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Fulcrum   Listen
noun
Fulcrum  n.  (pl. L. fulcra, E. fulcrums)  
1.
A prop or support.
2.
(Mech.) That by which a lever is sustained, or about which it turns in lifting or moving a body.
3.
(Bot.) An accessory organ such as a tendril, stipule, spine, and the like. (R.)
4.
(Zool.)
(a)
The horny inferior surface of the lingua of certain insects.
(b)
One of the small, spiniform scales found on the front edge of the dorsal and caudal fins of many ganoid fishes.
5.
(Anat.) The connective tissue supporting the framework of the retina of the eye.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Fulcrum" Quotes from Famous Books



... uttered rapidly, and in a wheedling undertone, with a continual snaky writhing of her whole body, except her eye, which seemed, in the intense fixity of its glare, to act as a fulcrum for all her limbs; and from that eye, as long as it kept its mysterious hold, there ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley

... wholly unlike that of Ben Jonson or Beaumont and Fletcher. The latter see the totality of a sentence or passage, and then project it entire. Shakespeare goes on creating, and evolving B out of A, and C out of B, and so on, just as a serpent moves, which makes a fulcrum of its own body, and seems forever twisting and untwisting its own strength. "And here are a few axioms: 'The grandest efforts of poetry are where the imagination is called forth, not to produce a distinct form, ...
— Poems of Coleridge • Coleridge, ed Arthur Symons

... his shoulders, removed its protective outer shield and began to assemble the organic surveyor, an egg-shaped ball of white carponium secured to a segmented forty-foot rod. While Brandt and I raised the rod with the aid of an electric fulcrum, Mason carefully placed his control cabinet on a piece of outcropping rock and made a ...
— The Long Voyage • Carl Richard Jacobi

... a-tingle, the boy seized a stout bit of wood, evidently cut for the fireplace, inserted it between the window bars, bore down and with a low squeak of protest the nails came out. Another pry, with the sill for a fulcrum, and there was a hole big enough for a body to get through. The bit of wood now acted as a step and in a moment Gus was inside ...
— Radio Boys Loyalty - Bill Brown Listens In • Wayne Whipple

... on the lever rod D; by increasing the distance between the weight and the fulcrum of the lower increased pressure is brought to bear upon the walls of the capsule with the result that the boiling-point of the liquid in the capsule is slightly raised, and a range of about two degrees can thus be ...
— The Elements of Bacteriological Technique • John William Henry Eyre

... on the inside to a brass operating arm, manipulated by means of rods running along each side of the clerestory, and each rod is operated by means of a brass lever, having a fulcrum secured to ...
— The New York Subway - Its Construction and Equipment • Anonymous

... "Great Courts should understand one another; then the small would be less troublesome." For a quarter of a century this has been the Kaunitz faith. In 1753, when he miraculously screwed round the French into union with the Austrians to put down an upstart Prussia, this was his grand fulcrum, the immovable rock in which the great Engineer fixed down his political capstans, and levered and screwed. He did triumphantly wind matters round,—though whether they much profited him when ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... the hatchet to him!" vociferated the sailor. "Lemme get the hatchet!" He shoved the steel edge close to Mr. Taylor's finger and used the man's teeth as a fulcrum. Jan held on and breathed through his nose, snorting like a grampus. "Steady, all! ...
— The God of His Fathers • Jack London

... notion of balance—the Steelyard, a small weight on the long arm of the fulcrum, admitting great range in the ...
— Pictorial Composition and the Critical Judgment of Pictures • Henry Rankin Poore

... at each side of the excavation, and the forked sticks tied up to the superior ring embracing it, served as arc-boutant in the direction where the greatest force was to be applied. A tree-trunk, with its fork, served as a fulcrum around which was wound the cable of bark. A pole placed in the fork served as lever. It is with the aid of this rustic capstan that my ten men were able to raise the heavy mass to the surface ...
— The Mayas, the Sources of Their History / Dr. Le Plongeon in Yucatan, His Account of Discoveries • Stephen Salisbury, Jr.

... which Festing's lumber gang floundered awkwardly. Had there been a thaw, the surface would have hardened, but now they were forced to move the logs through loose, billowy drifts. The men sank to their knees, it was difficult to find a fulcrum for the handspikes, and the logs would not run well on the beaten roads. The latter broke into holes, and the dry snow retarded the smooth sliding of the lumber like dust. One could not touch a saw or ax-head with ...
— The Girl From Keller's - Sadie's Conquest • Harold Bindloss

... considered very strong for his age. At throwing the hammer George had no compeer. At lifting heavy weights off the ground from between his feet, by means of a bar of iron passed through them—placing the bar against his knees as a fulcrum, and then straightening his spine and lifting them sheer up—he was also very successful. On one occasion he lifted as much as sixty stones weight—a striking indication of his strength ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles

... girl forced the chain and bent all her strength to the great lever that should launch the stored wheat into its quicksand flow. She flung her good muscles and her substantial weight so fiercely into that effort that the shaft snapped at its fulcrum—but not until ...
— A Pagan of the Hills • Charles Neville Buck

