say, in comparison with the space of the story of Beowulf; though whether the poem loses, as poetry, by this compression ...
— Epic and Romance - Essays on Medieval Literature • W. P. Ker

... monastic establishment, was a tall, thin, stern-looking woman, with a sallow complexion, an imperious compression of the lips, and small, grey eyes, that seemed to flicker with malignity rather than to beam with the ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds

... at all; the overflow of my brain would probably, in a state of freedom, have evaporated in a thousand follies; misfortune is needed to bring to light the treasures of the human intellect. Compression is needed to explode gunpowder. Captivity has brought my mental faculties to a focus; and you are well aware that from the collision of clouds electricity is produced—from ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... of levels, taken on the elevated railway columns, was kept, observations being made during each jacking up and at least twice a week during the progress of the work. The columns were usually kept about 1/2 in. high so as to allow for compression in ...
— Transactions of the American Society of Civil Engineers, vol. LXVIII, Sept. 1910 • B.F. Cresson, Jr

... metal is invariably associated with cerium. It presents, in its metallic state, a dark grey powder, which by compression acquires the ...
— A System of Instruction in the Practical Use of the Blowpipe • Anonymous

... was applied the Nevian was forced backward, away from the threatened city, against the full drive of her every projector. Soon, however, the advance was again checked, and both scientists read the reason upon their plates. The enemy had put down re-enforcing rods of tremendous power. Three compression members spread out fanwise behind her, bracing her against the low mountainside, while one huge tractor beam was thrust directly downward, holding in an unbreakable grip a cylinder of earth extending deep down ...
— Triplanetary • Edward Elmer Smith

... Mr. Morley; and it is, perhaps, the close proximity which suggests the strong physical likeness between the two. Both are clean shaven; both have the long narrow profile that is called hatchet-faced; in both there is the compression of lips that reveals depths of strength and tenacity; both have the slightly ascetic air of the philosopher turned politician; both look singularly young, not only for their years, but for the ...
— Sketches In The House (1893) • T. P. O'Connor

... nobody's business very soon become everybody's, and this was just one of those facts that are propagated with a mysterious and ridiculous rapidity. The whisper that carries them is very small, in the great scale of things, of air and space and progress, but it is also very safe, for there is no compression, no sounding-board, to make speakers responsible. And then repetition at sea is somehow not repetition; monotony is in the air, the mind is flat and everything recurs—the bells, the meals, the stewards' faces, the romp of children, the walk, the clothes, the very shoes ...
— A London Life; The Patagonia; The Liar; Mrs. Temperly • Henry James

... all of whom were excessively bored by the contest and more or less appalled by his unregal enthusiasm. He had insisted on going to the match incog, to enjoy it for all it was worth to the real spectators—those who sit or stand where the compression is not unlike that applied to a box ...
— The Prince of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon

... was chugging along under a heavy strain, but the other truck was coming down the steep grade under the compression of its engine, to accelerate the use of the brakes. And with the little warning they had, the two drivers brought their big machines to a stop less ...
— The Brighton Boys in the Radio Service • James R. Driscoll

... sense of touch told him what was on the bottom. He wasn't afraid of grabbing a crab or an eel. All underwater creatures with any mobility at all get out of the way as fast as possible. He knew the compression wave caused by his movement would ...
— The Flying Stingaree • Harold Leland Goodwin

... said the mathematician, with a penitent expression; "we ought to have subjected that peculiar skin to the action of a rolling machine. Where could my eyes have been when I suggested compression!" ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac

... leddyship wad tak' aboot wi' her ten thoosand poond—in a box?" Andy still showed much doubt by the angry glance of his eye and the close compression of his lips, and the great severity of his demeanour as he asked ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope

... come a second time!" Mrs. Rowe would say to me, with a fierce compression of the lip, that might lead a nervous person to imagine she made away with them ...
— The Cockaynes in Paris - 'Gone abroad' • Blanchard Jerrold

