Free TranslationFree Translation
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

  Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Projectile   Listen
adjective
Projectile  adj.  
1.
Projecting or impelling forward; as, a projectile force.
2.
Caused or imparted by impulse or projection; impelled forward; as, projectile motion.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |





"Projectile" Quotes from Famous Books



... by and watch the operations of the squad. Pretty soon he was assisting them by running back and bringing up the long, slender projectiles that the gun, pointed toward the skies, fired. He enjoyed watching the kick of the piece and the way it ejected the case of the shell after the projectile had soared on its way to ...
— The Children of France • Ruth Royce

... over the ground toward the glittering, silver-winged projectile that was the Baikal. A glowering officer waved me on, and I dashed up the slant of the gangplank and into the ship; the port dropped and I heard a ...
— The Worlds of If • Stanley Grauman Weinbaum

... below and in regular spacing about the rounded sides. No helicopters swung their blades above; there were only the bulge of a conning tower and the heavy inset glasses of the lookouts. Nor were there wings of any kind. It might have been a projectile for some ...
— Astounding Stories, May, 1931 • Various

... if propelled by some projectile force; then came a loud crash, as though we had dropped upon a hard rock. Water, and spray, and froth were dashed over our bodies; and the next moment, to our surprise as well as delight, we felt ourselves still ...
— The Hunters' Feast - Conversations Around the Camp Fire • Mayne Reid

... soul than is the clairvoyance of the mesmerists, or the dream of our ordinary sleep, which last has been called a proof of soul, though any man who has kept a dog must have observed that dogs dream as vividly as we do. But in this trance there is an extraordinary cerebral activity, a projectile force given to the mind, distinct from the soul, by which it sends forth its own emanations to a distance in spite of material obstacles, just as a flower, in an altered condition of atmosphere, sends forth the particles of its aroma. This should not surprise you. Your ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... and varied assortment of "Minenwerfer" with which to entertain us at all hours, day and night. A good many people, even among the soldiers themselves, think that Minenwerfer or "Minnie" for short, is the name of the projectile or torpedo, while, as a matter of fact, it is the instrument which throws it; a literal translation being "mine-thrower." In the same way they often speak of the shells thrown by trench mortars as "trench mortars" themselves. Now the family of "Minnies" is a large ...
— The Emma Gees • Herbert Wes McBride

... direction, has but a short swing in the other; while the long swing to the right invariably means the long swing to the left. An object hurled upward to a certain height has an equal distance to traverse on its return. The force with which a projectile is sent upward a mile is reproduced when the projectile returns to the earth on its return journey. This Law is constant on the Physical Plane, as reference to the standard authorities ...
— The Kybalion - A Study of The Hermetic Philosophy of Ancient Egypt and Greece • Three Initiates

... forty-eight hours of liberty, only their special guardian spirits were in a position to explain, but they kept discreetly silent. The men in Durand's room could truthfully declare that they had not had a thing to do with the launching of that extraordinary projectile and also that Durand was not in his room. It was not necessary to be too explicit, they felt, and twenty minutes later all were over at Middie's Haven, Guy Bennett and Richard Allyn, to Juno's secret disgust, having shifted into civilian clothes as was the privilege of the first ...
— Peggy Stewart at School • Gabrielle E. Jackson

... restrictions by Mr. Ricardo—are brought forward by Mr. Malthus as so many objections of his own to upset that law. The logic, as usual, is worthy of notice; for it is as if, in a question about the force of any projectile, a man should urge the resistance of the air, not as a limitation of that force, but as a capital objection to it. What I here insist on, however, is its extreme disingenuousness. But this is a subject which it is unpleasant to pursue; and the course of our subject will of itself bring ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey

... got up and kicked Manuel in the shins; the poor boy saw stars. He gave a cry of pain and then, furious, seized a plate and sent it flying at the agent's head; the latter ducked and the projectile crossed the dining-room, crashed through a window pane and fell into the courtyard, where it smashed with a racket. The salesman grabbed one of the coffee-pots that was filled with coffee and milk and hurled it at Manuel with such good aim that it struck the boy in the ...
— The Quest • Pio Baroja

... a machine-gun in a fixed position has sent its projectile right across a railway-carriage so that both the latter's walls are pierced. If the train is at rest, the position of the gun could be determined by sighting through the shot-holes made by the entrance and exit of the bullet. If, however, the train is moving at high speed, ...
— Man or Matter • Ernst Lehrs

... burst in this presence, and this miraculous instance of religious respect had its due weight with the pious islanders, by whom it was taken up, and for a long time preserved among the sacred curiosities of the town. A natural cause was, however, soon discovered for the harmlessness of the projectile. Napoleon continued his firing; but finding that the shells took no effect, though they fell on the very spot he intended, he examined some of them, and found that they were filled with sand. ‘Amici,’ he exclaimed, burning with indignation; ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester

... by soldiers in their breast pockets or placed under the pillows of persons who were afraid of ghosts. The tract shops exhibited in their windows bullet-dinted testaments, mothers' gifts to their soldier sons whose lives had been saved by it; for the muzzle-loaders of those days could not drive a projectile ...
— Back to Methuselah • George Bernard Shaw

... German method is for the aerial craft to fly over the position, and when in vertical line therewith to discharge a handful of tinsel, which, in falling, glitters in the sunlight, or to launch a smoking missile which answers the same purpose as a projectile provided with a tracer. This smoke-ball being dropped over the position leaves a trail of black or whitish smoke according to the climatic conditions which prevail, the object being to enable the signal to be picked up with the greatest ...
— Aeroplanes and Dirigibles of War • Frederick A. Talbot

