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noun
Humidity  n.  
1.
Moisture; dampness; a moderate degree of wetness, which is perceptible to the eye or touch; used especially of the atmosphere, or of anything which has absorbed moisture from the atmosphere, as clothing.
2.
Specifically: The content of water vapor in the air, expressed as a percent of the maximum amount of water vapor that the air can hold at the given temperature; also called relative humidity. The capacity of the air to hold moisture increases with temperature, so if the temperature changes without changing the absolute content of the atmospheric moisture, the relative humidity will also change.
relative humidity Same as humidity (2). Note: In hygrometrical reports (as of the United States Signal Service) complete saturation of the air by water vapor is designated by a relative humidity of 100, and its partial saturation by smaller numbers in direct proportion to the actual content of water vapor.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Humidity" Quotes from Famous Books



... monkey, can be preserved in European climates only by the utmost care in guarding it from the operation of atmospheric temperature. The cold and humidity of our winters are fatally injurious to its health. Neatness and cleanliness to a fastidious degree are constitutional traits of the marikina, and the greatest possible attention must be paid to it in this way, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 10, No. 270, Saturday, August 25, 1827. • Various

... remote Spots that were supplied with Steam Heat and French Cooking, together with Wines, Liquors, and Cigars, but no matter what the Altitude or the Relative Humidity, he felt discouraged every Morning when he awoke and remembered that presently he would have to rally his Vital Forces and walk all the way to ...
— Ade's Fables • George Ade

... little yard enclosed by the thick interior walls of the castle. It was lighted from the top like a prison yard. In the corners, drops of humidity dripped from the stones. We opened another door. It led into a large, empty, sonorous hall; the floor was cracked in a hundred places, but there was fresh paint ...
— Over Strand and Field • Gustave Flaubert

... from Damascus; saw hard basalt rocks split under the influence of the early morning freshness. I have myself noticed similar phenomena in the Nile valley, but it must be added that the fragments of rock broken off by the combined influence of heat and humidity present very notable differences to those worked by the hand of man, and cannot ...
— Manners and Monuments of Prehistoric Peoples • The Marquis de Nadaillac

... yet speaking, the elder Mr. Hammond came in. He looked wretched. The redness and humidity of his eyes showed want of sleep, and the relaxed muscles of his face exhaustion from weariness and suffering. He drew the person with whom I had been talking aside, and continued an earnest conversation with him for many minutes—often ...
— Ten Nights in a Bar Room • T. S. Arthur

... At a later period the Koncheh-daria mostly influenced the lower Tarim, and each time a change occurred in the latter's discharge, the Koncheh took a more westward course, to the detriment of its old eastern branch (Ilek). Always following the gradually receding humidity, the vegetable life changed too, while moving sands were taking its place, conquering more and more ground for the desert, and marking their conquest by remains ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa

... water, month after month! The heat is the same all the year round—not very excessive, seldom 104 deg., but still oppressive and enervating because of the humidity of the air. Yet the voyage was not monotonous. Leaning against the masts and gunwale, or leisurely moving the oars, the soldiers could observe the dolphins leaping in the river, the sudden darts of the alligators as they hunted ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin

... Go to, then: we'll use this unwholesome humidity, this gross watery pumpion; we'll teach him to know turtles from ...
— The Merry Wives of Windsor - The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [9 vols.] • William Shakespeare

... to the penetrating rays of the sun. In April the horizon begins to resume the misty veil. The mornings are cool and overcast, but the middle of the day is clear. In a few weeks after, the brightness of noon also disappears. The great humidity gives rise to many diseases, particularly fevers, and the alternations from heat to damp cause dysentery. On an average, the victims to this disease are very numerous. It is endemic, and becomes, at apparently regular but distant periods, epidemic. The intermittent fevers or agues, ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi

... During the summer, for long months together, the sky remains inexorably blue while the temperature is hot and parching. In winter, clouds are almost as rare; but winds often play violently over the great tracts of unbroken country. When these blow from the south they soon lose their warmth and humidity at the contact of a soil which, but a short while ago, was at the bottom of the sea, and is, therefore, in many places still strongly impregnated with salt which acts as a refrigerant.[19] Again, when the north wind ...
— A History of Art in Chaldaea & Assyria, v. 1 • Georges Perrot

... invested with a particular interest and originality. They were in progress for a whole year, in a thick forest of almost impenetrable brushwood, split with numerous deep ravines and abrupt, slippery precipices. The humidity of the forest is excessive, the waters pouring down from high promontories. The soldiers who struggled here practically spent two winters in ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume V (of 12) - Neuve Chapelle, Battle of Ypres, Przemysl, Mazurian Lakes • Francis J. Reynolds, Allen L. Churchill, and Francis Trevelyan

... had been split lengthwise, and the internal substance of which was very phosphorescent, could imbibe olive oil many times and yet continue for a long time to give a feeble light. By preserving these Rhizomorphae in an adequate state of humidity, I have been able for many evenings to renew the examination of their phosphorescence; the commencement of dessication, long before they really perish, deprives them of the faculty of giving light. Those which had been dried for more than a ...
— Fungi: Their Nature and Uses • Mordecai Cubitt Cooke

