Free TranslationFree Translation
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

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




Fraction   /frˈækʃən/   Listen
Fraction

verb
1.
Perform a division.  Synonym: divide.



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 |





"Fraction" Quotes from Famous Books



... said, shrinking to one side like a man in sudden pain, "the gentleman can't see how to reach that large door. A little more light, half an inch-not a fraction more!" ...
— No Clue - A Mystery Story • James Hay

... were situated on both banks of the Euphrates, principally on the right bank, between the Khabur and the Balikh, interspersed among the Sukhi, of whom they were perhaps merely a dissentient fraction. ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 7 (of 12) • G. Maspero

... the broker, fronting the gutted ruins where Bhanavar had been happy in her innocence with Almeryl, the mountain prince, her husband. Boolp was engaged haggling with a slave-merchant the price of a fair slave, and Ukleet said to him,'Yet awhile delay, O Boolp, ere you expend a fraction of treasure, for truly a mighty bargain of jewels is waiting for you at the palace of my lord the King. So come thither with all your money-bags of gold and silver, and your securities, and your bonds and dues in writing, for 'tis the favourite of the King requireth you to complete a bargain ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... asked it, first read aloud to beguile our ride across the great American desert, and finally printed because you wished a copy as a souvenir of our journeyings, no one can so naturally be called upon to stand sponsor to the little tale. Should the story but give its readers a fraction of the pleasure I owe to your kindness, ...
— The Great K. & A. Robbery • Paul Liechester Ford

... men, nor of the sinking of the only boat belonging to the submarine. His anger was aroused at the knowledge that once again his efforts to obtain fuel had been balked. The quantity contained in forty tins was a mere fraction of the amount he required in order to carry out his ambitious programme. Bitterly he realized that, like those of transgressors, the ways of ...
— The Submarine Hunters - A Story of the Naval Patrol Work in the Great War • Percy F. Westerman

... the ulterior objects of the enemy, by crippling the force upon which they depended. As will be seen in the sequel, Hotham, throughout his brief command as Hood's successor, suffered the consequences of permitting so important a fraction of the enemy's fleet to escape his grasp, when it was in his power to close ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan

... stood looking down at the completed roadway, the Roadmaker suddenly remembered his own slight years and the inconceivable fraction of time he had laboured for so wide a result, and there swept up to him across the level way a new knowledge of his relationship to all the past—that he was but the servant of those who had preceded him and had but brought into the light ...
— Christopher Hibbault, Roadmaker • Marguerite Bryant

... Leonore, and obtained the bunch. Who dares to say after that that women have no business ability nor shrewdness? It is true that she kissed the fraction returned before putting it in Peter's button-hole, which raises the question which had the best ...
— The Honorable Peter Stirling and What People Thought of Him • Paul Leicester Ford

... picked up the lantern, and a match that had been left handily near by. And so it took but a fraction of a minute for them to possess a light that would ...
— The Strange Cabin on Catamount Island • Lawrence J. Leslie

... guard a thousand times by my watch," said the Captain; "and I defy the devil to say that Hector MacTurk did not always discharge his duty to the twentieth part of the fraction of a second—it was my great grandmother, Lady Killbracklin's, and I will maintain its reputation against any timepiece that ever went ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott

... a brazen shout in their ears, they had a moment's glimpse of an interior of glittering plate-glass and rich morocco, and the magnificent motor-car, immense, breath-snatching, passionate, with its pilot tense and hugging his wheel, possessed all earth and air for the fraction of a second, flung an enveloping cloud of dust that blinded and enwrapped them utterly, and then dwindled to a speck in the far distance, changed back into a droning ...
— The Wind in the Willows • Kenneth Grahame

... functions, select as an area of self-government a region where one part is divided against another by passions, and, if you will, by prejudices, more violent, and more deeply-rooted than those which afflict any other fraction of the United Kingdom, choose that other fraction where, and ...
— Against Home Rule (1912) - The Case for the Union • Various

... separate out fractions that I can use. Platinum melts somewhere around seventeen-fifty, tantalum about twenty-nine hundred, and tungsten not until 'way up around thirty-three, or four hundred—and that, by the way, means lots of grief. Of course, each fraction will probably be an alloy of one kind or another, but I think maybe I'll be able to make ...
— Spacehounds of IPC • Edward Elmer Smith

... made my very heart shudder and my bones grind together in an agony. As I glanced up I had looked straight towards the last house in the row before me, and in an upper window of that house I had seen for some short fraction of a second a face. It was the face of a woman, and yet it was not human. You and I, Salisbury, have heard in our time, as we sat in our seats in church in sober English fashion, of a lust that cannot be satiated ...
— The House of Souls • Arthur Machen

... awful tragedy of it all! That the famous old town, quietly asleep in its plain, should be shattered and ruined; that so many hopes and ambitions can be blasted in so few hours; that young bodies can be crushed, in a fraction of a second, to masses of lifeless, bleeding pulp! The glorious tragedy of Ypres will never be written, for so many who could have spoken are dead, and so many who live will never speak—you can but guess their stories from the ...
— Mud and Khaki - Sketches from Flanders and France • Vernon Bartlett

... should call parent. Here was a clear example, not only of the abundance of life in the tropics, but of the keen competition. The jacana invariably lays four eggs, and the gallinule, at this latitude, six or eight, yet only a fraction of the young had survived ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe

... have just paid one hundred and sixty dollars for what will yield you two hundred and six dollars in six months,—for you must remember that you will get legal interest on the claim you have bought. Now this is a fraction over fifty-five per cent. per annum. What do you think of that for ...
— Finger Posts on the Way of Life • T. S. Arthur

... The fraction that could accurately show the relation of the conscious to the unconscious part of ourselves would have such a small numerator and such a huge denominator that we might well wonder where consciousness came in at all.[26] Some one has ...
— Outwitting Our Nerves - A Primer of Psychotherapy • Josephine A. Jackson and Helen M. Salisbury