... small-bore with the immense advantage of low trajectory, I am decidedly opposed to the hollow expanding bullet for heavy, thick-skinned game. I have so frequently experienced disappointment by the use of the hollow bullet that I should always adhere to the slightly hardened and solid projectile that will preserve its original shape after striking the thick hide of ...
— The Rifle and The Hound in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker

... killed by a stray bullet in the front line. There was some slight shelling of back areas with "Little Willies," German field gun shells, but these did no damage, and gave us in consequence a useful contempt for this kind of projectile. Trench mortars were not yet invented, and we were spared all heavy shells, so that, when on the 9th we left Armentieres, we felt confident that trenches, though wet and uncomfortable, were not after all so very dreadful, and that, if at any time we should be asked to hold the line, we should ...
— The Fifth Leicestershire - A Record Of The 1/5th Battalion The Leicestershire Regiment, - T.F., During The War, 1914-1919. • J.D. Hills

... the universe, and the destruction of an old system worn out with age(62). We must also remember the power of attraction every where diffused through infinite space, by means of which, as Herschel assures us, in great length of time a nebula, or cluster of stars, may be formed, while the projectile force they received in the beginning may prevent them from all coming together, at least for millions of ages. Some of these nebulae, he adds, cannot well be supposed to be at a less distance from us than six or eight thousand times the distance of Sirius(63). Kepler however denies that each star, ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin

... itself that what, upstairs, as we comparative vulgarians say, can be better? Hold to it, at any rate, that if a lady, in especial, scrambles out of a carriage, tumbles out of a cab, flops out of a tram-car, and hurtles, projectile-like, out of a "lightning-elevator," she alights from the Venetian conveyance as Cleopatra may have stepped from her barge. Upstairs—whatever may be yet in store for her—her entrance shall still advantageously ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James

... is the Nina, a very strong iron boat of three hundred and fifty tuns burden, capable of crossing the ocean, and having a speed of seventeen knots an hour. She is not impervious to heavy shot, but can be made so, and is capable of resisting any ordinary projectile that could be brought to bear on her from the decks of a ship of war. Her decks will be made torpedo and shot-proof, and several arrangements will be applied, now that it is known that the torpedo system is a success. Such a vessel as the Nina, attacking an enemy's squadron on our coast some ...
— Scientific American, Vol.22, No. 1, January 1, 1870 • Various

... light burst from the fort; there was a dull report, and in the air could be heard that peculiar singing and sighing of a flying projectile as a heavy missile passed over the Olympia and ...
— The Boys of '98 • James Otis

... saw the ship; she was stern on and apparently painted with black and white stripes. As I examined her through glasses—she was distant about 3,000 yards—I saw a flash aboard her and a few seconds later a projectile moaned overhead and fell about 6,000 yards over. So she is armed, thought I, and she has actually opened ...
— The Diary of a U-boat Commander • Anon

... were mostly armed with carronades, Downie's with long guns. Carronades fired masses of small projectiles with great effect at very short ranges. Long guns, on the other hand, fired each a single large projectile up to the farthest ranges known. In fact, it was almost as if the Americans had been armed with shot-guns and the British armed with rifles. Therefore the Americans had an overwhelming advantage at close quarters, while the British had a corresponding advantage at long ...
— The War With the United States - A Chronicle of 1812 - Volume 14 (of 32) in the series Chronicles of Canada • William Wood

... the very centre of the speaker's waistcoat, causing him to jump nearly out of his skin. Redbrook sprang to his feet in a towering rage, and as he did so another projectile burst on the open pages of the ...
— Soldiers of the Queen • Harold Avery

... and disquisitions little short of hateful; perpetual mulligatawney; curried capsicums; a very heating, unsatisfactory, unwholesome sort of food. How many pleasant dinner-parties have been abruptly broken up by the introduction of this dish! How many white waistcoats unblanched by projectile wine-glasses on account of this impetuous theme! How many little-civil wars produced from the pips of this apple of contention! Yes, I hate it; and for this cause, good readers, (who may chance to ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper

... sidearm from him. On Rend's advice, he chose a Jamiason-Tyre needlebeam. It was faster and more accurate than any projectile weapon, and it transmitted the same shock-power as a heavy caliber bullet. To be sure, it hadn't the spread of heat weapons such as the Hadjis used, which could kill within six inches of their target. But wide-range beamers encouraged inaccuracy. ...
— The Status Civilization • Robert Sheckley

... been completed. The short Tatham No.10 rifle carried a heavy cylinder, instead of the original spherical ball. I had only fired two shots with this rifle, and the recoil had been so tremendous, owing to the heavy weight of the projectile, that I had mistrusted the weapon; therefore, when the moment arrived to fire off all the guns preparatory to cleaning, my good angel whispered a providential warning, and I agreed to fire this particular rifle by a long fishing-line attached to the trigger, while the gun should be fastened to ...
— The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker

... but in sight, as were the German trenches about 2000 yards to our front. At times the fire would come in salvos quickly repeated. Bursts of fire would be made for ten or fifteen minutes at a time. We got all varieties of projectile, from 3 inch to 8 inch, or perhaps 10 inch; the small ones usually as air bursts, the larger percussion and air, and ...
— In Flanders Fields and Other Poems - With an Essay in Character, by Sir Andrew Macphail • John McCrae

... could not stop the speedsters, and with their momentum, the invaders could not make it less deadly with their heat beam, for, molten, it was still effective. A projectile weighing twenty-two tons, moving a hundred miles a second, can destroy anything man can lift off a planet! Their very speed made it impossible to dodge them, and usually they found their mark. As for the risk, if the Solarian forces were victorious, the pilots could be ...
— The Black Star Passes • John W Campbell

