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Capillary   Listen
adjective
Capillary  adj.  
1.
Resembling a hair; fine; minute; very slender; having minute tubes or interspaces; having very small bore; as, the capillary vessels of animals and plants.
2.
Pertaining to capillary tubes or vessels; as, capillary action.
Capillary attraction, Capillary repulsion, the apparent attraction or repulsion between a solid and liquid caused by capillarity. See Capillarity, and Attraction.
Capillarity tubes. See the Note under Capillarity.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Capillary" Quotes from Famous Books



... perceived the welcome controversy to which it was giving rise, Georgie was very near calling down benedictions on his youthful hairs. With great presence of mind he recovered his good-humour, and diverted the talk further and further into its capillary course. He backed his moustache against Duffield's and Raggles' spliced together, he upbraided them with envy, and called Webster to witness that the pimple on Raggles' lip, which he claimed as the forerunner of his crop, had ...
— Follow My leader - The Boys of Templeton • Talbot Baines Reed

... drawer and from a number of capillary pipettes selected a plain capillary tube of glass. He held it in the flame of a burner until it was red hot. Then carefully he drew out one end of the tube until it was hair fine. Again he heated the other end, but this time he let the end alone, except that he allowed ...
— The Treasure-Train • Arthur B. Reeve

... natural gestures of all kinds. In themselves, these are not expressive. They are organic parts of a person's attitude. One does not blush to show modesty or embarrassment to others, but because the capillary circulation alters in response to stimuli. But others use the blush, or a slightly perceptible tightening of the muscles of a person with whom they are associated, as a sign of the state in which that person finds himself, ...
— Democracy and Education • John Dewey

... abdomen, the omentum was found dark and shrunk. Stomach contracted. Intestines distended, shining, and very vascular, with capillary injection when viewed externally. The peritoneal covering of the stomach showed ...
— North American Medical and Surgical Journal, Vol. 2, No. 3, July, 1826 • Various

... about his smooth, firm mouth. What at once attracted attention was his hair which was dark and unusually thick and bushy and a peculiar characteristic was a solitary white lock in the center of his forehead. Such a phenomenon of the capillary glands was not uncommon, but as a rule, the white hair is on the side of or at the back of the head. In Kenneth's case, it was the very center of the forehead and imparted to his face ...
— The Mask - A Story of Love and Adventure • Arthur Hornblow

... account of each person's fortune, striving to control or influence the actions of others, prognosticating marriages, and blaming the conduct of friends as sharply as that of enemies. These persons, spread about the town like the capillary fibres of a plant, sucked in, with the thirst of a leaf for the dew, the news and the secrets of each household, and transmitted them mechanically to the Abbe Troubert, as the leaves convey to the branch ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac

... "but every man should know enough of anatomy and therapeutics to safeguard his own health. A sudden cold may set up capillary bronchitis or inflammation of the pulmonary vesicles, which may result in a serious affection ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry

... stretch we sank into a silently reflective and forgetful mood, while the rain-drops dribbled down our noses, sopped from our mackintoshes to our saddles, whence they re-ascended, through the capillary influence of garments, to our necks, and soon equalised ...
— Six Months at the Cape • R.M. Ballantyne

... only the heart, but also the capillary system, as is shown in the complexion of the face and the color of the hands. In moderate drinkers the face is only flushed, but in drunkards it is purplish. The flush attending the early stages ...
— A Practical Physiology • Albert F. Blaisdell

... or in temperature. Inhalation is the most common and successful method of applying it—when modified in composition—to the human body. The methods in use are as follows: (1) Inhalation of gases, as oxygen and nitrous oxide. The dyspnoea and cyanosis of pneumonia, capillary bronchitis, heart failure, &c., are much relieved by the inhalation of oxygen; and nitrous oxide is largely used as an anaesthetic in minor operations; (2) Certain liquids are used as anaesthetics, which volatilize at low temperatures, as chloroform and ether. ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... the stipe half the total height. In general appearance the shorter forms of the species resemble slightly C. nigra, but are distinguished by a much shorter stipe and much more open capillitium. The sporangia of C. nigra mounted on long capillary stipes always droops more or less; the sporangia of the present species stand rigidly erect. The sporangia vary in form and in the branching of the columella. In the more globose phases, the columella almost always shows a peculiar dichotomy near the apex; ...
— The North American Slime-Moulds • Thomas H. (Thomas Huston) MacBride

