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Concave   Listen
adjective
Concave  adj.  
1.
Hollow and curved or rounded; vaulted; said of the interior of a curved surface or line, as of the curve of the of the inner surface of an eggshell, in opposition to convex; as, a concave mirror; the concave arch of the sky.
2.
Hollow; void of contents. (R.) "As concave... as a worm-eaten nut."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Concave" Quotes from Famous Books



... roof that the touch of distinction appeared. For this, Jacques had modelled after his memory of an old Canadian roof. There was a delicate concave sweep in it, as it sloped downward from the peak, and the eaves projected pleasantly over the front door, making a strip of shade wherein it would be good to rest when ...
— The Ruling Passion • Henry van Dyke

... what I mean is that it is composed of curves described about a point determined by the pictorial interest; circular shadows round a dominant light. Design, colouring, and lighting fall into a concave scheme, with a strongly defined base, a retreating ceiling, and corners rounded and converging on the centre; whence it follows that the painting is all depth, and that it is far from the eye to the objects represented. ...
— The Mind of the Artist - Thoughts and Sayings of Painters and Sculptors on Their Art • Various

... sounds: At which the universal host up sent A shout that tore hell's concave, and beyond Frighted the reign of ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett

... before these conditions were fulfilled; and Villars had used these two precious days in throwing up a series of immensely strong works. The heights he occupied formed a concave semicircle, enfilading on all sides the little plain of Malplaquet, and this semicircle now bristled with redoubts, palisades, abattis, and stockades; while the two trouees, or openings, by which it was presumed that the allies would endeavour to force an entrance, were so ...
— The Cornet of Horse - A Tale of Marlborough's Wars • G. A. Henty

... komprenebla. Comprehension kompreneco. Compress kunpremi. Compressible kunpremebla. Comprise enhavi. Compromise kompromiti. Compromise kompromiso. Compulsion devigo. Compunction memriprocxo. Computation kalkulo. Compute kalkuli. Comrade kamarado. Concave kaveta. Conceal kasxi. Consecutive intersekva. Concede cedi. Conceit malmodesteco. Conceited malmodesta. Conceive gravedigxi. Concentrate koncentrigi. Concentric koncentra. Conception (idea) elpenso. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes

... morsel of protoplasm, which lives in a concave-convex, brown, finely reticulated shell, through a circular opening in the concave side of which it can project itself by throwing out pseudopodia. If we look through the microscope at a drop of water containing living arcellae, we may happen to see one of them lying on its back at the bottom ...
— Unconscious Memory • Samuel Butler

... but the bore of it not above half an inch diameter, and very even; these I fix very strongly together by the help of very hard Cement, and then fit the whole Glass ABCDEF into a long Board, or Frame, in such manner, that almost half the head AB may lye buried in a concave Hemisphere cut into the Board RS; then I place it so on the Board RS, as is exprest in the first figure of the first Scheme; and fix it very firm and steady in that posture, so as that the weight of the Mercury that is afterwards to be put into it, may not in the least shake or stir it; ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke

... and up she went, a great concave hollow of white like the half of a pear. The Lass's head went down, and now, instead of attempting to go over the waves, she went through ...
— The Harbor of Doubt • Frank Williams

... lake became silted up, i.e. it became so shallow that it was little more than a lake of mud. The same facts were brought out at the bend of the river. On its convex side, Fig. 55, the water has rather further to go in getting round the bend than on its concave side B, it therefore flows more quickly, and carries away the soil of the bank and mud from the bottom. But on its concave aide where it flows more slowly it deposits material. There is at the bend a marked ...
— Lessons on Soil • E. J. Russell

... form of a helicoidal or screw-shaped spiral, the rings of which, rising one over the other, occupy nearly the whole of the height of the tank. Before again issuing from it, this spiral runs into a small cone with a concave base, that is turned downward in the ...
— Five Weeks in a Balloon • Jules Verne

... piece stood on the globe, had 4 iron supporters, and was a table about 20 inches in diameter, and 6 in thickness! The edge was cut into 12 concave superficies like so many half-cylinders; on each of which was a dial showing the hour by the shade of a fleur-de-lis fixed at the top of each half-cylinder. From the top of this table issued 4 iron branches, with glass bowls, like those of the first, second, and ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 400, November 21, 1829 • Various

... you look down a precipice absolutely perpendicular, and many hundred feet deep, upon the torrent at the bottom, which finds its noisy way over large fragments of rock. The point of view is a great projection of the mountain on this side, answered by a concave of the opposite, so that you command the glen both to the right and left. It exhibits on both immense sheets of forest, which have a most magnificent appearance. Beyond the wood to the right, are some inclosures hanging on the side of a hill, crowned by a mountain. I ...
— A Tour in Ireland - 1776-1779 • Arthur Young

... a gravel bank near the shore, being the seat of operations. A fire of pitch pine and birch bark is ignited on an elevated "jack" in the bow of the boat, the "jack" consisting of an ox-muzzle, or other concave wire contrivance [Page 240] which will hold the inflammable materials. This is secured to a post or crotched stick, as a prop, and the spearman stands near the burning mass with his spear in readiness. As ...
— Camp Life in the Woods and the Tricks of Trapping and Trap Making • William Hamilton Gibson

... district of Mono County, and elsewhere, sometimes in the form of Mexican onyx, which is only a translucent variety of the same marble. In its reproduction here the marble has been imitated even to the natural imperfections which roughened the Italian stone. In the concave surfaces of the ornamentation the color has been deepened, so that it appears sometimes as a rich reddish brown. All this enhances the antique effect, making the palace walls and columns still more like those of the ...
— The Jewel City • Ben Macomber

... away to the east the low, concave sweep of the prairie was cut by the jagged banks and curves of a watercourse which drained the melting snows in earlier spring. Along the further bank a dozen buffalo were placidly grazing, unconscious of the fact ...
— Warrior Gap - A Story of the Sioux Outbreak of '68. • Charles King

... distinctions of costume and apparel. In Kent the fibul are circular and highly ornamented, but these are sparingly found beyond the area of the earliest settlers. From Suffolk to Leicestershire the fibul are mostly bridge-shaped. A third variety, the concave or saucer-shaped, is found in Berkshire, Wiltshire, Oxfordshire, and Gloucestershire. It is, however, possible that these distinctions ...
— Anglo-Saxon Literature • John Earle

... of bone objects the use of which is problematical. One of the best of these is a section of the tibia of a bird, cut longitudinally, convex on the side represented in plate CXIV, h, and concave on the opposite side. When found this bone fragment was tied to a second similar section by a string (remnants of which can be seen in the figure), thus forming a short tube. The use of this object is not known to me, nor were any satisfactory suggestions made by the ...
— Archeological Expedition to Arizona in 1895 • Jesse Walter Fewkes

... great night for prowling. A moon so little less than full that the eye could barely detect its slight tendency to become concave, shone serenely, creating a desirable combination of black shadows where the prowler might hide and great stretches of light in which the prowler might reveal his wickedness without disguise. Mr Pickering walked briskly along the road, then less ...
— Uneasy Money • P.G. Wodehouse