... three days in the week, that the sun shines only one-fourth of the time he is above the horizon, and that the atmosphere only lacks 18 per cent. of complete saturation, and is cloudy seven-tenths of the time. Moreover, the humidity of the atmosphere in London is very uniform, varying but little in the different months. Under these circumstances, wood will not be ignited very easily by sparks or by contact with a weak flame. This is ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 460, October 25, 1884 • Various

... afterwards quit their confinement, to take wing, they detach wherever it is most convenient to them, their envelope, or web, a portion of which remains suspended to the trunk of the tree, where it waves to and fro like a streamer, and which becomes more or less white, according as the air and humidity of the season and situation admit. This natural silk paper has been gathered measuring a yard and a half, of an elliptical shape, which is peculiar ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 17, Number 490, Saturday, May 21, 1831 • Various

... on my light ones some two weeks ago. I got jerry that there would be some class to the humidity, so I made ...
— The Sorrows of a Show Girl • Kenneth McGaffey

... arose from the fact of its production in greatest perfection on the low, sandy islands near the coasts of some of the Southern states. It does well on low land near the seashore. The saltness and humidity of such locations seem peculiarly favorable to its greatest perfection. It yields about half as much as the "short staple" called Mexican and Petit gulf cotton, and known in commerce as upland cotton. But ...
— Soil Culture • J. H. Walden

... sir," he said. "Atmosphere is rather denser than I had expected. Hendricks reports the air breathable, with a humidity of one hundred. And—tell me, sir, what do you make of the appearance ...
— The Terror from the Depths • Sewell Peaslee Wright

... does not depend on the humidity of the soil, or low, wet pastures containing ponds. Probably dusty quarters are responsible in large ...
— Common Diseases of Farm Animals • R. A. Craig, D. V. M.

... these three grand divisions of climate, however, exceptional localities exist where there is a marked nonconformity to the prevailing characteristics. The peninsula of Florida is such an exception, owing to its peculiar location, and the great humidity of its atmosphere during a considerable fraction of the year. Here we have a fully developed season of periodical rains, beginning usually in June and ending in the latter part of September. The winter ...
— Minnesota; Its Character and Climate • Ledyard Bill

... plant, which sheds abundant seed. The consequence of having adopted ridiculous titles for these academies suggested to them many other characteristic fopperies. At Florence every brother of the "Umidi" assumed the name of something aquatic, or any quality pertaining to humidity. One was called "the Frozen," another "the Damp;" one was "the Pike," another "the Swan:" and Grazzini, the celebrated novelist, is known better by the cognomen of La Lasca, "the Roach," by which he whimsically designates himself among the "Humids." ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli

... kunproksimigxi. Hue (colour) nuanco. Hug cxirkauxprenegi. Huge grandega. Hum kanteti. Hum zumi. Human homa. Humane humana. Humanity humaneco. Humanity (mankind) homaro. Humble humila. Humble humiligi. Humble, to be humiligxi. Humerus humero. Humid malseka. Humidity malsekeco. Humiliate humiligi. Humility humileco. Humming-bird kolibro. Humorous humora. Humour humoro. Hump gxibo. Hunchback gxibulo. Hunger malsato. Hungry malsata. Hungry, to be malsati. Hundred, 100 ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes

... why his head was so thick half the time that he couldn't do a thing with it. In his correspondence with Goethe it is exasperating to observe that these great poets kept so little reserve vim in stock that a slight change of temperature or humidity, or even a dark day, was enough to overdraw their health account and bankrupt their work. How glorious it would have been if they had only stored up enough exuberance to have made them health magnates, ...
— The Joyful Heart • Robert Haven Schauffler

... day. To us, the heat would have been stifling, the humidity distressing, but Piang loved it all and joyfully looked forward to the trip up ...
— The Adventures of Piang the Moro Jungle Boy - A Book for Young and Old • Florence Partello Stuart

... it—another mystery, profounder and graver, floats amid these thick mists, perhaps the mystery of the creation itself! For was it not in stagnant and muddy water, amid the heavy humidity of moist land under the heat of the sun, that the first germ of life pulsated and expanded to ...
— Selected Writings of Guy de Maupassant • Guy de Maupassant

... these symbols as follows: "It appears therefore that the asterisk, bull, or minotaur, in the centre of a square or labyrinth equally mean the same as the Indian lingam,—that is the male personification of the productive attribute placed in the female, or heat acting upon humidity. Sometimes the bull is placed between two dolphins, and sometimes upon a dolphin or another fish; and in other instances the goat or the ram occupy the same situation. Which are all different modes of expressing different ...
— The Sex Worship and Symbolism of Primitive Races - An Interpretation • Sanger Brown, II

... us both with a soporific humidity; and equally immersed in one unconscious thought, we remained there side ...
— A Reckless Character - And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev

... unquestionably true, that many of the surrounding objects in nature are constantly tending to man's destruction. The excess of heat and cold, humidity and dryness, noxious exhalations from the earth, the floating atoms in the atmosphere, the poisonous vapors from decomposed animal and vegetable matter, with many other invisible agents, are exerting their deadly influence; and were ...
— Select Temperance Tracts • American Tract Society