... compression of the air caused by playing for any length of time with the shutters closed, he provides escape valves, opening outside the auditorium. He also provides fans for driving all the cold air out of the box before using ...
— The Recent Revolution in Organ Building - Being an Account of Modern Developments • George Laing Miller

... less largeness of heart, resembled Fouquet in many points. He had the same penetration, the same knowledge of men; moreover, that great power of self-compression which gives to hypocrites time to reflect, and gather themselves up to take a spring. He guessed that Fouquet was going to meet the blow he was about to deal him. His ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... was effected, in order that the Primal Light might be upraised, and a space become vacant. The second compression occurred when the vestiges of the removed Light remaining were compressed into points; and that compression was effected by means of the emotion of joy; the Deity rejoicing, it had already been said, on account of His Holy People, thereafter to come into being; and that ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike

... the almond, the stone differs greatly in the degree to which it is compressed, in size, shape, strength, and in the depth of the furrows, as may be seen in figure 42 (Nos. 4 to 8) of such kinds as I have been able to collect. With peach-stones also (Nos. 1 to 3) the degree of compression and elongation is seen to vary; so that the stone of the Chinese Honey-peach (No. 3) is much more elongated and compressed than that of the (No. 8) Smyrna almond. Mr. Rivers, of Sawbridgeworth, to whom ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication - Volume I • Charles Darwin

... eyes looked up at him intelligently; but as they met that unnatural smile of gallantry there was a queer compression of her shrewd and strenuous face. She changed the subject. He wondered if by any chance she knew; if she corresponded with Miss Harden; if Miss Harden had mentioned him in the days before her troubles came; if Miss Roots were trying to test him, to draw him out as she had never drawn ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair

... others it is absolutely necessary to remove food with the esophagoscope. If the aspirating tube becomes clogged by solid food, the method of swab aspiration mentioned under bronchoscopy will succeed. Of course there is usually no cough to aid, but the involuntary abdominal and thoracic compression helps. Should a patient arrive in a serious state of water-hunger, as part of the preparation the patient must be given water by hypodermoclysis and enteroclysis, and if necessary the endoscopy, except in dyspneic cases, must be delayed ...
— Bronchoscopy and Esophagoscopy - A Manual of Peroral Endoscopy and Laryngeal Surgery • Chevalier Jackson

... fantastic constructions, edifices built wholly in the inner obscurity of the mind, sombre and secret abodes where the passions immediately find a lodgement as soon as the open gate permits them to enter. The convent is a compression which, in order to triumph over the human heart, should ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo

... models of austere brevity, are so thoroughly characteristic of the stern commander known to history, that it is hard indeed to conceive of them as the work of a mere LITTERATEUR. Sometimes, indeed, owing to extreme compression, they are scarcely intelligible and stand no less in need of a commentary than the text ...
— The Art of War • Sun Tzu

... denizen of the Sardinian sea, immature Cornish pilchard, or mere plebeian sprat well oiled—numbers of our fellow-men and fellow-women, with all the will in the world, might never raise a laugh. As it is, thanks to his habit of lying in excessive compression within his tin tabernacle, and the prevalence in these congested days of too many passengers on the Tubes, on the Underground and in the omnibuses, whoever would publicly remove gravity has but to set up the sardine comparison ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, April 30, 1919 • Various

... the condensation of their thought and the compression of their style, are not easy to read for the first time. He crowds so many fantastic incidents into one action, and burdens his discourse with so much profoundly studied matter, that we rise from the perusal of his works with a blurred impression of the fables, a deep sense ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds

... envelope. Now this is virtually the predicament of the body we call a sun when in the immediate presence of another body of similarly great mass. Such a body is presumably gaseous throughout, the component gases being held in a state of rigidity by the compression produced by the tremendous gravitational force of their own aggregate mass. At the surface such a body is enveloped in a shell of relatively cool matter. Now suppose a great attracting body, such as another sun, to approach near enough for ...
— Curiosities of the Sky • Garrett Serviss