... servants, carrying a candle, stepped into the passage. The light fell directly on the figures standing by the wall. The man was startled. So sudden an encounter was unusual, and in these days the unusual was dangerous. Only a fraction of time was necessary to bring him to this conclusion, but in it, Barrington had also reached a conclusion equally definite. As the man opened his mouth to call out, his throat was seized in a viselike grip and only the ghost of a sound gurgled and was lost. ...
— The Light That Lures • Percy Brebner

... sending a ball so as to strike the earth immediately before her, and a few inches below the surface. The instant this was done, another fired his bullet directly after, with such skill that it varied but the fraction of an inch from following directly in its path. The force with which these balls were discharged was such that the twelfth one would most assuredly take the life ...
— The Riflemen of the Miami • Edward S. Ellis

... at the speedometer, but I could feel each mile as it added itself to our pace. I felt this climb from ninety to ninety-one. Thickening the spark by a fraction, I brought it to ninety-two ... ninety-three.... In a quiet, steady voice, Piers began to give me the ...
— Jonah and Co. • Dornford Yates

... eight or nine days, according to your expertness,' was the reply. Robert did a little ciphering in his mind immediately. Three axes, plus twenty-seven days (minus Sundays), equal to about the chopping of ten acres and a fraction during the month of December. The calculation ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe

... experiences of ourselves or somebody else. And of the rare individuals who leave the well-trod paths of thought to think new thoughts, only a minutely small percentage think right. This minutely small fraction represents genius, the one man in a million or rather ten million, or, to be more accurate, the one ...
— The Scouts of Stonewall • Joseph A. Altsheler

... whole regions of the past and of leaping complacently over huge gaps in our memory and linking on conscious experience with conscious experience, involves an illusory sense of continuity, and so far of personal identity. Thus, our ordinary image of our past life, if only by omitting the very large fraction passed in sleep, in at least an approximately unconscious state, clearly contains an ...
— Illusions - A Psychological Study • James Sully

... Duchat had charge of the new institution of St. Vasili for hopeless idiots, I found a boy of eleven whom they called Stepan Borovitch. Since he was born, he had not seen, heard, spoken or thought. Nature had granted him, it was believed, a fraction of the sense of smell, and perhaps a fraction of the sense of taste, but of even this there was no positive ascertainment. Nature had walled in his soul most effectually. Occasional inarticulate murmurings, and an incessant knitting and kneading of the fingers were his only manifestations of ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 10 • Various

... adult world days passed before Oley's accidentally acquired pattern of nubilous information on the subject of shorts was enlarged. It was only days in the adult world, but in Oley's world each day was a mountainous fraction of an entire lifetime, into which came tumbling and jumbling—or were pulled—bits, pieces, oddments, landslides and acquisitions of information on every subject that he ran into, or that ran into him. Nobody had told Oley that acquiring information was his ...
— Poppa Needs Shorts • Leigh Richmond

... met with no resistance on his assumption of the throne, he had the hearty support of but a mere fraction of the English people, and his accession was the work of a few great Whig families, only. His rule was by no means popular, and his Dutch favourites were as much disliked, in England, as were James' French ...
— Orange and Green - A Tale of the Boyne and Limerick • G. A. Henty

... someone say that this is a mockery, a piece of special pleading, a giving of stones to those that ask for bread. Life is not life unless we can feel it, and a life limited to a knowledge of such fraction of our work as may happen to survive us is no true life in other people; salve it as we may, death is not life any more ...
— The Humour of Homer and Other Essays • Samuel Butler

... 342.] He was then nearly twice as strong as Lee, but he did not venture even upon a forced reconnoissance. The situation of the previous year was repeated. He was allowing himself to be besieged by a fraction of his own force. Grant would have put himself into the relation to McClellan which he sustained to Meade in 1864, and would have infused his own energy into the army. Halleck did not do this. It would seem that he ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V1 • Jacob Dolson Cox

... was having an average attendance of three, if one is allowed to stretch a fraction of a boy into a whole one, and a membership in the class of four. These boys had lost all interest in the Sunday school, and it was only that 'Dad said you must' that any of them came at all to ...
— The Boy and the Sunday School - A Manual of Principle and Method for the Work of the Sunday - School with Teen Age Boys • John L. Alexander

... special cases. There was, of course, little Mr. Spillikins, with his vacuous face and football hair, who was there, as everybody knew, on account of Dulphemia; and there was old Judge Longerstill, who sat leaning on a gold-headed stick with his head sideways, trying to hear some fraction of what was being said. He came to the gathering in the hope that it would prove a likely place for seconding a vote of thanks and saying a few words—half an hour's talk, perhaps—on the constitution of the United States. Failing that, he felt sure ...
— Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich • Stephen Leacock

... beings. I don't want people particularly. In some ways, Henry, I'm a humbug—I mean, I'm not what you all take me for. I'm not domestic, or very practical or sensible, really. And if I could calculate things, and use a telescope, and have to work out figures, and know to a fraction where I was wrong, I should be perfectly happy, and I believe I should ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf

... there is hardly evidence to show that the cause for which she is fighting has touched the imaginations or the feelings of more than a small fraction of the population. It is the war of a bureaucracy, and Russia may easily fail to develop either great leading, though her officers are instructed, or intelligent following of the leaders by the rank and file. But the Russian troops are brave and have always ...
— Britain at Bay • Spenser Wilkinson

... woman with her quaint dignity of another decade failed to move; she did not unbend so much as the fraction of an inch. But hard upon the heels of Caleb's last words the boy went forward unhesitatingly. Hat in the hand that balanced his big steel trap, he stopped in front of her ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans

... could tell you in five minutes just what it was; and the amount of information that man possessed about the next world was simply astonishing. He knew pretty nearly everything. I think he could tell you, within a fraction or two, just how much material it took to make wings for John the Baptist, and whether Paul sings bass or tenor. His presbytery says he is a most remarkable theologian—and I don't doubt it. According to the law of compensation, ...
— Men, Women, and Gods - And Other Lectures • Helen H. Gardener

