"Concave" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... his brigade from the assault by Colonel De Courcey was justified by the failure of the corps of A. J. Smith, and the command of Colonel Lindsey, to advance simultaneously to the assault. Both had the same difficulties to encounter —impassable bayous. The enemy's line of battle was concave, and De Courcey advanced against his centre—hence he sustained a concentric fire, and the withdrawal of Steele from the front of the enemy's right on the 28th ult. enabled the enemy on the following day to concentrate his ...
— The Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman, Complete • William T. Sherman
... the highest, and I could shake The firm foundation of the earthly globe; Could I but grasp the poles in these two hands I'd pluck the world asunder. He would scale heaven, and when he had ——got beyond the utmost sphere, Besiege the concave of this universe, And hunger-starve the gods till they confessed What furies ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... displayed her vase of flowers and her lighted taper before her. In front of all were a number of my younger pupils, the royal children, in circles also. Close by the altar, on a low square stool, overlaid with a thin cushion of silk, sat the high-priest, Chow Khoon Sah. In his hand he held a concave fan, lined with pale green silk, the back richly embroidered, jewelled, and gilt. [Footnote: The fan is used to cover the face. Jewelled fans are marks of distinction among the priesthood.] He was draped in a yellow robe, ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... his powerful mind, though it may have dimmed, could not obscure the brightness of his genius. To him, and apparently to him only, among all the inquiring spirits of the time, were known the properties of the concave and convex lens. He also invented the magic-lantern; that pretty plaything of modern days, which acquired for him a reputation that embittered his life. In a history of alchymy, the name of this great man cannot be omitted, although, unlike many others of whom we shall have occasion ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... outer walls. The outline of their ground-plan formed a parallelogram, whose enclosure wall was often divided into vertical panels easily distinguished by the different arrangements of the building material. At El-Kab and other places the courses of crude brick are slightly concave, somewhat resembling a wide inverted arch whose outer curve rests on the ground. In other places there was a regular alternation of lengths of curved courses, with those in which the courses were strictly ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 2 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... surely follows, as concave implies convex, that by daily converse and association with these great ones we take their breeding, their manners, earn their magnanimity, make ours their gifts of courtesy, unselfishness, mansuetude, high seated pride, scorn of ...
— On The Art of Reading • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... body of the church and choir are divided into three parts or aisles. The roof of each is adorned with arches and spacious peripheries of enrichments, as shields, leaves, chaplets, &c. (the spaces included being somewhat concave), admirably carved in stone; and there is a large cross aisle between the north and south porticoes, and two ambulatories, the one a little eastward, the other westward from the said cross-aisle, and running ...
— London in 1731 • Don Manoel Gonzales
... bo:s, bovis (gen. plur. boum or bovum, dat. and abl. plur. bo:bus or bu:bus), m. and f. ox, cow bracchium, bracchi:, n. arm brevis, -e, adj. short Brundisium, -i:, n. Brundisium, a seaport in southern Italy. See map bulla, -ae, f. bulla, a locket made of small concave plates of gold fastened by a ...
— Latin for Beginners • Benjamin Leonard D'Ooge
... Both led in the direction of our route, and the pond we had just left was ascertained to be the only one in the little channel. I sought a good position for a depot camp on the newly-discovered river, and found one extremely favourable, on a curve concave to the N. W., overlooking, from a high bank, a dry ford, on a smooth rocky bed; and having also access to a reach of water, where the bottom was hard and firm. We approached this position with our carts, in the midst ...
— Journal of an Expedition into the Interior of Tropical Australia • Thomas Mitchell
... but we are already sufficiently imbued with it to be almost completely disabled from comprehending the thoughts of our ancestors. "How Finn cosmogonists could have believed the earth and heaven to be made out of a severed egg, the upper concave shell representing heaven, the yolk being earth, and the crystal surrounding fluid the circumambient ocean, is to us incomprehensible; and yet it remains a fact that they did so regard them. How the ...
— Myths and Myth-Makers - Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology • John Fiske
... rectangular, and sometimes has concave niches on each side (p. 130). It is covered either with a barrel or with a cross-groined vault, and communicates with the ...
— Byzantine Churches in Constantinople - Their History and Architecture • Alexander Van Millingen
... high, leaves alternate, persistent, petiolate, no stipules, oblong, dentate, acuminate, pinnately nerved. Flowers whitish, regular, hermaphrodite, in terminal cymes. Receptacle concave. Calyx short, 10-toothed. Corolla, 10 narrow, elongated ribbon-like petals. Stamens 30-40, filaments free and glabrous. Ovary inferior, held in the concavity of the receptacle, one-celled, with 1 seed, crowned by an epigynous disc, ...
— The Medicinal Plants of the Philippines • T. H. Pardo de Tavera
... glades And green savannahs—Earth has not a plain So boundless or so beautiful as thine; The eagle's vision cannot take it in. The lightning's wing, too weak to sweep its space, Sinks half way o'er it like a wearied bird;— It is the mirror of the stars, where all Their host within the concave firmament, Gay marching to the music of the spheres, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, - Issue 493, June 11, 1831 • Various
... miles, I saw at once that quite the reverse was true. I seemed to be standing in the center of a vast shallow bowl. The ground curved upward into the distance. There was no distant horizon line, only the gradual fading into shadow of the visual landscape. I was standing obviously on a concave surface, on the inside, not the outside of ...