... great disadvantage of the art of painting that, while other productions of genius may survive the revolution of ages, the creations of the pencil are intrusted to perishable wood or canvas. From the effect of heat, humidity, various exhalations to which they may be carelessly exposed, and even an unperceived neglect in the priming of the pannel or cloth, master-pieces are in danger of disappearing for ever. Happy, then, is it for the arts ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon

... exclude the atmospheric air; and the soil, in which they are constructed, should be essentially conservative, the air being never changed, is constantly of the same temperature, very dry, and not subject to the variations of humidity, which affect the external air: this, with other necessary precautions being observed, they will preserve the corn twenty or thirty years perfectly sound. In countries, (like that of the Cape of Good Hope,) subject to drought, inundations, or locusts, ...
— An Account of Timbuctoo and Housa Territories in the Interior of Africa • Abd Salam Shabeeny

... nearly as quick as my Indians, who, like me, hastened to get clear of the insupportable humidity in which we ...
— Adventures in the Philippine Islands • Paul P. de La Gironiere

... took their departure from Timor for Van Dieman's Land, having on board a large proportion of sick. On drawing near the coast, the humidity of the climate and short allowance ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc

... in the United States. Further chapters concern the tests as to the explosibility of coal dust, made by the Geological Survey, at Pittsburg; investigations, both at the Pittsburg laboratory and in mines, as to the humidity of mine air. There is also a chapter on the chemical investigations into the ignition of coal dust by Dr. J. C. W. Frazer, of the Geological Survey. The application of some of these data to actual mine conditions in Europe, in ...
— Transactions of the American Society of Civil Engineers, vol. LXX, Dec. 1910 • Herbert M. Wilson

... About this period is commonly felt the harmattan, a dry and parching wind, blowing from the north-east, and accompanied by a thick smoky haze, through which the sun appears of a dull red colour. This wind, in passing over the Great Desert of Sahara, acquires a very strong attraction for humidity, and parches up every thing exposed to its current. It is, however, reckoned very salutary, particularly to Europeans, who generally recover their health during its continuance. I experienced immediate relief from sickness, both at Dr. Laidley's and at Kamalia, during the harmattan. Indeed, the ...
— Life and Travels of Mungo Park in Central Africa • Mungo Park

... afternoon we were enveloped in dense fog which lasted the whole night, the cold being quite severe, and the more perceptible because of the humidity in the air. The trail here described a wide detour, which could have easily been avoided had another trail that went direct to New Bermudez been followed at the bottom of the valley. The journey by that lower trail could be accomplished in one day and a half. The elevation by hypsometrical ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor

... the merest toy—a complex plaything, nothing more. Allow me to explain. I have a line of very large greenhouses which extends from one end of my smoking-room. These different houses are kept at varying degrees of heat and humidity so as to reproduce the exact climates of Egypt, China, and the rest. You see, our crystal chamber is a tramway running with a minimum of friction along a steel rod. By pulling this or that handle I regulate how far it shall go, and it travels, as you have seen, with amazing speed. The effect of my ...
— The Doings Of Raffles Haw • Arthur Conan Doyle

... formed along the axis of elevation. By the first of these upheavals, the plants and animals inhabiting Borneo, Sumatra, New Guinea, and the rest, would be subjected to slightly modified sets of conditions. The climate in general would be altered in temperature, in humidity, and in its periodical variations; while the local differences would be multiplied. These modifications would affect, perhaps inappreciably, the entire flora and fauna of the region. The change of level would produce ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer

... Piddie begins tiptoein' around important, and Mr. Robert cuts his lunchtime down to an hour, that there's something in the air besides humidity. ...
— On With Torchy • Sewell Ford

... vigor and enthusiasm that are thrilling in their inspiration. An improved instrument was added that recorded temperatures on a self-registering roll, all fluctuations, and the highest and lowest temperatures, wind-pressures, all variations in humidity, temperature, and air pressure as well as the directions and the velocity of the wind for periods of seventy days and more. This instrument was the achievement of Professor S.P. Fergusson, for many years a pioneer worker in mountain meteorology ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James

... Suddenly the weather turned hot. In that part of America the transition from winter to summer is very abrupt. In the pools and lakes, the bullfrogs croaked in rivalry with the high, clear shrilling of the other American frogs. Now came that unendurable combination of heat and humidity which Mrs. Schmidt so dreaded. She suffered fearfully during the summer, when she continued with her hard work just as ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann

... cloudy, rainy, hot, humid summers (southwest monsoon, June to September); less cloudy, scant rainfall, mild temperatures, lower humidity during winter ...
— The 1996 CIA Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... their conversation. They have found, for instance, that green is restful to the eyes, and the fact goes without saying, in a hint, in a mere word. They are aware that heat is more disagreeable when accompanied by a high degree of humidity, and do not put forth this axiom as a sensational discovery. They have noticed the coincidences known as mental telepathy usual in correspondence, and have long ceased to be more than mildly amused at the occurrence of the phenomenon. ...
— Are You A Bromide? • Gelett Burgess