... have been forced to recognise (as Ruskin explains by his drawing of the cottage roof and the Matterhorn peak) that the exquisitely phrased skyline of the furthermost hills, picked up at rhythmical intervals into sharp crests, dropping down merely to rush up again in long concave curves, was merely an illusion of perspective, nearer lines seeming higher and further ones lower, let alone that from a balloon you would see only flattened mounds. But to how things might look from a balloon, or under ...
— The Beautiful - An Introduction to Psychological Aesthetics • Vernon Lee

... ordinary bath tub. To suit individual cases however, its length may be made to vary. The only peculiarity in its construction is at the head. Here, instead of slanting, it is made square, and the slightly concave (from side to side) board against which the back of the bather is to rest, is fitted in afterwards. This is necessary, because it is very difficult to make a wooden tub with a slanting back water-tight. If the length of the tub ...
— The Electric Bath • George M. Schweig

... words had no sooner left Surtur's mouth than Maskull saw him spring suddenly upward and outward. Looking up at the vault of the sky, he saw the whole expanse of vision filled by Surtur's form—not as a concrete man, but as a vast, concave cloud image, looking down and frowning at him. Then the spectacle vanished, as ...
— A Voyage to Arcturus • David Lindsay

... the steam, and having tried different heights for many years, I found that nine inches was the nearest to perfection. And in these experiments two additional bridges were built in one boiler; six feet behind the ordinary bridge was a concave bridge and six feet behind that was a convex bridge. The concave bridge was built close up to the bottom of the fire-tube, and resembled a small archway, and extended down to within nine inches of the bottom ...
— The Stoker's Catechism • W. J. Connor

... later. The scene had changed. The Allied front, leaving the rippling stream some two miles or more in the rear, was now showing a convex bend towards the foe instead of a concave hollow, as was the case ...
— Our Pilots in the Air • Captain William B. Perry

... a large hollow in the earth shaped like the interior of a bowl. The sides were steep and apparently of polished glass, and on its slightly concave surface stood about two dozen men clad in the half costume, half uniform, of aviators. Their upturned faces, lit with wrath, with malice, with despair, with cynical humour, were covered by long growths of beard, but with the exception of ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald

... green floating from the mouth of a cavern, suggest a mermaid's hair, and her visible presence would scarcely add to the wonders in this under-world of glamour and mystery. Shells, pink and pearly, brown and lilac, scarlet and cobalt, strew the flower-decked floor with infinite variety, concave and spiral, ribbed and fluted, fretted and jagged—the satin smoothness of convoluted forms lying amid rugged shapes bristling with spines and needles. We gaze almost with awe at the lovely vision of a dainty Nautilus, sailing his fairy ...
— Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings

... perfect order, forming a crescent, the horns of which were seven miles apart, the concave part to the rear. Formidable, indeed, from their size and number, did they appear, like so many floating castles, such as had never in the world's history sailed over the surface of the deep. The English captains were eager for the attack, but Lord Howard wisely checked their ardour, ...
— How Britannia Came to Rule the Waves - Updated to 1900 • W.H.G. Kingston

... the concave lines of his tall, lean figure displayed to advantage in shirt-sleeves and evening waistcoat, his head bent, the end of his white tie peeping askew from underneath one white Dundreary whisker, his eyes peering with ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... sped through uncounted leagues before it reached my extremities; the air drawn into my lungs expanded into seas of limpid ether, and the arch of my skull was broader than the vault of heaven. Within the concave that held my brain, were the fathomless deeps of blue; clouds floated there, and the winds of heaven rolled them together, and there shone the orb of the sun. It was—though I thought not of that at the time—like a revelation of the mystery of omnipresence. It is difficult ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor

... of this titanic battle a huge disc appeared, carried by the gaseous clouds. It was a concave lens, like some powerful optical instrument. But instead of focusing beams of light, it reflected, not only light but all forms of energy. As the spheres attacked they were shattered into spores and shot away ...
— The Whispering Spheres • Russell Robert Winterbotham

... broad and silent mirror gave to view The pale and waning stars, The chariot's fiery track, And the grey light of morn Tingeing those fleecy clouds 140 That cradled in their folds the infant dawn. The chariot seemed to fly Through the abyss of an immense concave, Radiant with million constellations, tinged With shades of infinite colour, 145 And semicircled with a ...
— The Daemon of the World • Percy Bysshe Shelley

... only ten Kowrie shells for each individual) furnishes a considerable revenue to the king in the course of a year. The canoes are of a singular construction, each of them being formed of the trunks of two large trees, rendered concave, and joined together, not side by side, but end-ways, the junction being exactly across the middle of the canoe; they are, therefore, very long and disproportionately narrow, and have neither decks nor masts. They are however, very roomy, for I observed in one of them four horses and several people ...
— Life and Travels of Mungo Park in Central Africa • Mungo Park

... earthwork, the opposite arm of the causeway stretched so invitingly from the Rebel main, the horizon glimmered so low around me,—for it always appears lower to a swimmer than even to an oarsman,—that I seemed floating in some concave globe, some magic crystal, of which I was the enchanted centre. With each little ripple of my steady progress all things hovered and changed; the stars danced and nodded above; where the stars ended, the great Southern fire-flies began; and closer than the fire-flies, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... the cell is kept in advance of the centre. The bee does not put its tongue in the centre and pour out its load there, but carefully brushes the sides as it fills, excluding every particle of air, and keeps the surface concave instead of convex. This is just as a philosopher would say it should be. If it was filled at once and no care taken to attach it to the sides, why, the external air would never keep it there, which it does effectually when of ordinary length. When the cell is about one-fourth of ...
— Mysteries of Bee-keeping Explained • M. Quinby

... silence fell upon the room. They sat for some time like that, no one so much as moving, till a voice said, "We want tobacco," and a general murmur of assent arose. Peetka roused himself, pulled out of his shirt a concave stone and a little woody-looking knot. The Boy leaned forward to see what it was. A piece of dried fungus—the kind you sometimes see on the birches up here. Peetka was hammering a fragment of it into powder, with his heavy clasp-knife, on the concave stone. He swept the particles into his pipe ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)

... Dragon, by Lord Chester"; "The Coming of the Shepherd from Joseph, The Standing of the Great Ensign, by Koresh." The "Religio-science" of this Chicago revelator is based, first upon some precise measurements of the earth which prove that its surface is concave; and second upon some philological discoveries very much resembling puns. Thus the "cross of Christ" is explained in a sense of the word more common among ...
— The Profits of Religion, Fifth Edition • Upton Sinclair

... as he could see, in front and to left and right, their bayonets flashed in the sun, and a cry of admiration sprang to his lips. Forward they came, their line even and beautiful, and then the tempest beat upon them. The entire French fire was concentrated upon the concave red lines. The batteries poured grape shot upon them and a sleet of lead cut through flesh and bone. Gaps were torn in their ranks, but the others closed up, and came on, the American Colonials on ...
— The Lords of the Wild - A Story of the Old New York Border • Joseph A. Altsheler