— The Girl in the Golden Atom • Raymond King Cummings
... a wretched pilgrim here, By thee though left in solitude to roam, Yet can I mourn that thou hast found thy home, On angel pinions borne, in bright career? Now thou behold'st the ever-turning sphere, And stars that journey round the concave dome; Now thou behold'st how short of truth we come, How blind our judgment, and thine own how clear! That thou art happy soothes my soul oppress'd. O friend! salute from me the laurell'd band, Guitton and Cino, Dante, and the rest: And tell my Laura, friend, ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... when they saw his chariot but appear, Did they not make an universal shout, That Tiber trembled underneath her banks To hear the replication of their sounds Made in her concave shores?" ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XII • John Lord
... by Hansen and Lehmann in their experiments consists of two large concave reflectors. These are placed at a convenient distance, one facing the other, so that two experimenters may be seated, the first having his mouth at the focal point of one reflector, the second with his ear at the focal point of the other. As the first experimenter repeats ...
— The Psychology of Singing - A Rational Method of Voice Culture Based on a Scientific Analysis of All Systems, Ancient and Modern • David C. Taylor
... direct line below it. Anaximander, that the sun is eclipsed when the fiery mouth of it is stopped and hindered from respiration. Heraclitus, that it is after the manner of the turning of a boat, when the concave seems uppermost to our sight, and the convex nethermost. Xenophanes, that the sun is eclipsed when it is extinguished; and that a new sun is created and rises in the east. He gives a farther account of an eclipse of the sun which remained for a whole month, and again of an eclipse ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... when placed in a burette form what is called a meniscus at their upper surfaces. In the case of liquids such as water or aqueous solutions this meniscus is concave, and when the liquids are transparent accurate readings are best obtained by observing the position on the graduated scales of the lowest point of the meniscus. This can best be done as follows: Wrap around the burette a piece of colored paper, the straight, smooth edges of ...
— An Introductory Course of Quantitative Chemical Analysis - With Explanatory Notes • Henry P. Talbot
... candles on altars is supposed to have been the cause of this not uncommon defect; but heat, if considerable, would rather produce the contrary appearance. It would seem that the layer of paint, with its substratum, slightly operates to prevent the wood from contracting or becoming concave on that side; it might therefore be concluded that a similar protection at the back, by equalizing the conditions, would tend to keep the wood flat. The oak panel on which the picture by Van Eyck in the National Gallery ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... their legs behind them as a balance to their large heavy heads, for as most nocturnal birds have large eyes and ears they must have large heads to contain them. Large eyes, I presume, are necessary to collect every ray of light, and large concave ears to command the smallest degree of sound ...
— The Natural History of Selborne, Vol. 2 • Gilbert White
... carried almost to the height of the columns, and the section is surmounted in its centre by an ornamental pedestal, which bears a group of sculpture, and at its extremes by slated flagstaff towers, whose sides are concave. The purpose of these larger windows is the effectual lighting of the Boardroom, which is of the height of two storeys. The length of the Bread Street front is 90 feet. The Boardroom is 60 feet long, 36 feet wide and 24 feet high, the room being lighted by ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell
... above the second roof level, and there is no doubt that two stories above the ground were the maximum height of the western rooms, excluding the parapet. The eastern wall presents a marked double convexity while the western wall is comparatively straight in a horizontal line, but markedly concave vertically above the first roof level. Below this level it is straight. The floor beams were from 3 to 6 inches in diameter. The marks in the eastern wall show that the beams projected into it to a nearly uniform depth of 1 foot 4 inches. In the western wall, however, the depth varies from 1 to ...
— Casa Grande Ruin • Cosmos Mindeleff
... palaces have no entrances from below, except on the inner or concave partition, from which one enters directly to the lower parts of the building. The higher parts, however, are reached by flights of marble steps, which lead to galleries for promenading on the inside similar ...
— The City of the Sun • Tommaso Campanells
... your punch, Mother? You used to be up on men's rigging. All the boys look like their own shadows these days. English cut. No padding. No heels. Incurve at the waist. Watch me walk." He flapped across the room, chest concave, shoulders rounded, arms hanging limp, feet wide apart, chin ...
— Roast Beef, Medium • Edna Ferber
... Perianthium of four leaves, sitting on the Germen, leaves narrow, concave, reddish, with green tips, the lowermost one widely separated from the others, and placed immediately under the Nectary, ...
— The Botanical Magazine Vol. 8 - Or, Flower-Garden Displayed • William Curtis
... sano. A man all lucid, and in equilibrium. His intellect a clear mirror geometrically plane, brilliantly sensitive to all objects and impressions made on it and imaging all things in their correct proportions; not twisted up into convex or concave, and distorting everything so that he cannot see the truth of the matter, without endless groping and manipulation: healthy, clear, and free and discerning ...
— Why Worry? • George Lincoln Walton, M.D.