... be armed mainly with swords and lances, but also in evidence were some tubular affairs that could very well be some sort of projectile-discharging device. The Captain suddenly felt unaccountably warm. It was a heavy responsibility—he hoped these Martians wouldn't be the type of madmen who believed in the ...
— It's a Small Solar System • Allan Howard

... the Greta and Buckfastleigh; and the notable and most pathetic drawing of the Kirkby Lonsdale churchyard, with the schoolboys making a fortress of their larger books on the tombstone, to bombard with the more projectile volumes; and passing from these to the intense horror and pathos of the Rizpah, consider for yourself whether there was ever any other painter who could strike such an octave. Whether there has been or not, in other walks of art, this power of sympathy is unquestionably in landscape ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin

... in the brig was stayed and every eye was raised as the rushing tempest was heard advancing. The mass went muttering directly between the masts of the Swash. It had scarcely seemed to go by when the fierce flash of fire and the sharp explosion followed. Happily for those in the brig, the projectile force given by the gun carried the fragments from them, as in the other instance it had brought them forward; else would few have escaped mutilation, or death, ...
— Jack Tier or The Florida Reef • James Fenimore Cooper

... will not surprise those who are acquainted with the laws of hydrostatics and the enormous resistance offered to bodies moving swiftly through water, that the determination of the proper form of projectile for the submarine gun has demanded protracted experiments, commencing at the beginning of June and continued up to last week, as before stated. The greater portion of these experiments, it should be observed, ...
— Scientific American, Volume XLIII., No. 25, December 18, 1880 • Various

... with the highest that can be produced on earth. If the German gun that bombarded Paris were loaded with a solid steel projectile of suitable dimensions, a muzzle velocity of 6,000 feet per second could be reached. Suppose this to be fired into a tapered hole in a great block of steel. The instantaneous pressure, according to Cook, would be about 7,000 tons per square inch, ...
— The New Heavens • George Ellery Hale

... construction; but in our heaviest guns, which have a bore of 30.5 centimetre, and require three to four minutes to load, the advantage of quick-firing is not apparent, for here everything depends upon accurate aim, so that the heavy projectile may hit the right place. For this purpose clever manoeuvring is everything. Moreover, the battles round Port Arthur show us the importance of the torpedo and the mine. The Russian fleet has met with its heaviest losses owing to the clever manoeuvring ...
— The Coming Conquest of England • August Niemann

... ascertain how far they do go, that is, how far they correspond to the object to which they belong, we must compare them with the views taken out of that object by other sciences. Did we proceed upon the abstract theory of forces, we should assign a much more ample range to a projectile than in fact the resistance of the air allows it to accomplish. Let, however, that resistance be made the subject of scientific analysis, and then we shall have a new science, assisting, and to a certain point completing, for the benefit of questions of fact, the ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman

... live thing, and turned over, end for end, twice. Then, it seemed to shoot high into the air, and fell again, in a confused heap of wreckage, among the broken stones of the quarry. Morton was thrown from it, like the projectile from a catapult, and he came down in a crumpled heap, somewhere among that mass of rocks; and after that there ...
— The Last Woman • Ross Beeckman

... sound of the voice as though it had shot a projectile into his back. However, he rose at once and came forward in his usual, brisk, stiff way, halting before the two men with a salute. ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison

... again the picture showing the working of the bomb-dropping device, and I would like to have the film stopped exactly at the moment that the projectile leaves the tube. I wish to examine the action ...
— L. P. M. - The End of the Great War • J. Stewart Barney

... to the death, high in the air with all London looking on. The guns were in full play and the shell and shrapnel were bursting all about the Zeppelin. Sometimes you could trace the whole trajectory of a projectile, as a spark of light swept through the sky toward the Zeppelin and then burst to the right or left, above or below it. Most of the shots seemed to go wide of the mark. More than a score of aeroplanes had been sent up to attack it, with one plane to guide the rest and signal to the guns below by ...
— With Our Soldiers in France • Sherwood Eddy

... and forts greeted this sight. Torpedo boats and other craft of the Allies hurried to the rescue, but they were successful in saving only a few men. Besides having been struck by a mine, the Bouvet was severely damaged above the water line by shell fire. One projectile struck her forward deck. A mast also was shot away and hung overboard. It could be seen that the Bouvet when she sank was endeavoring to gain the mouth of the strait. This, however, was difficult, owing, apparently, to the fact that ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various

... invented and applied in accordance with the character of the vessel. After a study of the various types of mines in existence, there was produced an American mine believed to involve all the excellent points of mines of whatever nationality, while another extraordinary invention was the non-ricochet projectile. The ordinary pointed projectile striking the water almost horizontally is deflected and ricochets. A special type of shell which did not glance off the surface of the ocean was developed early in 1917 and supplied to all vessels sailing in ...
— Our Navy in the War • Lawrence Perry

... we found the interplanetary projectile which had sought to escape. Amid its wreckage lay the single, broken form of Tao—that leader who, plotting the devastation of two worlds for his own personal gain, had at the very last deserted his comrades and ...
— The Fire People • Ray Cummings

... did not escape the storm of shot and shell that was rained in that direction. Some of them were perforated by cannon-shot, or have been completely cut off in that peculiar splintering that marks the course of a projectile through green wood. Near the scene of this fighting is a large pile of muskets and cartridge-boxes collected from the field. Considerable work has been done in thus gathering the debris of the battle, ...
— Camp-Fire and Cotton-Field • Thomas W. Knox

... IV, 3, and Plate XVII, 1) is a most peculiar looking object like a projectile, and gives one the impression of being ready to shoot off on the smallest provocation. The eight spikes, reversed funnels, coming to a point, are probably responsible for this warlike appearance. The remainder of the body is ...
— Occult Chemistry - Clairvoyant Observations on the Chemical Elements • Annie Besant and Charles W. Leadbeater