... rings two feet in diameter, and about a foot and a half in breadth, joined together by thin layers of bitumen. [PLATE XII., Fig. 3.] To give the rings additional strength, the sides have a slight concave curve and, still further to resist external pressure, the shafts are filled from bottom to top with a loose mass of broken pottery. At the top the shaft contracts rapidly by means of a ring of a peculiar ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 1. (of 7): Chaldaea • George Rawlinson

... artifact (139565) may have been used as a bull-roarer. This artifact, with a length of 23.5 cm., a diameter of 5.1 cm., and a thickness of 6 mm. (pl. 15, i), is made of a very hard dark wood—probably ironwood, Olneva tesota. It is concave on both faces. At each end, and at a right angle to the main axis of the specimen, is a groove filled with a hardened black substance inlaid with fragments of Olivella shell (O. biplicata). The hole at one end is biconically drilled. This artifact has been tentatively called a ...
— A Burial Cave in Baja California - The Palmer Collection, 1887 • William C. Massey

... train of minor arches running over the flat shore on the other: usually a steep bank at the river-side next the large arch; always, of course, a flat shore on the side of the small ones: and the bend of the river assuredly concave towards this flat, cutting round, with a sweep into the steep bank; or, if there is no steep bank, still assuredly cutting into the shore at the steep ...
— The Elements of Drawing - In Three Letters to Beginners • John Ruskin

... restful, meditative, a place where the feeling of magical allure takes a deeper, more subjective character. It might well be called the Court of Pools, for two, quiet pools, one circular, one oblong except for its concave side to hold the other, fill the floor of its sunken garden and reflect its pensive as well as its physical charms. The Caryatids repeated throughout this court are the joint work of John Bateman and A. Stirling Calder. They inject into the court ...
— The Sculpture and Mural Decorations of the Exposition • Stella G. S. Perry

... abandoned, except for finishing some of the inferior grades of flour, and the work is done by means of grooved and plain rollers, made of chilled iron or porcelain. In some cases disks of chilled iron, suitably furrowed, are used, and in others concave mills, consisting of a cylinder running against a concave plate. In Minneapolis the chilled iron rolls take the precedence ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 275 • Various

... individually, many hours must be consumed in the process. Yet this is an operation which must be performed many times in the manufacture of needles; and it is accomplished in a few minutes by a very simple tool; nothing more being requisite than a small flat tray of sheet iron, slightly concave at the bottom. In this the needles are placed, and shaken in a peculiar manner, by throwing them up a very little, and giving at the same time a slight longitudinal motion to the tray. The shape of the needles assists ...
— On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures • Charles Babbage

... Brummell's bow had not the grace, Alvanly stood eclipsed in face, The Roues all were mute, So exquisite, so chaste, unique, The mark for every Leg and Greek, Who play the concave suit.{26} At Almack's, paradise o' the West, Tom's hand by prince and peer is press'd, And fashion cries supreme. His Op'ra box, and little quean, To lounge, to see, and to be seen, Makes life a pleasant dream. Such dreams, ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle

... and hears him in the wind." The Scottish "herdsman" on the lonely mountain-top "feels the presence and the power of greatness," and "in its fixed and steady lineaments he sees an ebbing and a flowing mind." The philosopher[128] lifts his eyes to "the starry heavens" in all the depth of their concave, and with all their constellations of glory moving on in solemn grandeur, and, to his mind, these immeasurable regions seem "filled with the splendors of the Deity, and crowded with the monuments of his power;" ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker

... thus chanted to her comity, the chorus straightway shrills with trembling tongues, the light tambour booms, the concave cymbals clang, and the troop swiftly hastes with rapid feet to verdurous Ida. Then raging wildly, breathless, wandering, with brain distraught, hurrieth Attis with her tambour, their leader through dense woods, like an untamed heifer shunning the burden of the yoke: ...
— The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus • Caius Valerius Catullus

... here—that was numbing in its vastness. This was the concave, inner surface, doubtless deep within the atom of some material substance. A little empty Space here, ...
— The World Beyond • Raymond King Cummings

... attached along its peripheral, convex edge to the head of the tibia, the medial meniscus being connected also to the capsular ligament of the joint. The tendon of the popliteus muscle intervenes between the lateral meniscus and the capsule. The central, concave edges of the menisci ...
— Manual of Surgery Volume Second: Extremities—Head—Neck. Sixth Edition. • Alexander Miles

... Fossorial group contain many of great beauty and rarity. A new species belonging to the tribe of Solitary Wasps, Odynerus clavicornis, is perhaps the most interesting insect in the collection; this Wasp has clavate antennae, the flagellum being broadly dilated towards the apex, convex above and concave beneath. I am not acquainted with any other insect belonging to the Vespidious group ...
— Journal of the Proceedings of the Linnean Society - Vol. 3 - Zoology • Various

... button at the bottom of the concave in the wall seemed to stare with wonder upon this unfamiliar Raikes, who could thus permit the radiator to swing open so heedlessly, and the inner recess ...
— The Flaw in the Sapphire • Charles M. Snyder

... marine region on the other side birds soar suddenly into the air, and hang over the summits of the heights with the indifference of long familiarity. Their forms are white against the tawny concave of cloud, and the curves they exhibit in their floating signify that they are sea-gulls which have journeyed inland from expected stress of weather. As the birds rise behind the fort, so do the clouds ...
— A Changed Man and Other Tales • Thomas Hardy

... inches and more in diameter. The surface is smooth or covered with little grains (granular) or with minute scales (squamulose) shining like satin, or kid-like in its texture. It may be rounded and depressed (concave), elevated (convex), level (plane), or with a little mound in the centre (umbonate). It may be covered with warts, marked with lines (striate), or zoned with circles. The margin may be acute or obtuse, rolled backward or upward (revolute), or rolled inward ...
— Among the Mushrooms - A Guide For Beginners • Ellen M. Dallas and Caroline A. Burgin

... has disappeared behind the western mountains, and the stars sparkled o'er the blue concave, we have been accustomed to sit down to the compilation of this unpretending volume, and therefore it is called "Eventide." O, that its pages might be read at that calm, silent hour,—their follies mercifully overlooked, their ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton

... general configuration of the ground, the risings of the Orinoco have an influence on the Amazon; but those of the Amazon do not alter the progress of the oscillations of the Orinoco. It results from these data, that in the two basins of the Amazon and the Orinoco, the concave and convex summits of the curve of progressive increase and decrease correspond very regularly with each other, since they exhibit the difference of six months, which results from the situation of the rivers in opposite hemispheres. The commencement of the risings only ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V3 • Alexander von Humboldt

... known is to be added to the already unthinkable universe which we inhabit. Every part of the immense observatory and of the telescope is of American production, with the single important exception of the cast glass disc from which the two principal lenses, the one double convex and the other plano-concave, are produced. These were cast by Mantois, of Paris, whose superiority to the American manufacturers ...
— Notable Events of the Nineteenth Century - Great Deeds of Men and Nations and the Progress of the World • Various

... ceremony begins. On a little stand three cups, each slightly concave and having an under-rest or foot about half an inch high, are set one upon another, like a pagoda. The stand with this three-storied arrangement is handed to the bride. Holding it in both hands while the sake is ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 86, February, 1875 • Various