... mankind. That, and much else,—in a far too headlong manner, poor soul! Like an ardent, violent, totally inexperienced person (enfranchised SCHOOL-BOY, come to the age of thirty-four), who has sat hitherto in darkness, in intolerable compression; as if buried alive! He is now Czar Peter, Autocrat, not of Himself only, but of All the Russias;—and has, besides the complete regeneration of Russia, two great thoughts: FIRST, That of avenging native Holstein, and his poor martyr of a Father now with ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... her step indicated much weakness. Nor had the signs of restless trouble diminished as these tide-marks indicated ebbing strength. There was the same dry fierce fire in her eyes; the same forceful compression of her lips; the same evidences of brooding over some one absorbing thought or feeling. She seemed to me, and to Dr Duncan as well, to be dying of resentment. Would nobody do anything for her? I thought. Would not her father help her? He had got more ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald

... reduction, diminution; decrease of size &c 36; defalcation, decrement; lessening, shrinking &c v.; compaction; tabes^, collapse, emaciation, attenuation, tabefaction^, consumption, marasmus^, atrophy; systole, neck, hourglass. condensation, compression, compactness; compendium &c 596; squeezing &c v.; strangulation; corrugation; astringency; astringents, sclerotics; contractility, compressibility; coarctation^. inferiority in size. V. become small, become smaller; lessen, decrease &c 36; grow less, dwindle, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... the tiller crosshead. The spring buffers, which, as has been said, form an essential part of the quadrant, are fitted with steel rollers at the point of contact with the crosshead, thereby reducing the friction to a minimum. The springs, by their compression, absorb any shock coming on the rudder, and greatly reduce the vibration when struck by a sea. They are made adjustable, and can be either steel ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 1178, June 25, 1898 • Various

... With the compression of lip and significant shake of the head of a physician about to take in hand a hopeless case of illness, the justice made known to his two neighbors the text of the sheet of paper, on which Claude Odouart de Buxieres had written, in his coarse, ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... precipitate is formed, decant off the rest of the liquid, and wash the precipitated metal with hot water two or three times by decantation. The metal should be in a lump; if there are any floating particles they must be made to sink by compression with a glass rod. Transfer the washed metal to an evaporating dish 3 or 4 in. across, and cover with a few c.c. of hot water. Add nitric acid drop by drop till the tin is completely attacked. Evaporate nearly to dryness, and add a drop or two more of nitric ...
— A Textbook of Assaying: For the Use of Those Connected with Mines. • Cornelius Beringer and John Jacob Beringer

... curved fangs may be inserted and the door held firmly closed. Also, the trap-door of a number of species is so designed as to be absolutely rain-proof, being bevelled and as accurately fitting a corresponding bevel of the tube as the setting of a compression valve of a ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday

... in youth, thick lips may be reduced by compression, and thin linear ones are easily modified by suction. This draws the blood to the surfaces, and produces at first a temporary and, later, a permanent inflation. It is a mistaken belief that biting the lips reddens them. ...
— Burroughs' Encyclopaedia of Astounding Facts and Useful Information, 1889 • Barkham Burroughs

... that he had understood, and she was conscious of a fierce resentment. She felt as though an unwarrantable intrusion had been made upon her privacy, and her annoyance showed itself in the quick compression of her mouth. She was about to slip away under cover of the applause when Mallory laid a detaining hand ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler

... into a little cranny in the rock, Mrs. Sheldon," said Mr. Leslie, looking up and laughing to see the 'splendid cave;' "I think they will keep dry by force of compression." ...
— The Old Stone House • Anne March

... is not the only apparatus which Ctesibius is said to have thought out, but many more of various kinds are shown by him to produce effects, borrowed from nature, by means of water pressure and compression of the air; as, for example, blackbirds singing by means of waterworks, and "angobatae," and figures that drink and move, and other things that are found to be pleasing to the ...
— Ten Books on Architecture • Vitruvius