... to have a range of forty miles and to be able to penetrate anything with equanimity and joy. The gun, as a matter of fact, had once been induced to go off when it had hurled itself passionately upon its back, incidentally breaking its inventor's leg. The projectile had wandered some four hundred yards seaward, where it dug a hole in the water which was really a menace to navigation. Since then there had been nothing tangible save the inventor, in splints and out of splints, as the fortunes of science decreed. In short, this office boy ...
— Active Service • Stephen Crane

... aside and took up elocution as he dodged another stone and wished that the mesquite-loving crank had put on a roof. In evading the projectile he let his sombrero appear on a level with the desert, and the hum of a bullet as it passed through his head-gear and into the opposite wall made him wish that there had been constructed a ...
— Hopalong Cassidy's Rustler Round-Up - Bar-20 • Clarence Edward Mulford

... complete series of bone or stag-horn implements such as darts, arrow-heads, barbed arrows, harpoons, fibulae, and finely cut needles often pierced with eyes (Fig. 22). The invention of barbs is worthy of special notice; the series of points made the blow much more dangerous, as the projectile remained in the flesh of a wounded animal which was not able to get it out. But this was not the only object of the barbs. Arranged symmetrically on either side of the arrow they kept it afloat in the ...
— Manners and Monuments of Prehistoric Peoples • The Marquis de Nadaillac

... him when they were about fifty feet from the boy. Shooting by on his side, with a long stroke and a plunge of his body like a projectile, the dark face with the long, black hair plastering it turned toward his own, in fierce triumph Silver Tassel cried ...
— Northern Lights • Gilbert Parker

... fire at 500 to 700 yards, which means that at this range the track or "wake" of a projectile would be discernible for, say, twenty-five to thirty seconds—not much time, indeed, for any ship to get out of the way. At 100 yards' range or less they do not care to fire unless compelled to, as the torpedo is nearly always discharged when the submarine is lying ahead of the object, i. ...
— Aircraft and Submarines - The Story of the Invention, Development, and Present-Day - Uses of War's Newest Weapons • Willis J. Abbot

... a proprietor of collieries at Newcastle-on-Tyne, conceived the idea that if a bullet were made to receive the projectile force in the interior of the bullet, but beyond the centre of gravity, it would continue its flight without deviation. Having satisfied himself of the truth of this theory, he sent the mould to the Board of Ordnance on the 20th of January, 1797, and received a reply ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray

... generation of the righteous," of "the generation of vipers," of an "untoward generation," of "a stubborn generation," of "the iniquity of the past visited upon the children unto the third and fourth generation?" So that the text comes to-day with the force of a projectile hurled from mightiest catapult: "Whose son ...
— The Wedding Ring - A Series of Discourses for Husbands and Wives and Those - Contemplating Matrimony • T. De Witt Talmage

... it by auction. It was worth two hundred pounds still. The good people sympathized with him, and he started within an hour. He left his pickaxe and shovel, and took only his double rifle, an admirable one, some ammunition, including conical bullets and projectile shells given him by Falcon, a bag full of carbuncles and garnets he had collected for Ucatella, a few small diamonds, and one hundred pounds,—all that remained to him, since he had been paying wages and other things for months, and had given ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade

... diminished and a greater quantity made to circulate around the iron from the same battery. The second method of producing a similar result consisted in increasing the number of elements of the battery, or, in other words, the projectile force of the electricity, which enabled it to pass through an increased number of turns of wire, and thus, by increasing the length of the wire, to develop the maximum power of ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - Invention and Discovery • Various

... projectile, Colton, as I had agreed," answered the German, coolly, "but your quaint watchman has thrown it away. As for the girl," he added, with a broad grin, "she has fooled me. She said she had brains, and I find ...
— Mary Louise and the Liberty Girls • Edith Van Dyne (AKA L. Frank Baum)

... nearest German destroyer launched a torpedo at the Sylph. By a quick and skillful maneuver, Lord Hastings avoided this projectile, and a broadside was poured ...
— The Boy Allies Under Two Flags • Ensign Robert L. Drake

... hastily erected and still more hastily designed building in a dirty, paper-littered back street of old London, and a number of shabbily dressed men coming and going in this with projectile swiftness, and within this factory companies of printers, tensely active with nimble fingers—they were always speeding up the printers—ply their type-setting machines, and cast and arrange masses of metal in a sort of kitchen inferno, ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells

... had nearly all perished, not through our puny efforts, but in consequence of disease, and the few survivors fled in one of their projectile cars, inflicting their crudest blow in the act ...
— Edison's Conquest of Mars • Garrett Putnam Serviss

... was too late. The man pulled the cord. There was a deafening roar, a cloud of smoke, a sheet of fire, and a black projectile was sent hurtling on its way against the hill, up the side of which Paul was climbing with ...
— The Moving Picture Girls in War Plays - Or, The Sham Battles at Oak Farm • Laura Lee Hope

... good grace. Often one of our H.E. hundred pounders seemed to burst just where a field gun had been spotted:—and before our triumphant smiles had time to disentangle themselves from our faces, the beggars would open again. But the 15-inch shrapnel, with its 10,000 bullets, was a much more serious projectile. The Turks were not taking more than they could help. Several times we silenced a whole battery by one of these monsters. No doubt these very batteries are now getting back into concealed positions where our ships' guns will not be able to find them. Still, ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume I • Ian Hamilton

... miscellaneous crew composed of Englishmen, Swedes, and Greeks, and never had a single accident from explosion. As a very small number of hot shot can be heated at once, and as an iron ball of eight inches diameter loses its spherical form if kept for any length of time red hot, this projectile could only be used in particular circumstances. It happened more than once on board the Karteria, that shot which had remained for some time in the engine fires, had so lost their form as not to enter the muzzle of the guns. With regard to the great danger which is supposed to ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various

