Free TranslationFree Translation
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

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




Buffer   /bˈəfər/   Listen
Buffer

noun
1.
(chemistry) an ionic compound that resists changes in its pH.
2.
A neutral zone between two rival powers that is created in order to diminish the danger of conflict.  Synonym: buffer zone.
3.
An inclined metal frame at the front of a locomotive to clear the track.  Synonyms: cowcatcher, fender, pilot.
4.
(computer science) a part of RAM used for temporary storage of data that is waiting to be sent to a device; used to compensate for differences in the rate of flow of data between components of a computer system.  Synonyms: buffer storage, buffer store.
5.
A power tool used to buff surfaces.  Synonym: polisher.
6.
A cushion-like device that reduces shock due to an impact.  Synonym: fender.
7.
An implement consisting of soft material mounted on a block; used for polishing (as in manicuring).  Synonym: buff.



Related searches:



WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |





"Buffer" Quotes from Famous Books



... eventual disruption of the smaller social and political unities,[4] the knightly manors with the privileges attached to the knightly class generally. The knighthood, or lower nobility, had acted as a sort of buffer between the princes of the empire and the Imperial power, to which they often looked for protection against their immediate overlord or their powerful neighbour—the prince. The Imperial power, in consequence, found the lower nobility a bulwark against its princely vassals. ...
— German Culture Past and Present • Ernest Belfort Bax

... we will, Jack!" announced Bobolink, triumphantly; "for I can see the big timber he said was acting as a buffer above him. Hey! we've got to be extra careful now, because one end of that beam is balanced ever so delicately, and if it gets shoved off its anchorage—good-bye ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts Snowbound - A Tour on Skates and Iceboats • George A. Warren

... the art of acting, but not in the art of dissimulation; she had been of the world without having been worldly; and sometimes she was as frank and simple as a child. And worldliness makes a buffer in times like these. Cathewe thanked God for his own shell, toughened as it had been ...
— A Splendid Hazard • Harold MacGrath

... No dimber damber, angler, dancer, Prig of cackler, prig of prancer; No swigman, swaddler, clapperdudgeon; Cadge-gloak, curtal, or curmudgeon; No whip-jack, palliard, patrico; No jarkman, be he high or low; No dummerar, or romany; No member of "the Family;" No ballad-basket, bouncing buffer, Nor any other, will I suffer; But stall-off now and for ever, All outliers whatsoever: And as I keep to the foregone, So may ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth

... herself with a buffer state and ally in Southern Europe, meaning Turkey, so she has cleverly succeeded in creating a similar condition in the extreme north of Europe. Sweden and Norway, at no time friendly to the Moscovite—you need only recall the ...
— The Secrets of the German War Office • Dr. Armgaard Karl Graves

... Republicans had failed to carry a majority of the congressional districts. Thus the blunders of Douglas and Chase in 1854 had started the dogs of sectional warfare, and now a solid North confronted a solid South, with only two or three undecided buffer States, like Maryland and ...
— Expansion and Conflict • William E. Dodd

... corporate proprietorship, the owners of mines are guided in their relations with labor by engineers occupying executive positions. On them falls the responsibility in such matters, and the engineer becomes thus a buffer between labor and capital. As corporations have grown, so likewise have the labor unions. In general, they are normal and proper antidotes for unlimited ...
— Principles of Mining - Valuation, Organization and Administration • Herbert C. Hoover

... hostilities divided the island into two de facto autonomous areas, a Greek area controlled by the Cypriot Government (59% of the island's land area) and a Turkish-Cypriot area (37% of the island), that are separated by a UN buffer zone (4% of the island); there are two UK sovereign base areas within the Greek Cypriot ...
— The 1995 CIA World Factbook • United States Central Intelligence Agency

... specified a large sum in his will to be appropriated to the purpose of erecting convenient alms-houses for the poor; but bethinking himself of the possibility that his life might be extended to a distant period, and that in the meantime the poor would continue to buffer, and many of them perish without the projected aid, he became the instant executor of his own will, and lived for years to be a gratified witness of that comfort which must otherwise have been so long delayed. It is descriptive of the "good man," that "he ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. II • Francis Augustus Cox

... year he had been a self-constituted buffer between Mr. Clarke and the men in the furnace-room, and he wondered anxiously ...
— Calvary Alley • Alice Hegan Rice

... at the rate of 80 a minute, and as the pile sank, the hammer followed it down with never relaxing activity until it was driven home to the required depth. One of the most ingenious contrivances employed in the driver, which was also adopted in the hammer, was the use of steam as a buffer in the upper part of the cylinder, which had the effect of a recoil spring, and greatly enhanced the force ...
— Industrial Biography - Iron Workers and Tool Makers • Samuel Smiles