... seen that one of the chief characteristics of French classicism was compactness. The tragedies of Racine are as closely knit as some lithe naked runner without an ounce of redundant flesh; the Fables of La Fontaine are airy miracles of compression. In prose the same tendency is manifest, but to an even more marked degree. La Rochefoucauld and La Bruyere, writing the one at the beginning, the other towards the close, of the classical period, ...
— Landmarks in French Literature • G. Lytton Strachey

... the consciousness of being a natural body, composed of involuntarily united members with common interests; this sentiment, already weakened and drooping at the end of the ancient regime, lost under the multiplied attacks of the Revolution and under the prolonged compression of the Empire. During twenty-five years it has suffered too much; it has been too arbitrarily manufactured or mutilated, too frequently recast, and made and unmade.—In the commune, everything has been upset over and over again, the territorial circumscription, ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 5 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 1 (of 2)(Napoleon I.) • Hippolyte A. Taine

... to give every cent of it to my mother," replied Tom, with a compression of his fine lips and a flash ...
— Brave Tom - The Battle That Won • Edward S. Ellis

... composition, not addressed to the casual reader, but to the scholar. Its preparation involved a great diligence, and its study is not to be undertaken lightly. What the psychologist will find to admire in it, however, is not its learning and painstaking, its laborious erudition, but its compression. It establishes, we believe, a new and clearer method for a science long run to turgidity and flatulence. Perhaps it may be even said to set up an entirely new science, to wit, that of descriptive sociological psychology. ...
— The American Credo - A Contribution Toward the Interpretation of the National Mind • George Jean Nathan

... a nervous illness, commonly called vapours, or lowness of spirits." Bayne, who was of an athletic temperament, imagined he had not paid attention to his diet, to the lowness of his desk, and his habit of sitting with a particular compression of the body; in future all these were to be avoided. He prolonged his life for five years, and, perhaps, was still flattering his hopes of sharing one day in the literary celebrity of his friends, when, to use his words, "the same illness made ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli

... strains arising from firing, the arm is fitted with what is known as the "differential recoil." Above the breach is an air recuperator and a piston, while there is no hydraulic brake such as is generally used. The compressor is kept under compression while the car is travelling with the gun out of action, so that the arm is available for instant firing. This is a departure from the general practice in connection with such weapons. When the gun is loaded the bolt which holds the compressor back is withdrawn, either by the hand for manual firing, ...
— Aeroplanes and Dirigibles of War • Frederick A. Talbot

... cut-off without changing the point of admission. By this means is secured uniformity of motion under variable loads with variable boiler pressure. It also secures the advantage resulting from high initial and low terminal pressure with small clearances and absence of compression, giving a large proportionate power and ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XIX, No. 470, Jan. 3, 1885 • Various

... Boy, from his thirteenth year, employed, not in the acquisition of literary information, but in the more active business of life, must not be expected to exhibit any considerable portion of the correctness of a Virgil, or the vigorous compression of a Horace. Men are not, I believe, frequently known to bestow much, labour on their amusements; and these poems were, most of them, written merely to beguile a leisure hour, or to fill up the languid intervals of studies of a ...
— The Poetical Works of Henry Kirke White - With a Memoir by Sir Harris Nicolas • Henry Kirke White

... St. Helena attributed much of his success in the field to the fact that he was not hampered by governments at home. Every modern commander, down certainly to the present moment, must have envied him. Kinglake's mordant pen depicts with felicity and compression the men of Downing Street, who without military experience or definite political aim, thwarted, criticised, over- ruled, tormented, their much-enduring General. We have Aberdeen, deficient in mental clearness and propelling force, by his horror of war bringing war to pass; Gladstone, of too subtle ...
— Biographical Study of A. W. Kinglake • Rev. W. Tuckwell

... that whenever the motion of the blood through the arteries is impeded, whether it be by compression or infarction, or interception, there do the remote divisions of the arteries beat less forcibly, seeing that the pulse of the arteries is nothing more than the impulse or shock of ...
— The Harvard Classics Volume 38 - Scientific Papers (Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology) • Various