... we continued to carry on most pleasantly, Mrs. Dalrymple, I could perceive, did not entirely sympathize with our projects of amusement. As an experienced engineer might feel when watching the course of some storming projectile—some brilliant congreve—flying over a besieged fortress, yet never touching the walls nor harming the inhabitants, so she looked on at all these demonstrations of attack with no small impatience, and wondered when would ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever

... deep disappointment in early life had soured its disposition and it had declared war upon the whole world. To say that it would butt anything accessible is but faintly to express the nature and scope of its military activity: the universe was its antagonist; its methods that of a projectile. It fought like the angels and devils, in mid-air, cleaving the atmosphere like a bird, describing a parabolic curve and descending upon its victim at just the exact angle of incidence to make the most of its velocity and weight. Its momentum, calculated ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8 - Epigrams, On With the Dance, Negligible Tales • Ambrose Bierce

... swoosh somewhere on his right. A projectile, Tom realized! Turning, his eyes widened in horror as he saw an uprush ...
— Tom Swift and the Electronic Hydrolung • Victor Appleton

... the switch off, and kicked up the motors. The ship shot southward almost as rapidly as a projectile. ...
— The Stutterer • R.R. Merliss

... Harriet's direction or the instinct of the swimmer, she closed her lips tightly and held her breath. Her little body flashed through a thick growth of bushes that hung over the chute at one point. She had seen the bushes coming at her like a projectile and instinctively lowered her head before reaching them. But she quickly raised her head again, uttering an exclamation, as the skin was neatly peeled from ...
— The Meadow-Brook Girls in the Hills - The Missing Pilot of the White Mountains • Janet Aldridge

... bow of the Paracuta to cut away the rope. Of a sudden the knife he held was snatched out of his hand, the rope broke, and the grapnel, like a projectile, shot off in the direction of ...
— An Antarctic Mystery • Jules Verne

... the Crimea, this office clerk and dauber in watercolors walked to the front as tranquilly as he would have gone to the minister's office with his umbrella under his arm. At the very moment when the two officers reached the plateau, a projectile from the Prussian batteries fell upon a chest and blew it up with a frightful uproar. The dead and wounded were heaped upon the ground. Pere Lantz saw the foot-soldiers fleeing, and the artillery ...
— A Romance of Youth, Complete • Francois Coppee

... or anticipating, more than the completed square, [Greek: 'aneu psogou], of their battle, their keep, and their cloister. Soldiers before and after everything, they learned the lockings and bracings of their stones primarily in defence against the battering-ram and the projectile, and esteemed the pure circular arch for its distributed and equal strength more than for its beauty. "I believe again," says M. le Duc,[16] "that the feudal castle never arrived at its perfectness till after the Norman invasion, and that this race of the North was the first to ...
— The Pleasures of England - Lectures given in Oxford • John Ruskin

... apparatus? How fetter this stupendous engine of destruction? How anticipate its comings and goings, its returns, its stops, its shocks? Any one of its blows on the side of the ship may stave it in. How foretell its frightful meanderings? It is dealing with a projectile, which alters its mind, which seems to have ideas, and changes its direction every instant. How check the course of what must be avoided? The horrible cannon struggles, advances, backs, strikes right, strikes left, retreats, passes by, disconcerts expectation, grinds up ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various

... is none—absolutely none. Sir, if I fall into a river, an unsophisticated man will jump in and bring me out; but a philosopher will look on with the utmost calmness, and consider me in the light of a projectile, and, making a calculation of the degree of force with which I have impinged the surface, the resistance of the fluid, the velocity of the current, and the depth of the water in that particular place, he will ascertain with the greatest nicety in what part of the mud at the bottom ...
— Headlong Hall • Thomas Love Peacock

... allowing for their difference in starting time. But as the Mercury turned into the straight stretch of back road, on the second time around, there sounded a sharp report, the car staggered perilously, and a tire tore itself loose from a rear wheel to hurtle, a vicious projectile of rubber and steel, far across the stubble fields. Reeling, but held to its course by the driver's trained hand, the Mercury slackened its flight and was brought to a stop. Rupert was already leaning over the back, dragging ...
— From the Car Behind • Eleanor M. Ingram

... profit by our example? We don't wish to blow up, but gently to 'disintegrate. We are mild, but firm. We never express a wish for revolution, but for reform. We are as active as anyone in bringing about the Millennium, but we don't desire to be shot into it head foremost, like a projectile from one of your infernal machines. Dynamite, that last infirmity of noble minds, should only be resorted to when all other modes of conciliation have failed." And what do you think he replied? He smiled affably and offered me a box. "Thank you!" ...
— 'That Very Mab' • May Kendall and Andrew Lang

... the Yellow Sea busy gunners on a Japanese battleship aimed a 12-inch gun at one of the German forts in Tsing-tao. Opening the breech, they removed the smoking cartridge case, put in another loaded one, and waited to learn whether the projectile had scattered death among the enemy or exploded harmlessly in soft earth. They were five or ...
— Current History, A Monthly Magazine - The European War, March 1915 • New York Times

... attention to this silent Union-making factor. Various Southern writers took up pens against this new menace to individual rights. Some State Legislatures adopted protests. Madison alluded sarcastically to the "projectile capacity" of the court, whereby it extended the power of Congress from the exclusive jurisdiction reserve of ten miles square constituting the District, even to the uttermost parts of the country. ...
— The United States of America Part I • Ediwn Erle Sparks