... magnificent guns lies in the buffer and in the ability of the muzzle of the gun to cool off; after discharging 24 rounds they are just as ready to discharge another 24 as when they started, while in the case of our pieces we have to let ...
— S.O.S. Stand to! • Reginald Grant

... man of His Excellency. I am a buffer between him and the heads of divisions. This has led to the erroneous assumption which I ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer

... protest. Lord Castlereagh stated in a circular note addressed to Russia, Prussia, and Austria, that it had always been England's desire that an independent Poland, possessing a dynasty of its own, should be established, which, separating Austria, Russia, and Prussia, should act as a buffer State between them; that, failing its creation, the Poles should be reconciled to being dominated by foreigners, by just and liberal treatment which alone would make them satisfied. His note, which is most remarkable for its ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various

... bruising match between James Cochran Esq., and William Cooper Esq., on or about the sixteenth of October last, when the said James Cochran confessed to the said William Cooper these words: "I acknowledge you are too much of a buffer for me," at which time it was understood, as this deponent conceives, ...
— The Story of Cooperstown • Ralph Birdsall

... Lustica. It leads into the Bay of Topla, and the steamer heads direct for Castelnuovo, leaving on the left the Sutorina, the lower part of the Canali valley, a portion of the territory of the Republic of Ragusa ceded to Turkey in 1699 to form a buffer state between herself and Venice. The Slav name of Castelnuovo is Erzegnovi, and it was founded in 1373 by the Bosniak king Tvarko I., Kotromanovic. In 1483 it was enlarged and raised to the position of principal ...
— The Shores of the Adriatic - The Austrian Side, The Kuestenlande, Istria, and Dalmatia • F. Hamilton Jackson

... would not have believed, nor I either, that it could touch the spiritual side of the question and the love which is worth having, that is God-like and belongs to immortality. I might have done what I could if Dora had married me, so far as the other girls would have let me, to serve as a buffer between the family and the adversity which I am afraid not all their high spirit and gallant fight will hold entirely at bay. It was not to be, and there is an end on't. I wonder where I found the heart, and the cheek too for that matter, to bully ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Sarah Tytler

... "Buffer? No, but a guardian angel if such a creature can shield me from rebuffs," said Daniel, even more brusquely than he had ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann

... revolt. The workers of the world, as a class, are fighting the capitalists of the world, as a class. The so-called great middle class is a growing anomaly in the social struggle. It is a perishing class (wily statisticians to the contrary), and its historic mission of buffer between the capitalist and working-classes has just about been fulfilled. Little remains for it but to wail as it passes into oblivion, as it has already begun to wail in accents Populistic and Jeffersonian-Democratic. The fight is on. The revolution ...
— Revolution and Other Essays • Jack London

... every beast toward man was one of fear or fierce hate. These sambur, on the contrary, seemed rather to welcome the companionship of the tribe, as if looking to it for some protection against the strange pursuing peril. His sleepless sagacity perceiving the value of this great escort as a buffer against the contact of less kindly hordes, Grom gave strict orders that none of these beasts should be molested. And the Cave Folk, not without apprehension, found themselves traveling in the vanguard of an army of tall, ...
— In the Morning of Time • Charles G. D. Roberts

... thing you have done was to surround yourself with this mercenary body, whom you call the royal cuirassiers, only, instead of three hundred, you should have two thousand. Self-interest will make them true to you. You might find some means to pay them, for they would be a good buffer between you and your enemies. The president of the Diet and the members are passing bills which will eventually undermine you. How long it will take I can not say. But this last folly, the loan, which you could have got on without, caps the climax. The duke ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath

... semi-sarcastic remark for the careless and unmethodical; a keen eye for hops wasted and trodden into the ground, or for poles of undersized hops, unwelcome to the pickers and hidden beneath those from which the hops had been picked. He acted as buffer between capital and labour, smoothing troubles over, telling me of the pickers' difficulties, and explaining my side to the pickers when the quality was poor and prices discouraging, so that the work went with a swing and with happy faces ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory

... his two companions contributed the array of empty glasses and then valiantly bolted for the door. The narrowness of the alley behind the bar undoubtedly saved the struggling Texan from serious mishap. As it was his two assailants hindered and impeded each other and at the same time formed a buffer against the shower of glassware that descended from above. Freeing one hand the Texan began to shoot along the floor. With the first explosion the bartender scrambled to his feet and leaped onto the bar at the precise moment that Green Vest, pausing in his flight ...
— Prairie Flowers • James B. Hendryx

... loose upon the people of Glasgow an infernal machine intended to soar considerably in a quiet kind of way and to be propelled by steam. It looked like the bird known to ornithology as the flyupithecrick, and had an air brake, patent coupler, buffer and platform. It was intended to hold two men on ice and a rosewood casket with silver handles. It was mounted on wheels, and, as it did not seem to skim through the air very much, the people of Glasgow hitched a clothes line to it and used ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye

... when they first come. Presently you will grow accustomed to its invigorating tone, and quiet down. It is caused by the dry air. We are a long way from the Atlantic, and these mighty mountains to the west act as a buffer to the moisture-laden ...
— The Outdoor Chums After Big Game - Or, Perilous Adventures in the Wilderness • Captain Quincy Allen

... separate from the shadows, let the half tone paper always come as a buffer state between them. Get as much information into the drawing of your lights and shadows as possible; don't be satisfied with a smudge effect. Use the side of your white chalk when you want a mass, or work in parallel lines (hatching) on the principle described ...
— The Practice and Science Of Drawing • Harold Speed

... carrying at its end three or more air-compressing pumps set radially, with the piston-rods thrust outwards by a strong spring on each, but with the ends perfectly free from any attachment, yet fitted with a buffer or wheel. As the pendulum moves it throws one or more of these piston-rod ends into contact with the inner surface of the ring, driving it into the compressing pump. At the top of the pendulum there is a double or universal ...
— Twentieth Century Inventions - A Forecast • George Sutherland

... license, some points in all three Gatehouses have been utilized for effect. So we can imagine the three friends in succession going up the "postern stair;" and, further on in the story, we can picture that mysterious "single buffer, Dick Datchery, living on his means," as a lodger in the "venerable architectural and inconvenient" official dwelling of Mr. Tope, minutely described in the eighteenth chapter of Edwin Drood, as "communicating by an upper stair with Mr. ...
— A Week's Tramp in Dickens-Land • William R. Hughes

... the Colonel; me and the old man don't get on well. The old buffer is always down on me whenever I takes a drop, but I'm going to make him a present of a 'oss this night, that I am." He went off in the darkness, towing the present by ...
— Impressions of a War Correspondent • George Lynch

... I dare say you have guessed—by my filling up one of those two vacancies, partly to help her pecuniarily, partly to act as a buffer between her and the swaggering Swede. He was quite flabbergasted by my installation in the house, and took me aside in the atelier and asked me if Ingeborg had really come into any money. I was boiling over, but I kept the lid on by main ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill

... Austria, and a confession of defeat by the King, who preferred to place his trust in Alexander. Francis was equally adverse to Talleyrand's elaborate scheme of a realm eastern in fact as in name, stretching away down the Danube valley to the Euxine, a buffer against Russian aggression, a menace or a support to Turkey as occasion required. It was therefore a categorical imperative which determined the Emperor of the French to woo the Emperor of all the Russias at this juncture. When a proposition ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane

... and Cherokees were thus by their position the barrier tribes of the South, who had to stand the brunt of our advance, and who acted as a buffer between us and the French and Spaniards of the Gulf and the lower Mississippi. Their fate once decided, that of the Chickasaws and Chocktaws ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume One - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1769-1776 • Theodore Roosevelt

... checked him and repeated, "But if a man had loved you as you have loved me—remember now, on your honor—would you permit him to love with no better reward than the consciousness of being a solace, a help, a sort of buffer between you and the ills ...
— Taken Alive • E. P. Roe

... across a valley and a stream of some consequence there is a ridge not at all connected with the mountain on which Praeneste was situated, but belonging rather to Valmontone, which was better suited for neutral ground or to act as a buffer to the southeast. We turn to mention this ridge again as territory topographically outside Praeneste's domain, in order to say more forcibly that one must cross still another valley and stream before reaching the territory of Cave, and so Cave, ...
— A Study Of The Topography And Municipal History Of Praeneste • Ralph Van Deman Magoffin

... would take a volume in itself. Briefly, Bulgaria, Serbia, and Montenegro were represented. Montenegro, with characteristic laisser faire, never appointed a commissary at all, and the work all fell on me. Fortunately, in fact, for I was the buffer state between Serbia and Bulgaria, who were at daggers-drawn. At the necessary meetings the Serb Commissioner talked German and Serb into one of my ears, while the Bulgar shouted French and Bulgar into the other, and the English manager at intervals begged ...
— Twenty Years Of Balkan Tangle • Durham M. Edith

... touched me very deeply. I began to murmur something. "Oh no," said Father Payne, "you needn't! A boy at a prize-giving isn't required to enter into easy talk with the presiding buffer! I have just handed ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson

... all this crept into his book for, after a fortnight at home, he set his own jaw and lips rather grimly, went to his small office room in the tower of a high building, and paid the elevator boy a goodly sum for acting as buffer during five holy ...
— At the Crossroads • Harriet T. Comstock