... effectually prevent the manufacture of demagogues without adopting measures which would render us false to our acknowledged principles of government and to our civilising mission. But we may govern in such a manner as to give the demagogue no fulcrum with which to move his credulous and ill-informed countrymen and co-religionists. The leading principle of a government of this nature should be that low taxation is the most potent instrument with which to ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring

... seems malicious because analysis in discovering common traits and universal principles assimilates things at the poles of being; it can apply to cookery the formulas of theology, and find in the human heart a case of the fulcrum and lever. We commonly keep the departments of experience distinct; we think that different principles hold in each and that the dignity of spirit is inconsistent with the explanation of it by physical analogy, and the meanness ...
— The Sense of Beauty - Being the Outlines of Aesthetic Theory • George Santayana

... and is now placing all his individual strength to the task of heaving off this incubus from the breast of our body politic, but with small avail, for he has no lever to assist him—no fulcrum whereon to rest it; otherwise he might say with Archimedes, 'With these I could move a world.' He is unaided, this eagled-eyed prophet of ours, looking sorrowfully, sagaciously down into the ages! South Carolina is the Joseph, that his cruel brothers, the remaining Southern States, have sold ...
— Sea and Shore - A Sequel to "Miriam's Memoirs" • Mrs. Catharine A. Warfield

... where an angle is provided as a shelf on which this slab rests. The angle is supported, with thread and nut, on rods which reach up to the front slab, from which a horizontal force, acting about the toe of the wall as a fulcrum, results in the lifting force on the slab. There is positively no way in which this wall could fail (as far as the counterfort is concerned) but by the pulling apart of the rods or the tearing out of this anchoring angle. Compare this method of failure with the ...
— Some Mooted Questions in Reinforced Concrete Design • Edward Godfrey

... Young Henrys cut a strong bar six or eight feet long, while Pat McGuire chopped a hole alongside the log. Then one end of the bar was thrust into the hole, the logging chain fastened to the other; and, behold, a monster lever, whose fulcrum was the ice and whose power was applied by Molly, hitched to the end of the chain. In this simple manner a task was accomplished in five minutes which would have taken a dozen men an hour. When the log had been cat-a-cornered ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White

... to as a sufficient indication that the Creation of Man is to be referred to a period at least 10,000 years more remote than is fixed by the Chronology of the Bible.... Brick and flint! a precious fulcrum, truly, for a theory which ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon

... only exists that it may cease to exist. In it lies the opportunity of all victory and all progress. Whether it call itself fatality, death, night, or matter, it is the pedestal of life, of light, of liberty, and the spirit. For it represents resistance—that is to say, the fulcrum of all activity, the occasion for ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... creature—its internal shell, I should rather say, for bone it has none. The form of the shell in this species is that of a feather, equally developed in the web on both sides. It gives rigidity to the body, and furnishes the muscles with a fulcrum; and we find it composed, like all other shells, of a mixture of animal matter and carbonate of lime. Such was the lesson taught me in a single walk; and I have recorded it at some length. The subject of it, the loligo, has been described by some of our more distinguished naturalists, ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller

... according to their custom, the jurists put themselves at the service of the new reign. And no dogma was better suited their to authoritative instinct; no axiom furnished them so convenient a fulcrum on which to set up and turn their logical wheel. This wheel, which they had latterly managed with care and caution under the ancient Regime, had suddenly in their hands turned with frightful speed and effect in order to convert the rigid, universal, and applied ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 5 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 1 (of 2)(Napoleon I.) • Hippolyte A. Taine

... wand of art, Her fulcrum was the human heart, Whence all unfailing aid is; She moved the earth! Its thunders pealed, Its mountains shook, its temples reeled, The blood-red fountains were unsealed, And ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... faith in everything but myself, I boldly and voluntarily entered the arena of commercial activity at the pliable age of eight. My first job away from home was in a mattress factory. Ah, that first job! I was a triumphant Archimedes who had found his fulcrum. I helped move the world, for twelve hours a day and ...
— An Anarchist Woman • Hutchins Hapgood

... and by imperceptible degrees I lifted it to the top of the groove, and the least bit above it, say half an inch in all; but it made an appreciable difference to the sounds within, as when you remove your foot from a piano's soft pedal. I could do no more, for there was no further fulcrum for the spike, and I dared not gamble away what I had won by using ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers

... thumb is that of a pivot; a fulcrum. The bow is a lever resting thereon, and its pressure on the string is regulated by the first and second fingers on the one side and by the third and fourth on the other. It would thus appear that the best place for the thumb would be exactly between ...
— The Bow, Its History, Manufacture and Use - 'The Strad' Library, No. III. • Henry Saint-George