... it carelessly; "it is in reality a sort of air-gun, with a wonderful compression, and a most ingenious silencer; quite as deadly, they say, as any firearm ever invented. It ejects a cylindrically-shaped bullet, tapered down almost to the fineness of a needle. Now," he added, ...
— The Master Mummer • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... a mixture of combustible gas and air, which operated like steam in a steam engine. This engine had a water-jacket, centrifugal governor, and flame ignition. In 1838 Barnett applied the principle of compression to a single-acting engine. He also employed a gas and air pump, which were placed respectively on either side of the engine cylinder, communication being established between the receiver into which the pumps delivered ...
— Gas and Oil Engines, Simply Explained - An Elementary Instruction Book for Amateurs and Engine Attendants • Walter C. Runciman

... Compression of the urethra by growths or tumors, strictures of the urethra, distended bladder, spasm of the neck of the bladder in nervous animals, paralysis of the bladder and injuries to the penis are common causes of retention of ...
— Common Diseases of Farm Animals • R. A. Craig, D. V. M.

... regal warrant, or self-joined by bond For interest sake, or swarming into clans Beneath one head for purposes of war, Like flowers selected from the rest, and bound And bundled close to fill some crowded vase, Fades rapidly, and by compression marred Contracts defilement not to be endured. Hence chartered boroughs are such public plagues, And burghers, men immaculate perhaps In all their private functions, once combined, Become a loathsome ...
— The Task and Other Poems • William Cowper

... bear—and the strength of the materials used. The theory of strains in bridge trusses is merely that of the Composition and Resolution of Forces. The various strains, to which the materials of a bridge are subjected—are compression, extension and detrusion. ...
— Instructions on Modern American Bridge Building • G. B. N. Tower

... grunted. "You're the doctor. Be giving Fred a chance to prove one of his theories. Personally I believe you'd make a go of selling right off the bat, and a good salesman is wasted in the mechanical line. When you feel that you've saturated your system with valve clearances and compression formulas and gear ratios and all the rest of the shop dope, come and see me. I'll give you a try-out on the selling end. For the present, report ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair

... the loaded detonator opposite won't fire, that he feels he's in the wrong. Any or all of these together, very effective and powerful though they be, are light in the balance when compared with the two-handed compression you receive from the gentleman that expects you to ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever

... which is of course only that of the wood between the bottom of the notches and the plain side. Therefore it is necessary to have sides somewhat deeper than would be required for a centrally-runged ladder; which is pierced where the wood is subjected to little tension or compression. ...
— Things To Make • Archibald Williams

... of reinforcement for concrete, and the best methods of applying them in order to secure the greatest strength in compression, tension, shear, etc., in reinforced concrete beams, columns, ...
— Transactions of the American Society of Civil Engineers, vol. LXX, Dec. 1910 • Herbert M. Wilson

... for the strongest constitution to continue long under Water without breathing, and they ordinarily dye through the extream rigor of the Cold, spitting Blood which is occasioned by the too great compression of the Breast, procreated by a continued holding breath under Water, for by too much cold a profluvium of blood follows. Their hair naturally black is changed into a combust, burnt or Sun-colour like that of the Sea Wolves, their shoulders and backs covered, or overspread with a saltish humor ...
— A Brief Account of the Destruction of the Indies • Bartolome de las Casas

... very coolly arranging themselves about the room, began to stare at the company. Shaw and I looked at each other. We were forcibly reminded of the Oregon emigrants, though these unwelcome visitors had a certain glitter of the eye, and a compression of the lips, which distinguished them from our old acquaintances of the prairie. They began to catechise us at once, inquiring whence we had come, what we meant to do next, and what were our future ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.