... fact that she was his daughter could not excuse his failure to render it. Was she to continue to live with him on their present terms? She had no intention to make another effort to alter them; but to remain as they were would be intolerable, and Mrs. Tanberry could not stay forever, to act as a buffer between her and her father. Peering out into the dismal night, she found her own future as black, and it seemed no wonder that the Sisters loved the convent life; that the pale nuns forsook the world wherein there was so much useless unkindness; where women were petty and jealous, like that cowardly ...
— The Two Vanrevels • Booth Tarkington

... life, is a buffer between sensitive nerves and intensest experience. Strong natures who for some reason are dislocated and therefore do not work, or work only fragmentarily, come too much in contact with life and often cannot bear it; it burns ...
— An Anarchist Woman • Hutchins Hapgood

... morning were reborn as he left the study, unattended. Had he any right to inflict this specimen on Creighton? He could only hope that the detective's sense of humor would prove a buffer between him and his patron's boorishness. ...
— The Monk of Hambleton • Armstrong Livingston

... who had regained their freedom might find a refuge and make a new start in life. He decided to found this colony to the south of South Carolina, so that it might not only be a refuge for the oppressed, but also form a buffer state between the Carolinas and Spanish Florida. So from George II Oglethorpe got a charter for the land lying between the Savannah and the Altamaha rivers, and in honour of the King ...
— This Country Of Ours • H. E. Marshall Author: Henrietta Elizabeth Marshall

... my society well enough to make a special journey down into Devon. I represent to him, of course, the days gone by, and for their sake he will always feel an interest in me. Being ten years my junior, he must naturally regard me as an old buffer; I notice, indeed, that he is just a little too deferential at moments. He feels a certain respect for some of my work, but thinks, I am sure, that I ceased writing none too soon—which is very true. If I had not been such a lucky fellow—if at this moment I were still toiling ...
— The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft • George Gissing

... existence of Belgium and Switzerland; why, it may be asked, should not the whole frontier be treated in the same way by neutralising the disputed territory of Alsace-Lorraine? Perhaps, too, a neutral Poland would form a useful buffer between Germany and Russia. Such neutralisation, it should be noted, need not necessarily carry with it independence. Poland and Alsace-Lorraine might form part of Russia and France respectively, ...
— The War and Democracy • R.W. Seton-Watson, J. Dover Wilson, Alfred E. Zimmern,

... local authorities and benches of magistrates, quite independent of the Home Office, are held responsible for mistakes in police action or irregularities in local justice. The consequence is that there is a strong buffer to protect the character and ...
— Handbook of Home Rule (1887) • W. E. Gladstone et al.

... met another old gentleman pushing a wheelbarrow." I stopped her at once, and not being able to identify the sentence as part of the story I had told, I questioned her a little more closely. I found that the word "buffalo," had evidently conveyed to her mind an old "buffer" whose name was "Lo," probably taken to be an Indian form of appellation, to be treated with tolerance though it might not be Irish in sound. Then, not knowing of any wheel more familiarly than that attached to a barrow, the young narrator completed the picture ...
— The Art of the Story-Teller • Marie L. Shedlock

... conquests would swell the treasury at Nineveh, the native soldiers would be incorporated into the Assyrian army, and when the smaller tribes had all in turn been subdued, their conqueror would, at length, find himself confronted with one of the great states from which he had been separated by these buffer communities; then it was that the men and money he had appropriated in his conquests would embolden him to provoke or accept battle with some tolerable certainty ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 7 (of 12) • G. Maspero

... naturally lead to war with the Ameer, and (if the intentions about Merv were persisted in) with Russia as well. And for what purpose? In order that we might gain an advanced frontier and break in pieces the one important State which remained as a buffer between India and Russian Asia. In the eyes of all but the military men this policy stood self-condemned. Its opponents pointed out that doubtless Russian intrigues were going on at Cabul; but they were the result of the marked hostility ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose

... tip it up to the right or the left, it must simply be pushed from the opposite side, and the contents are at once emptied clean out. In order that the bodies of the wagons may not touch at the top, when several are coupled together, each end of the wagon is furnished with a buffer, composed of a flat iron bar cranked, and furnished ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 446, July 19, 1884 • Various

... ... We wish an international settlement that will enable us to be more supremely great as nationalists. This is the significance of the League of Nations. It is a plan of hope. It is the only plan which the mind of man has evolved which any number of nations has ever been willing to accept as a buffer against devil-made war. ... It is a monumental experiment which this century and other centuries will talk of and think of and write of because it involves the lives of men and women under it, and there is the possibility of giving our full thought and ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane

... so many pleasures that I can afford to forget one of them," replied Steinmetz, in his somewhat old-fashioned courtesy. "But an old—buffer, shall I say?—hardly expects to be taken much notice of by young ...
— The Sowers • Henry Seton Merriman