... divided per capita among the people; in Judea a new division was made every fifty years. The Peruvians renewed every year all the fires of the kingdom from the Temple of the Sun, the new fire being kindled from concave mirrors by the sun's rays. The Romans under Numa had precisely the same custom. The Peruvians had theatrical plays. They chewed the leaves of the coca mixed with lime, as the Hindoo to-day chews the leaves ...
— The Antediluvian World • Ignatius Donnelly

... already as good as adopted her niece, from whom she received all the attention and watchful tenderness which she needed continually, by reason of age and manifold infirmities. But while our life has its outer convex side, which magnifies its advantages before the world, it has its inner concave side also, which reduces the outer circumstances of prosperity into littleness, when "the heart knoweth its own bitterness, and a stranger doth not intermeddle with its joy." So it was with Mary Stansfield. She had a refined and luxurious home, and all her wants ...
— Working in the Shade - Lowly Sowing brings Glorious Reaping • Theodore P Wilson

... her husband, and designed by Mr. G.F. Bodley. It is made of Verde di Prato marble, octagonal in shape, and rests upon a circular base surrounded by detached pillars, all of the same material. The faces of the octagon are concave, and without decoration, except that towards the east, which displays a star in a ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: Southwark Cathedral • George Worley

... about a third of the circuit of the band of light, forming altogether five suns, one real and four fictitious luminaries, through which a broad hoop of subdued light ran round an area of slightly hazy blue sky. The centre of this area was occupied by a small segment of a rainbow, the concave side of which was turned from the true sun, while on its convex edge, in contact with it at its most prominent part, was stretched a broad straight band of prismatic colours, similar to the rainbow in all but curvature. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 13 Issue 364 - 4 Apr 1829 • Various

... discern an irregular pink crescent, with the concave side downwards, somewhere in the blackness beyond the bows. He rubbed his eyes, and said nothing, believing that the unaccustomed strain of gazing into the dark had affected his sight. But the pink ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy

... herself could be; And she had found no heart which, tuned with hers, Would beat in rhythm, growing into rime. She read phantasmagoric tales, sans salt, Sans hope, sans growth; or listlessly conversed With phantom-visitors—ladies, not friends, Mere spectral forms from fashion's concave glass. She haunted gay assemblies, ill-content— Witched woods to hide in from her better self, And danced, and sang, and ached. What had she felt, If, called up by the ordered sounds and motions, A vision had arisen—as once, of old, The minstrel's ...
— The Poetical Works of George MacDonald in Two Volumes, Volume I • George MacDonald

... a lower level. Not far from his left elbow, in the concave of the outer wall, was a slit for the admission of light, and he perceived at once that through this slit alone lay his chance of communicating with the outer world. At first it seemed as if it were to be done by shouting, but when he learnt what little effect was produced by his ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy

... Howley nor his gadget were very impressive. He was a lean, slope-shouldered individual, five-feet-eight or nine—which was shorter than he looked—with straight brown hair combed straight back and blue eyes which were shielded with steel-rimmed glasses. The thick, double-concave lenses indicated a degree of myopia that must have bordered on total blindness without glasses, and acute tunnel vision, even ...
— ...Or Your Money Back • Gordon Randall Garrett

... that all the ships should sweep with their guns the sea over which, nearly at right angles, the hostile columns were advancing. Instead of this, embarrassed by both lack of wind and lack of skill, their manoeuvres resulted in a curved line, concave to the enemy's approach; the horns of the crescent thus formed being nearer to the latter. Collingwood noted that this disposition facilitated a convergent fire upon the assailants, the heads of whose columns were bearing down on the allied centre; it does not seem to have ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. II. (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan

... point of the earth and look up, the heavenly bodies appear as though they were situated upon the surface of a vast hollow sphere, of which your eye is the center. Of course this apparent concave vault has no existence and we cannot accurately measure the distance of the heavenly bodies from us or from each other. We can, however, measure the direction of some of these bodies and that information is of tremendous value to us in helping us ...
— Lectures in Navigation • Ernest Gallaudet Draper

... bark in texture and colour. the berrys grow in clumps at the end of the small branches; each berry supported by a seperate stem, and as many as from 3 to 18 or 20 in a clump. the berry is ovate with one of it's extremities attatched to the peduncle, where it is in a small degre concave like the insertion of the stem of the crab apple. I know not whether this fruit can properly be denominated a berry, it is a pulpy pericarp, the outer coat of which is in a thin smoth, tho firm tough pillecle; the pericarp containing a membranous capsule with from three to four ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al

... more to the west and north until arriving at the sea it could go no farther. This is what has been called by French military critics "The Race to the Sea." In this race to the sea the Germans had a great advantage over the French. A glance at the map is enough to make it understood. The concave form of the German front made the lines of transportation shorter; they were within the interior of the angle, while the French were at the exterior. On the German side this movement drew into the line more than eighteen army corps, ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of 12) - The War Begins, Invasion of Belgium, Battle of the Marne • Francis J. Reynolds, Allen L. Churchill, and Francis Trevelyan

... solve it. A magnifying lens will collect the rays from any distant object, and convey them to a point called the focus. Then suppose we put this glass in the tube of an opera-glass, or pocket spy-glass, and look through the eye-hole and the concave lens, properly adjusted, in front of it, we shall see the image of the object considerably magnified. But suppose the object draws very near, we see nothing distinctly; for the rays reflected from it, which ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson

... could go beyond Henry Maudslay himself in his dexterous use of the file. By a few masterly strokes he could produce plane surfaces so true that when their accuracy was tested by a standard plane surface of absolute truth, they were never found defective; neither convex, nor concave, nor "cross-winding,"—that ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth

... dug in the dark, not many weeks ago, to secure two hundred yards of French territory recovered from the Bosche by bomb and bayonet. (The captured trench lies behind us now, and serves as our second line.) They are muddy—you come to water at three feet—and at one end, owing to their concave formation, are open to enfilade. The parapet in many places is too low. If you make it higher with sandbags you offer the enemy a comfortable target: if you deepen the trench you turn it into a running stream. Therefore long-legged subalterns crawl painfully past ...
— The First Hundred Thousand • Ian Hay

... By means of these mortars the settlers, in regions where saltpetre could be obtained, made very respectable gunpowder. In making corn-meal a grater was sometimes used, consisting of a half-circular piece of tin, perforated with a punch from the concave side. The ears of corn were rubbed on the rough edges, and the meal fell through the holes on a board or cloth placed to receive it. They also sometimes made use of a handmill, resembling those alluded to in the Bible. These consisted ...
— Daniel Boone - The Pioneer of Kentucky • John S. C. Abbott

... us at that point and the steady advance of their lines were to gain as much distance as possible. From the base of the hill at Taylor's Creek they began digging a tunnel one hundred and seventy yards long, and at its terminus were two laterals, dug in a concave towards our works, of thirty-seven feet each. In these laterals were placed eight hundred pounds of powder, with fuse by which all could be exploded ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert

... of his brigade from the assault by Colonel De Courcey was justified by the failure of the corps of A. J. Smith, and the command of Colonel Lindsey, to advance simultaneously to the assault. Both had the same difficulties to encounter —impassable bayous. The enemy's line of battle was concave, and De Courcey advanced against his centre—hence he sustained a concentric fire, and the withdrawal of Steele from the front of the enemy's right on the 28th ult. enabled the enemy on the following day to concentrate his ...
— The Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman, Complete • William T. Sherman

... The operative crawled up and glanced over the crest. In a hollow before them was a crude one-storied house, and erected on an open space before it was a massive piece of apparatus. It consisted of a number of huge metallic cylinders, from which lines ran to a silvery concave mirror mounted on an elaborate frame which would allow it to be rotated so as to ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, March 1930 • Various

... entrances from below, except on the inner or concave partition, from which one enters directly to the lower parts of the building. The higher parts, however, are reached by flights of marble steps, which lead to galleries for promenading on the inside similar to those ...
— The City of the Sun • Tommaso Campanells

... through the air, which was followed by a ring or hoop of fire, and within this hoop stood a man and woman of small size, handsomely dressed. With one arm they embraced each other, and with the other they took hold of the hoop, and their feet rested on the concave surface of the ring. When the hoop reached the earth these two beings jumped out of it, and immediately proceeded to make a circle on the ground. As soon as this was done, a large number of men and women instantly appeared, and to the ...
— Welsh Folk-Lore - a Collection of the Folk-Tales and Legends of North Wales • Elias Owen

... according to the law of reflection, all the sound which enters it is brought to a focus in the narrow end. It thus increases many fold the intensity of a sound which reaches the ear through it, and enables a person who has become deaf to common conversation to mix again with pleasure in society. The concave hand held behind the ear answers in some degree the ...
— Popular Education - For the use of Parents and Teachers, and for Young Persons of Both Sexes • Ira Mayhew

... A peculiar tree with concave leaves shaped like a cup was locally called Ariticun or Articun. It produced a large ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor

... of white quartz, measuring five inches in diameter and an inch and three fourths in thickness. The margin is rounded, and both surfaces are deeply concave though imperforate. ...
— Some Observations on the Ethnography and Archaeology of the American Aborigines • Samuel George Morton

... upon the western horizon. Eastward the bare, bold volcanic upheaval of Diamond Head gleamed in bold relief, reflecting the silver rays. Here and there through the foliage shone the soft-colored fires of Chinese lanterns, and farther away, along the concave shore, distant electric lights twinkled like answering signals to the stars in the vault of blue, and the "riding lights" of the few transports or warships, swinging ...
— Found in the Philippines - The Story of a Woman's Letters • Charles King

... and live!— Pardon me, airy planet, that I prize One thought beyond thine argent luxuries! How far beyond!" At this a surpris'd start Frosted the springing verdure of his heart; 190 For as he lifted up his eyes to swear How his own goddess was past all things fair, He saw far in the concave green of the sea An old man sitting calm and peacefully. Upon a weeded rock this old man sat, And his white hair was awful, and a mat Of weeds were cold beneath his cold thin feet; And, ample as the largest winding-sheet, A cloak of blue wrapp'd up his aged bones, O'erwrought ...
— Endymion - A Poetic Romance • John Keats

... armed with long-rowelled spurs, overcame the patience of the animal, which bounced and plunged, while poor Gibbie's entreaties for aid never reached the ears of the too heedless butler, being drowned partly in the concave of the steel cap in which his head was immersed, and partly in the martial tune of the Gallant Grames, which Mr Gudyill whistled with all his power ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... fine watches, notably those of A. Lange & Sons, have convex lifting planes on the engaging and concave on the disengaging pallets; the lifting planes on the teeth are also curved. See Fig. 11. This is decidedly an ingenious arrangement, and is in strict accordance with scientific investigation. We should see many fine watches made with such escapements if the means for producing them could fully ...
— An Analysis of the Lever Escapement • H. R. Playtner

... that the presence of those artistic virtues in his own practice, upon which he expatiates in his representation of another man's art, were accompanied by the corresponding consciousness—that, namely, of the artist as differing from that of the critic, its objects being regarded from the concave side of the hammered relief. If this probability be granted, I would, from it, advance to a higher and far more important conclusion—how unlikely it is that if the writer was conscious of such fitnesses, he should be unconscious ...
— A Dish Of Orts • George MacDonald

... clusters upon the roofs and in the streets; then as they soared the details would shrink, the sides of streets draw together, the view widen, the people cease to be significant. At the highest the effect was that of a concave relief map; Bert saw the dark and crowded land everywhere intersected by shining waters, saw the Hudson River like a spear of silver, and Lower Island Sound like a shield. Even to Bert's unphilosophical mind ...
— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells

... admitted. The most savoury viands, the most high flavoured ragouts, and the most delicious wines presented themselves spontaneously to the expecting attendant. The hall was illuminated with a thousand lustres that depended like stars from the concave roof, and were multiplied by the reflection of innumerable mirrors. The whole ...
— Imogen - A Pastoral Romance • William Godwin

... metate, or hand mill, which consists of a concave tablet and a rubbing stone, was an important adjunct to the household appliances of nearly all the more cultured American nations. It is found not only in those plain substantial forms most suitable for use in grinding grain, seeds, and spices by manual means, but in many cases it has been elaborated ...
— Ancient art of the province of Chiriqui, Colombia • William Henry Holmes

... the main agent, both in ordinary and extraordinary respiration. In its quiescent state it presents its convex surface towards the thorax, and its concave one towards the abdomen. The anterior convexity abuts upon the lungs; the posterior concavity is occupied by some ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt

... that the enemy is not permitted by a flank movement to be before the retreating army at the outlet of the forest, as was the case at Hohenlinden. The retreat would be the more secure if, as at Waterloo, the forest formed a concave line behind the center; for this re-entering would become a place of arms to receive the troops and give them time to pass off in ...
— The Art of War • Baron Henri de Jomini

... nutritive matter to exude from the vessels which permeate the periosteum. Nevertheless, the observations adduced by Mr. Spencer,[730] on the strengthening of the bowed bones of rickety children, along their concave sides, leads to the belief ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Volume II (of 2) • Charles Darwin

... they are running before it. These turbines are made entirely of light metal, and fold when not in use, so that only the frames are visible. Sometimes these also fold and are housed, or wholly disappear within the mast. Steam-boilers are also placed at the foci of huge concave mirrors, often a hundred feet in diameter, the required heat being supplied by the sun, without smoke, instead of by bulky and dirty coal. This discovery gave commercial value to Sahara and other tropical deserts, which are now desirable ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds - A Romance of the Future • John Jacob Astor

... form, and they will say, A curved line. If they are then asked how they may know it is D, they will say, Because it is made of a perpendicular line and has a curved line behind. Further information may then be given. Turn the D letter up thus , and say, I want to teach you the difference between concave and convex: the under part of the curve is concave and the upper part of it is convex. Then say, I shall now take the letter away, and wish you to shew me concave and convex on one of your fingers; when they will bend the forefinger ...
— The Infant System - For Developing the Intellectual and Moral Powers of all Children, - from One to Seven years of Age • Samuel Wilderspin