... a second time, and Crusoe came forward with the mitten in his mouth. It seemed as if it had been done accidentally, for he dropped it before coming quite up. If so, it was a fortunate accident, for it served as the tiny fulcrum on which to place the point of that mighty lever which was destined ere long to raise him to the pinnacle of canine erudition. Dick Varley immediately lavished upon him the tenderest caresses and gave him a lump of meat. But he quickly tried it again lest he should lose the lesson. ...
— The Dog Crusoe and His Master - A Story of Adventure in the Western Prairies • Robert Michael Ballantyne

... Possibility, when Archimedes finds a fulcrum, Cassandra has a following and seven cities compete for the honor of endowing ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce

... it belonged; and as, in many cases, from the existence of such animals, we may go on, step by step, to the nature of the earth's surface at the period when they lived: so the meanest relic of art will serve the natural historian of man as a fulcrum by which he may turn up a mass of genuine information; with which, as with all knowledge, as its store increases, the power of applying it becomes more facile; until at length it scarcely becomes an exaggeration to say, that every material relic bears in itself its ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various

... which still holds its place in the schools. Archimedes of Syracuse, who had once studied at Alexandria, made many discoveries in engineering. A water screw of his device is still in use. He has the credit for finding out the laws of the lever. "Give me a fulcrum on which to rest," he said, "and I will move the earth." The Hellenistic scholars also made remarkable progress in medicine. The medical school of Alexandria was well equipped with charts, models, and dissecting rooms for the study of the human body. During the second century of our era all the medical ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER

... serving as the chief support. The fingers are then bent out in such a manner that their foremost joints, especially those of the two innermost fingers, rest upon the ground by their upper sides, while the point of the free and straight thumb serves as an additional fulcrum. ...
— Evidence as to Man's Place in Nature • Thomas H. Huxley

... that this operating power, whatever its name, under certain limitations, exercises a sovereign dominion not only over our limbs, but over our intellectual pursuits? The mind of every man is evidently the fulcrum, the moving force,—which alike regulates all his limbs and actions: and in which example, we find a strong illustration of the subordinate nature of mere matter. That alone which gives direction to the organic parts of our nature, is wholly mind; and one mind if placed over ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle

... gigantic outcrop of pitchblende or black oxide of uranium. He estimated that nature had stored more uranium in but one of the abutments of this cliff than in all the known mines of the entire world. This radioactive mountain was the fulcrum by which this modern Archimedes had moved the earth. The vast amount of matter disintegrated by the Ray and thrown off into space with a velocity a thousandfold greater than the blast of a siege gun produced a back pressure or recoil against the ...
— The Man Who Rocked the Earth • Arthur Train

... economists preach as they will, and Radical socialists abuse a measure, which helps to take from them the fulcrum of the levers that are to upset the whole existing framework of society, it is impossible for one who did see those sights, and who has visited the same localities in later days, not to bless Lord Shaftesbury's ...
— What I Remember, Volume 2 • Thomas Adolphus Trollope

... case with the animal machine. It is not enough that it is put in motion by the noblest spirit or that it is nourished by the highest blood; every bone must have its just proportion; every muscle or tendon its proper pulley; every lever its proper length and fulcrum; every joint its most accurate adjustment and proper lubrication; all must have their relative proportions and strength, before the motions of the machine can be accurate, vigorous and durable. In every machine modifications are required according as the purposes vary to which it is ...
— The Principles of Breeding • S. L. Goodale

... much dependent upon absolute strength as it is on knowing how. The whole body, so far as it is a physical mechanism, may be thought of as a series of levers, of which the muscles, bones, and joints make up the parts and are fulcrum, power arm or weight arm as the case may be. Without going into the details of bodily structure or even knowing the names of the different bones and muscles, it is possible to learn a few simple things about the right use of these levers that will ...
— Scouting For Girls, Official Handbook of the Girl Scouts • Girl Scouts

... force—both of these terms being "aspects" of God—and without a fulcrum no force can manifest itself; there is no heat without cold, and when it is summer in the northern hemisphere it is winter in the southern. There is no movement that does not depend upon a state of rest, no light without shadow, no pleasure without the faculty of pain, no freedom that is not ...
— Reincarnation - A Study in Human Evolution • Th. Pascal

... I've got my commission to do the old job again; to boss the railways, to help the two towns. The Mayor brought it back from Montreal yesterday; and together, boys, together, we'll make Manitou and Lebanon the fulcrum of the West, the swivel by which to swing ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... go out every morning before breakfast and, with ferula for Archimedean lever and Three R's for fulcrum, prize open the gates of day. The organization of infants of every conceivable degree of intellectuality into classes, and their formal elevation through successive "grades" by means of cunningly devised educational jack-screws or block-and-tackle, ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann

... all interested in the matter, or thinking it probable that he ever would. His reading, without the application we are here recommending, would never have led him to perceive the slightest similarity between the fulcrum of the lever, and the insertion of his jaw; or any connection between the lesson of the school, and the employment of the parlour:—But ...
— A Practical Enquiry into the Philosophy of Education • James Gall