... 86. The Danger of Compression. Air under ordinary atmospheric conditions exerts a pressure of 15 pounds to the square inch. If, now, large quantities of air are compressed into a small space, the pressure exerted becomes correspondingly greater. If too much air is ...
— General Science • Bertha M. Clark

... In this compression is also to be remembered, that the promise given on the 45th page in regard to the four in Baltimore executed in connexion with my visit to President Buchanan appears in a more dreadful shape in the portion of the 4th treatise ...
— Secret Enemies of True Republicanism • Andrew B. Smolnikar

... would arrive next morning early. They waited for a moment of consciousness to tell her; but the day went by, and in spite of oxygen and brandy it did not come. She was sinking fast; her only movements were a tiny compression now and then of the lips, a half-opening of the eyes, and once a smile when the parrot spoke. The rally came at eight o'clock. Mademoiselle was sitting by the couch when the voice came fairly strong: ...
— Tatterdemalion • John Galsworthy

... to answer with wrath, but changed his mind and remained silent. So the topic dropped, but that it stood very straight upon its feet in Mr. Knight's mind was clear from the compression of his thin lips and the ill-humour of his remarks about the coldness and overdone character of the beef and sundry other household matters. As soon as the meal was concluded and he had washed it down with ...
— Love Eternal • H. Rider Haggard

... been for so long frozen out of that high-bred, haughty face, that the look of the eyes, the compression of the lips, the fear and horror of the entire countenance, ...
— The Diamond Coterie • Lawrence L. Lynch

... most wonderful sight, and Gard sat long watching it, then and later, fascinated always and puzzled by that extraordinary self-compression and sudden upleap of the waters out ...
— A Maid of the Silver Sea • John Oxenham

... of compression into the Latin speech. In English, on the other hand, you have a language which by its very copiousness and elasticity tempts you to believe that you can do without packing, without compression, arrangement, order; that, with the Denver editor, all you need is to 'get there'—though it ...
— On the Art of Writing - Lectures delivered in the University of Cambridge 1913-1914 • Arthur Quiller-Couch

... sense, it must have been a relief to turn to the amplitude of Spencer's stanza, "the full strong sail of his great verse." To a generation surfeited with Pope's rhetorical devices—antithesis, climax, anticlimax—and fatigued with the unrelaxing brilliancy and compression of his language; the escape from epigrams and point (snap after snap, like a pack of fire-crackers), from a style which has made his every other line a proverb or current quotation—the escape from all this into Spenser's serene, leisurely manner, copious Homeric similes, and lingering ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers

... effect must be truly presented; time and space are mere accidents, and of small consequence in the drama, whose very idea is compression for the sake of presentation. All that is necessary in regard to time is, that, either by the act-pause, or the intervention of a fresh scene, the passing of it ...
— The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark - A Study with the Text of the Folio of 1623 • George MacDonald

... muscles, and the play of the joints, so necessary to health and nutrition; and that while the refluent blood is obstructed in the veins, which run on the surface of the body, the arteries, which lie deep, without the reach of compression, are continually pouring their contents into the head, where the blood meets with no resistance? The vessels of the brain are naturally lax, and the very sutures of the skull are yet unclosed. What are the consequences of this cruel swaddling? the limbs are wasted; the joints ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett

... slightest pressure of the atmosphere. In the cold season its weight increases by the absorption of humidity. The particles unite in masses, and more easily resist the wind. In the meantime the hillocks also acquire more firmness or compression by the increased weight which presses on ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi

... compression, I suppose," was the rather slow answer. "You know they have condensed, or compressed, air until it is liquid. I've done it ...
— Tom Swift and his Air Scout - or, Uncle Sam's Mastery of the Sky • Victor Appleton

... much engrossed with his own miserable reflections to pay any more than mechanical attention to all of this. Physically resuscitated and momentarily inflating his glad lungs anew, he still felt that terrible vice-like grip upon his throat,—the compression of the fingers of steel that seemed to squeeze the last drop of ...
— Mlle. Fouchette - A Novel of French Life • Charles Theodore Murray

... of Ormond is considered as a book of authority; but it is ill-written. The matter is diffused in too many words; there is no animation, no compression, no vigour. Two good volumes in duodecimo might be made out ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell

... before they were printed; nor can we wonder at the dissatisfaction he expressed some years afterwards, when he exclaimed that he thought they had been better. In the Idler there is more brevity, and consequently more compression. ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary

... something must be indulged to the extravagance of Nature; the subdued tones to which pathos and sentiment are limited can not express a tempest of the soul. The range between the piteous "no more but so," in which Ophelia compresses the heartbreak whose compression was to make her mad, and that sublime appeal of Lear to the elements of nature, only to be matched, if matched at all, in the "Prometheus," is a wide one, and Shakespeare is as truly simple in the one as in the other. The simplicity of poetry is not that of prose, nor its clearness ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various

... require many tens of thousands of years, but this quantity of heat is negligible in comparison with the quantity generated within the star during and by the processes of condensation from the helium age down to the Class M state. We know that the compression of any body against resistance generates or releases heat. Now a gaseous star at any instant is in a state of equilibrium. Its internal heat and the centrifugal force due to its rotation about an axis are trying to expand it. Its own gravitational power is trying ...
— Popular Science Monthly Volume 86

... Short-sighted rogues that we are! What a blessing is it, a knowledge of the evils to come is not permitted to cloud our enjoyments in possession! Crack went the whip. "Hold on with your claws and teeth!" cried the driver; the latter, we found, were only to be kept in the jaws by compression: for the former, we had immediate occasion; our first movement unshipped a trunk and carpetbag, together with the band-box of our fair passenger—the latter was crushed flat beneath the trunk, and its contents scattered about ...
— Impressions of America - During The Years 1833, 1834, and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Tyrone Power

... himself, set his hearers in a roar. He was as ready to hear a good story as to tell one, and his ringing laugh was a delight. The Bishop talked much and well. His use of the pause in speaking, with a momentary compression of the lips now and then between clauses, heightened the effect of crispness in his felicitously chosen phrases. He was a good listener if one had anything to say, but he was not averse to presiding in monologue over a number of people, and often did so, for his fund of talk was so rich ...
— The Story of Cooperstown • Ralph Birdsall

... beginning at the brain, may arise from concussion; compression; cerebral pressure from haemorrhage and other forms of apoplexy; blocking of a cerebral artery from embolism; dietetic and uraemic conditions; and from opium and other ...
— Aids to Forensic Medicine and Toxicology • W. G. Aitchison Robertson

... of old Rome, involving in a common destruction the most magnificent works of ancient art, the choicest manuscripts of ancient literature, and the most venerable monuments of ancient superstition. In a few touches of inimitable compression, such as the stern genius of the Latin language permits, but which are too condensed for direct translation, Tacitus has depicted the horror of the scene,—wailing of panic-stricken women, the helplessness of the very aged and the very young, the passionate ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar

... he saw her conscious blush, turned pale instead of becoming red and embarrassed, and, save a slight compression of his lips, made no other movement. She sang the concluding verse of the ballad in a rather unsympathetic manner, and, after a light instrumental piece devoid of sentiment, rose ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe

... dictated the slope of the pediments. This roof covered the whole of the building, that is, both the cella and the colonnades on either side of it, and as the Greeks were ignorant of the principle of the triangulated truss built up of beams in compression and tension, they were at a loss to know how to carry their roof without pushing out their walls. Hence the great solidity of their buildings, and the rather clumsy expedient of the colonnades in the interiors of temples which appear to have been the only means they could think of to carry ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various

... every look and gesture is detailed. His enjoyment, too, at outwitting the Indians in their own fashion is contagious. There is a fine history of a young man driven by a presentiment to run upon his death. But I find, to copy these stories, as they stand, would half fill this little book, and compression would spoil them, so I ...
— Summer on the Lakes, in 1843 • S.M. Fuller

... the position of a dramatist and wrote what he felt sure his interlocutor would have said on the particular theme. He put himself, that is, in his interlocutor's place. The thoughts got clothed with the right words, though, no doubt, under great compression. ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey



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