... of the frog, 400 diameters, reduced 1/2: a, a, Venule with red and white corpuscles; b, b, Gelatinous nerve fibre; c, Capillary; d, d, Dark-bordered nerve fibre; e, e, Connective tissue with connective tissue corpuscles and ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture

... cylindric, striate, 2 to 12 inches long. Branches are irregularly distantly alternate, solitary or rarely two, swollen at base, dividing into slender filiform spreading branchlets; the lower branches from 3 to 7 inches in length and getting shorter upwards. Branchlets are 1/2 to 3 inches, capillary, angular ...
— A Handbook of Some South Indian Grasses • Rai Bahadur K. Ranga Achariyar

... was not more than ten years old, a distant relative of our family, hoping to astonish my inexperience, constructed a simple microscope for me, by drilling in a disk of copper a small hole, in which a drop of pure water was sustained by capillary attraction. This very primitive apparatus, magnifying some fifty diameters, presented, it is true, only indistinct and imperfect forms, but still sufficiently wonderful to work up my imagination to a preternatural state ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various

... into the matter. I've studied it with the highest and the deepest authorities—and what do I learn? Native gold is found crystallised in the forms of the octahedron, the cube, and the dodecahedron, of which the cube is considered as the primary form. It also occurs in filiform, capillary, and arborescent shapes, as likewise in leaves or membranes, and rolled masses. It offers no indications of internal structure, but, on being separated by mechanical violence, exhibits a hackly fracture. Its colour ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100. March 7, 1891. • Various

... Mattison's astronomical maps. These maps were the gifts of Mrs. Dr. Burgess and of Fisher Howe, Esq. The school has a pair of globes, one Season's machine, one orrery, a pair of gasometers, a spirit-lamp and retort stand, a centre of gravity apparatus, a capillary attraction apparatus, a galvanic trough, a circular battery, an electromagnet, a horse shoe magnet, a revolving magnet, a wire coil and hemispheric helices, and an ...
— The Women of the Arabs • Henry Harris Jessup

... chemical operations, are made by first forming a bulb, then puncturing the bulb at the top, when hot, with a piece of charcoal, and smoothing down or flaring the edges. Very small and fine glass tubes, such as are used in experiments to demonstrate capillary attraction, water or other liquid rising in them when they are plunged into it, are made by heating as long a section of tubing as can be handled in the flame—2 in. will be found enough—and, when very hot, giving the ends a sudden vigorous pull apart. The tube pulls out and gets smaller and smaller ...
— The Boy Mechanic: Volume 1 - 700 Things For Boys To Do • Popular Mechanics

... film, moving in a dark chamber, is also used to receive markings produced by a beam of light interrupted by a small screen attached to an electromagnetic stylus, or by the legs of a tuning-fork, or by the mercury column of a capillary electrometer. In certain researches on the explosive wave of gases the light given by the burning gases made the time trace on a rapidly moving photographic film (H.B. Dixon, Phil. Trans., 1903, 200, p. 323). In physiological chronography the stylus is in many cases actuated directly ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various

... fresh blushes chase each other over the face. Blushing is preceded by a peculiar sensation in the skin. According to Dr. Burgess the reddening of the skin is generally succeeded by a slight pallor, which shows that the capillary vessels contract after dilating. In some rare cases paleness instead of redness is caused under conditions which would naturally induce a blush. For instance, a young lady told me that in a large and crowded party she caught her hair so firmly ...
— The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals • Charles Darwin

... them. It also had a rosy tint which is not ordinarily seen in embalmed corpses. Dr. Martout explained this anomaly by saying that if the colonel had actually been dried alive, the globules of the blood were not decomposed, but simply collected in the capillary vessels of the skin and subjacent tissues, where they still preserved their proper color, and could be seen more easily than otherwise on account of ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner

... nothing spoken in the speeches worth remembering, but it was Dickens's manner that carried off the whole thing. D—— necessarily now wears his hair so widely parted in the middle that only two little capillary scraps are left, just over his ears, to show what kind of thatch once covered his jolly cranium. Dickens pretended that his candidate was superior to the other, because he had no hair; and that mine, being profusely supplied ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields

... the tanning matter to penetrate into the interior of a thick hide. The improved process consists in placing the hides with the solution of tan in close vessels, and then exhausting the air. The effect is to withdraw any air which may be contained in the pores of the hides, and to aid capillary attraction by the pressure of the atmosphere in forcing the tan into the interior of the skins. The effect of the additional force thus brought into action can be equal only to one atmosphere, but ...
— On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures • Charles Babbage