... order. Now in the first order, one end of the lever is applied to the point of resistance, which in the case just mentioned was the lid of the box. At the other end we apply our strength, force, or power. The edge of the box against which the chisel is worked serves as a fulcrum and lies between the handle where the power is applied and the bevelled edge which moves the resistance or weight. A pair of ordinary weighing scales also exemplifies the first order of levers. The knife edge on which the beam is balanced serves as a fulcrum; it is placed ...
— A Book of Exposition • Homer Heath Nugent

... of the charter first, because it is right and just to women; second, that women may have a political fulcrum on which to plant their lever for everything they wish to secure through government; third, that the opinions of the women of this city may be respected, and there is no other way to secure respect but to have them counted with those of men ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper

... makes for instability and loss of distance. The fundamental law of the dynamics of golf is that the left foot shall be solidly on the ground at the moment of impact. If you allow your heel to point down the course, it is almost impossible to bring it back in time to make the foot a solid fulcrum." ...
— The Clicking of Cuthbert • P. G. Wodehouse

... one, such a creature may be continually nourished by it and thereby enabled to protract its undesirable activity for a very long period. It can, however, produce no effect upon the person towards whom it is directed unless he has himself some tendency which it can foster—some fulcrum for its lever, as it were; from the aura of a man of pure thought and good life all such influences at once rebound, finding nothing upon which they can fasten, and in that case, by a very curious law, they ...
— The Astral Plane - Its Scenery, Inhabitants and Phenomena • C. W. Leadbeater

... obscure for the minds of that race to comprehend, and they lived, hoped and died, ignorant of his great Cosmic relationship. Jesus was a son of the planet and his mission was to set laws of race consciousness into activity which would act as a spiritual fulcrum throughout ...
— Freedom Talks No. II • Julia Seton, M.D.

... doubt represents the decisive factor. The love of truth in the abstract is probably the weakest of human passions; but truth when attained ultimately gives the fulcrum for a reconstruction of the world. When a solid core of ascertained and verifiable truth has once been formed and applied to practical results it becomes the fixed pivot upon which all beliefs must ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen

... and approaches more nearly the methods employed by Man when the animal makes use of a foreign body, as a tool or as a fulcrum, to achieve his objects. A snake is very embarrassed when he has swallowed an entire egg with the shell; he cannot digest it in that condition, and the muscles of his stomach are not strong enough to break it. The ...
— The Industries of Animals • Frederic Houssay

... needed at Toulon. Thus these two expeditions competed together, and produced a dislocation of plans and ordering of troops to and fro, which told against success in either quarter. By 27th October Ministers definitely decided that Toulon, or la Vendee, was a better fulcrum for their scanty forces than Flanders.[245] Even so, with all these dislocations of the Flemish plans, Pitt and Dundas relied too much upon Austria; and all too late found out that she was a broken reed. The Sardinians, also, lacking due support from the Court of Vienna, were afraid to denude ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose

... however small, should escape him. There were fools in Berlin as well as in Paris; and he knew what he knew. "Never a move shall he make that I shan't make the same; and in one thing I shall move first. Two million francs! Handsome! It is I who must find this treasure, this fulcrum to the lever which is going to upheave France. There will be no difficulty then in pricking the pretty bubble. In the meantime we shall proceed to Munich and carefully inquire into the affairs of the grand ...
— A Splendid Hazard • Harold MacGrath

... be said that since the eye does not rotate like the pendulum, from a fulcrum above, the image of i in the case of the moving eye will be distorted as is indicated in Fig. 4, a. This is true, but the distortion will be so minute as to be negligible if the pendulum is rather ...
— Harvard Psychological Studies, Volume 1 • Various

... feathers of each wing; and these separate feathers, if there had been the least vibratory movement, would have appeared as if blended together; but they were seen distinct against the blue sky. The head and neck were moved frequently, and apparently with force; and the extended wings seemed to form the fulcrum on which the movements of the neck, body, and tail acted. If the bird wished to descend, the wings were for a moment collapsed; and when again expanded with an altered inclination, the momentum gained by the rapid descent ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin

... the matter upon which we operate must not escape our grasp and slip through our hands, if we are to be able to work it. The constant, again, is the element of language, in which the word represents its inert permanence, in which it constitutes the solid fulcrum, the foundation and landmark of dialectic progress, being that which can be discarded by the mind, whose attention is thus free for other tasks. In this respect analysis by concepts is the natural method of common-sense. It consists in asking from time to time what point the object studied ...
— A New Philosophy: Henri Bergson • Edouard le Roy

... which its use is attended. The next, and most common power applied for elevating buildings on large rocks, is the simple lever, commonly called a pry. This usually consists of a long straight beam or pole, one end of which is placed under the object to be raised, while a fulcrum consisting of a stone or block of wood, is placed under the lever, at a short distance from the object to be raised. The opposite extremity then being forced down by the weight of one or more of the workmen, a force is applied to the object to be raised, bearing the same proportion to ...
— Scientific American magazine, Vol. 2 Issue 1 • Various