... from being found out. We meet each other in public. Ware a fight! Get them into different parts of the room! Our friends hustle round us. Capulet and Montague are not more at odds than the houses of Roundabout and Wrightabout, let us say. It is, "My dear Mrs. Buffer, do kindly put yourself in the chair between those two men!" Or, "My dear Wrightabout, will you take that charming Lady Blancmange down to supper? She adores your poems, and gave five shillings for your autograph at the fancy fair." In like manner ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray

... remember—at the same moment, both the cabin sky-light, and an oar, in single combat with a large berg that was doing no particular harm to us, but against which he seemed suddenly to have conceived a violent spite. Luckily a considerable quantity of snow overlaid the ice, which, acting as a buffer, in some measure mitigated the violence of the concussion; while the very fragility of her build diminishing the momentum, proved in the end the little schooner's greatest security. Nevertheless, I must confess that more than once, while leaning forward in expectation of the scrunch I knew ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)

... nervous, forceful fellow, he accepted it as a matter of course. His career was planned for him: he "took orders," married the young woman his folks selected, and slipped easily into his proper niche—his adipose serving as a buffer for his feelings. In his intellect there was no flash, and his insight into the heart of things ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard

... these days of pugilists who resemble matinee idols he had the appearance of an anachronism. He was a stocky man with a round, solid head, small eyes, an undershot jaw, and a nose which ill-treatment had reduced to a mere scenario. A narrow strip of forehead acted as a kind of buffer-state, separating his front hair from his eyebrows, and he bore beyond hope of concealment the badge of his late employment, the cauliflower ear. Yet was he a man of worth and a good citizen, and Ann had liked him from their first meeting. As for Jerry, he worshipped Ann and would have done anything ...
— Piccadilly Jim • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse

... year together in India it was evident that downright antagonism had existed between Hugo Tancred and his little son. Tony had weighed his father and found him wanting; and it was clear that he had tried to insert his small personality as a buffer between his ...
— Jan and Her Job • L. Allen Harker

... with this struggle until she gets it. To guess at the direction of the new line is not to express a British opinion, but to speculate upon the opinion of France. After the experience of Luxembourg and Belgium no one now dreams of a neutralised buffer State. What does not become French or Belgian of the Rhineland will remain German—for ever. That is perhaps conceivable, for example, of Strassburg and the low-lying parts of Alsace. I do not know enough to ...
— What is Coming? • H. G. Wells

... middle of the street was a ribbon of ice three feet wide and as smooth as glass. At the foot of the hill, a piled-up mound of snow served as a buffer. ...
— Maida's Little Shop • Inez Haynes Irwin

... source of happiness, a buffer that softens all the jolts of life. After David Sawney's failure to capture Perritaut's half-breed Atlantis and her golden apples at one dash, one would have expected him to be a little modest ...
— The Mystery of Metropolisville • Edward Eggleston

... the colonies, expressed the policy, when he declared, in 1792, that the object was to interpose an Indian barrier between Canada and the United States; and in pursuance of this policy of preserving the Northwest as an Indian buffer State, the Canadian authorities supported the Indians in their resistance to American settlement beyond the Ohio. The conception of the Northwest as an Indian reserve strikingly exhibits England's inability to foresee the future ...
— The Frontier in American History • Frederick Jackson Turner

... a question," he suggested. "Last night, your one idea was that I could protect you and your father, everybody in the house here, by acting as your spokesman. I think you wanted to set me up as a buffer between all of you on the one side and the authorities and the reporters on the other. You wanted things kept down, nothing to get out beyond that which was ...
— No Clue - A Mystery Story • James Hay

... filled by lot, because the result would be on the whole quite as satisfactory as that obtained by the present system, while disappointed candidates would curse Fortune, who has a broader back than the Prime Minister. No doubt examinations were introduced on the same sort of principle, to act as a buffer between the train of candidates and the engine of Government. That the examination often comes after instead of before the appointment is a necessary modification, without which no room would be left ...
— Behind the Bungalow • EHA

... you arrive at the ground-floor, reading your file of the 'Daily Advertiser;' not an egg broken nor a drop spilled. I saw it done in a New York hotel. The air is compressed under the elevator, and acts as a sort of ethereal buffer." ...
— The Elevator • William D. Howells

... Babylon rounded off her dominion in this quarter by the absorption of the last state upon her south-western border that had maintained the shadow of independence: and the two great powers of these parts, hitherto prevented from coming into contact by the intervention of a sort of political "buffer," became conterminous, and were thus brought into a position in which it was not possible that a collision should for any considerable time ...
— Ancient Egypt • George Rawlinson