... must know that arms of high penetrating power, firing projectiles of small diameter, grooved projectiles, cause only the slightest graze in the materials they pass through: the damage is almost imperceptible. Numerous experiments have demonstrated this. You see the passage of the projectile is so rapid, its gyratory movement so accelerated, that, in some way, the threads of the fabric are not broken: they are only pushed aside. They come together again after the passage of the ball, and unless a very careful examination is made, one would never know that a projectile ...
— A Nest of Spies • Pierre Souvestre

... the puzzle for the future and called for more cases. The next two yielded projectile-type handguns for ten men, with ammunition, and standard Planeteer space knives. The space knives had hidden blades, which were driven forth violently when the operator pushed a thumb lever, releasing the gas in a cartridge contained in the handle. ...
— Rip Foster in Ride the Gray Planet • Harold Leland Goodwin

... was spared, but his partisans did not meet with the same clemency. For the truth of what I am about to relate I am unable to vouch, but can only give it as it is recorded by the chroniclers of the events of those times. Projectile machines are said to have been erected, and the prisoners, being placed upon them, were flung against a wooden framework studded with great iron hooks, and wherever the body of the unfortunate victim was caught by them, there it hung until ...
— Herzegovina - Or, Omer Pacha and the Christian Rebels • George Arbuthnot

... Progeny ido, idaro. Prognostic antauxsigno. Programme programo. Progress progreso. Progression progresado. Prohibit malpermesi. Prohibition malpermeso. Project (protrude) elstari. Project projekto. Projectile jxetajxo, pafajxo. Proletarian proletaria, o. Prolific multinfana, fruktoporta. Prolix trolonga. Prologue antauxskribajxo, antauxverko. Prolong plilongigi. Promenade promeni. Promenade (act) promenado. Promenade (place) promenejo. Prominent eminenta, rimarkinda. Promiscuous ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes

... navigator, he is not fit to take charge of his Majesty's ships. The boatswain and carpenter are merely practical men; but the gunner, sir, is, or ought to be, scientific. Gunnery, sir, is a science—we have our own disparts and our lines of sight—our windage and our parabolas and projectile forces—and our point blank, and our reduction of powder upon a graduated scale. Now, sir, there's no excuse for a gunner not being a navigator; for knowing his duty as a gunner, he has the same mathematical tools to work with." Upon this principle ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Captain Frederick Marryat

... Le Bret! I soon shall reach the moon. To-night, alone, with no projectile's aid!. ...
— Cyrano de Bergerac • Edmond Rostand

... was the excitement. But each time he went through it, it was worse. Just standing and waiting in the silence, praying they weren't spotted—staring at the unmoving firmament and knowing he was a projectile hurtling two miles each second straight at a clump of metal and flesh that was the enemy. Knowing the odds were twenty to one against their scoring a kill ... unless they ...
— Slingshot • Irving W. Lande

... glimpse of something blacker, raised high in the air like the threatening head of some great gliding serpent. Suddenly there came a sharp puff of lighter smoke that seemed like a forked tongue, and then a hollow report, and we could see a great black projectile hurled into the air, and falling a quarter of a mile away from us, in the woods. I did not at once learn that this first shot killed two of the Maine men, and wounded two more. This was fired wide, but the numerous ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson

... ball had entered on the right side, a little behind; and between the fourth and the fifth rib, one could see a round wound, the edges drawn in. But the most careful examination did not enable him to find the place where the projectile had come out again. The doctor rose slowly, and, while carefully dusting the knees of his trousers, ...
— The Clique of Gold • Emile Gaboriau

... their range is short and penetrative power small. A bulwarked vessel was, so to say, armored against canister; for it makes no difference whether the protection is six inches of wood or ten of iron, provided it keeps out the projectile. The American schooners were in this respect ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 2 • Alfred Thayer Mahan

... lady's head sank down as if the blow had been too severe for her. But, almost immediately recovering herself, she launched a last projectile ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... at nine o'clock on the morning of the fourth of May. From then on until dusk the intensity of a furious all-day bombardment by every known variety of projectile had been broken only at intervals to allow of the nearer approach of the enemy's attacking infantry. The worst was the enfilade fire of two batteries on our right which with six-inch high explosive ...
— The Escape of a Princess Pat • George Pearson

... in a distorting convex mirror. He went neither forward nor backwards, neither to the right nor the left, neither up nor down. But he went. He went utterly. He simply flashed away out of sight like a vanishing projectile. ...
— Three More John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood

... is usually placed at the water line because it is this part of the ship which is the most vulnerable and open to attack and where a shell or projectile would do the most harm. If a hole were torn in the side at this place the vessel would quickly take in water and sink. On this account the armor is made thick and is known as the water-line belt. At the point where the protective deck and ...
— Marvels of Modern Science • Paul Severing

... then a slug of iron fell among the surrounding bushes or buried itself deep in the ground near us. Finally a projectile from an unseen Spanish gun disabled a Hotchkiss piece, wounded two cavalrymen, and smashed into the 10 old Sugar Mill in our rear, whereupon the terrorized insurgents fled and were not seen again near the firing line until the ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell

... to glass or water—the velocity of the light-particles, when they came close to the surface, is, according to Newton, also accelerated. Approaching such a surface obliquely, he supposed the particles, when close to it, to be drawn down upon it, as a projectile is deflected by gravity to the surface of the earth. This deflection was, according to Newton, the refraction seen in our last lecture (fig. 4). Finally, it was supposed that differences of colour might ...
— Six Lectures on Light - Delivered In The United States In 1872-1873 • John Tyndall

... make a small golf links out of the green scrub and sand; with a comfortable clubhouse at one end of it and this primeval monument at the other. They did not actually use this archaic abyss as a bunker, because it was by tradition unfathomable, and even for practical purposes unfathomed. Any sporting projectile sent into it might be counted most literally as a lost ball. But they often sauntered round it in their interludes of talking and smoking cigarettes, and one of them had just come down from the clubhouse to find another gazing somewhat moodily into ...
— The Man Who Knew Too Much • G.K. Chesterton