... 73deg 30' to 79deg E., about 600 m. to the east of Lake Aral. It is fourth in size of the lakes in Eurasia, having an area of 7115 sq. m., and lies at an altitude of 900 ft. It has the shape of a broad crescent, about 430 m. long from W.S.W. to E.N.E., having its concave side turned southwards; its width varies from 36 to 53 m. Its north-western shore is bordered by a dreary plateau, known as the Famine Steppe (Bek-pak-dala). The south-east shore, on the contrary, is low, and bears ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various

... he would fain have partaken. The portions were served by a person at the ringing of a bell, and delivered out by means of what in religious houses is termed a tour—a machine like the section of a cask, that, by turning round on a pivot, exhibits whatever is placed on the concave side, without discovering the person who moves it. One day this dog, who had only received a few scraps, waited till the paupers were all gone, took the rope in his mouth, and rang the bell. His stratagem succeeded. ...
— Anecdotes of Dogs • Edward Jesse

... a rotation of the wings. The whole structure and form of the wings of insects, moreover, indicate an action in flight quite analogous to that of birds. I believe that a careful examination will show that the wings of almost all insects are slightly concave beneath. Further, they are all constructed with a strong and rigid anterior margin, while the outer and hinder margins are exceedingly thin and flexible. Yet further, I feel confident (and a friend here agrees ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences Vol 2 (of 2) • James Marchant

... 120 And fire the arrowy throne of rising Morn. —OR, plum'd with flame, in gay battalion's spring To brighter regions borne on broader wing; Where lighter gases, circumfused on high, Form the vast concave of exterior sky; 125 With airy lens the scatter'd rays assault, And bend the twilight round the dusky vault; Ride, with broad eye and scintillating hair, The rapid Fire-ball through the midnight air; Dart from the North on ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin

... variations in contour by corresponding changes in shade or light in a manner and to a degree which no other material can equal. In the Doric, mouldings were few, and almost always convex; they became much more numerous in the later styles, and then included many of concave profile. The chief are the OVOLO, which formed the curved part of the Doric capital, and the crowning moulding of the Doric cornice; the CYMA; the BIRD'S BEAK, employed in the capitals of the antae; the FILLETS under the Doric capital; the hollows ...
— Architecture - Classic and Early Christian • Thomas Roger Smith

... because it is near the heart. The other opening, by which the food leaves the stomach, and where the small intestine begins, is the pyloric orifice, and is guarded by a kind of valve, known as the pylorus, or gatekeeper. The concave border between the two orifices is called the small curvature, and the convex as the great ...
— A Practical Physiology • Albert F. Blaisdell

... Chippewas, in which thirteen pieces or dice were used. Nine of them were of bone and were fashioned in figures typifying fish, serpents, etc. One side of each was painted red and had dots burned in with a hot iron. The brass pieces were circular having one side convex and the other concave. The convex side was bright, the concave dark or dull. The red pieces were the winning pieces and each had an arithmetical value. Any number of players might play. A wooden bowl, curiously carved ...
— Indian Games • Andrew McFarland Davis

... said dreamily. 'I haf a rock-crystal lens which is permeable to this light, und which I can place in mine camera. I must have a concave mirror, not of glass, which is opaque to this light, but ...
— The Grain Ship • Morgan Robertson

... combination with a mold wheel having a series of cogs interposed by a series of concave stops, blanks or abutments upon its periphery, a drive wheel having cogs and a blank surface on its perimeter so that the mold wheel may be moved, stopped and locked by said drive wheel which has a continuous movement, substantially as and for ...
— Scientific American, Vol. 17, No. 26 December 28, 1867 • Various

... crested with long white hairs. Stamens united with style into unsymmetrical declined column, bearing an anther on either side, and a dilated triangular petal-like sterile stamen above, arching over the broad concave stigma. Leaves: 2, from the base; elliptic, thick, 6 ...
— Wild Flowers Worth Knowing • Neltje Blanchan et al

... rings, set with brilliants and precious stones. In the waistcoat pocket the top of a cigarette case was showing, and, when he pulled it out for a smoke, there was a big cluster of brilliants in the centre of the concave side. His walking-stick had a gold cross-head, and on the other side his initials were ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls, Vol. XIII, Nov. 28, 1891 • Various

... shoulder with the dreadful shield The shaggy AEgis,[20] border'd thick around With terror; there was Discord, Prowess there, There hot Pursuit, and there the feature grim 875 Of Gorgon, dire Deformity, a sign Oft borne portentous on the arm of Jove. Her golden helm, whose concave had sufficed The legions of an hundred cities, rough With warlike ornament superb, she fix'd 880 On her immortal head. Thus arm'd, she rose Into the flaming chariot, and her spear Seized ponderous, huge, with which the Goddess sprung From an Almighty father, levels ranks ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer

... down the whole alluvial and auriferous formation to the floor of grey granite which has supplied the huge 'cankey-stones' [Footnote: This proto-historic implement, also called a 'saddle-quern,' is here made out of a thick slab of granite slightly concave and artificially roughened. The muller, or mealing-stone, is a large, heavy, and oval rolling-pin used with the normal rocking and grinding motion. These rollers are also used for crushing ore, and correspond with the stone ...
— To The Gold Coast for Gold, Vol. II - A Personal Narrative • Richard Francis Burton and Verney Lovett Cameron

... spinning. I sat down. My brain was chaos. Then my perception grew clear and minute as though I saw things in a concave mirror. His manner seemed to have changed into something nervous and hasty. He pulled out his watch and grimaced at it. "Eleven-seven! And to-night I must— Seven-twenty-five. Waterloo! I must go at once." He called for the bill, and struggled with his coat. Officious ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells

... roof and adapted for groups of sculpture. The pediment is protected above by a "raking" cornice, which has not the same form as the horizontal cornice, the principal difference being that the under surface of the raking cornice is concave and without mutules. Above the raking cornice comes a SIMA or gutter-facing, which in buildings of good period has a curvilinear profile. This sima is sometimes continued along the long sides of the building, and sometimes not. When it is so continued, ...
— A History Of Greek Art • F. B. Tarbell

... figures, should be studied. The whole of the exterior of the skull in all its parts has been altered; the hinder surface, instead of sloping backwards, is directed forwards, entailing many changes in other parts; the front of the head is deeply concave; the orbits have a different shape; the auditory meatus has a different direction and shape; the incisors of the upper and lower jaws do not touch each other, and they stand in both jaws above the plane of the molars; the canines of the upper jaw stand in front of those ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Vol. I. • Charles Darwin

... kindled by means of a concave mirror of polished metal, which, collecting the rays of the sun into a focus upon a quantity of dried cotton, speedily set it on fire. It was the expedient used on the like occasions in ancient Rome, at least under the reign of the pious Numa. When the sky was overcast, ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott

... longer in the hall. He was marching along a gallery overhanging one of the great streets of the moving platforms that traversed the city. Before him and behind him tramped his guards. The whole concave of the moving ways below was a congested mass of people marching, tramping to the left, shouting, waving hands and arms, pouring along a huge vista, shouting as they came into view, shouting as they passed, shouting as they receded, ...
— When the Sleeper Wakes • Herbert George Wells