... This would have entirely changed the course of European politics and perhaps greatly increased the chances of a peaceful and stable regime. As it was, the intermediate country, widely open in the East and in the West, too weak to resist foreign aggression, became, at best, a weak buffer State, and, at worst, a bone of contention between two ...
— Belgium - From the Roman Invasion to the Present Day • Emile Cammaerts

... word with Grace. The girl, looking very white and worn, leaned on the arm of Captain Nat, whose big body acted as a buffer between her and over-sympathetic Come-Outers. Mrs. Coffin silently held out both hands and ...
— Keziah Coffin • Joseph C. Lincoln

... similar advantage to Russia in Northern Persia. Nothing but a friendly understanding between England and Russia, which should clearly define the respective spheres of influence, will save the integrity of Persia. That country should remain an independent buffer state between Russia and India. But to bring about this result it is more than necessary that we should support Persia on our side, as much as Russia does on hers, or the balance is bound to go ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor

... "Buffer" is the term used in the English story. Its nearest native equivalent is, probably, our Dead-Beat;" meaning, variously, according to circumstances, a successful American politician; a wife's male relative; ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 25, September 17, 1870 • Various

... relative accessibility and general strategic advantages. He did this and made all sorts of arrangements tending to co-ordinate the work of the various sub-committees along the lines of the plan we drew up. It will be a great thing to have somebody who will act as buffer for all the detail and relieve me of just ...
— A Journal From Our Legation in Belgium • Hugh Gibson

... "You've been a buffer between us and the enemy more than once, but it took a mind like Stonewall Jackson's to keep moving you around so you would stand between the armies of the enemy and make the Yankees fight, only one army at ...
— The Scouts of Stonewall • Joseph A. Altsheler

... to do so. China wants nothing more than the re-establishment of Chinese suzerainty over Tibet, with recognition of the autonomy of the territory immediately under the control of the Lhassa Government; she is agreeable to the British idea of forming an effective buffer territory in so far as it is consistent with equity and justice; she is anxious that her trade interest should be looked after by her trade agents as do the British, a point which is agreeable even to the Tibetans, though apparently not to the British; in other words, she expects ...
— The Fight For The Republic in China • Bertram Lenox Putnam Weale

... favourable circumstances—this shell stands a very good chance of getting broken in tumbling to the earth, so that it has been necessary to surround it with a mass of soft and yielding fibrous material, which breaks its fall, and acts as a buffer to it when it comes in contact with the soil beneath. So many protections has the coco-nut gradually devised for itself by the continuous survival of the best adapted amid numberless and endless spontaneous variations of all ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen

... and unoccupied land south of Charles Town in South Carolina. It would be very good to settle it, and none had taken up the idea with seriousness since Azilia had failed. Such a colony as was now contemplated would dispose of Spanish claims, serve as a buffer colony between Florida and South Carolina, and establish another place of trade. The upshot was that the Crown granted to Oglethorpe and twenty associates the unsettled land between the Savannah and the ...
— Pioneers of the Old South - A Chronicle of English Colonial Beginnings, Volume 5 In - The Chronicles Of America Series • Mary Johnston

... hold; so Tootles stepped forward politely. Tootles hated the idea of signing under such a man, but an instinct told him that it would be prudent to lay the responsibility on an absent person; and though a somewhat silly boy, he knew that mothers alone are always willing to be the buffer. All children know this about mothers, and despise them for it, but make constant ...
— Peter and Wendy • James Matthew Barrie

... "Hullo, you old buffer!" was equally free from any gloss of eloquence, but he hooked his hand in the doctor's arm as he made ...
— The Way of an Eagle • Ethel M. Dell

... yards—below the surface of the ground. It is worked by an electric locomotive, hauling ten wagons at a speed of 12 kilometers, or 71/2 miles per hour. The total weight drawn is eight tons. The gauge is a narrow one, so that the locomotive can be made of small dimensions. Its total length between the buffer heads is 2.43 meters; its height 1.04 meters; breadth 0.8 meter; diameter of wheels, 0.34 meter. From the rail head to the center of the buffers is a height of 0.675 meter; and the total weight is only 1550 kilogrammes, or say 3,400 lb. We give a longitudinal section through ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 417 • Various

... boyhood, clings desperately and with apoplectic puffings to these things is an essentially grotesque figure. To listen to young men discussing one of these my belated contemporaries, and to hear one enforcing on another the amusement to be gained from watching the old buffer's manoeuvres, is a lesson against undue youthfulness. One can indeed give amusement without loss of dignity, by being open to being induced to join in such things occasionally in an elderly way, without ...
— From a College Window • Arthur Christopher Benson

... and collisions of which the Holy War is full. And, besides, it is with Mansoul and her neighbour states of Heaven and Hell just as it is with some of our great European empires in this also. There is no neutral zone, no buffer state, no silver streak between Mansoul and her immediate and military neighbours. And thus it is that her statesmen, and her soldiers, and even her very common-soldier sentries must be for ever on the watch; they must never ...
— Bunyan Characters - Third Series - The Holy War • Alexander Whyte