... sat down. My brain was chaos. Then my perception grew clear and minute as though I saw things in a concave mirror. His manner seemed to have changed into something nervous and hasty. He pulled out his watch and grimaced at it. "Eleven-seven! And to-night I must— Seven-twenty-five. Waterloo! I must go at once." He called for the bill, and struggled with his coat. Officious waiters came to ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... is used to wash the hulls free from the nuts and force the removed hulls to the floor below. The disc is supported by a 1-3/8 inch diameter shaft that runs through the disc and is held central as it revolves in a flange containing a 3/4 ball bearing that fits into the end of the concave in the shaft. Up four feet from the disc is a link self aligning bearing that allows the shaft and disc to turn like a gyroscopic top. The shaft's pulley has 'V' belts connected to a 3/4 h.p. motor. I have hulled up to 40 bushels ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 43rd Annual Meeting - Rockport, Indiana, August 25, 26 and 27, 1952 • Various
... will look at the illustration entitled "Women grinding chocolate," he will see how the brittle roasted bean is reduced to a paste in primitive manufacture. A stone, shaped like a rolling-pin, is being pushed to and fro over a concave slab, on which the smashed beans have already been reduced to a ...
— Cocoa and Chocolate - Their History from Plantation to Consumer • Arthur W. Knapp
... that he had dropped into a sewer. To get out the way he had entered appeared impossible. He could not leap upward from the slimy, concave bottom the distance he had dropped. To follow the sewer upward would lead him nowhere nearer escape. There remained no hope but to follow the trickling stream downward toward the river, into which his judgment told him the entire sewer system of ...
— The Mad King • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... no uncertainty here. I laid open numerous vertebrae of various forms,—some with long spinous processes rising over the body or centrum of the bone,—which I found in every instance, unlike that of the Ichthyosaurus, only moderately concave on the articulating faces; in others the spinous process seemed altogether wanting. Only two of the number bore any mark of the suture which unites, in most reptiles, the annular process to the centrum; in ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... secrets to make the ill-disposed as genial gods ere they departed. Mr. Bareaud at fifty had lived so well that he gave up walking, which did not trouble him; but at sixty he gave up dancing, which did trouble him. His only hope, he declared, was in Crailey Gray's promise to invent for him: a concave partner. ...
— The Two Vanrevels • Booth Tarkington
... entrance of the cave they put out, and within was only one glimmering lamp, that rather served to add to the horror of the vault, discovering its hollowness and ruins. At his entrance, he was saluted with a noise like the rushing of wind, which whizzed and whistled in the mighty concave. Anon a more silent whispering surrounded him, without being able to behold any creature save the old German. Anon came in old Fergusano, who rolling a great stone, that lay at one corner of the cave, he desired the Prince to place himself on it, and ...
— Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister • Aphra Behn
... its middle, upon which it plays, and is poised so exactly that the weakest hand can turn it. It is hooped round with a hollow cylinder of adamant, four feet yards in diameter, placed horizontally, and supported by eight adamantine feet, each six yards high. In the middle of the concave side, there is a groove twelve inches deep, in which the extremities of the axle are lodged, and turned ...
— Gulliver's Travels - into several remote nations of the world • Jonathan Swift
... as monstrosities but only as the most natural of artificialities; for they are a part of a horticultural whole. To walk into a Japanese garden is like wandering of a sudden into one of those strange worlds we see reflected in the polished surface of a concave mirror, where all but the observer himself is transformed into a fantastic miniature of the reality. In that quaint fairyland diminutive rivers flow gracefully under tiny trees, past mole-hill mountains, till they fall at ...
— The Soul of the Far East • Percival Lowell
... should be made concave, and terminate in a trough to catch the gravy and keep the fat from dropping into the fire and making a smoke, ...
— The Cook's Oracle; and Housekeeper's Manual • William Kitchiner
... take a clam shell, and, holding it with the concave side toward the ground, scale it into the air, you will see it gradually mount upward. If you hold the convex side toward the ground and throw it, you will see ...
— Dick Hamilton's Airship - or, A Young Millionaire in the Clouds • Howard R. Garis
... Upper and Middle Eocene formations. The patterns of the grinding-teeth of Plagiolophus are similar to those of Anchitherium, and their crowns are as thinly covered with cement; but the grinders diminish in size forwards, and the last lower molar has a large hind lobe, convex outwards and concave inwards, as in Palceotherium. The ulna is complete and much larger than in any of the Equidae, while it is more slender than in most of the true Palaeotheria; it is fixedly united, but not ankylosed, with the radius. There are three toes in the ...
— Critiques and Addresses • Thomas Henry Huxley
... wind-wheel, of course, is permanently set to run no matter from what direction the wind may be blowing. Tests instituted with the object of determining the pressure which the wind exerts on the cup of a "Robinson" anemometer have shown that when the breeze blows into the concave side of the cup, its effect is rather more than three times as strong as when it blows against the convex side. At any given time the principal part of the work done by a windmill constructed on this principle ...
— Twentieth Century Inventions - A Forecast • George Sutherland
... Both men and women were all over the place, and much vigorous dancing was going on. Using the same gansa as the Ifugao, the Igorot beats it on the convex side with a regular padded drumstick, whereas the Ifugao uses any casual stick on the concave side. Moreover, the Bontok dancers went around their circle, beating their gansas the while, in a sort of lope, the step being vigorous, long, easy, and high; as in all the other dances seen, the motion was against the ...
— The Head Hunters of Northern Luzon From Ifugao to Kalinga • Cornelis De Witt Willcox
... explained Kennedy. "There are only three kinds, as Bertillon calls them—convex, straight, and concave. A detective, we will say, is sent out after a man with a concave nose or, as in this case a woman with a straight nose. Thus he is freed from the necessity of taking a second glance at two-thirds of the women, roughly, that he meets—that is, theoretically. ...