... dealings with capillary forces that quicksilver is indeed very resistant to the waves which produce molecular action, and this developed a new theory of the depression of the mercury in capillary tubes. This would tend to confirm Maiorana's claim that a basin of mercury beneath ...
— The Planet Mars and its Inhabitants - A Psychic Revelation • Eros Urides and J. L. Kennon

... facts. They are the frame-work of history, not the drapery. They are like the cold, hard, dishevelled, damp, and uncomfortable body under the knife of the demonstrator, not the bright and bounding boy, clothed in graceful garments and filled to every tingling capillary with a soul. ...
— Comic History of the United States • Bill Nye

... fineness of the soil-particles has an important influence on the absorptive power of soils, so, too, it is found, it has an important bearing on the rate at which evaporation takes place. Evaporation goes on to the greatest extent in soils whose particles are compacted together, capillary action in this case taking place more freely, and effecting evaporation from a greater depth of soil. The stirring of the surface portion of the soil, as for example by hoeing or harrowing, has for this reason an important influence in lessening the amount of evaporation, and minimising ...
— Manures and the principles of manuring • Charles Morton Aikman

... which a sailor's life is full, and which, once past, constitutes one of its chief charms. Let my readers try the following experiment:—Put two small bits of paper in a basin of water, and disturb the liquid. By what learned men call capillary attraction the two scraps of paper draw nearer to each other and finally join together. It was this same capillary attraction which nearly lost me my frigate and another battleship, the Cassard, which was our consort. A violent south-easterly squall had come down on us, and the sea was ...
— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville

... extent, though far inferior in this respect to the galvanic current; but that when employed of sufficient intensity it superadds to those mentioned a strictly mechanical action, which consists in forcing static blood from the capillary into the general circulation through the medium of ...
— The Electric Bath • George M. Schweig

... flat-top desk. It seemed to be two instruments composed of many levers and discs and magnets, each instrument with a roll of paper about five inches wide. On one was a sort of stylus with two silk cords attached at right angles to each other near the point. On the other was a capillary glass tube at the junction of two aluminum arms, also at right angles ...
— The Poisoned Pen • Arthur B. Reeve

... placing the hides with the solution of tan in close vessels, and then exhausting the air. The consequence of this is to withdraw any air which might be contained in the pores of the hides, and to employ the pressure of the atmosphere to aid capillary attraction in forcing the tan into the interior of the skins. The effect of the additional force thus brought into action can be equal only to one atmosphere, but a further improvement has been made: the vessel containing the hides is, after exhaustion, filled up with a solution of tan; ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 559, July 28, 1832 • Various

... glass, and are filled preferably with pulverized gypsum, although any finely-ground stone, mineral, or metal may be employed. The bottom of the glass tube is closed by wire gauze, or other suitable strainer, through which the fluid flows; and is carried by the capillary attraction of the pounded material to ...
— Scientific American, Vol.22, No. 1, January 1, 1870 • Various

... left arm as he marveled at the brilliance of modern medical techniques. Before they were finished he had been seen by both the Mitral men and the Aortic men, as well as the Great Arteries man and the Peripheral Capillary Bed man. ...
— An Ounce of Cure • Alan Edward Nourse

... This is repeated at two feet, and so on, until the whole thickness is pierced to the sea-water beneath. At three feet brine may begin to trickle into the hole, and this increases in amount until the worker is in a puddle. The leakage takes place, if not along cracks, through capillary channels, which ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson

... was being disturbed. A few rapid sentences were exchanged between the two physicians. The old doctor murmured some words about amphoric breathing, and a sound such as a cracked jar might give out. Nevertheless, he still affected some hesitation, and spoke, suggestively, of capillary bronchitis. Doctor Deberle hastened to explain that an accidental cause had brought on the illness; doubtless it was due to a cold; however, he had already noticed several times that an anaemical tendency ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola

... casual visit at a friend's house at luncheon (or it might have been dinner), when he suddenly became strangely excited, but not quite unconscious. . . . I believed at the time, and do so still, that there was some capillary apoplexy of the convolutions. The attack was attended with some hemiplegic weakness on the right side, and altered sensation, and ever after there was a want of freedom and ease both in the gait ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... depths, of what lies therein or where? Nothing. What does the root know of the earth's fruitfulness? Again nothing. Yet both make for the nourishing spot. Theories are put forward, most learned theories, introducing capillary action, osmosis and cellular imbibition, to explain why the caulicle ascends and the radical descends. Shall physical or chemical forces explain why the animalcule digs into the hard clay? I bow profoundly, without understanding or even trying to understand. ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre

... swarm on a tree; or like a carrion corrupted into vermin, still preserving the shape and figure of the mother animal: that all invention is formed by the morsure of two or more of these animals upon certain capillary nerves which proceed from thence, whereof three branches spring into the tongue and two into the right hand. They hold also that these animals are of a constitution extremely cold: that their food is the air we attract, their excrement phlegm. And that what we vulgarly ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 204, September 24, 1853 • Various

... English is shown in her back hair, which is a foot longer than the average hair of previous "Lady Macbeths," and is as thick and massive as a lion's mane. Wicked and punnish persons go so far as to call it her mane attraction. They are wrong, however. JANAUSCHEK does not draw by the force of capillary attraction. By the bye, did any one ever notice the fact that while a painter cannot be considered an artist unless he draws well, an actress may be the greatest of artists and not be able to draw a hundred ...
— Punchinello, Vol. II., No. 33, November 12, 1870 • Various

... spiral thread is a capillary tube finer than any that our physics will ever know. It is rolled into a twist so as to possess an elasticity that allows it, without breaking, to yield to the tugs of the captured prey; it holds a supply of sticky ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre

... Poets by locks hyacinthine Distinguished from Lawyers, Physicians, and Aldermen, By capillary cataracts, thick as are thin thine?— Bald, sooth to say, few undeniably balder men Can be found, for the comfort of heads without hair, Than that ...
— Punch, Or the London Charivari, Volume 101, November 21, 1891 • Various

... given the subject no special attention; and I know that many intelligent iron-founders doubt the fact of expansion. It is quite possible that the solid floats because it is not wetted by the molten iron, its volume being virtually augmented by capillary repulsion. Certain flies walk freely upon water in virtue of an action of this kind. With bismuth, however, it is easy to burst iron bottles ...
— Six Lectures on Light - Delivered In The United States In 1872-1873 • John Tyndall

... name of the law it would shut off. Of course, there is no such switchboard, but we know pretty well what would happen if we could shut off various laws. One of the least dangerous-looking switches would be one labeled CAPILLARY ATTRACTION. And now, just for fun, suppose that you have turned that switch off in order ...
— Common Science • Carleton W. Washburne

... body, resulting in rapid paralysis of such organs as are supplied with motive power from these sources; its physiological and toxicological realizations being more or less speedy accordingly as it is applied near or remote from these centers, or infused into the capillary or the venous circulation. Usually, too, an unfortunate experiences, perhaps instantaneously, an intense burning pain in the member lacerated, which is succeeded by vertigo, nausea, retching, fainting, coldness, and collapse; ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 421, January 26, 1884 • Various

... to whom the rising of the sap in its capillary vessels in the rock-maple is the sign of a sort of carnival, are now in the midst of their season of sugar-making. It is one of their old customs to move, men, women, children, and dogs, to their accustomed sugar-forests ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft

... unshaken, firm almost to rigidity. A white heat of resolute energy burnt in every capillary of ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable

... true capillary attraction of the moral world, and penetrates every stratum of society; and the folly of extravagant attire in the drawing-room is reproduced in the nursery. Not content with bewildering men's minds, and emptying their husband's purses for the enhancement ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous

... whole range of medicine. The facts as to this are so indisputable, and so far granted by the profession, as to be no longer debatable. Changes in stomach and liver, in kidneys and lungs, in the blood-vessels to the minutest capillary, and in the blood to the smallest red and white blood disc disturbances of secretion, fibroid and fatty degenerations in almost every organ, impairment of muscular power, impressions so profound on both nervous systems as to be often toxic—these, and such as these, ...
— Grappling with the Monster • T. S. Arthur

... one; as well as the degree of such torpor or exertion, are perhaps more material than the time of their duration. Besides this some muscles are less liable to accumulate sensorial power during their torpor, than others, as the locomotive muscles compared with the capillary arteries; on all which accounts a long cold fit may often be followed by a short ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin

... a number of young shoots, which, in the course of six or eight months, will have reached their normal height, and will be fit for cutting when required. Bamboo should be felled in the dry season before the sap begins to ascend by capillary attraction. If cut out of season it is prematurely consumed by grub (gojo), but this is not much heeded when ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman

... particles decay and pass away. It is in the capillaries, which are all over the body, that this change takes place. The blood-vessels that convey the pure blood from the heart, divide into myriads of little branches that terminate in capillary vessels like those lining the air-cells of the lungs. The blood meanders through these minute capillaries, depositing the oxygen taken from the lungs and the food of the stomach, and receiving in return the decayed matter, which ...
— The American Woman's Home • Catherine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe

... towel is like a sponge," said Daddy Blake. "The fuzzier the towel the more like a sponge it is. Each little bit of linen or cotton, is really a tiny hollow tube—a capillary tube it is called—and these tubes suck up the water on your hands as the same fuzzy capillary tubes in a piece of blotting paper suck up the ink. A towel is a sponge or a blotter. And the earth is a sort of sponge when it comes to ...
— Daddy Takes Us to the Garden - The Daddy Series for Little Folks • Howard R. Garis

... from to time, the barangayans, or native river-boats, huge, clumsy, ill-built, and generally with but four or five inches of free-board amidships on full load. These craft look as though they ought to sink by mere capillary attraction. However, people are born, live, and die aboard of them, so they must be safe enough. In the afternoon the river widened and its right bank, anyway, grew bolder and occasionally more permanent-looking, and finally, about an hour before sunset, we perceived the low white godowns of Aparri. ...
— The Head Hunters of Northern Luzon From Ifugao to Kalinga • Cornelis De Witt Willcox

... gravity feed which maintained the oil at a constant level. In later lamps, upon the adoption of mineral oil, this was found unnecessary, perhaps owing to the construction of the wick and to the physical characteristics of the oil which favored capillary action in the wick. However, the height of the oil in the reservoir of modern oil-lamps makes some difference in the amount ...
— Artificial Light - Its Influence upon Civilization • M. Luckiesh

... to finish that will be sent for at eight o'clock. Just think, I have three tonics to recommend, four preparations of iron, a dye, two capillary lotions, an opiate, and I don't know how many soaps and powders. ...
— Conscience, Complete • Hector Malot

... result of cold in the Plexus renalis; Perspiration is due to numbness in the nerve fibrils. The inclination of the mucous membranes to Hemorrhage is explained by congestion of blood in the capillaries, due to lack of vigor in the nerve fibrils. When the nerve fibrils fail to act, the capillary circulation stops and the blood overloaded with carbonic acid presses against the walls until ...
— Valere Aude - Dare to Be Healthy, Or, The Light of Physical Regeneration • Louis Dechmann

... arteries to the veins was not to be made until four years after Harvey's death. This process, which can be observed easily in the web of a frog's foot by the aid of a low-power lens, was first demonstrated by Marcello Malpighi (1628-1694) in 1661. By the aid of a lens he first saw the small "capillary" vessels connecting the veins and arteries in a piece of dried lung. Taking his cue from this, he examined the lung of a turtle, and was able to see in it the passage of the corpuscles through these minute vessels, making their way along these previously ...
— A History of Science, Volume 2(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams

... Peck. Sporangia very slender and much elongated, tapering gradually upward, weak and prostrate or pendulous, growing close together on a well-developed purplish-black hypothallus. Stipe and columella capillary, smooth and black, reaching to the apex of the sporangium or often vanishing in the network far below it, the stipe very short, the columella long and flexible. Capillitium of long, slender, dark-brown threads; these are reticulately ...
— The Myxomycetes of the Miami Valley, Ohio • A. P. Morgan

... BEETHAM'S CAPILLARY FLUID is acknowledged to be the most effectual article for Restoring the Hair in Baldness, strengthening when weak and fine, effectually preventing falling or turning grey, and for restoring its natural colour without the use of dye. The rich glossy appearance it imparts is the ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 237, May 13, 1854 • Various

... QUAREGNA (1776-1856), Italian physicist, was born at Turin on the 9th of June 1776, and died there on the 9th of July 1856. He was for many years professor of higher physics in Turin University. He published many physical memoirs on electricity, the dilatation of liquids by heat, specific heats, capillary attraction, atomic volumes &c. as well as a treatise in 4 volumes on Fisica di corpi ponderabili (1837-1841). But he is chiefly remembered for his "Essai d'une maniere de determiner les masses relatives des molecules elementaires des corps, et les proportions selon lesquelles ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various

... a good idea to soak the top edge of porous cups for about 1/4 in. in paraffine to keep the solutions from crawling up by capillary attraction. If the solutions constantly evaporate from the soaked tops of the cups, they not only waste but they get the whole ...
— How Two Boys Made Their Own Electrical Apparatus • Thomas M. (Thomas Matthew) St. John



Words linked to "Capillary" :   capillary bed, thermometer, tomentum, hair, tomentum cerebri, capillarity, tubing, capillary tube, capillary fracture



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