... smiles, Chopin makes a grinning grimace: where Field sighs, Chopin groans; where Field shrugs his shoulders, Chopin twists his whole body; where Field puts some seasoning into the food, Chopin empties a handful of Cayenne pepper...In short, if one holds Field's charming romances before a distorting concave mirror, so that every delicate expression becomes coarse, one gets Chopin's work...We implore Mr. ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks

... of any prince's court in the world; speaks the languages with that purity of phrase, and facility of accent, that it breeds astonishment; his wit, the most exuberant, and, above wonder, pleasant, of all that ever entered the concave of this ear. ...
— Every Man Out Of His Humour • Ben Jonson

... the nurse on her guard as to the risks we were running. We should have had concave glasses to protect our eyes, and we spent part of our time washing our ...
— Sylvia's Marriage • Upton Sinclair

... worn by women. It consists of a segment of bamboo, 7 or 8 centimeters long and 5 centimeters high, curved while still green and made to retain its shape by a slip of bamboo fastened into two holes on the concave side. The teeth are whittled out and the upper part and sides are cut into the characteristic shape seen in Plate 9. On the front or convex side of the comb are ornamental incisions the style and variety of which depend upon the caprice and adeptness of the fashioner. Skeat and Blagden[1] ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan

... The speaker tapped his concave chest. "Bum lungs. I came down here to shuffle off, and I'm waiting for it to happen. What brings ...
— Rainbow's End • Rex Beach

... rather queer, for they must have known by my trail that they had to deal with only one man. The reason for their inaction was soon made clear. I had not gone a hundred yards before I reached the limit of my run—the head of the gulch which I had mistaken for a canon. It terminated in a concave breast of rock, nearly vertical and destitute of vegetation. In that cul-de-sac I was caught like a bear in a pen. Pursuit was needless; they had ...
— Present at a Hanging and Other Ghost Stories • Ambrose Bierce

... provided for his breakfast. The end of his spare time had now arrived, and emerging from the garden by getting over the hedge at the back he pursued a path northward, till he came to a wide and lonely depression in the general level of the upland, which was sown as a corn-field. This vast concave was the scene of his labours for Mr Troutham the farmer, and he descended into the ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy

... concave or hollow can be made full length of the runner, true and uniform which will hold on the ice sideways and not retard the forward movement. —Contributed by Geo. A. Howe, Tarrytown, ...
— The Boy Mechanic: Volume 1 - 700 Things For Boys To Do • Popular Mechanics

... inner surface of the comb was concave, and the outer surface convex, the bees made the cells on the former much smaller, and those on the latter ...
— The Dawn of Reason - or, Mental Traits in the Lower Animals • James Weir

... we have an opposite effect. Here the paper is in a curve exactly the reverse of that shown in Figure C, bringing the concave side up. Now if you will again blow across the surface of the card the action of the paper will be downward—it will be impossible to make it rise. The harder you blow the greater will be ...
— Flying Machines - Construction and Operation • W.J. Jackman and Thos. H. Russell

... a day or two, to a bed some yards distant from the spot of its first growth; because, without any reference whatever to the nasal sense, it was considered that it might be rather an eye-sore to their Reverences, on approaching the door. Several concave inequalities, which constant attrition had worn in the earthen floor of the kitchen, were filled up with blue clay, brought on a cart from the bank of a neighboring river, for the purpose. The ...
— The Station; The Party Fight And Funeral; The Lough Derg Pilgrim • William Carleton

... bivalve shell are like thin saucers, concave inside, convex outside. The inside is smooth, polished. The outside is rougher, sometimes with graceful ribs or concentric ridges or combinations of both. Univalves are conical and spiraling, with a series of whorls coming down like widening ...
— Let's collect rocks & shells • Shell Oil Company

... Hetty, come nearer to me," said the old gentleman, turning sideways on his couch and ferreting out from beneath his pillows a concave snuff-box, "pray do not be angry with me for putting you to inconvenience. Bear with me for the little time I have still to live. But if you find living under the same roof with me unendurable, all the greater ...
— The Poor Plutocrats • Maurus Jokai

... prospect of change, as at the hope of improvement. Certainly things were bad enough with us in Smyrna bay at that time. The pitch was boiling in the seams, the water was hissing along-side; the sky seemed an entire sun, so truly were the fiery rays rendered back from every part of the glowing concave. The sea-breeze, one's only solace under such circumstances, was continually forgetting to come. In spite of the common profession, that without the sea-breeze it would be impossible to live hereaway, we continued to pant through days of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 380, June, 1847 • Various

... not half seen Niagara. Following the verge of the island, the path led me to the Horseshoe, where the real, broad St. Lawrence, rushing along on a level with its banks, pours its whole breadth over a concave line of precipice, and thence pursues its course between lofty crags towards Ontario. A sort of bridge, two or three feet wide, stretches out along the edge of the descending sheet, and hangs upon the ...
— Other Tales and Sketches - (From: "The Doliver Romance and Other Pieces: Tales and Sketches") • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... take a clam shell, and, holding it with the concave side toward the ground, scale it into the air, you will see it gradually mount upward. If you hold the convex side toward the ground and throw it, you will see ...
— Dick Hamilton's Airship - or, A Young Millionaire in the Clouds • Howard R. Garis

... discharge your memory of masses of particular instances, for the law will reproduce them for you whenever you require them. The law of refraction, for example: If you know that, you can with a pencil and a bit of paper immediately discern how a convex lens, a concave lens, or a prism, must severally alter the appearance of an object. But, if you don't know the general law, you must charge your memory separately with each of the three ...
— Talks To Teachers On Psychology; And To Students On Some Of Life's Ideals • William James

... lenticular, beneath plane or concave, variously colored, yellow, greenish yellow, rusty orange, stipitate, nodding; the peridium splitting irregularly or reticulately; stipe variable in length and color, through various shades of red and yellow, subulate; capillitium strongly developed, concolorous ...
— The North American Slime-Moulds • Thomas H. (Thomas Huston) MacBride

... conventionalized vases with sunflowers and leaf ornamentations, while the capitols were in three superposed fluted tiers, the uppermost being the largest in diameter. The frieze of the ceiling was concave, made of bits of looking-glass and gold, and the ceiling itself was also entirely composed of mirrors. The back was of shiny green and blue, with eight stars and two large looking-glasses, while at the sides there was ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor

... the steam is blown from stationary nozzles against vanes mounted on a revolving wheel. Fig. 36 shows the nozzles and a turbine wheel. The wheel is made as a solid disc, to the circumference of which the vanes are dovetailed separately in a single row. Each vane is of curved section, the concave side directed towards the nozzles, which, as will be gathered from the "transparent" specimen on the right of our illustration, gradually expand towards the mouth. This is to allow the expansion of the steam, and a consequent gain of velocity. As it issues, ...
— How it Works • Archibald Williams

... knot, Andy disclosed a mysterious device resembling two hard rubber shoe horns, joined in the centre by a concave piece ...
— Andy the Acrobat • Peter T. Harkness