... sent me to school, but I looked at the master, and saw that he was a smooth round ferule, or an improper noun, or a vulgar fraction, and refused to obey him. Or he was a piece of string, a rag, a willow-wand, and I had a contemptuous pity. But one was a well of cool, deep water, and looking suddenly in, one day, I saw ...
— Prue and I • George William Curtis

... are a very real step in advance. The numbers of your school show that there is a considerable and increasing fraction of residents in Bath who do care for the intellectual quality of the education of their girls; and the report of the examiners is a most satisfactory guarantee that the instruction given here is thoroughly efficient along the whole line. Bath must be congratulated on its High School ...
— Three Addresses to Girls at School • James Maurice Wilson

... of that party should have thought of going back to seek her. But the female infant occupies an insignificant place among those uncivilized people: the birth of one of them is greeted with but a small fraction of the honours with which a male ...
— Owindia • Charlotte Selina Bompas

... railway carriages care for you?—do you think that the gentleman in the worsted wrapper is saying to his neighbor with the striped rug on his comfortable knees, "How grateful we ought to be for that fiery particle which is crackling and hissing under the boiler! It helps us on the fraction of an inch from Vauxhall to Putney?" Not a bit of it. Ten to one but he is saying—"Not sixteen miles an hour! What the deuce is ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various

... care of him," answered the trainer, without taking his eyes from the beast for the fraction of ...
— The Circus Boys on the Flying Rings • Edgar B. P. Darlington

... relation like the Golden Section, where the smaller is to the larger dimension as the larger is to the sum of both; or like that which obtains when different parts form a geometrical series, where each is smaller or larger than the preceding by some fraction of the latter. The relation between the length and breadth of the facade of the Ducal Palace in Florence illustrates the Golden Section; the heights of the stories of the Peller House in Nuremberg form a geometrical series. This type of harmony is ...
— The Principles Of Aesthetics • Dewitt H. Parker

... quick to comprehend the cruel words, and in an instant she had crumpled the anonymous scrawl in her hand. But she was the fraction of a second too late. Amy had ...
— The Outdoor Girls of Deepdale • Laura Lee Hope

... these incessant toils and agitations, does the Editor, dismissing all anger, see his otherwise robust health declining; some fraction of his allotted natural sleep nightly leaving him, and little but an inflamed nervous-system to be looked for. What is the use of health, or of life, if not to do some work therewith? And what work nobler than transplanting ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle

... all which is not actually present to the mind—and the present is an infinitesimal fraction of knowledge—is reproduced by the memory, and this is effected by the molecular movements of the human brain, and by what may be called the ethereal modifications which took place when the sensations, perceptions, and acts first occurred. If the cells vibrate, and the ...
— Myth and Science - An Essay • Tito Vignoli

... "Tableau des progres de l'esprit humain," the tenth epoch. "The methods of the mathematical sciences, applied to new objects, have opened new roads to the moral and political sciences."—Cf. Rousseau, in the "Contrat Social," the mathematical calculation of the fraction of sovereignty to which each individual ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine

... community. They divided the property in 1860, when one faction continued the community with its share. In 1861 this party also broke up, separating into three divisions. In 1862 these again divided the property after numerous lawsuits. A small fraction, I believe, still continues a community on the ruins. In this community the families lived separately, but ate all together. They had no president or single head, the business being transacted by a board of trustees. Their ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, October, 1877, Vol. XX. No. 118 • Various

... whim. With few exceptions they probably admitted the logic of the then accepted syllogism,—democracy, anarchy, despotism. But this formula was framed upon the experience of small cities shut up to stew within their narrow walls, where the number of citizens made but an inconsiderable fraction of the inhabitants, where every passion was reverberated from house to house and from man to man with gathering rumor till every impulse became gregarious and therefore inconsiderate, and every popular assembly needed but an infusion of eloquent sophistry to turn it into a mob, all ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various

... the proportion now existing in it between the aggregating power, and the power that has opposed aggregation. On making the requisite calculations, a remarkable harmony with this inference comes out. The following table shows what fraction the centrifugal force is of the centripetal force in every case; and the relation which that fraction bears to the number ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer

... committed? Their business was with the innkeeper; he had omitted to fix a lantern at his door! He hated the French like a true Corsican. He would not pay even decent respect to the officers, his guests, and boasted of starving them to the last fraction his contract for the mess allowed; while nothing was good ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester

... For a fraction of a second McRae hesitated. Then he threw doubt to the winds and gripped Joe's hand with a heartiness that warmed ...
— Baseball Joe Around the World - Pitching on a Grand Tour • Lester Chadwick

... evolution of the religious life of the world threatened the stability of truth? There never was a time on earth when there was such a passion for truth as there is today. What means all this intense activity of the scientific world? these men that devote their lives to some little fraction of the universe which they study through their microscope, not for pay, to find one little fragment of the truth of God; these critics that are rummaging the dust-heaps of the ages in the hope that they may find one little, ...
— Our Unitarian Gospel • Minot Savage

... other's commercial constituencies, as very few visitors would traverse the Atlantic: they could reach only the people of the United States. This difficulty must interfere—though much less now than twenty years ago, when the means of ocean-travel were but a fraction of what they are at present—with the strictly international complexion of any exposition in this country. If, however—as we are already assured beyond peradventure will be the case with the Centennial—our neighbors over the way send us a full representation of their products, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. XVII, No. 99, March, 1876 • Various

... upon Louis Riel convicted of high treason was allowed to be carried into execution.' Scarcely were the words out of his mouth before Sir Hector Langevin rose, anticipating Blake, the leader of the Opposition, by a fraction of a second, and moved the 'previous question,' {133} thus shutting off all amendments, and compelling a vote to be taken on the resolution as it stood. The Opposition had naturally counted upon having an opportunity ...
— The Day of Sir John Macdonald - A Chronicle of the First Prime Minister of the Dominion • Joseph Pope