... the school was assured from that moment. She had a good solid foundation to build upon in the jealousy of two or three of the leading girls of the style of pretensions illustrated by some of their talk which has been given. There is no possible success without some opposition as a fulcrum: force is always aggressive, and crowds something or other, if it does not ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 118, August, 1867 • Various

... Drama with Vijaya as the hero—what has he to say as to the details of its plot? What weapon does he use to weaken this foundation-stone of a chronology upon which are built and on which depend all other Buddhist dates? What is the fulcrum for the critical lever he uses against the Asiatic records? Three of his main points may be stated seriatim with answers appended. He begins ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various

... there a State outside of the people, and a human foresight outside of humanity? Archimedes might have repeated all the days of his life, "With a lever and a fulcrum I will move the world," but he could not have moved it, for want of those two things. The fulcrum of the State is the nation, and nothing is madder than to build so many hopes on the State; that is to say, to assume a collective science and foresight, after ...
— Sophisms of the Protectionists • Frederic Bastiat

... could have agreed with Maharajah, but the priests had stood between. That treasure was their fulcrum; the legacy, dictated by a dead, misguided hand, intended as a war reserve to stay the throne of Howrah in its need, and trebly locked to guard against profligacy, had placed the priests of Siva in the position of dictators of Howrah's destiny. A ...
— Rung Ho! • Talbot Mundy

... effected by a four-way cock provided with a lever, which is actuated by a tappet rod attached to the crosshead, as seen on the back view of the engine. To the crosshead is also coupled a lever having its fulcrum on a bracket attached to the boiler; this lever serving to work the feed pump. Unfortunately the original pump of the Crewe engine was smashed, but Mr. Webb has fitted one up to show the arrangement. A notable feature in the engine is that it is provided with a feed heater through which ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XIX, No. 470, Jan. 3, 1885 • Various

... Archimedes lever, as opposed to that which Allen Sanford had heard his father give. To Gorham the power of the lever depended upon the strength of the imaginative ideals, and the "cold, hard cash" was simply the necessary fulcrum ...
— The Lever - A Novel • William Dana Orcutt

... fulcrum, which is generally treated as being absolutely immovable, being the general belief in ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells

... whether their loyalty were due to the country or to slavery; and with a respectable body of honest and influential men who still believed in the possibility of conciliation,—Mr. Lincoln judged wisely, that, in laying down a policy in deference to one party, he should be giving to the other the very fulcrum for which their disloyalty had ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various

... for there are very few things in this world that do not involve specific relations. This is the case, for example, with planets, levers, and brothers. There is no planet without its sun, no lever without its fulcrum, no brother who ...
— The Moral Economy • Ralph Barton Perry

... wires they tightened with the short iron bar, in the end of which a V-shaped cut had been made. While Pete caught the slack wire with this bar, and, using the post as a fulcrum, the bar as a lever, drew it taut, Conniston with hammer and staples made it secure. Now and again they found a rotten post which must be taken out, while a new one from a row which had been dumped from a wagon yesterday was put into ...
— Under Handicap - A Novel • Jackson Gregory

... passed through pullies [Footnote 10: Compare the sketch on page 198 and on 201 (S. K. M. II.1 86b).]. And here remember that the weight of a man pulls in proportion as his centre of gravity is distant from his fulcrum, and to this is added the force given by his legs and bent back as ...
— The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, Complete • Leonardo Da Vinci

... that if I showed any sign of want of spirit or of backwardness, that I should be ruined at once. So I took my bucket of grease and climbed up to the royal-mast-head. Here the rocking of the vessel, which increases the higher you go from the foot of the mast, which is the fulcrum of the lever, and the smell of the grease, which offended my fastidious senses, upset my stomach again, and I was not a little rejoiced when I got upon the comparative terra firma of the deck. In a few ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana

... of bark in his bill, tugging and fluttering, using his tail as a lever with the tree as a fulcrum, and objurgating in unseemly tones, as the bark resists his efforts, the drongo assists the Moreton Bay ash in discarding worn-out epidermis, and the tree reciprocates by offering safe nesting-place ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield

... which proved so offensive to many thousand voters in New York. Indeed, it may be said with truth, that Seward's record on that one question did more to defeat him at Chicago than all his "irrepressible conflict" and "higher-law" declarations. It became the fulcrum of Curtin's and Lane's aggressive resistance, who claimed that, in the event of his nomination, the American or Know-Nothing element in Pennsylvania and Indiana would not only maintain its organisation, but largely increase its strength, because of its strong prejudices against ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander

... sustaining itself under the test of determined opposition, to them it is enough. Our great national axiom, is, per se, the eternal foe of all monarchies, aristocracies, oligarchies, of all possible despotism, because it is the fulcrum of a mighty lever which must one day overturn them all, if it be not itself jostled ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... was laughing and chatting with Mme. Firmiani, one of the most charming women in Paris. A voice indeed cried, "Intellect is the lever by which to move the world," but another voice cried no less loudly that money was the fulcrum. ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac

... the West the Pillars of Hercules marked earth's furthest bound. Beyond lay the mare tenebrosum, the Mysterious Sea, girding the level world. England was not then one of the first nations of the earth. She was not yet a maritime power, she had not begun the work of colonisation and empire: the fulcrum of Europe lay further south. But as our Tudor sovereigns were making secure dominion in "these isles," the Byzantine Empire was moving slowly to its end, and favouring circumstances were already making Italy the centre of the ...
— Old Quebec - The Fortress of New France • Sir Gilbert Parker and Claude Glennon Bryan

... be ground slips between this loop and the strip C, and is held firmly in place by the pressure applied to the back end of D, which thus acts as a lever on the fulcrum E. ...
— Handwork in Wood • William Noyes

... strong, carpenter's horse in the shed, to act as a fulcrum, and a seasoned bar of hickory as a lever. There was never an old farm yet that didn't have a useful heap of junk, and Hiram had already scratched over Uncle Jeptha's collection ...
— Hiram The Young Farmer • Burbank L. Todd

... In mechanics three classes of levers are described, according to the relative position of the power, the fulcrum, and the resistance. All the movements of the bones can be referred to one or another ...
— A Practical Physiology • Albert F. Blaisdell

... to keep the Irish in the public eye. This was no less than an attempt to free Ireland and disrupt the British Empire, using the United States as a fulcrum, the Irish in America as the power, and Canada as the lever. James Stephens, who organized the Irish Republican Brotherhood, came to America in 1858 to start a similar movement. After the Civil War, which supplied a training school for whole regiments of Irish soldiers, a convention of Fenians ...
— Our Foreigners - A Chronicle of Americans in the Making • Samuel P. Orth

... Era, while it furnished a most appropriate field for Dr. Bailey's talents, also marked an era in the antislavery history of the country. At the centres of all governments there is found a fulcrum whose value politicians have long since demonstrated by its use,—too frequently for the most unworthy purposes. There had always been organs for conservatism at Washington, but none for progress. There were numbers of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various

... of the springs when thick stricks appear; hence, when a thick place passes under the roller which is in contact with the curved end of the oblique rod, the end moves slightly clockwise, and thus rotates the fulcrum rod; this results in an increased quantity of oil being liberated from the source of supply, and the mechanism is so arranged that the oil reaches the thick part of the strick. When the above-mentioned upper roller descends, due to a decrease in the thickness of the strick, ...
— The Jute Industry: From Seed to Finished Cloth • T. Woodhouse and P. Kilgour

... perihelion there would simply be increased evaporation and clouds near the equator, which would shield those regions from the sun, only to disappear again as the earth receded. "The only trouble," said Cortlandt, "is that we should have no fulcrum. Straightening the axis is simple enough, for we have the attraction of the sun with which to work, and we have but to increase it at one end while decreasing it at the other, and change this as the poles change their inclination towards the sun, to bring it about. If ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds • J. J. Astor

... in particular, has elsewhere been discussed time and again, and I lack here the space, and the desire, either to explain or to apologize for the era's delinquencies. I would merely indicate that this point of conduct is the fulcrum of The Jewel Merchants. ...
— The Jewel Merchants - A Comedy In One Act • James Branch Cabell

... shaft. There is another pair of connecting rods from the side levers to the crosshead of the air pump. All connecting rods are on one arm of the side levers, the other end having only a counterbalance weight beyond the fulcrum bearing. The flywheel has a shaft fitted with two gears, and is driven through idler gears from gears on the paddle-wheel shaft; it turns at about twice the speed of the paddle wheel. No other pumps ...
— Fulton's "Steam Battery": Blockship and Catamaran • Howard I. Chapelle

... overcome. Thus the levers require to be extremely light; this was secured by the use of an alloy of aluminium used in the construction of Zeppelins: this combines lightness with rigidity. Another difficulty almost unsuperable arises from the friction at the bearings of the fulcrum, the best watch jewels made of ruby were employed, but the supply was cut off from Germany by the war. This proved a blessing in disguise, for it forced the lecturer to devise a new principle of suspension using local material. This was found in practice ...
— Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose - His Life and Speeches • Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose

... power; devoid of energy, as an heap of ignoble matter purely passive: who, incapable of acting by herself, was not competent to any of the operations they beheld, without the direct, the immediate agency of the moving powers they had associated with her: which they had made the fulcrum necessary to the action of the lever. They either did not or would not perceive, that the great Cause of causes, ens entium, Parent of parents, had, in unravelling chaotic matter, with a wisdom ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 2 • Baron D'Holbach

... our practical experience in the science of government, affording us an opportunity for actual participation in the shaping of legislation and in giving vitality to public policies. The press, however, occupies a most unique position with reference to all of them. It is the fulcrum upon which all these activities must depend for useful service. The press is the concentrated voice of the masses; the mouthpiece of the age; the universal censor—directed by popular opinion—from whose verdict there is no appeal. The press is the medium ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various