... conditions under which agriculture is carried on are so many of them outside of the control of the operator that it is very difficult to predict results or to attain any fixed standard. This is necessarily so with an operation which has so many uncertain factors to deal with as agriculture. Humidity of the atmosphere and of the soil, the available plant food in the soil, methods of tillage, fertilizers used, recurrence of frosts, amount of sunlight, the altitude and latitude of different localities, all have a bearing upon crop production. It is, therefore, ...
— Three Acres and Liberty • Bolton Hall

... Since then we have heard that it is to go directly to Holly Springs, Mississippi, for the summer, where a large camp is to be established. Just imagine what the suffering will be, to go from this dry climate to the humidity of the South, and from cool, thick-walled adobe buildings to hot, glary tents in the midst of summer heat! We will reach Holly Springs about the Fourth of July. Faye's allowance for baggage hardly carries more than ...
— Army Letters from an Officer's Wife, 1871-1888 • Frances M.A. Roe

... June, in the year 708, merry crowds were thronging to Vazon Forest. It was a lovely spot. The other portions of the island were bare and somewhat rugged; here the humidity of the soil favoured the growth of fine, vigorous timber. On the low ground flourished oak and sycamore, torn and bent near the shore where the trees met the force of the Atlantic gales, growing freely and with rich verdure where better protected. On the higher slopes ...
— The Forest of Vazon - A Guernsey Legend Of The Eighth Century • Anonymous

... we must go to Holland. There these inland navigators ply their vocation with only one ambition, and that to become the owner of a tjalk, and to rear thereon a family of towers. It is said that the life is one that requires the consumption of unlimited quantitics of 'schnapps,' and the humidity of the atmosphere is undoubted. But even free libations do not diminish the prosperity of the bargees. They are a thriving race, and it must also be noted to their credit that they are well behaved, and not given to quarrels. Collisions on the thickly-covered canals are rare; malicious ...
— Dutch Life in Town and Country • P. M. Hough

... humidity also tends to prevent radiation of heat, and the temperature at night does not drop exceedingly low, although frost is not uncommon even in summer. As our vegetation is acclimated and adapted to our environment no damage ...
— The Planet Mars and its Inhabitants - A Psychic Revelation • Eros Urides and J. L. Kennon

... meantime the rain poured a dozen or more times a day, increasing the humidity of ...
— In Desert and Wilderness • Henryk Sienkiewicz

... is sufficiently well suited to be productive. Outliers of this main region of the Pacific slope run north into Oregon, Washington, Idaho and even into British Columbia, forced more and more eastward the farther north to escape humidity from the ocean which northward passes farther and farther inland. Other outliers of the main region are found eastward in Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico and even Utah and Colorado, though for the most part in these ...
— Manual of American Grape-Growing • U. P. Hedrick

... suffers from drought. This sort of thing has occurred wherever man has been sufficiently civilised and enterprising to commit the folly of destroying forests. Forests have an immense effect on climate, causing humidity of both the air and the soil, and give rise to moderate and persistent instead of torrential streams. Spain has been irretrievably injured by the cutting down of her forests in the course of a few hundred years. The same thing is going on, to a disastrous extent, in parts of the United ...
— More Science From an Easy Chair • Sir E. Ray (Edwin Ray) Lankester

... winter nor the heat of summer, in northern Arizona, are as frigid or as torrid as the readings of the thermometer may seem to indicate. The cold or heat is not felt to such an extreme as in the East. A minimum of humidity is the basic reason for this wide difference between, for example, the July or January climate of New York, and the July or January climate of the Grand Canyon. Extremes that in New York drive people to the cool seashore or To California's ...
— The Grand Canyon of Arizona: How to See It, • George Wharton James

... village. The eternal smile of the Californian summer had begun to waver and grow less fixed; dust lay thick on leaf and blade; the dry hills were clothed in russet leather; the trade winds were shifting to the south with an ominous warm humidity; a few days longer and the rains would be here. It so chanced that this afternoon my seclusion on the roadside was accidentally invaded by a village belle—a Western young lady somewhat older than myself, and of flirtatious reputation. As she persistently and—as I now have reason ...
— Short Stories of Various Types • Various

... they brought the slave ships from the Guinea coast to our Southern States. The African, like the Indian, has passed through a most unfavorable environment on his way from central Asia to America. For ages he was doomed to live in a climate where high temperature and humidity weed out the active type of human being. Since activity like that of Europe means death in a tropical climate, the route by way of Africa has been if anything worse ...
— The Red Man's Continent - A Chronicle of Aboriginal America, Volume 1 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Ellsworth Huntington

... But, besides the principal spring, there are others which, acting on or in combination with it, give to each clock a special character and a peculiar movement. Such, in the first place, is climate, that is to say, the degree of heat or cold, humidity or dryness, with its infinite effects on man's physical and moral attributes, followed by its influence on political, civil and domestic servitude or freedom. Likewise the soil, according to its fertility, its position and its extent. Likewise ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine

... speak, standing on the north side of the cathedral, was always in the shadow thrown by that vast edifice, on which time had cast its dingy mantle, marked its furrows, and shed its chill humidity, its lichen, mosses, and rank herbs. The darkened dwelling was wrapped in silence, broken only by the bells, by the chanting of the offices heard through the windows of the church, by the call of the jackdaws nesting in the belfries. The region is a desert of stones, a solitude with a character ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac

... fact, there is exceedingly little evidence to show that pure, fresh, open air at any reasonable temperature and humidity ever did harm when inhaled directly into the lungs. In fact, a considerable proportion of us, when swinging along at a lively gait on the country roads, or playing tennis or football, or engaged in any form of active sport, ...
— Preventable Diseases • Woods Hutchinson

... whose bodies remained several days undecayed;[585] or by means of the art of embalming; or lastly, owing to the nature of the earth in which they are interred, which has the power of drying up the radical humidity and the principles of corruption. I do not stop to prove all these things, which besides ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet

... and down-hill ride of twenty-odd miles through a garish mid-day atmosphere brought him in the afternoon to a detached knoll a mile or two west of Talbothays, whence he again looked into that green trough of sappiness and humidity, the valley of the Var or Froom. Immediately he began to descend from the upland to the fat alluvial soil below, the atmosphere grew heavier; the languid perfume of the summer fruits, the mists, the hay, the flowers, formed therein a vast pool of odour ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy

... all, and permeating every other interest, is the orange. As to dampness, a physician threatened with consumption, and naturally desirous of finding the driest air, began while at Coronado Beach a simple but sure test for comparative degrees of "humidity" by just hanging a woolen stocking out of his window at night. At that place it was wet all through, quite moist at Los Angeles, very much less so at Pasadena, dry as a bone or red herring or an old-fashioned sermon at Riverside. Stockings will tell! (From April ...
— A Truthful Woman in Southern California • Kate Sanborn

... the skirts, it cannot produce much; for so much as we saw of it consisted wholly of coral rocks, all over-run with woods and bushes. Not a bit of soil was to be seen; the rocks alone supplying the trees with humidity. If these coral rocks were first formed in the sea by animals, how came they thrown up to such an height? Has this island been raised by an earthquake? Or has the sea receded from it? Some philosophers have attempted ...
— A Voyage Towards the South Pole and Round the World Volume 2 • James Cook

... Winter time, [b] warme well your garments at the fire, and warm the linings of the same, for it helpeth concoction, and remoueth all humidity and moysture. But my father did not allow of this custome, warning men of strength, and those that are borne for the Common-wealth, not to accustom themselves to such kind of softnesse, which doe weaken our bodies. Also [c] when you put off your garments to go to bed, then put ...
— Early English Meals and Manners • Various

... of the ceremony they were performing. In the winter, when the air is most frequently condensed by cold, and its different strata of various degrees of tenacity, on a clear evening after rain, when particles of humidity, still floating in the air gives it greater power of reflection and refraction, when the sun was setting, and his horizontal beams found most favourable to produce meteoric phenomena, the spectrum of this wooden cross was cast on the concave surface of some atmospheric ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian

... settled at Keswick, in a house, which if not built, was at least finished for him, by a then neighbour (a Mr. Jackson,) and for a time he occupied a part of it. But here his health greatly failed, and he suffered severe rheumatism from the humidity of a lake country, which was the main cause of his ...
— The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - 1838 • James Gillman

... while tempera, if protected from humidity, retain their brilliancy and clearness as long as the material on which they rest endures. The true occupation of the restorer is to put the work given to him in a condition as near as possible to its original state, carefully abstaining ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various

... feet. There the frequent clouds introduce their fertilizing contents at a modest distance from the fat valley, and send their humid influences from the mountain tops. There the saline atmosphere of Salt Lake mingles in wedlock with the fresh humidity of the same vegetable element which comes over the mountain top, as if the nuptial bonds of rare elements were introduced to exhibit a novel specimen of a perfect vegetable progeny in ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn

... is, leakage of wind from one pipe to another. In poor chests of this description the slides are apt to stick when the atmosphere is excessively damp, and to become too loose on days when little or no humidity is present. ...
— The Recent Revolution in Organ Building - Being an Account of Modern Developments • George Laing Miller

... we give it water in abundance and perfect sanitation and light everywhere, we give it ventilation less successfully than we might, and finally we give it the human quality that is so modern. There are no dungeons in the good modern house, no disgraceful lairs for servants, no horrors of humidity. ...
— The House in Good Taste • Elsie de Wolfe

... the latitude, corrected for magnetic variation, and this gives us the exact location of the tragedy. We have the altitude, the temperature, and the degree of humidity prevailing—inestimably valuable, since they enable us to estimate with precision the degree of influence which they would exercise upon the mood and disposition of the assassin at that ...
— A Double Barrelled Detective Story • Mark Twain

... a quiet road. In spite of the shadows of the trees it was hot. The swift motion of the cars, however, relieved the humidity of the atmosphere in ...
— The Motor Girls • Margaret Penrose

... approximating closer to "the gay resorts" of the beau monde, they are more felt. The want of draining, and the vapours that stagnate over the turbid waters of the ruisseaux that intersect the streets at Paris, add to the humidity of the atmosphere; while the sewers in London convey away unseen and unfelt, if not always unsmelt, the rain which purifies, while it deluges, our streets. Heaven defend me, however, from uttering this disadvantageous comparison to Parisian ...
— The Idler in France • Marguerite Gardiner