... of course. In that case, I set my flitter into a projectile trajectory like this, whose objective is the center of the vortex, there. See? Ten seconds or so away, at about this point, I take my instantaneous readings, solve the equations at that particular warped surface for some certain ...
— The Vortex Blaster • Edward Elmer Smith

... The strange projectile smashed to atoms as it fell, and at the same instant there arose a stench the like of which the nose of Willoughby had never ...
— The Willoughby Captains • Talbot Baines Reed

... an enormous range. In fact, as regards practical effect, the transit described by the ball ought to be as extended as possible, and this tension could only be obtained under the condition that the projectile should be impelled with a ...
— The Secret of the Island • W.H.G. Kingston (translation from Jules Verne)

... I sat there in the driving rain, hatless and shivering, hanging to the tiller and letting the sloop drive. Letting her drive! why, there wasn't a thing I could do to change her course. She was rushing on through the foaming seas like a projectile shot from some huge gun, and every moment the howling ...
— Swept Out to Sea - Clint Webb Among the Whalers • W. Bertram Foster

... flattened itself against the wall, where it adhered in the form of a convex mass in alto rilievo. The master looked round and saw the young butcher's arm in an attitude which pointed to it unequivocally as the source from which the projectile had ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 5, No. 28, February, 1860 • Various

... field that caused molecular motion to take place as wanted. As weapons, they were terrifically deadly. If half a mountain is suddenly thrown into the air because all the random motion of its molecules becomes concentrated in one direction, it becomes a difficult projectile to fight. Or touch the bow of a ship with the beam; the bow drops to absolute zero and is driven back on the stern, with all the speed of its billions of molecules. The general effect is similar to that produced by ...
— Islands of Space • John W Campbell

... would have a hoarse sound—that meant that it had ricochetted. At intervals of three or four minutes a huge, old-fashioned projectile would labour through the air, visible all the time, and crash harmlessly into the woods. The Americans called it the "long yellow feller," and sometimes a negro trooper would turn and with a yell shoot at it as it passed over. ...
— Crittenden - A Kentucky Story of Love and War • John Fox, Jr.

... The Times to chronicle the Germans' most astounding feat. It happened at Hartlepool. "A chimney nearly 200 feet in height, on the North-Eastern Railway hydraulic power-station, was," our contemporary tells us, "grazed by a projectile about ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, December 30, 1914 • Various

... the hunger he suffered from, until the squirrel ventured out upon the ground. Even then, White Fang was not premature. He waited until he was sure of striking before the squirrel could gain a tree-refuge. Then, and not until then, would he flash from his hiding- place, a grey projectile, incredibly swift, never failing its mark—the fleeing squirrel that ...
— White Fang • Jack London

... calibers and the crash of the bursting shells was almost incessant. A shell struck a rather pretentious building, which was evidently the town hall; there was a burst of flame, and a torrent of bricks and beams and tiles shot skyward amid a geyser of green-brown smoke. Another projectile chose as its target the tall white campanile, which suddenly slumped into the street, a heap of brick and plaster. Now and again we caught glimpses of tiny figures—Italian soldiers, most likely—scuttling for shelter. Occasionally the Austrians would vary their rain of heavy projectiles ...
— Italy at War and the Allies in the West • E. Alexander Powell

... east or west points. It is eastern or ortive when the heavenly object rises, and western or occiduous when it sets, and is moreover northern or southern according to its quarter of the horizon.—Amplitude, in gunnery, is the range or whole distance of a projectile, or the right horizontal line subtending the curvilineal path in which it moved.—Amplitude, in magnetism, is the difference between the rising and setting of the sun from the east and west points, as indicated by the mariner's or magnetic compass—which subtracted ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth

... probability of such an occurrence, and he related several instances of the prodigious strength of the "sword." It strikes with the accumulated force of fifteen double-handed hammers; its velocity is equal to that of a swivel-shot, and it is as dangerous in its effects as a heavy artillery projectile would be. ...
— Harper's Young People, February 3, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... it turns round the sun at the rate of nearly a hundred thousand miles an hour. Every second we cover thirty thousand miles. Men have never invented a cannon ball that could fly so quickly. You move through space fixed to a projectile which whirls with dizzy speed, and, deceived by your smallness, you think you are living immovable in a dead cathedral. And this velocity is as nothing compared with others. The sun round which we turn, flies ...
— The Shadow of the Cathedral • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... Kull with this buoy, and has obtained most encouraging results. There are two kinds, both being designed to be attached to kite lines and drawn over the water by the power of the kite. The simpler variety is merely a long wooden tube about three inches in diameter and shaped very much like a gun projectile, with a cone of tin dragging behind to give steadiness. It is for use only when the wind is blowing in exactly the direction in which it is designed to send a message or carry a rope. It will be observed that, in a large number ...
— McClure's Magazine, March, 1896, Vol. VI., No. 4. • Various

... as I had pitched into space, with equal suddenness did I emerge from the fog, out of which I shot like a projectile from a cannon into clear daylight. My speed was so great that I could see nothing about me but a blurred and indistinct sheet of smooth and frozen snow, that rushed past me with ...
— Pellucidar • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... bow, javelin and broadsword, blunderbuss and creaking cannon—all the weapons of all stages in the art of war—had gone trooping past. Now had come the speck in the sky, straight on, like some projectile ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer

... occurred to them before, but they realised it now as they stood there in the trench bay, and others remarked the fact and wrote of it afterwards. A hurricane of shells of every calibre, from the whiz-bang of the field-guns to the enormous projectile of "Mother," passed continuously overhead in the darkness, to burst in the enemy trenches, and yet the sound was less loud than many a ...
— With Haig on the Somme • D. H. Parry

... and Tommy prepared his message-carrying projectile. He found snapshots and included them. He tore out a photograph of Evelyn and her father, which had been framed above a work bench in the laboratory. He labored, racking his brain for a means of conveying the information that the globe was of any other world.... And suddenly ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science January 1931 • Various

... per second; it is capable of wreaking disaster on anything which it meets, simply because its rapid motion is the vehicle by which the energy of the gunpowder is transferred from the gun to where the blow is to be struck. Had the cannon been directed vertically upwards, then the projectile, leaving the muzzle with the same initial velocity as before, would soar up and up, with gradually abating speed, until at last it reached a turning-point, the elevation of which would depend upon the initial velocity. Poised for a moment at the summit, the cannon-ball may then be likened to the ...
— Time and Tide - A Romance of the Moon • Robert S. (Robert Stawell) Ball

... just such a thought-form after it has left the astral body of its author, and is on its way towards its goal. It will be observed that the almost circular form has changed into one somewhat resembling a projectile or the head of a comet; and it will be easily understood that this alteration is caused by its rapid forward motion. The clearness of the colour assures us of the purity of the emotion which gave birth to this thought-form, while the precision of its outline is unmistakable ...
— Thought-Forms • Annie Besant

... factors. The first is known as "traverse," which means how far to the left or right it must be pointed in a horizontal plane. The second factor is "elevation"—how far up or down it must be pointed in a vertical plane. The latter factor determines how far it will throw its projectile, and up to a certain point the higher the gun is pointed the further will go the shell. A certain paradox seems to enter here. It is a fact that a distant ship presents a target more easily hit if its bow or stern is toward the gunner. If it presents a broadside ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of 12) - The War Begins, Invasion of Belgium, Battle of the Marne • Francis J. Reynolds, Allen L. Churchill, and Francis Trevelyan

... ballista of Spezzia for testing the hundred-ton gun lately made in England for Italy attracts a great many visitors, and the large photographs which give the condition of the butt after each impact of the projectiles brings up again the double problem as it is stated: How to construct a gun and projectile which shall be able to pierce the heaviest armor; and how to construct armor which shall be proof against the heaviest shot. Many saw with interest in the Machinery Building at the Centennial the eight-inch ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878 • Various

... since contracted for fourteen batteries of the James rifled gun, 6-pounder calibre, and a limited quantity of the James projectiles, weighing about fourteen pounds each. The reports showing the superiority of this gun and projectile, both as regards range, accuracy, and execution, for field service over that of all others at the battle of Fort Donelson, leads me to request that there be furnished to the State of Illinois in the shortest time practicable seven ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln

... weak as to offer no perceptible resistance to the motion of the planets, and other visible bodies.[350] Is the velocity of light uniform? Or, if variable, is the variation caused by the original difference of the projectile force of the different suns, stars, comets, etc.? or by the different media through which it passes? Arago alleges that light moves more rapidly through water than through air; but Brequet asserts that the fact is just the reverse.[351] Both admit that its velocity varies ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson

... the Secret Service. Its mile-wide top was a jointless expanse of gray armor steel; the steep, smooth surface of the truncated cone was a continuation of the same immensely thick sheet of metal. No known vehicle could climb that smooth, hard, forbidding slope of steel; no known projectile could mar that armor; no known craft could even approach the Hill without detection. Could not approach it at all, in fact, for it was constantly inclosed in a vast hemisphere of lambent violet flame through which neither material ...
— Triplanetary • Edward Elmer Smith

... these disputes were settled by physical contact of the disputants, with such simple arguments as the rudimentary logic of the times could supply—the sword, the spear, and so forth. With the growth of prudence in military affairs the projectile came more and more into favor, and is now held in high esteem by the most courageous. Its capital defect is that it requires personal attendance at the ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce

... cartridge of this gun the needle runs through the charge, firing it first at the front of the chamber, thus securing the whole force of the explosive, which burns backward in the enclosed space and expends itself entirely on the projectile. Those breech-loading pieces which fire the cartridge by percussion against its back end have the disadvantage of the charge burning forward, and thus wasting itself partly in the air after the bullet ...
— Notable Events of the Nineteenth Century - Great Deeds of Men and Nations and the Progress of the World • Various

... unbounded obedience. The Rupun swore by Tibetan matchlocks, which he believed to be the most serviceable weapons on earth. According to him, as long as you had powder enough, you could use anything as a projectile. Pebbles, earth, or nails did as good work as ...
— An Explorer's Adventures in Tibet • A. Henry Savage Landor

... into it, and the third pushed on the second; the horses reared and fell backward, landed on their haunches, slid down, all four feet in the air, crushing and overwhelming the riders; and there being no means of retreat,—the whole column being no longer anything more than a projectile,—the force which had been acquired to crush the English crushed the French; the inexorable ravine could only yield when filled; horses and riders rolled there pell-mell, grinding each other, forming but one mass of flesh in this gulf: when this trench was ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo

... bomb for the railway crossing at Nanteuil, I'll bet!" said Leon, and while I was realizing that that projectile might just as well have been for us, the others were gesticulating and bowling encouragement to their compatriot some few hundred yards above them, as though he could bear ...
— My Home In The Field of Honor • Frances Wilson Huard



Words linked to "Projectile" :   arm, multistage rocket, vehicle, dynamic, round shot, rocket, rocket engine, missile, cannonball, weapon system, spitball, slug, research rocket, throwing stick, bullet, step rocket, dart, arrow, boomerang, shot



Copyright © 2024 e-Free Translation.com