... THE MOTION OF A LEVER.—The simple lever with a pawl on each side of the fulcrum is the most effective means to make a continuous feed by the simple movement of a lever. The form shown is capable of many modifications, and it can be easily adapted for any ...
— Practical Mechanics for Boys • J. S. Zerbe

... by lime, or perhaps only by time itself, he called for one of the stones that had been thrown out, laid it by the side of the hole he had picked, and then thrusting down the iron bar and using the stone as a fulcrum, he levered out a good-sized ...
— Dead Man's Land - Being the Voyage to Zimbambangwe of certain and uncertain • George Manville Fenn

... to Cameron and showed him all the tricks of pitching hay. It was Tim who showed him how to stand with his back to the wagon so as to get the load properly poised with the least expenditure of strength; it was Tim who taught him the cunning trick of using his thigh as a fulcrum in getting his load up, rather than doing it by "main strength and awkwardness"; it was Tim who demonstrated the method of lifting half a cock by running the end of the fork handle into the ground so that the whole earth might aid in the hoisting of the load. Of course in ...
— Corporal Cameron • Ralph Connor

... the agenda paper into fantastic shapes until, when someone in authority brought out the formula, "I think the view of the committee will be—" a resolution was put and the issue settled by the mechanical raising of hands on the fulcrum of the elbow. And at each raising of hands everybody felt that something positive had indeed ...
— The Pretty Lady • Arnold E. Bennett

... exclaimed ARCHIMEDES, "a fulcrum, and I will raise the earth." "Give me," says the author of the Vestiges, "gravitation and development, and I will create a universe." ALEXANDER'S ambition was to conquer a world, our author's is to ...
— An Expository Outline of the "Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation" • Anonymous

... and the rest of us joining in to push that cart up the hill, then taking time to breathe until another came along that needed a lift. The social settlements, starting as neighborhood guilds to reassert the lost brotherhood, became almost from the first the fulcrum, as it were, whence the lever for reform was applied, because the whole idea of that reform was to better the lot of those whom the prosperous up-town knew vaguely only as "the poor." If parks were wanted, if schools needed bettering, there were at the College Settlement, ...
— The Making of an American • Jacob A. Riis

... how the little animal wins its way up against the stream, by alternate pulses of active and passive motion, now resisting the current, and now yielding to it in order to gather strength and a momentary fulcrum for a further propulsion. This is no unapt emblem of the mind's self-experience in the act of thinking. There are evidently two powers at work, which relatively to each other are active and passive; and this is not possible without ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... not bear the thought, for she had been accustomed to regard the Serapeum as the very heart of the universe—the centre and fulcrum on which the balance of the earth depended; to her, Serapis himself was inseparable from his temple and its atmosphere of magical and mystical power. Every prophecy, every Sibylline text, every oracle must be false if the overthrow ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... vibratory motion to the lever F. The crank C upon the end of the shaft operates the oil pump. The speed of the turbine is controlled by admitting the steam in puffs of greater or less duration according to the load. The lever F, having its fulcrum in the collar surrounding the shaft, operates with each vibration of the eccentric the pilot valve. The valve is explained ...
— Steam Turbines - A Book of Instruction for the Adjustment and Operation of - the Principal Types of this Class of Prime Movers • Hubert E. Collins

... forward motion of serpents. The seizure of prey by the constrictor, though invisibly swift, is quite simple in mechanism; it is simply the return to its coil of an opened watch-spring, and is just as instantaneous. But the steady and continuous motion, without a visible fulcrum (for the whole body moves at the same instant, and I have often seen even small snakes glide as fast as I could walk), seems to involve a vibration of the scales quite too rapid to be conceived. The motion of the ...
— The Queen of the Air • John Ruskin

... his number for October 1818 was one of the best he had ever read, and he desired him to "offer to his friends his very best thanks and congratulations upon the production of so admirable a number." "With this number," he said, "you have given me a fulcrum upon which I will move heaven and earth to get subscribers and contributors." Indeed, several of the contributions in this surpassingly excellent number had been sent to the Edinburgh publisher through the instrumentality ...
— A Publisher and His Friends • Samuel Smiles

... development as in a baboon when adult." (18. 'Die Grosshirnwindungen des Menschen,' 1868, s. 95.) The great toe, as Professor Owen remarks (19. 'Anatomy of Vertebrates,' vol. ii. p. 553.), "which forms the fulcrum when standing or walking, is perhaps the most characteristic peculiarity in the human structure;" but in an embryo, about an inch in length, Prof. Wyman (20. 'Proc. Soc. Nat. Hist.' Boston, 1863, vol. ix. p. 185.) found "that the great toe was shorter than the others; and, ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin

... any auxiliary other than his own stout arm. It overcomes or disproves the heretofore-received principle in mechanics, of not gaining power without a loss of speed. Archimedes, in declaring his ability to move the world, if he had a suitable position for his fulcrum, conveyed an apt illustration of the measureless power of the lever when exerted to its fullest extent. This fullest extent Mr Archard claims to have attained in the action of a succession of parallel ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 462 - Volume 18, New Series, November 6, 1852 • Various