... part of United States from Chesapeake Bay to the great interior valley of California. Is interrupted by the continental divide in eastern Arizona and west New Mexico and divided according to conditions of humidity into an eastern or Austroriparian and western or ...
— Explanation of Terms Used in Entomology • John. B. Smith

... summer; and vice versa.(195) Were it not for this fact, in connection with the winter-sleep of plants, a large portion of the north would be entirely uninhabitable. Besides, the temperature of a place does not depend exclusively on its latitude, or on its height above the sea-level.(196) The humidity of the climate is, as a rule, great in proportion to the quantity of water in its neighborhood, and to the height of its temperature; although, for instance, in Europe, the number of rainy days increases, the further we advance towards the ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher

... was standing near him, lightly on the shoulder, and pointed out a thin line of vapor which was stealing slowly out of the wilderness of leaves, at a distance of about a mile, and was diffusing itself in almost imperceptible threads of humidity in the quivering atmosphere. The Tuscarora was one of those noble-looking warriors oftener met with among the aborigines of this continent a century since than to-day; and, while he had mingled sufficiently with the colonists to be familiar with their habits and even with their language, he ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper

... made the final arrangements, had, in his opinion, been a little too much in a hurry to get the thing over with. Thorn himself felt that the test could have at least waited until the weather cooled off. The only consolation he had was that, out here, the humidity was so low that he could stay fairly comfortable in spite of the heat as long as there was plenty of drinking water. He had ...
— With No Strings Attached • Gordon Randall Garrett (AKA David Gordon)

... of England is healthy, and, as it admits of much out-door exercise, and is not subject to any very sudden variation, or violent extremes of heat and cold, it may be said to be good, though not agreeable; but its great humidity is very sensibly felt by Americans and other foreigners accustomed to a dry atmosphere and clear sky. That Mr. Slick should find a rainy day in the country dull, is not to be wondered at; it is probable it would be so any where, to a man who had so few resources, within himself, as the Attache. ...
— The Attache - or, Sam Slick in England, Complete • Thomas Chandler Haliburton

... an undertaking—more formidable, as it now appeared to them, than before — were made the subject of long and serious discussion. It was at length decided that Pizarro should remain in his present quarters, inconvenient and even unwholesome as they were rendered by the humidity of the climate, and the pestilent swarms of insects that filled the atmosphere. Almagro would pass over to Panama, lay the case before the governor, and secure, if possible, his good-will towards the prosecution of the ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott

... the only thing," continued Mr. Gordon. "Working condition's another. Go to the mills and see the wet spinners. The air of the room they work in is heavy with humidity. There are the women, waists open at the throat, sleeves rolled up, hair pulled back to prevent the irritation of loose ends on damp skins, bare feet on the cement floor. At noon they snatch up their shawls and rush home for a hurried lunch. ...
— What's the Matter with Ireland? • Ruth Russell

... villages that we passed were surrounded by fields of rye and neatly fenced gardens; the banks everywhere were either covered with timber or waving with wild grass five feet in height; and the luxuriant growth in many places of flowers and weeds testified to the richness of the soil and the warm humidity of the climate. Primroses, cowslips, marsh violets, buttercups, wild-roses, cinquefoil, iris, and azure larkspur grow everywhere throughout the valley in the greatest abundance; and a peculiar species of umbelliferae, with hollow-jointed stems, ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan

... for the operation, as the glass should be perfectly dry and unaffected by the humidity of the atmosphere. Of course, if you have a choice, it is more convenient to work on your glass before it is fixed in the frame. If you are working on a piece of unattached glass, lay it on a flat table, (a marble slab is preferable,) over which ...
— Young's Demonstrative Translation of Scientific Secrets • Daniel Young

... nerves, I say! Damn them! I have to swelter here because I can't let an electric fan play on my face, nor near me, without getting neuralgia. And swelter is the word, for it has been 104-5 degrees, with humidity, to ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane

... day the harvested nuts must be placed in cold storage at temperatures between 32 deg.F. and 45 deg.F. It has been found that a nearly air-tight container is required in order to maintain a relative humidity of 100% and prevent too much drying of the nuts. A 50-pound tin lard can with one 20d nail hole in the side near the lid has proven to be a good container for large quantities and these same cans also make good shipping ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Incorporated 39th Annual Report - at Norris, Tenn. September 13-15 1948 • Various

... Hermetis Trismegisti Poemander; ad fidem codicum manu scriptorum recognovit, by Gustavus Parthey. Berolini, 1854, p. 31. The word "sand" is used to symbolize the positive or atomic dryness, and "damp sand," the atomic humidity, or ...
— Scarabs • Isaac Myer

... comprised. The combination of water and earth is a unity, but this unity is mixture. If we bring together a base and an acid, we have as the result a crystal; also water; but water which cannot be discerned and which gives no trace of humidity. Here the unity of the water and of this matter is a unity different from the mixture of water and earth. The essential point is the difference of these determinations. The unity of God is always unity, but what is of primary ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various