— The Ear in the Wall • Arthur B. Reeve
... nearly unbroken, sheet of ice continues to extend. In the first few degrees of this its progress, its surface is very sensibly flattened, farther on depressed into a plane, and finally, becoming not a little concave, it terminates, at the Pole itself, in a circular centre, sharply defined, whose apparent diameter subtended at the balloon an angle of about sixty-five seconds, and whose dusky hue, varying in intensity, ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... both the bodily and the mental activities as equally important, and so closely interwoven that they cannot be separated. Perhaps they are just the outer and the inner aspects of one reality—the life of the creature. Perhaps they are like the concave and convex curves of a dome, like the two sides of a shield. Perhaps the life of the organism is always a unity, at one time appearing more conspicuously as Mind-body, at another time as Body-mind. The most important fact ...
— The Outline of Science, Vol. 1 (of 4) - A Plain Story Simply Told • J. Arthur Thomson
... 1590 the Dutch optician Zacharias Jensen placed a concave and a convex lens respectively at the ends of a tube about eighteen inches long, and used this instrument for the purpose of magnifying small objects—producing, in short, a crude microscope. Some years later, Johannes Lippershey, of whom not much is known except that he died in 1619, experimented ...
— A History of Science, Volume 2(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... Scars. These are the round, somewhat concave, scars, found terminating the stem where forking occurs, or seemingly in the axils of branches, on account of one of the forking branches growing more rapidly and stoutly than the other and thus taking the place of the main stem, so that this is apparently ...
— Outlines of Lessons in Botany, Part I; From Seed to Leaf • Jane H. Newell
... was cruel, but, barring perhaps the immense Asiatic butcheries, Nero contrived then to surpass anything that had been done. Bloated and hideous, his hair done up in a chignon, a concave emerald for monocle, in the crowded arena he assisted at the rape of Christian girls. Their lovers, their brothers and fathers were either eaten alive by beasts or, that night, dressed in tunics that had been soaked in oil, were fastened to posts and set on fire, in order ...
— The Lords of the Ghostland - A History of the Ideal • Edgar Saltus
... upon the sheet and turned it back from the pale and ghastly face, on whose brow the mysterious signet of everlasting rest was set. Still, immovable, solemn, placid—it lay beneath the gaze, with shrouded eye, and cheek like concave marble, and hueless, waxen lips. What depth, what grandeur, what duration in that repose! What inexpressible sadness, yet what sublime tranquillity! Helen held her breath, bending slowly, lower and lower, as if drawn down by a mighty, irresistible power, till her cheek almost touched ...
— Helen and Arthur - or, Miss Thusa's Spinning Wheel • Caroline Lee Hentz
... ball which we less-favoured golfers dream shall some day be ours to command; the ball which starts low, rises in a concave curve, and ends its trajectory in a slight slant to the left—the low, hooked ball. It was not a phenomenally long drive; about two hundred yards, I should say, but for the apparent effort expended I have never ...
— John Henry Smith - A Humorous Romance of Outdoor Life • Frederick Upham Adams
... flashed in the sun, and a cry of admiration sprang to his lips. Forward they came, their line even and beautiful, and then the tempest beat upon them. The entire French fire was concentrated upon the concave red lines. The batteries poured grape shot upon them and a sleet of lead cut through flesh and bone. Gaps were torn in their ranks, but the others closed up, and came on, the American Colonials on their flanks ...
— The Lords of the Wild - A Story of the Old New York Border • Joseph A. Altsheler
... lonely mountain-top "feels the presence and the power of greatness," and "in its fixed and steady lineaments he sees an ebbing and a flowing mind." The philosopher[128] lifts his eyes to "the starry heavens" in all the depth of their concave, and with all their constellations of glory moving on in solemn grandeur, and, to his mind, these immeasurable regions seem "filled with the splendors of the Deity, and crowded with the monuments of his power;" or he turns his eye to "the Moral Law within," ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... directly above his head for that. His only hope lay in crushing close to the side of the berg. He did so, on the instant, promptly followed by the dog, and happily found that the ice-wall at the spot was slightly concave. ...
— The Walrus Hunters - A Romance of the Realms of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... or navetas are so named from their resemblance to ships. The construction is similar to that of the talayots. The outer wall has a considerable batter. The famous Nau d'Es Tudons is about 36 feet in length. The facade is slightly concave. A low door (a) gives access through a narrow slab-roofed passage (b) to a long rectangular chamber (c), the method of whose roofing is uncertain. All the naus are built with their facades to the south or south-east, ...
— Rough Stone Monuments and Their Builders • T. Eric Peet
... the small room had a very faint radiance showing through my vizor pane. Narrow enclosing walls were visible. It was a triangular-shaped space, fifteen feet or so down one side, with a concave ceiling overhead. I was lying on the floor. The darkness at first had been impenetrable. The figures which had flung me down and seized my knife were gone; I had not seen them nor where ...