... of varying the not very exhilarating study of four brick walls within microscopic distance of his eye, turned to a small square hole which admitted light and air to the hut, and looked out upon the dreary prospect before him. The wide concave of cloud, of the monotonous hue of dull pewter, formed an unbroken hood over the level from horizon to horizon; beneath it, reflecting its wan lustre, was the glazed high-road which stretched, hedgeless and ditchless, past a directing-post where ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy

... visible vault of heaven. This narrow and branched girdle, studded with a radiant light, and here and there interrupted by dark spots, deviates only by a few degrees from forming a perfect large circle round the concave sphere of heaven, owing to our being near the center of the large starry cluster, and almost on the plane of the Milky Way. If our planetary system were far 'outside' this cluster, the Milky Way would appear to telescopic vision as a ring, ...
— COSMOS: A Sketch of the Physical Description of the Universe, Vol. 1 • Alexander von Humboldt

... cottage "quarters," it afforded an agreeable relief. As he rode abstractedly forward under the low cottonwood vault he felt a strange influence stealing over him, an influence that was not only a present experience but at the same time a far-off memory. The concave vault above deepened; the sunset light from the level horizon beyond streamed through the leaves as through the chequers of stained glass windows; through the two shafts before him stretched the pillared aisles of Ashley Church! He was riding as in a dream, and when a figure suddenly slipped ...
— Tales of Trail and Town • Bret Harte

... followed by Huyghens's adaptation of that principle to clocks, has been one of the greatest aids to accurate observation. About the same time an equally beneficial step was the employment of the telescope as a pointer; not the Galilean with concave eye-piece, but with a magnifying glass to examine the focal image, at which also a fixed mark could be placed. Kepler was the first to suggest this. Gascoigne was the first to use it. Huyghens used a metal strip of variable width in the focus, as a micrometer to cover ...
— History of Astronomy • George Forbes

... While the noise of their hammers filled the room, the hearse came tottering to the door, pulled and pushed by twenty men. It was an ambulance left behind by the soldiers, and of the old-fashioned shape, concave in body, its top blown away in winds of long ago; and as they revolved, its wheels dished in and out like hoops about to fall. While some made a harness from ropes, and throwing the saddles off two ponies backed them to the vehicle, the body was put in ...
— Lin McLean • Owen Wister

... upon which it plays, and is poised so exactly that the weakest hand can turn it. It is hooped round with a hollow cylinder of adamant, four feet yards in diameter, placed horizontally, and supported by eight adamantine feet, each six yards high. In the middle of the concave side, there is a groove twelve inches deep, in which the extremities of the axle are lodged, and turned round as there ...
— Gulliver's Travels - into several remote nations of the world • Jonathan Swift

... the conclusion that he had dropped into a sewer. To get out the way he had entered appeared impossible. He could not leap upward from the slimy, concave bottom the distance he had dropped. To follow the sewer upward would lead him nowhere nearer escape. There remained no hope but to follow the trickling stream downward toward the river, into which his judgment told him the entire sewer system of the ...
— The Mad King • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... bought her a new mirror, And it told to her the truth. Did she break the truthful mirror? Oh, no, no; no, no, no, no. But she bought some stays quite rare, Some false teeth and wavy hair, Some convex-concave glasses such as men of culture wear, And then she looked again, And she said, "I am not plain,— I am not plain, 'tis plain, Not very, very plain, I did not think that primps and crimps Would change a body so. I'll take a book on Art, And ...
— ZigZag Journeys in Northern Lands; - The Rhine to the Arctic • Hezekiah Butterworth

... he resumed, "that upper lens is concave so that it enlarges tremendously. I can do ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve

... navetas are so named from their resemblance to ships. The construction is similar to that of the talayots. The outer wall has a considerable batter. The famous Nau d'Es Tudons is about 36 feet in length. The facade is slightly concave. A low door (a) gives access through a narrow slab-roofed passage (b) to a long rectangular chamber (c), the method of whose roofing is uncertain. All the naus are built with their facades to the south or south-east, ...
— Rough Stone Monuments and Their Builders • T. Eric Peet

... had on its head a large cylindric stone of a red colour, wrought perfectly round. The one they measured, which was not by far the largest, was fifty-two inches high, and sixty-six in diameter. In some, the upper corner of the cylinder was taken off in a sort of concave quarter-round, but in others the cylinder ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr

... shape—alas! how Saturn wrecks, And bends, and corkscrews all the frame about, Doubles the hams, and crooks the straightest necks, Draws in the nape, and pushes forth the snout, Makes backs and stomachs concave or convex: Witness those pensioners called In and Out, Who all day watching first and second rater, Quaintly unbend themselves—but ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood

... eyesight. And everybody knows that one man may need very powerful glasses, while another needs glasses which magnify only slightly; one may need a double lens, while another needs only a single lens; one may need convex lenses, while another needs concave. ...
— Cluthe's Advice to the Ruptured • Chas. Cluthe & Sons

... the sun is by nature hot and not cold, as has already been stated. If rays of fire play on a concave mirror when it is cold, the rays refracted by the mirror will be hotter than {156} the fire. The rays emitted from a sphere of glass filled with cold water, which are reflected from a fire, will be warmer ...
— Thoughts on Art and Life • Leonardo da Vinci

... the top camber without a set of templates,[18] but a fairly accurate idea of the concave camber can be secured by slowly passing a ...
— The Aeroplane Speaks - Fifth Edition • H. Barber

... Souleman, the Place of Solomon. A similar one upon the left is named El Makam Daoud, the Place of David. A cavity or niche on the south-west side of the rock is called El Makam Ibrahim, the Place of Abraham. A similar concave step at the north-west angle is described as El Makam Djibrila, the Place of Gabriel; and a sort of stone table at the north-east angle is denominated El Makam el Hoder, the Place of Elias. In the roof of the ...
— Palestine or the Holy Land - From the Earliest Period to the Present Time • Michael Russell

... they are not equal in dimensions and come under two categories. The larger, outside ones are each of them almost a third of the circumference and overlap one another slightly. Their lower end bends into a concave curve to form the bottom of the bag. Those inside, which are considerably smaller, increase the thickness of the sides and fill up the ...
— Bramble-bees and Others • J. Henri Fabre

... are two smooth membranes in opposition. It cannot be too well remembered that these two, the inner surface of the chest walls and the outer surface of the lungs, are in the closest contact. This is so whatever the changes that take place in the size and shape of the chest. The lungs are concave below, and so fit accurately to the fleshy partition between the chest and the abdomen which constitutes the lower boundary of the chest, if we may use the term "chest" somewhat loosely. Above, suiting the shape of the chest, ...
— Voice Production in Singing and Speaking - Based on Scientific Principles (Fourth Edition, Revised and Enlarged) • Wesley Mills



Words linked to "Concave" :   dish-shaped, concaveness, boat-shaped, concave shape, cupular, intrusive, cupulate, cotyloidal, bowl-shaped, biconcave, umbilicate, patelliform, convex, recessed, concave lens, bursiform, acetabular, concavo-concave, pouchlike



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