... veracity. Faith means negligence, serfdom, insincerity and deception. The man who never doubts never thinks. He is like a straw in the wind or a waif on the sea. He is one of the helpless, docile, unquestioning millions, who keep the world in a state of stagnation, and serve as a fulcrum for the lever of despotism. The stupidity of the people, says Whitman, is always inviting ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (First Series) • George W. Foote

... to understand and make the most of the ground that he was to use. He jumped and jumped well, but only half gained the top of the bank. The poor brute, urged beyond his power, could not get his hind feet up so near the surface as to give him a fulcrum for a second spring. For a moment he strove to make good his footing, still clinging with his fore feet, and then slowly came down backwards into the ditch, then regained his feet, and dragging himself with an effort from the ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope

... would inevitably and intensely gravitate: commerce seeking customers; manufactures eager for markets; shipping greedy of cargoes and freights; but, above all, Democratic politicians hungry for power and pelf, and having the strong instinct of American unity and nationality as their fulcrum. They would gradually but surely undermine the mutilated fabric of our once glorious Union, and tear away its pillars to strengthen and extend the pile whereof Slavery is the acknowledged corner-stone. ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 2, No 6, December 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... power to be directed? How bring it to bear upon the Duke of Sutherland? It is an all-potent lever, but it must be furnished with a fulcrum on which to rest, and a direction in which to bear. Let us remark, first, that no signal privilege or right was ever yet achieved for Britain, that was not preceded by some signal wrong. From the times of Magna Charta down to the times of the Revolution, we find every ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller

... with your usual penetration, my captain, but our opinions do not clash. The Frate, wanting to be master, and to carry out his projects against the Pope, requires the lever of a foreign power, and requires Florence as a fulcrum. I used to think him a narrow-minded bigot, but now, I think him a shrewd ambitious man who knows what he is aiming at, and directs his aim as skilfully as you direct a ball when you ...
— Romola • George Eliot

... literature and art, are so founded on and pervaded by sentiment that they would all go to pieces without it, it is a word not to be used too lightly in passing judgment, as if it were an element to be thrown out or treated with small consideration. Reason may be the lever, but sentiment gives you the fulcrum and the place to stand on if you want to move the world. Even "sentimentality," which is sentiment overdone, is better than that affectation of superiority to human weakness which is only tolerable as one of the ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... high and dry to enable repairs or other operations to be conducted. For this purpose, one end of the pontoon is so formed as to enable it to fit around the cylinder, and to be held to it as to a center or fulcrum, about which the pontoon can be swung. The pontoon is of special construction, and has air-chambers at the sides placed near the center, so as to balance it. It also has chambers at the ends, which are divided horizontally in order that the operation of submerging ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 275 • Various

... then covered up the entrance with earth. When Corkran got to his portcullis, he thought he'd reached the reward of his labours. Well—so he had—the punishment. Here's the heap of stone he used as a fulcrum for his lever. The heap tumbled when he was on the other side, and the slab of rock came down to trap him. We'll have to build up his fulcrum again, before we ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson

... more equal difficulties made this impossible. The box had no handle, and it was slippery with the ooze and mucus of the sea. The leverage of pushing only wedged it faster in the orifice. The inconstant ladder swayed from it as a fulcrum. Again and again by art and endeavor and angle of push he essayed, and the ladder made sport of it. It was deadly sport, that swing and seesaw on the slippery rungs in the immeasurable loneliness of the silent, shrouded cabin. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI. • Various

... act by repulsion exerted on the fluid element in which they work. But in space there is no such resisting element on which repulsion can operate. I needed a repulsion which would act like gravitation through an indefinite distance and in a void—act upon a remote fulcrum, such as might be the Earth in a voyage to the Moon, or the Sun in a more distant journey. As soon, then, as the character of the apergic force was made known to me, its application to this purpose seized on my mind. Experiment had proved it possible, ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg

... he rose uninjured though concussed by the impact, raised the latch of the area door by the exertion of force at its freely moving flange and by leverage of the first kind applied at its fulcrum, gained retarded access to the kitchen through the subadjacent scullery, ignited a lucifer match by friction, set free inflammable coal gas by turningon the ventcock, lit a high flame which, by regulating, he reduced to quiescent candescence and ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce

... the hunting her up. Well, the fellow thought proper to upset some arrangements my mother had made, and then was more insolent than I should have thought even he could have been towards her. I suppose he had got into the habit with poor Aunt Alice. That made a fulcrum, and my father went at my uncle with a will. I never saw my father so roused in my life. I don't mean by the behaviour to his wife, but at what he knew of the fellow, and all the harm he had done and is doing. And ...
— Nuttie's Father • Charlotte M. Yonge



Words linked to "Fulcrum" :   lever, pin



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