... all.—No woman need despair,—especially if she has a house over her, and a snug little property. A worthy man, a former missionary, of the best principles, but of a slightly jocose and good-humored habit, thought that he could piece his widowed years with the not insignificant fraction of life left to Miss Silence, to their mutual advantage. He came to the village, therefore, where Father Pemberton was very glad to have him supply the pulpit in the place of his unfortunate disabled colleague. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various

... the front of the poop, against which it broke with terrific violence, smashing in the entire front of the structure, as I judged by the tremendous crashing of timber that instantly followed. Checked for the fraction of an instant by its impact with the poop, the sea piled itself up in a sort of wall, and then came surging and foaming along the deck toward me. I saw that it would inevitably sweep me off my feet, so, to avoid being dashed ...
— The Castaways • Harry Collingwood

... infantile whistle that contrasts strongly with the loud, demoniac yell that makes a residence near a railway or a depot, in this country, so unbearable. The trains themselves move with wonderful smoothness and celerity, making a mere fraction of the racket made by our flying palaces as they go swaying and jolting over our ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs

... Cabool. And why? The pomp, the procession of the misery, lasted through six weeks in the Napoleon case, through six days in the English case. Of the French host there had been originally 450,000 fighting men; of the English, exactly that same amount read as the numerator of a fraction whose denominator was 100. Forty-five myriads had been the French; forty-five hundreds the English. And yet so mighty is the power of any thing moral, because shadowy and illimitable, so potent to magnify and unvulgarize any interest, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various

... second and all that follow after. But suppose, for argument's sake, that the man should skip one of these acts; an apparently trifling one, for instance; suppose that it had been appointed that on a certain day, at a certain hour and minute and second and fraction of a second he should go to the well, and he didn't go. That man's career would change utterly, from that moment; thence to the grave it would be wholly different from the career which his first act as a child had arranged for him. Indeed, ...
— The Mysterious Stranger and Other Stories • Mark Twain

... truth about the medical art? That by far the largest number of diseases which physicians are called upon to treat will get well at any rate, even in spite of reasonably bad treatment. That of the other fraction, a certain number will certainly die, whatever is done. That there remains a small number of cases where the life of the patient depends on the skill of the physician. That drugs now and then save life; that they often ...
— Mastery of Self • Frank Channing Haddock

... make. The Savage, shooting an odd caliber cartridge, had been distrusted because of that fact, the men of the country fearing that they would have difficulty in procuring shells of such an unusual caliber. Unable to sell it, he had finally parted with it for a mere fraction of its value to one who would chance its inconvenience. The man who possessed it had been known far and wide and, at that time, he was the sole owner of such a rifle in all ...
— Louisiana Lou • William West Winter

... when we take into our consciousness the truth that only complementaries have the power to act and react, without change, or loss. Equilibrium is maintained by a perfect balance of two forces; if one force be ever so small a fraction less than the other, perfect balance ...
— Sex=The Unknown Quantity - The Spiritual Function of Sex • Ali Nomad

... will be bounded by academic conventionalities in such a cast-iron fashion that it would, you are well aware, waste your time to attempt to extend its boundaries by the fraction of an inch. If you say anything yourself out of the beaten track, you know that you will be looked down upon as a fool or a faddist. The Eton stamp will be upon his dress and manners; the Cambridge brand seared into every crevice of his mind. There ...
— The Curse of Education • Harold E. Gorst

... were expressed and declared the conditions on which a nation might wish to constitute itself a body politic: and that the end of that constitution, is the general good of each individual, who is to enter into that social compact. How then dares a mere fraction of the great Portuguese nation, without waiting for the conclusion of this solemn national compact, attack the general good of the principal part of the same, and such is the vast and rich kingdom of Brazil; dividing it into miserable fragments, and, in a word, attempting to tear from its ...
— Journal of a Voyage to Brazil - And Residence There During Part of the Years 1821, 1822, 1823 • Maria Graham

... it had better come out. This business ought to be in the hands of the church board; you young folks have no Scriptural rights to speak on the subject at all." The three young Christians looked at Uncle Bobbie, whose left eye remained closed for just the fraction of a second, and the speaker wondered at the confident smile with which his words were received. "There's not one of you that has the proper qualifications for an elder or a deacon," he continued. "You girls have no right to have the oversight ...
— That Printer of Udell's • Harold Bell Wright

... For just the fraction of a moment longer she was frightened and puzzled by Lewis's dumfounded mien; then her mind harked back for the clue and got it. No one had to tell her that the game was up so far as Lewis was concerned. She knew it. Her face suddenly crinkled up with mirth. With a peal of laughter, ...
— Through stained glass • George Agnew Chamberlain

... by the release of a mighty spring. Quick as a flash the grizzly shrank backward upon his haunches and swept up a huge black paw to parry the assault. But he was not quite quick enough. The puma's spring overreached his guard. She landed fairly upon his back, facing his tail; but in the fraction of a second she had whirled about and was tearing at his throat with teeth and claws, while the terrible talons of her hinder ...
— Kings in Exile • Sir Charles George Douglas Roberts

... ranked even with Boswell's "Johnson." It reveals to the reader the inmost personality of the man himself, and no life from first to last could better afford such complete revelation. Moreover, the "Life" was a labour of love, Lockhart himself receiving not a fraction of its very considerable proceeds, but resigning them absolutely to Scott's creditors. Published in seven volumes in 1838, in every respect it is the greatest of all Lockhart's books. Lockhart ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various

... refused to become a party leader. He saved Germany from a serious danger to which almost every other country in Europe which has attempted to adopt English institutions has fallen a victim—the sacrifice of national welfare to the integrity and power of a Parliamentary fraction. His desire was a strong and determined Government, zealously working for the benefit of all classes, quick to see and foresee present and future evil; he regarded not the personal wishes of individuals, but looked only in each matter ...
— Bismarck and the Foundation of the German Empire • James Wycliffe Headlam