— Wandl the Invader • Raymond King Cummings
... west and north until arriving at the sea it could go no farther. This is what has been called by French military critics "The Race to the Sea." In this race to the sea the Germans had a great advantage over the French. A glance at the map is enough to make it understood. The concave form of the German front made the lines of transportation shorter; they were within the interior of the angle, while the French were at the exterior. On the German side this movement drew into the line more than eighteen ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of 12) - The War Begins, Invasion of Belgium, Battle of the Marne • Francis J. Reynolds, Allen L. Churchill, and Francis Trevelyan
... body of this hemisphere was hell, shared as a vast cone, of which the apex was the centre of the globe; and here, according to Dante, was the seat of Lucifer. The concave of Hell had been formed by his fall, when a portion of the solid earth, through fear of him, ran back to the southern uninhabited hemisphere, and formed there, directly antipodal to Jerusalem, the ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 1, Hell [The Inferno] • Dante Alighieri
... is in triangular form, with concave sides and rounded corners. A bronze figure of a Battalion man is mounted upon the front corner. Flanking him on two sides of the triangle are: cut in high relief, on the left, the scene of the enlistment ...
— Mormon Settlement in Arizona • James H. McClintock
... the lighthouse rays, and under their front, at periods of a quarter of a minute, there arose a deep, hollow stroke like the single beat of a drum, the intervals being filled with a long-drawn rattling, as of bones between huge canine jaws. It came from the vast concave of Deadman's Bay, rising and falling ...
— The Well-Beloved • Thomas Hardy
... the only time I was ever taken to any place of entertainment was when my Father and I paid a visit, long anticipated, to the Great Globe in Leicester Square. This was a huge structure, the interior of which one ascended by means of a spiral staircase. It was a poor affair; that was concave in it which should have been convex, and my imagination was deeply affronted. I could invent a far better Great Globe than that in my ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse
... his astonished countenance. His big chest heaved. Like many another wounded giant before him, he experienced the insufficiency of interjections to solace pain. For them, however, the rocks were handy to fling, the trees to uproot; heaven's concave resounded companionably to their bellowings. Relief of so concrete a kind is not to be obtained ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... far the commonest condition (the well-known "long sight," or hyperopia), we put a plus or bulging glass before the eye and thus correct its shape. But if the eye is too round and bulging, producing the familiar "short sight," or myopia, we put a minus or concave lens before the eye, and thus bring it back to the normal. By a curious paradox, however, it often happens that the headache due to eye-strain is caused not by the grosser defects, such as interfere with vision so seriously as absolutely ...
— Preventable Diseases • Woods Hutchinson
... Andy disclosed a mysterious device resembling two hard rubber shoe horns, joined in the centre by a concave ...
— Andy the Acrobat • Peter T. Harkness
... even, plane, smooth; prostrate, prone; stale, insipid, vapid, tasteless, unsavory, unpalatable, mawkish; peremptory, unqualified, positive; spatulous, spatulate; sonant, vocal. Antonyms: convex, concave, warped, cambered, undulating, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... "Antiquities,") was a temporary structure of boards, removed after the performances were closed. This fashion continued till the erection of the theatre of Bacchus, at Athens, which served as a model for the others. The Greek theatre was no more than a concave sweep, scooped out of the hollow side of a hill, generally facing the sea. The sweep was filled with seats, rising above each other, and ascended by staircases, placed like the radii of a circle. This semi-circular form was adopted ...
— A History of Pantomime • R. J. Broadbent
... among the weedy stones at the bottom of the sea. Of all living creatures the jelly fish alone seemed to retain any spirit. Immense crowds of them drifted past the Tortoise, swelling out and closing again their concave bodies, revolving slowly round, dragging long purple tendrils deliriously through the warm water. They swept past Priscilla's drooping hands, touching them with their yielding bodies and brushing them softly with their tendrils. Now and then she lifted one from the water, ...
— Priscilla's Spies 1912 • George A. Birmingham
... long-rowelled spurs, overcame the patience of the animal, which bounced and plunged, while poor Gibbie's entreaties for aid never reached the ears of the too heedless butler, being drowned partly in the concave of the steel cap in which his head was immersed, and partly in the martial tune of the Gallant Grames, which Mr Gudyill whistled with all ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... life more comprehensible by discarding the irrelevant, and attracting attention to the essential; it must also render us the service of bringing to a focus that phase of life it represents. The mirror which the dramatist holds up to nature should be a concave mirror, which concentrates the rays impinging on it to a luminous focal image. Hamlet was too much a metaphysician to busy his mind about the simpler science of physics; but surely this figure of the concave mirror, with its ...
— The Theory of the Theatre • Clayton Hamilton
... also urged that the concave on the under side of the wing gives the quality of lift. Certain kinds of beetles, and particularly the common house fly, disprove that theory, as their wings ...
— Aeroplanes • J. S. Zerbe***
... with a mold wheel having a series of cogs interposed by a series of concave stops, blanks or abutments upon its periphery, a drive wheel having cogs and a blank surface on its perimeter so that the mold wheel may be moved, stopped and locked by said drive wheel which has a continuous movement, substantially as ...
— Scientific American, Vol. 17, No. 26 December 28, 1867 • Various
... that the convex outside curve of wings allowed the wind to escape over them, while the under side, being concave, held every breath. Thus the upward stroke did not simply counterbalance the downward and keep him stationary. Moreover, she showed him how the feathers underlapped each other so that the downward stroke pressed them closely together ...