... his friend Paul Limousin still more, who had continued to be the familiar and intimate friend of the house, after having been the inseparable companion of his bachelor days, which is very rare. It was Limousin who acted as a buffer between his wife and himself, and who defended him ardently, and even severely, against her undeserved reproaches, against crying scenes, and against all the daily miseries ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant

... good talking now of buffer States, because the German conscience cannot respect them. Buffer States are just anvil States. At any rate, very considerable annexations of German territory by Belgium and France are now inevitable, and Holland must expect a much larger and stronger Belgium ...
— Current History, A Monthly Magazine - The European War, March 1915 • New York Times

... black eyebrows, BUTTONED UP IN A TIGHTISH BLUE SURTOUT, with a buff waistcoat, grey trowsers, and something of a military air." His shock of white hair was unusually thick and ample. This man, "a buffer living idly on his means," named Datchery, is either, as Mr. Proctor believed, Edwin Drood, or, as Mr. Walters thinks, Helena Landless. By making Grewgious drop the remark that Bazzard, his clerk, a moping owl of an amateur tragedian, "is off duty here," at his chambers, Dickens ...
— The Puzzle of Dickens's Last Plot • Andrew Lang

... "Well, old buffer, so you are popular," said he to him. "Your phiz is sold on the heads of pipes and on liqueur bottles and every drunkard in Alca spits out your name as he rolls in the gutter. . . . Chatillon, the hero of the Penguins! Chatillon, defender ...
— Penguin Island • Anatole France

... then swung him round and round and round again. For a girl, she "guided" remarkably well; nevertheless, a series of collisions, varying in intensity, marked the path of the pair upon the rather crowded platform. In such emergencies Miss Boke proved herself deft in swinging William to act as a buffer, and he several times found himself heavily stricken from the rear; anon his face would be pressed suffocatingly into Miss Boke's hair, without the slightest wish on his part for such intimacy. He had a helpless feeling, fully warranted ...
— Seventeen - A Tale Of Youth And Summer Time And The Baxter Family Especially William • Booth Tarkington

... Sparta's fear of Athenian power: the alleged pretexts were different. The rise of Athens is rapidly described, her building of the walls broken down by the Persians, her control of the island-states in a Delian league which eventually became the nucleus of her Empire, her alliance with Megara, a buffer-state between herself and Corinth. This last saved her from fears of a land invasion; when she built for Megara long walls to the sea she incurred the intense anger of Corinth which smouldered for years and at last caused the Peloponnesian conflagration. ...
— Authors of Greece • T. W. Lumb

... suppose they charged highest for the lowest seats. Wonder whether a lion ever nipped up and helped himself to some fat old buffer in the Stalls when the martyrs turned out ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, December 19, 1891 • Various

... "I say, Bill! damned hard lines to have to speak to a lamp-post, a kid, and an old buffer"—by the latter vulgarity ...
— The Tables Turned - or, Nupkins Awakened. A Socialist Interlude • William Morris

... Minister's family from that annoyance. Now and then, the fact could not be wholly disguised that some one had refused to meet — or to receive — the Minister; but never an open insult, or any expression of which the Minister had to take notice. Diplomacy served as a buffer in times of irritation, and no diplomat who knew his business fretted at what every diplomat — and none more commonly than the English — had to expect; therefore Henry Adams, though not a diplomat and wholly unprotected, went his way peacefully enough, seeing clearly that society cared ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams

... save himself by reaching for Berry's shoulder with his forepaws, but at the critical moment his buffer flinched, the paws fell short of their objective, and with a startled grunt the terrier fell heavily into the bath, his desperate claws leaving two long ...
— Berry And Co. • Dornford Yates

... "A lady-buffer! What's that?" I cried, looking at the slovenly, dirt-streaked wrapper and the shabby golf-cape that had slipped from her shoulders to the cot. She regarded me with pity for my ignorance, and then ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson

... kitten. This cursed climate has sapped it all out of them, I reckon. Monty and I clubbed together and bought presents for his Majesty, the boss here, and Monty wrote out this little document—sort of concession to us to sink mines and work them, you see. The old buffer signed it like winking, directly he spotted the rum, but we ain't quite happy about it; you see, it ain't to be supposed that he's got a conscience, and there's only us saw him put his mark there. We'll have to raise money to work the thing upon this, and maybe there'll be difficulties. So what ...
— A Millionaire of Yesterday • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... join the French family and enter into the spirit and body of that great civilization on their borders, whose language was that of their own literature. Belgium seemed to have no character. Its nationality was the artificial product of European politics; a buffer divided in itself, which would be neither French, nor German, nor ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer

... the Judge's anger at so trifling an error very ridiculous and insulting, and shall shoot him the first time he comes to town. An Independent Press is not to be muzzled by any absurd old buffer with a crooked nose, and a sister who is considerably more mother than wife. Not as long as we have our usual success in thinning out the judiciary with buck ...
— The Fiend's Delight • Dod Grile

... windward as if she had been struck by a heavy sea. In a moment she righted and shot ahead, and, turning, presented her port side to the enemy. Instant examination of the armour on her other side showed that the two banks of springs were uninjured, and that not an air-buffer had exploded or failed to spring back to ...
— The Great War Syndicate • Frank Stockton

... she whizzed backward, her vibrant muzzle a bare six inches from the shiny buffer, one of her flying feet slipped in a mud rut. Her balance gone, ...
— Further Adventures of Lad • Albert Payson Terhune

... towards Southun men; We hed to go sheers in preservin' the bellance: An' ez they seemed to feel they wuz wastin' their tellents 'Thout some un to kick, 't warn't more 'n proper, you know, Each should funnish his part; an' sence they found the toe, An' we wuzn't cherubs—wal, we found the buffer, For fear thet the Compromise ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various

... or other convenient revolving shaft is available, a buffer made of many thicknesses of cotton cloth is very valuable for polishing tools. The addition of a little tripoli greatly facilitates ...
— Handwork in Wood • William Noyes

... his thoughts. They could: and watch it all the way down, swallow a pin sometimes come out of the ribs years after, tour round the body changing biliary duct spleen squirting liver gastric juice coils of intestines like pipes. But the poor buffer would have to stand all the time with his insides ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce

... there has been a renewal of Turkey's vigor and prestige; then again its situation has been rendered yet more precarious. It has been a buffer between the clashing interests of the great powers. Speaking of Turkey's difficult position in this respect, the London Fortnightly Review, May, 1915, ...
— Our Day - In the Light of Prophecy • W. A. Spicer

... Wells, people made the best they could of him, though it was painfully apparent to the livery-stable keepers, and others, who had the best interest of the place at heart, that such a red-faced, gloveless, drab-breeched, mahogany-booted buffer, who would throw off at the right time, and who resolutely set his great stubbly-cheeked face against all show meets and social intercourse in the field, was not exactly the man for a civilized place. Whether time might ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees

... a lever: it must be rigid; otherwise it will bend, and power will be lost. Now, if the foot were a rigid lever, there would be missing two of its most useful qualities. It could no longer act as a spring or buffer to the body, nor could it adapt its sole to the various kinds of surfaces on which we have to tread or stand. Nature, with her usual ingenuity, has succeeded in combining those opposing qualities—rigidity, suppleness, and elasticity or springiness—by resorting to her favorite ...
— A Book of Exposition • Homer Heath Nugent

... centred for a time the whole British policy toward America. Pakenham, the British minister to Mexico, urged a British pressure on Mexico to forgo her plans of reconquering Texas, and strong British efforts to encourage Texas in maintaining her independence. His theory foreshadowed a powerful buffer Anglo-Saxon state, prohibiting American advance to the south-west, releasing Britain from dependence on American cotton, and ultimately, he hoped, leading Texas to abolish slavery, not yet so rooted as to be ineradicable. This ...
— Great Britain and the American Civil War • Ephraim Douglass Adams

... made to remove two provisions on which the French are most insistent: First, an international military staff to be prepared to use force against Germany if there were signs of military activity; second, the creation of an independent Rhenish Republic to act as a 'buffer' state. Of course the triple alliance would make ...
— The Peace Negotiations • Robert Lansing

... trailing wheels are formed of two 1/2 inch plates, with cast iron blocks between them to serve as guides. The ends of the rectangular frame are formed of plates 3/4 thick, and at the front end there is a buffer beam of oak 4-1/2 inches thick and 15 inches deep. The draw bolt is 2 inches diameter. There are two strong stays on each side, joining the barrel of the boiler to the inside framing, and one angle iron on each side joining ...
— A Catechism of the Steam Engine • John Bourne

... buffer would marry," he muttered, after about half an hour's revery. Alicia and my lady, the stepmother, will go at it hammer and tongs. I hope they won't quarrel in the hunting season, or say unpleasant things to each other at the dinner-table; ...
— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon



Words linked to "Buffer" :   power tool, implement, locomotive, engine, computing, chemical compound, memory device, buffer state, motorcar, memory cache, framework, random access memory, device, buffing wheel, keyboard buffer, read/write memory, compound, storage device, random memory, auto, cache, random-access memory, railway locomotive, zone, car, locomotive engine, chemistry, modify, chemical science, ram, machine, computer science, automobile



Copyright © 2024 e-Free Translation.com