... was a born coward. I've seen him start at the distant sound of guns long before we got near the front, and he was nervous at going out alone at night about the camp. The men ragged him, but he was such a friendly rascal and so willing to take over others' work that he got along with a fraction of the persecution most of his sort would have had. I wondered sometimes what would happen to the poor little devil when actual fighting came. Would it be 'C'est bien, Mon Capitaine,' at the order to go over the top, or would the terrible force of fear be ...
— Joy in the Morning • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews

... quick as a cat, had thrown himself upon the ground with Eli's last count. Like the loon that dives at the flash of the hunter's gun, he was a fraction of a second quicker than Eli. Now, lying prone, his rifle at his shoulder, he had Eli covered, and the chamber of Eli's ...
— Troop One of the Labrador • Dillon Wallace

... mystery or the infinite, we shall not lose a single tributary of the unknown and unknowable by at last restoring the great river to its primitive bed; nor shall we have closed a single road that leads to the infinite, or lessened by the minutest fraction the most contested of veritable mysteries. Whatever we take from the skies we find again in the heart of man. But, mystery for mystery, let us prefer the one that is certain to the one that is doubtful, the one that is near to the one that is far, the one that is in us and of us to the harmful ...
— The Buried Temple • Maurice Maeterlinck

... from the Park moved onward. High overhead there was a dull muttering like faraway thunder, but it was planes with filled bomb racks circling above the starlit land. There were men in those planes who ached to dive down and destroy this separated fraction of an invasion. But there were firm orders from the Pentagon. So long as the invaders killed nobody, they were not to be attacked. There was reason for the order in the desire of the government to be on friendly terms with a race which could travel between ...
— Operation Terror • William Fitzgerald Jenkins

... permit yourself to harbour for a moment, my dear," he answered. "Don't even for a fraction of time allow yourself to think that my old friend ...
— The Herapath Property • J. S. Fletcher

... and a fraction, as 4-1/2, to fractional form, multiply the whole number by the denominator, add the numerator and write the result over the denominator. Thus, 4 X 2 8 9 ...
— Burroughs' Encyclopaedia of Astounding Facts and Useful Information, 1889 • Barkham Burroughs

... yet climbed with intelligent independence as a perfect individual, capable of separate existence whenever it should wish or be compelled to withdraw from the little clan. The domestic sheep, on the contrary, is only a fraction of an animal, a whole flock being required to form an individual, just as numerous flowerets are required to make ...
— The Mountains of California • John Muir

... a vulgar fraction, say 1/17, to a decimal fraction, we proceed as below, adding as many noughts to the dividend as we like until there is no remainder, or until we get a recurring series of figures, or until we have carried it as far as we require, since every additional figure in ...
— The Canterbury Puzzles - And Other Curious Problems • Henry Ernest Dudeney

... in reality the beauty which Dorothy by a fraction fell short of being, suffered by comparison with her sister. She was desperately tired—that was in her smile. But there was something else: a singular preoccupation which was nearly akin to listlessness. That was in the droop of her eyelids, in the eloquently ...
— The Lieutenant-Governor • Guy Wetmore Carryl

... special agent returned but little wiser for the trip, and concluded, as the best that could be done under the circumstances, to allow the bird to flutter a little longer before renewing the hunt. Meanwhile the thief grew more reckless, and the papers that came to Mr. Furay, though covering a fraction only of the depredations, located the thief on the lower end of the route, within ...
— The Lock and Key Library/Real Life #2 • Julian Hawthorne

... Times, existing as an organ of the common, satisfied, well-to-do Englishman, and for as much play of mind as may suit its being that. And so on through all the various fractions, political and religious, of our society; every fraction has, as such, its organ of criticism, but the notion of combining all fractions in the common pleasure of a free disinterested play of mind meets with no favor. Directly this play of mind wants to have more scope, and to forget the pressure of practical considerations ...
— Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold

... agony, men run after them to cut their throats, followed by others with great pails to catch the blood. Much of the warm blood is spilt over the men or on the floors; but this is of no consequence, if but a small fraction of a minute is economised. In a short time, whether the animal has bled long enough or not, it reaches the lowest and darkest and worst ventilated portion of the gloomy building, where it is disembowelled. The walls and floors are caked with blood, the place is filthy, there is no proper ...
— The Chemistry of Food and Nutrition • A. W. Duncan

... eyebrows the fraction of an inch, meaning to say he didn't know but at the same time ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance

... such safe matters as the disposal of the furniture they never ceased secretly to take stock of each other. What people say to each other at any time only represents a fraction of the intercourse that is taking place. Under cover of the most trifling conversation there may be exciting reconnaisances going on, scout-work and even pitched ...
— The Deaves Affair • Hulbert Footner

... had been hovering on the outskirts of this duel, inclined her head the fraction of an inch, but Alice put out her hand with her ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... see only that side of him is to think, as the shepherd boy piped, 'as though' you will 'never grow old.' Does he never appeal to you with any more human significance, a significance tearful and uncomfortably symbolic? Or are you so entirely that tailor's fraction of manhood, the fin de siecle type, that your ninth part does not include a heart and ...
— Prose Fancies • Richard Le Gallienne

... stunned. The first thing he thought of was his mother; but his call sounded hollow and unnatural and there was no response. He had been out-generaled, vanquished and insulted by a skunk, a creature but a fraction his size, and the realization of it hurt. His good opinion of himself fell, and he needed sympathy and encouragement as he had never needed them before. But they were not forthcoming. He was alone in the world and must fight ...
— The Black Phantom • Leo Edward Miller

... his sense of touch besides is laboriously refined. Without the gift of sight there must always be (so I had been forced to decide) a black gaping hiatus which it seemed that no human power could fill. Of my helpers, till yesterday, Sadi was the only one who showed the least fraction of talent; yet even his best efforts could scarcely throw a glimmer ...
— The Recipe for Diamonds • Charles John Cutcliffe Wright Hyne