— Jimbo - A Fantasy • Algernon Blackwood
... saw, and sewed on cords by still another machine, at about half the cost of hand-sewing. Next, they are cut or trimmed on the three edges in a cutting-machine. The backs of the books are made round by a rounding-machine, leaving the back convex and the front concave in form, as seen in all finished books. The books are now ready for the covers. These consist of binders' board or mill-board, cut out of large sheets into proper size, with lightning-like rapidity, by another machine called a rotary board-cutter. The cloth which is to form the ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford
... tube about two inches in diameter and thirty inches long. In the farther end of the tube gleamed a lump of yellow metal, which I took to be gold. Hall and I were seated near another table about twenty-five feet distant from the tube, and on this table was an apparatus furnished with a concave mirror, whose optical axis was directed towards the tube. It occurred to me at once that this apparatus would be suitable for experimenting with electric waves. Wires ran from it to the floor, and in the cellar beneath was audible the beating of an engine. My companion made an adjustment ...
— The Moon Metal • Garrett P. Serviss
... would march overland with five hundred men and attack Fort Caroline while its defenders were absent. First he ordered a mass; then he called a council. Doubtless, it was in that great Indian lodge of Seloy, where he had made his head-quarters; and here, in this dim and smoky concave, nobles, officers, priests, gathered at his summons. There were fears and doubts and murmurings, but Menendez was desperate. Not the mad desperation that strikes wildly and at random, but the still red heat that melts and burns and seethes with a steady, unquenchable fierceness. "Comrades," ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 73, November, 1863 • Various
... there is a rapidly increasing effect with increased stimulus. Finally, a tendency shows itself to approach a limit of response. Thus we find the curve at first slightly convex, then straight and ascending, and lastly, concave ...
— Response in the Living and Non-Living • Jagadis Chunder Bose
... thought there was one somewhere in his house, and, calling to his wife, he asked her in Languedocian to look for it. While she was searching he drew my attention to a circular stone lying upon the top of his rough garden wall. It was about a foot in diameter, and concave on one side. 'What is it?' ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... most savoury viands, the most high flavoured ragouts, and the most delicious wines presented themselves spontaneously to the expecting attendant. The hall was illuminated with a thousand lustres that depended like stars from the concave roof, and were multiplied by the reflection of innumerable mirrors. The whole was arranged with ...
— Imogen - A Pastoral Romance • William Godwin
... Ideal in the concave of some vaulting heart or brain, it is a new heaven and signeth ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... and constitute the commercial article. They are generally killed by immersion in boiling water, which causes them to swell to twice their natural size, and are then dried and packed for market. The insects shrivel in drying, and assume the form of irregular grains, fluted and concave. The best sorts have a silvery-grey colour, with a purplish reflection, and seem to be dusted with a white powder. This appearance is often given by means of heavy spar, carbonate of lead, Venice talc, ...
— Field's Chromatography - or Treatise on Colours and Pigments as Used by Artists • George Field
... people over the river, and the money they receive (though the fare is only ten Kowrie shells for each individual) furnishes a considerable revenue to the king in the course of a year. The canoes are of a singular construction, each of them being formed of the trunks of two large trees, rendered concave, and joined together, not side by side, but end-ways, the junction being exactly across the middle of the canoe; they are, therefore, very long and disproportionately narrow, and have neither decks nor masts. They are however, very roomy, for I observed in one of them four horses and ...
— Life and Travels of Mungo Park in Central Africa • Mungo Park
... was John Brogan, of Alexandria. His stronghold was marked cards. He had played with them for years, and had been remarkably successful, having accumulated considerable property. I was once coming down the Red River, when I made the acquaintance of a shrewd fellow named Neice. He used a small concave reflector about the size of a gold dollar, which he placed in the pile of chips before him, and which in dealing the cards enabled him to see every card, and where it went. He generally played with gamblers, and so adroit was ...
— Forty Years a Gambler on the Mississippi • George H. Devol
... this point in my description. My own face is a narrow one, and yet I find that I cannot get my eyes into the centre, nor near the centre, of these glasses. Therefore, the lady's eyes are set very near to the sides of the nose. You will perceive, Watson, that the glasses are concave and of unusual strength. A lady whose vision has been so extremely contracted all her life is sure to have the physical characteristics of such vision, which are seen in the forehead, the eyelids, ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes • Arthur Conan Doyle
... of trenches forming a salient almost triangular in shape, to which we gave the name of the Pocket (la Poche). During the whole year a war of mining had been going on, and the region, which was broken up by concave constructions and intersected in all directions by trenches and alleys of communication, constituted an attacking ground all the more difficult because to the north of la Poche the somewhat thickly wooded Trou Bricot, the edges of which were in a state of defence, ...
— World's War Events, Vol. I • Various
... is open at its upper extremity. The rays from the object observed penetrate freely into it, and strike a concave metallic mirror—that is to say, they are focussed. From thence their reflected rays meet with a little mirror, which sends them back to the ocular in such a way as ...
— The Moon-Voyage • Jules Verne
... map of Europe; putting yourself first at the point to be attacked—at Rome, and looking north, follow the German frontier from the Euxine up the Danube and down the Rhine. It is a convex arc: but not nearly as long as the concave arc of the Roman frontier opposed to it. The Roman frontier overlaps it to the north-west by all Britain, to the south-west by part of Turkey and the whole ...