... sweetness of the liquid. Day after day the end of the stem must be pared as otherwise the sap would cease to exude. A tree will produce daily anywhere from 10 to 30 liters according to the fertility of the soil and the humidity of the atmosphere. The humidity determines the duration of time that the tree produces toddy. This time varies from one to ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan

... under intense heat as well as under intense cold, for he is known to come to the highest perfection, though not attaining a large size, in Arabia and northern Africa. Much humidity is apparently more injurious to the horse than heat or cold. In the Falkland Islands, horses suffer much from the dampness; and this same circumstance may perhaps partly account for the singular fact that to the eastward of the Bay of Bengal,[120] over an enormous and ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Vol. I. • Charles Darwin

... HUMIDITY. Something which comes in through the window and goes out through the pores. A warm proposition any way you take it. A brother-in-law to Torture and a ...
— The Silly Syclopedia • Noah Lott

... of potter's earth, which is called ceramite, and there had found no source or drop of water; for that sort of earth, by reason of its substance, which is fat, strong, firm, and close, so retaineth its humidity, that it doth not easily evaporate it by ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais

... with closely-fitting glass-doors. {2} The shelves should be lined with velvet or chamois leather, that the delicate edges of the books may not suffer from contact with the wood. A leather lining, fitted to the back of the case, will also help to keep out humidity. Most writers recommend that the bookcases should be made of wood close in the grain, such as well-seasoned oak; or, for smaller tabernacles of literature, of mahogany, satin-wood lined with cedar, ebony, and so forth. These close-grained woods are less easily penetrated by insects, and it is ...
— The Library • Andrew Lang

... was most distressing. It had rained all night. The roaring of the overflowing gutters filled the deserted streets, in which the houses, like sponges, absorbed the humidity, which penetrating to the interior, made the walls sweat from cellar to garret. Jeanne had left the convent the day before, free for all time, ready to seize all the joys of life, of which she had dreamed so long. She was afraid her father would not set out ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant

... is the Colorado River as we have known it ever since its discovery. Meantime, the water left in the shallow lake, cut off from the flow of the river, gradually evaporated—a thing that would take but a few years in that country, where the heat is intense and the humidity very low. That left somewhere about 2,000 miles of desert land, covered with a deposit of salt from the sea water which had evaporated, and most of it below the level of the sea. That is the Colorado desert as it has been known since ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 829, November 21, 1891 • Various

... the islet and got over to the mainland, and slept in a hooked-thorn copse, with a species of black pepper plant, which we found near the top of Mount Zomba, in the Manganja country,[6] in our vicinity; it shows humidity of climate. ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume II (of 2), 1869-1873 • David Livingstone

... the dogs and the sound of the water. The camels were being picketed for the night's repose. The atmosphere was not actually cold, but there was no golden warmth in the air, and the wonderful and exquisitely clean dryness of Upper Egypt was replaced by a sort of rich humidity, now that the sun was gone. The vapour around the moon, the smell of the earth, the distant sound of the dogs and the near sound of the water, the feeling of dew which hung wetly about her, and the gleam of the ...
— Bella Donna - A Novel • Robert Hichens

... tears to stream down his face; that done, he soon recovered his cheerfulness and his aridity. Glantz the councillor thus saw the prize fished away before his eyes—those very eyes which he had already brought into an Accessit,[19] or inchoate state of humidity; this vexed him: and his mortification was the greater on thinking of his own pathetic exertions, and the abortive appetite for the prize which he had thus uttered in words as ineffectual as his ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey

... in a year in which the summer rains were late, beginning in late July (Stebbins, 1951:137), whereas ours were made in a year having abundant and relatively early rainfall, beginning in late June. Microclimatic humidity is of extreme importance to both the salamanders and ...
— Natural History of the Salamander, Aneides hardii • Richard F. Johnston

... of the room and persistently turned my back. But I saw out of the corner of my eye they were far away above food, and, Mate, believe me, they did n't even know it was hot, though a rain barrel couldn't have measured the humidity. ...
— The Lady and Sada San - A Sequel to The Lady of the Decoration • Frances Little

... instantly she suffered in his thought. He even recognised now that he had noticed something odd at the time, and that unconsciously his attitude, even while she had been there, had been one of criticism. The mechanism of her was a little obvious; her melting humidity was the result of analysable processes; and behind her there had seemed to lurk some dim shape emblematic of mortality. He had never, during the ten years of their intimacy, dreamed for a moment of asking her to marry him; none the less, he ...
— Widdershins • Oliver Onions

... have the boat for what it meant to self; for to Katie, too, the sultry day had become more than sultry day. The thing which pressed upon her seemed less humidity than the consciousness of a world she did not know. It was not the heat which was fretting her so much as that growing sense of limitations in her ...
— The Visioning • Susan Glaspell

... their modern exploiter, whether he be the Cossack tribute-gatherer of the lower Lena River, or the factor of the Hudson Bay Company. The assimilation tends to be ethnic as well as economic, because the severity of the climate excludes the white woman. The debilitating effects of heat and humidity, aided by tropical diseases, soon reduce intruding peoples to the dead level of economic inefficiency characteristic of the native races. These, as the fittest, survive and tend to absorb the new-comers, pointing to hybridization as the simplest solution of the problem ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple

... along the Avenue, and catching at points of color. It was one of those splendid mornings of full-blown Tune, when even New York,—that paradox of cities,—had beauty. It was too early in the year for the trees to have grown blowsy and the grass worn and burnt. The humidity of midsummer was held back by the energy of a merry breeze which teased the flags and sent them spinning against the oriental ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton

... one was omitted, namely, its substitution occasionally for Peruvian bark in cases of intermittent fever. This disorder, known better by the name of ague, had been formerly epidemic in Ireland, where the humidity of the atmosphere is continually increased by the exhalation of the lochs and bogs with which the country abounds. In consequence, however, of the formation of the Grand and Royal Canals, and the drainage of the waters in their vicinity, the tendency to this disease ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, - Issue 284, November 24, 1827 • Various

... well last night. It was close in my room, and this morning the humidity's oppressive. You know what that does to us of the T. ...
— The Winning Clue • James Hay, Jr.

... or madness, because of its reputed power to expel hydrophobia. "This Garden Cress," said Wm. Coles in his Paradise of Plants, 1650, "being green, and therefore more qualified by reason of its humidity, is eaten by country people, either alone with butter, or with lettice and purslane, in ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie

... the dreariness, gloominess, and humidity, of a Milanese sky in winter; which, I conclude, under the old regime, led to all the hospitality, and conviviality, practised here, by ...
— The Letters of Lord Nelson to Lady Hamilton, Vol. I. - With A Supplement Of Interesting Letters By Distinguished Characters • Horatio Nelson

... itself everywhere. The corn, herb of the lowlands, so magnificently green in the Spring, displayed shades of dead straw in the depths of the valleys, and, on all the summits, beeches and oaks shed their leaves. The air was almost cold; an odorous humidity came out of the mossy earth and, at times, there came from above a light shower. One felt it near and anguishing, that season of clouds and of long rains, which returns every time with the same air of bringing the definitive exhaustion of saps and irremediable death,—but ...
— Ramuntcho • Pierre Loti

... masterpiece. Neither is the city hall, whose administrative style is a cinder in the eye. But on this square, as in the neighbouring streets, Servandoni, Garanciere, and Ferrou, one respires an atmosphere compounded of benign silence and mild humidity. You think of a clothes-press that hasn't been open for years, and, somehow, of incense. This square is in perfect harmony with the houses in the decayed streets around here, with the shops where ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans

... ten o'clock crowds began to gather in Beresford-place, and in an hour about ten thousand men were present. The morning had succeeded to the hopeless humidity of the night, and the drizzling rain fell with almost dispiteous persistence. The early trains from Kingstown and Dalkey, and all the citerior townlands, brought large numbers into Dublin; and Westland-row, Brunswick, D'Olier, and Sackville-streets, streamed ...
— The Wearing of the Green • A.M. Sullivan

... day had grown steadily more oppressive. It was one of those airless, stifling afternoons which afflict New York in the summer. He remembered seeing something about a record in the evening paper which he had bought on his way to the studio, a whole column about heat and humidity. It certainly felt unusually warm even for ...
— The Coming of Bill • P. G. Wodehouse

... spend his time this way in spite of the discomfort imposed by any kind of activity. Humidity was a physical factor which seemed to have gone undiscovered by the inhabitants of the planet they were on. He was sure it was constantly maintained within a fractional per cent of one hundred as he donned a clean pair of trunks and staggered miserably along ...
— Cubs of the Wolf • Raymond F. Jones

... requires, so it seems to me, a ready-made way, a crevice through which it can slip; but this crevice I have never been able to discover. What about a dissolving fluid which would soften the mortar under the point of the ovipositor? No, for I see not a trace of humidity around the point where the thread is at work. I fall back upon a fissure, a lack of continuity somewhere, although my examination fails to discover any on the Mason-bee's nest. I was better served in another case. Leucopsis dorsigera, FAB., settles her eggs on the larva ...
— The Mason-bees • J. Henri Fabre

... trade winds, relatively low humidity, little seasonal temperature variation; rainy season ...
— The 2002 CIA World Factbook • US Government

... conquest of the dry land by animals, we must recognise the indispensable role of plants in preparing the way. The dry ground would have proved too inhospitable had not terrestrial plants begun to establish themselves, affording food, shelter, and humidity. There had to be plants before there could be earthworms, which feed on decaying leaves and the like, but how soon was the debt repaid when the earthworms began their worldwide task of forming vegetable mould, opening up the earth with their ...
— The Outline of Science, Vol. 1 (of 4) - A Plain Story Simply Told • J. Arthur Thomson

... danger until a chill suddenly came over me on the first day out from Floresta. I had felt a peculiar drowsiness for several days, but had paid little attention to it as one generally feels drowsy and tired in the oppressive heat and humidity. When to this was added a second chill that shook me from head to foot with such violence that I thought my last hour had come, I knew I was in for my first experience of the dreaded Javary fever. There was nothing to do but ...
— In The Amazon Jungle - Adventures In Remote Parts Of The Upper Amazon River, Including A - Sojourn Among Cannibal Indians • Algot Lange



Words linked to "Humidity" :   humidness, mugginess, relative humidity, wetness



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