... and poked at it. The sharp tip penetrated for a fraction of an inch, then stopped. It was either rock or metal, and judging from the shape, it was unlikely that it was rock. He put his knife under it and pried, and the ...
— The Wailing Octopus • Harold Leland Goodwin

... a thing, he ain't the man to do it by halves. I've kept a close watch upon Mr. Carrington; and with the exception of his parleyvous francais-ing with that sharp-nosed, shabby-genteel lady- companion of Madame Durski's, there's very few of his goings-on I haven't been able to reckon up to a fraction. No, my lady, there's some one else in this business; and who that some one else is, it'll be my duty to find out. But I can't do anything till I get on the ground. When I get on the ground, and have had time to look about me, I shall be able ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon

... ground for him. The affairs of that unhappy institution were being wound up. Considering the fact that the stockholders had been assessed dollar for dollar of their holdings, and that, even with this assessment added to the assets, the depositors would get back only a fraction of their money, Vaniman could scarcely marvel at the hard looks and the muttered words he met up with on ...
— When Egypt Went Broke • Holman Day

... ewe was bleeding about the head, and would, of course, if she had been left to fight it out, have been worsted in a very short time. But the enemy had felt the weight of her blows upon his ribs, and had learned his lesson. For just a fraction of a second he turned, and defied the ram with a screeching snarl. But when that horned, black, battering head pitched forward at him he bounded aside like a furry gray ball and clambered to the top of the rock. Here he crouched for some moments, snarling viciously, his tufted ears set back ...
— The Watchers of the Trails - A Book of Animal Life • Charles G. D. Roberts

... In writing on a former day, One little matter I forgot to say; I now inform you in a single line, On Thursday next our purpose is to dine. The act of feeding, as you understand, Is but a fraction of the work in hand; Its nobler half is that ethereal meat The papers call 'the intellectual treat;' Songs, speeches, toasts, around the festive board Drowned in the juice the College pumps afford; For only water flanks our knives and forks, So, sink ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... costly paraphernalia of the Inquisition? After all, no matter how ingeniously inventive might be their persecutors, they could only be made to endure terminable and comparatively insignificant torments, not a millionth millionth fraction of eternity! ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards

... the artist slipped. For a fraction of a second, his form half straightened and he stood nearly erect; then, as a weed cut by the sharp scythe of a mower falls, he fell; his body whirling downward toward the trees and rocks below. The ...
— The Eyes of the World • Harold Bell Wright

... from the floor and propelled me toward the half shattered door. Dimly I noted that the same thing had happened to Hawkins. For the tiniest fraction of a second he seemed to be floating horizontally in the air. Then I felt my head collide with wood; the door parted, and I ...
— Mr. Hawkins' Humorous Adventures • Edgar Franklin

... finally dismiss any idea—I won't say hope—that I might after all "turn up" for Xmas. However, my thoughts will be with you, and you have my best wishes for a really festive day. Mind that none of my nephews or nieces expend any fraction of their guineas ...
— A Thin Ghost and Others • M. R. (Montague Rhodes) James

... welcome announcement that broke our suspense. I glanced at Stubberud and saw his face expanding into its most amiable smile. Though I had not much doubt of the correctness of Johansen's statement, I borrowed his glass, and a fraction of a second was enough to convince me. That ship was easily recognized; she was our own old Fram safely ...
— The South Pole, Volumes 1 and 2 • Roald Amundsen

... progression—but still, he was not omnipotent. Wilkes, that epitome of all manner of ugliness, often boasted that he was only an hour behind the handsomest man that ever existed, so far as regarded his position with the fair. Rip was but twenty-five minutes and a fraction. In ten minutes he would talk the generality of women into a good opinion of themselves—an easy matter, some may think, for the ladies have one ready made; but it is a different thing from having it and daring to own it. In ten minutes he would make his listener, by some act or word, ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard

... unsounded depths, must have felt this isolation in all its tragic completeness. There may have been moments when the soul of Washington or Laurens brushed his own. Assuredly no woman companioned it for a fraction of a second. Whatever his last thoughts, no man has met his end with ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton

... good that nearly all our people are taught to read, but it is a small fraction of the community that reads to much good purpose. Children, so soon as they have acquired the use of the alphabet, are inundated with little juvenile stories, some of them good, but most of them silly, and many vulgar. As they grow older, successions ...
— The Elements of Character • Mary G. Chandler

... the bottle is filled from it, and quickly weighed. If the balance-room is cooler than the water, the latter will draw back into the bottle, and a few small bubbles of air will enter; but even in extreme cases this will only increase the weight by a very small fraction of a milligram. There is more trouble caused when the room is warmer, for the liquid then expands and protrudes as a drop resting on the top of the stopper. There will in this case be loss by evaporation, which in the case ...
— A Textbook of Assaying: For the Use of Those Connected with Mines. • Cornelius Beringer and John Jacob Beringer

... Max had figured nicely, and knew to a fraction of a second just when he must make his clutch for the swimmer. Shack saw what was coming, and as though ready to give up and sink if this effort to save him failed, he threw out one of his hands ...
— Afloat on the Flood • Lawrence J. Leslie

... He that sets the days a-going in consequence of His being identical with the Sun; He that is the destroyer of all-destroying Time itself; He that conveys the libations poured on the sacred fire unto those for whom they are intended; (or, He that bears the universe, placing it on only a minute fraction of His body); He that has no beginning; (or, He that has no fixed habitation) He that upholds the Earth in space (in the form of Sesha, or, rescues her in the form of the mighty boar or supports her as a subtil pervader) (CCXXVII—CCXXXV); He that is exceedingly inclined to grace, insomuch ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli

... Grenada, where a vessel can be secure during the hurricane months. These tempests, when blowing from any quarter, seem to defy all the efforts of man to withstand their violence; twist the ships from their anchors, force them on the reefs or drive them out to sea, sometimes without ballast or the fraction of a crew. ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper

... elderly man started to cross the road, and on the sound of the horn stood stock still, with resentful defiance on his weather-beaten face. McKeogh jammed on the brakes. The car halted. But the infinitesimal fraction of a second before it came to a dead stop the wing over the near front wheel touched the elderly person and down he went on the ground. I leaped from the car, to be instantly surrounded by an infuriated crowd, which seemed to gather from all the quarters ...
— The Joyous Adventures of Aristide Pujol • William J. Locke

... a workhouse orphan. No chance-child was he, for he could trace his genealogy all the way back to his parents, who lived hard by; his mother being a washerwoman, and his father a drunken soldier, discharged with a wooden leg, and a diurnal pension of twopence-halfpenny and an unstateable fraction. The shop-boys in the neighbourhood had long been in the habit of branding Noah in the public streets, with the ignominious epithets of 'leathers,' 'charity,' and the like; and Noah had bourne them without reply. But, now that fortune had cast in his way a nameless ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens

... enough, though drinking freely. All without exception were armed, and the weapons peeped from their holsters within easy reach. Among these reckless and, in many cases lawless, dwellers on the borderland of civilization, the difference of a fraction of a second in offense or defense might mean the difference between life ...
— Bert Wilson in the Rockies • J. W. Duffield

... of a few miles brought us in sight of the village, which was situated in a beautiful grove on the bank of the stream up which we had been marching. It consisted of upwards of three hundred lodges, a small fraction over half belonging to the Cheyennes, the remainder to the Sioux. Like all Indian encampments, the ground chosen was a most romantic spot, and at the same time fulfilled in every respect the requirements of a good camping-ground; wood, water, and grass were abundant. The village was ...
— The Old Santa Fe Trail - The Story of a Great Highway • Henry Inman

... untrue. George's political economy was old-fashioned or absurd; and his solution of the problem of poverty could not withstand the simplest criticism. Taxation to extinction of the rent of English land would only affect a small fraction of England's wealth. ...
— The History of the Fabian Society • Edward R. Pease

... wood, seeking poetical inspiration; no more necessity to go about, with downcast look, among the insolent farmers, in that most humiliating of all pursuits, asking for work. A charm to even the coarsest minds, the overwhelming consciousness! of being owner of a fraction of the surface of great mother earth, had countless allurements to the poet. He knew it would not only raise him in the world, but would make him a better, a nobler, a wiser man. Yet for all that, and though ...
— The Life of John Clare • Frederick Martin

... it seemed certain to pass over the center of the plate, and it would not do to let it pass. It was speedy, and the batter was forced to make up his mind in a fraction ...
— Frank Merriwell at Yale • Burt L. Standish

... might talk to you and take some of my time with you away from me." Her eyes sparkled into his for the merest fraction of a second, and she laughed half mockingly. Then she dropped his lapel and they proceeded. She did not put the white rose in ...
— The Gentleman From Indiana • Booth Tarkington

... was the strength of the planting interest is its weakness in the new order of things. Given such physical force, given the moral and physical strength which comes with national protection, and given the immense power which belongs to the wish for peace, and the "tenth part" will soon find its fraction becoming larger and more respectable by accretions at home and by emigration from other States. We shall soon learn that there is next to nobody who really favored this thing in the beginning. They will tell us that they all stood for their old State flag, and that they will be glad to stand for ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various

... she looked only at him, her eyes filmy with love, the crooked smile upon her face so happy that it could not stand still? Her arms made a slight gesture towards him; her hands were open; she was giving herself to him. She could not see. For a fraction of time the space between them seemed to be annihilated. His arms were closing round her. Then she knew that ...
— Tommy and Grizel • J.M. Barrie

... body tightened. He was positive that he had caught the outline of a human head and shoulders in the foliage. His finger pressed gently against the trigger of his Winchester. Before he breathed again he would have fired. But a shot from the foliage beat him out by the fraction of a second. In that precious time lost, his enemy's bullet entered the edge of his kit—and came through. He felt the shock of it, and in the infinitesimal space between the physical impact and the mental effect of shock his brain told him the horrible thing had happened. It was ...
— The Flaming Forest • James Oliver Curwood

... terrible, but the whole of the events now to be described were fought under far worse conditions. No trenches or dugouts were available for sheltering the troops in the battle area, of whom only a small fraction could be accommodated in such pill-boxes as remained intact. The corduroy paths by which alone rations and stores could be brought up were gassed and shelled night and day; one false step was to be engulfed sometimes beyond ...
— The War Service of the 1/4 Royal Berkshire Regiment (T. F.) • Charles Robert Mowbray Fraser Cruttwell

... which you ask a few remarks is in relation to the early spread of Christianity. Mr. Newman makes easy work of this great problem. He says, "Before Constantine, Christians were but a small fraction of the empire ..... In fact, it was the Christian soldiers in Constanline's army who conquered the empire ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers

... religious and piously befriended individuals, the other of those who were remarkably cold-hearted and neglected; and that, then, an honest comparison of their respective periods of treatment, and the result, would manifest a distinct proof of the efficacy of prayer, if it existed to even a minute fraction of the amount that religious teachers exhort us to believe.' Evidently, he imagines that it would be sufficient for the hospital authorities to advertise—not of course, in the 'Times,' but in the 'Record'—and ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton

... a sudden surge of joy and then like a face in a motion-picture the aura over the bed faded out; the dynamic shadow by the window, that was as near as he could name it, remained for the fraction of a moment and then the breeze seemed to lift it swiftly out of the room. He clinched his hands in quick ecstatic excitement... the ...
— This Side of Paradise • F. Scott Fitzgerald

... forms and degrees of dissipation until they are utterly incapacitated for one honest day's work; yet they do not hesitate to take a full day's wages, and would consider themselves wronged were the smallest fraction withheld." ...
— At the Time Appointed • A. Maynard Barbour