— The Roman and the Teuton - A Series of Lectures delivered before the University of Cambridge • Charles Kingsley
... belonging to the tribe of Solitary Wasps, Odynerus clavicornis, is perhaps the most interesting insect in the collection; this Wasp has clavate antennae, the flagellum being broadly dilated towards the apex, convex above and concave beneath. I am not acquainted with any other insect belonging to the Vespidious group ...
— Journal of the Proceedings of the Linnean Society - Vol. 3 - Zoology • Various
... 8 a), then the legs clasp the empty cuticle, and the abdomen is drawn out (fig. 8 b, c). After a short rest, the newly-emerged fly climbs yet higher up the water-weed, and remains for some hours with the abdomen bent concave dorsalwards (fig. 8 d), to allow space for the expansion and hardening of the wings. For some days after emergence the cuticle of the dragon-fly has a dull pale hue, as compared with the dark or brightly metallic aspect that characterises it when fully mature. The life of the ...
— The Life-Story of Insects • Geo. H. Carpenter
... she received all the attention and watchful tenderness which she needed continually, by reason of age and manifold infirmities. But while our life has its outer convex side, which magnifies its advantages before the world, it has its inner concave side also, which reduces the outer circumstances of prosperity into littleness, when "the heart knoweth its own bitterness, and a stranger doth not intermeddle with its joy." So it was with Mary Stansfield. ...
— Working in the Shade - Lowly Sowing brings Glorious Reaping • Theodore P Wilson
... its burning signs Exulting measures the perennial wheel Of Nature, and looks back on all the stars, Whose blended light, as with a milky zone, Invests the orient. Now, amazed she views The empyreal waste, where happy spirits hold Beyond this concave heaven, their calm abode; And fields of radiance, whose unfading light Has traveled the profound six thousand years, Nor yet arrived in sight of mortal things. Even on the barriers of the world, untired She meditates the eternal depth below; ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... diluted soup, Performs not well in those substantial things, Whose mass adhesive to the metal clings; Where the strong labial muscles must embrace The gentle curve, and sweep the hollow space. With ease to enter and discharge the freight, A bowl less concave, but still more dilate, Becomes the pudding best. The shape, the size, A secret rests, unknown to vulgar eyes. Experienced feeders can alone impart A rule so much above the lore of art. These tuneful lips that thousand spoons ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... Expence of the Country, it is now high time that you should give the Country their Revenge. Since your withdrawing from this Place, the Fair Sex are run into great Extravagancies. Their Petticoats, which began to heave and swell before you left us, are now blown up into a most enormous Concave, and rise every Day more and more: In short, Sir, since our Women know themselves to be out of the Eye of the SPECTATOR, they will be kept within no Compass. You praised them a little too soon, for the Modesty of their Head-Dresses; for as the Humour of a sick Person is ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... bodies of the feminine gender, fixed for one brief week apiece on the theatrical "concave," moved quickly in the direction of "the road." These more or less heavenly lights were Miss Odette Tyler and Miss Eugenie Blair, who appeared at those kaleidoscopic theaters called "combination houses." Miss Tyler used to be something of a Broadway "favorite"—a term that has lost a good deal ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... cut his upper tusks, and have a mouth full and complete, and the teeth will have hollows of a very dark brown colour. At six years old the grooves and hollows in a horse's mouth will begin to fill up a little and their tusks have their full growth, with their points sharp, and a little concave. At seven years old the grooves and hollows will be pretty well filled below. At eight the whole of the hollows and groves are filled up, and you see the appearance of what is termed smooth below. At nine years old, the ...
— Young's Demonstrative Translation of Scientific Secrets • Daniel Young
... on any point of the earth and look up, the heavenly bodies appear as though they were situated upon the surface of a vast hollow sphere, of which your eye is the center. Of course this apparent concave vault has no existence and we cannot accurately measure the distance of the heavenly bodies from us or from each other. We can, however, measure the direction of some of these bodies and that information is of tremendous value to us in helping ...
— Lectures in Navigation • Ernest Gallaudet Draper
... Heaven on the holy pile. I went in and walked down the aisle, listening for awhile to the grand choral, while the clustered tapers under the dome quivered and trembled, as if shaken by the waves of music which burst continually within its lofty concave. ...
— Views a-foot • J. Bayard Taylor
... could, by alternately increased and diminished pressure, cause nutritive matter to exude from the vessels which permeate the periosteum. Nevertheless, the observations adduced by Mr. Spencer,[730] on the strengthening of the bowed bones of rickety children, along their concave sides, leads to the belief that ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Volume II (of 2) • Charles Darwin
... to Sevenbergen, the dwarf nudged Gerard with his bundle of parchments and held out a concave claw. ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... the column must wind. Some were afire; the smoke of burning straw and clothing and foodstuffs mingling with the yet low-lying powder smoke and with the pall of Valley dust. Horses lay stark across the way, or, dying, stared with piteous eyes. The sky was like a bowl of brass, and in the concave buzzards were sailing. All along there was underfoot much of soldiers' impedimenta—knapsacks, belts, accoutrements of all kinds, rolled blankets and oilcloths, canteens. Dead men did not lack. They lay in strange ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... a slope that had been eroded concave. It was at the very top of the half-moon angle, upside down, standing Ekstrohm on his head. Since he was not strapped ...