... of coasts and rivers is enthralling to the eye; and to hit, in a map, upon some place you have heard of before, makes history a new possession. But we thumbed our charts, on these evenings, with the blankest unconcern. We cared not a fraction for this place or that. We stared at the sheet as children listen to their rattle; and read the names of towns or villages to forget them again at once. We had no romance in the matter; there was nobody so fancy-free. If you had taken the maps away while we were studying them most intently, ...
— An Inland Voyage • Robert Louis Stevenson

... he, "but the week's wages was always gone by Thursday." Many men, however, who make a boast of turning over unbroken pay envelopes to their wives borrow back so much in daily advances that their net contribution is only a fraction of their wages. ...
— Broken Homes - A Study of Family Desertion and its Social Treatment • Joanna C. Colcord

... the fraction of a second, all would have been lost, as on Astor's ship a few years later; but before the savages had time for any concerted signal, he had seized the speaker by the scruff of the neck, and tossed him into the sea. In a second every savage had scuttled over decks; but the scalp of Kendrick's ...
— Vikings of the Pacific - The Adventures of the Explorers who Came from the West, Eastward • Agnes C. Laut

... that Marjorie's letter to Private Hargreaves had been written in an excess of patriotism, she made her feel the ban of her displeasure. She received her coldly when she brought her home letters to be stamped, stopped her exeat, and did not remit a fraction of her imposition. She considered she had gauged Marjorie's character—that thoughtless impulsiveness was one of her gravest faults, and that it would be well to teach her a lesson which she would remember for some time. Marjorie's hot spirits chafed against her punishment. It was terribly hard ...
— A Patriotic Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil

... fraction of an hour you choose. The idea of the sand glass was not entirely new, because some form of running sand had long before been used in the Far East. But the sand glass as we know it was new to the European world, and you cannot but agree it was ...
— Christopher and the Clockmakers • Sara Ware Bassett

... certainty and the lesser demonstration to prove the 108:15 greater, as the product of three multiplied by three, equalling nine, proves conclusively that three times three duodecillions must be nine duodecillions, - not 108:18 a fraction more, ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy

... to him. For a moment she did not shift her position the least fraction of an inch, but sat very still, leaning forward in her chair, facing the banker. Then after a little when it was evident that Templeton was going to say nothing more she turned slowly to the new comer, her lashes ...
— Six Feet Four • Jackson Gregory

... was drooping and she walked with a listless air. Now, as I watched I forgot everything but that she looked sad, and troubled, and more beautiful than ever, and that I loved her. Instinctively I rose, lifting my cap. She started, and for the fraction of a second her eyes looked into mine, then she passed serenely on her way. I might have been a stick or stone for all the further notice ...
— My Lady Caprice • Jeffrey Farnol

... megohms) in comparison with which the internal resistance of the cell is negligible. The fact that the introduction of the reagent did not produce any variation in the total resistance of the circuit was demonstrated by taking two deflections, due to a definite fraction of a volt, before and after the introduction of the reagent. These deflections were ...
— Response in the Living and Non-Living • Jagadis Chunder Bose

... of Paris contains over four hundred thousand volumes and pamphlets on French history alone. The output of historic works in all languages approaches ten thousand volumes every year. No scholar, even, can peruse more than the smallest fraction of this enormously increasing mass. Herodotus is forgotten, Livy remains to most of us but a recollection of our school-days, and Thucydides has become an ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various

... persistent and thoroughly equipped warrior in our political lists. There is not a square foot of New York City that it does not know. On the day before election it is able always to tell within a fraction the number of votes it will poll. Every member is forced to go to his voting place and deposit his ballot. The political preference of every man in every precinct of every ward is known. Its agents are everywhere and always at work. It spends money ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann

... that the heavy goggles slipped a fraction of an inch along his nose, the first time she had ever seen them in any degree misplaced. She was herself ...
— The Unspeakable Perk • Samuel Hopkins Adams

... head—Bobby never lost his head in an emergency. He thought of everything. He feared there was not time to reload, but it was the only thing to do. As he ran he drew two shells, loaded with ball, from his pocket. For the fraction of a minute he halted, "broke" his gun, dropped the shells into place, snapped the gun back and threw it to his shoulder, but in the brief interval that had elapsed the bear and Jimmy had so far gained upon him that the distance between him and the bear loomed up before him now ...
— Bobby of the Labrador • Dillon Wallace

... a fraction of a pessimist among them! How well they understand life! A beautiful convent, beautiful nature, good wine and good cheer, neither disturbance nor care; neither wife nor children; and when they leave the world, heaven specially created for them, seraphim waiting for them ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume VI • Various

... accented or with an unaccented syllable. See Ex. 10. Hence the significant rule, that a melodic member may begin at any part of a measure, upon an accented or an unaccented beat, or upon any fraction ...
— Lessons in Music Form - A Manual of Analysis of All the Structural Factors and - Designs Employed in Musical Composition • Percy Goetschius

... exact fraction of a second it would take to cook a couple of eggs?" laughed Ardan. "I should as soon believe in one calculation as in the other.—But—by the by—why does not such extreme heat cook us all up like ...
— All Around the Moon • Jules Verne

... nevertheless in spite of her inattention, plying and moulding somewhere deep below her thrilling joy. The thought was, that she must not show Keith that she loved him, because while she knew—she felt sure—that He loved her, she must not be the smallest fraction of time before him in confession. She was too proud for that. He would tell her that he loved her; and the spell would be broken. Her shyness would be gone; her bravado immediately unnecessary. But until ...
— Nocturne • Frank Swinnerton

... out forty yards down below us on the rocks. I did not see him actually hit a bird, but his precision was amazing, for almost invariably the missile, thrown from such a distance at so minute an object, appeared to graze the feathers and to miss killing by but a fraction of an inch. ...
— Far Away and Long Ago • W. H. Hudson



Words linked to "Fraction" :   part, rational number, arithmetic, chemical substance, figure, portion, fixed-point part, work out, rational, chemical, simple fraction, compound fraction, cypher, reckon, halve, quarter, cipher, multiply, proper fraction, calculate, complex fraction, compute, mantissa, continued fraction



Copyright © 2024 e-Free Translation.com