— The Planet with No Nightmare • Jim Harmon
... but it was necessity's labour lost. We were not provided with proper drain pipes but made an open conduit. We had to go to the quarry to get the stone, which we broke into small pieces, and these were set out in concave form at the bottom of the trench we had excavated after the manner in which cobble stones are laid. I believe it was considered to be an excellent piece of work, but unfortunately it was of little use. The first wind and rain that came along ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney
... instances, for the law will reproduce them for you whenever you require them. The law of refraction, for example: If you know that, you can with a pencil and a bit of paper immediately discern how a convex lens, a concave lens, or a prism, must severally alter the appearance of an object. But, if you don't know the general law, you must charge your memory separately with each of the three kinds ...
— Talks To Teachers On Psychology; And To Students On Some Of Life's Ideals • William James
... open gates. These were made wholly of silver, and polished, and that all over, excepting the bases, which were of brass. Now on each side of the gates there stood three pillars, which were inserted into the concave bases of the gates, and were suited to them; and round them was drawn a curtain of fine linen; but to the gates themselves, which were twenty cubits in extent, and five in height, the curtain was composed of purple, and scarlet, and blue, and fine ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... rule, two reflectors are fixed in the same holder; one a concave mirror, the other a plane one. The former brings the rays of light to a point or focus while the latter simply passes the beam of light along just as it received it, viz., as a parallel ...
— The Story of the Cotton Plant • Frederick Wilkinson
... This cup, with a concave body and a baluster stem with a square foot, is marked "Moulton" and is in the style of Ebenezer Moulton who worked in ...
— Presentation Pieces in the Museum of History and Technology • Margaret Brown Klapthor
... is hollow from the base to the point, from the former the poison is pressed up out of the poison-bag and exudes through the fang point, which, as you see, is in the form of a narrow slit on its concave side." ...
— With Axe and Rifle • W.H.G. Kingston
... cavern was tolerably light, though the sun was unfortunately enveloped in clouds. His disc was invisible, but we could clearly distinguish his situation through the watery barrier. The fall of the cataract is nearly perpendicular. The bank over which it is precipitated is of concave form, owing to its upper stratum being composed of lime-stone, and its base of soft slate-stone, which has been eaten away by the constant attrition of the recoiling waters. The cavern is about one hundred and twenty feet in height, fifty in ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 262, July 7, 1827 • Various
... few yards along the whole line. The jets, M, must be placed at such a distance apart that at least one will be able to operate on the shortest train that can be used. In this turbine there are two sets of blades, one above the other, placed with their concave sides in opposite directions, so that one set is used for propelling in one direction and the other in the opposite direction. In Fig. 6 it is seen that the jet, M, for one direction is just high enough to act against the blades, Q, while the other jet is higher, and acts on the blades, P, for propulsion ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 717, September 28, 1889 • Various
... region on the other side birds soar suddenly into the air, and hang over the summits of the heights with the indifference of long familiarity. Their forms are white against the tawny concave of cloud, and the curves they exhibit in their floating signify that they are sea-gulls which have journeyed inland from expected stress of weather. As the birds rise behind the fort, so do the clouds rise ...
— A Changed Man and Other Tales • Thomas Hardy
... standards, and allusions military and funereal. A great eagle of course tops the whole: tripods burning spirits of wine stand round this kind of dead man's throne, and as we saw it (by peering over the heads of our neighbors in the front rank), it looked, in the midst of the black concave, and under the effect of half a thousand flashing cross-lights, properly grand and tall. The effect of the whole chapel, however (to speak the jargon of the painting-room), was spoiled by being CUT UP: ...
— The Second Funeral of Napoleon • William Makepeace Thackeray (AKA "Michael Angelo Titmarch")
... herself. He was incontestibly the most wonderful in his finishing of all the Flemish masters, although the number of artists of that school who have excelled in this particular style are quite large. The pictures he first painted were portraits, and he wrought by the aid of a concave mirror, and sometimes by looking at the object through a frame of many squares of small silk thread. He spent so much time in these works that, notwithstanding they were extremely admired, his sitters became disgusted, ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects and Curiosities of Art (Vol. 3 of 3) • S. Spooner
... not a plain So boundless or so beautiful as thine; The eagle's vision cannot take it in; The lightning's glance, too weak to sweep its space, Sinks half-way o'er it, like a wearied bird: It is the mirror of the stars, where all Their hosts within the concave firmament, Gay marching to the music of the spheres, Can ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 429 - Volume 17, New Series, March 20, 1852 • Various
... refractions, what you like; here's the great Signor Cullingworth, right up to date and ready for anything!' In they come of course, droves of them, and then I arrive and take the money. Here's my luggage!" he pointed to two great hampers in the corner of the room. "Those are glasses, my boy, concave and convex, hundreds of them. I test an eye, fit him on the spot, and send him away shouting. Then I load up a steamer and come home, unless I elect to buy one of their little States ...
— The Stark Munro Letters • J. Stark Munro
... the tibia, the medial meniscus being connected also to the capsular ligament of the joint. The tendon of the popliteus muscle intervenes between the lateral meniscus and the capsule. The central, concave edges of the menisci ...
— Manual of Surgery Volume Second: Extremities—Head—Neck. Sixth Edition. • Alexander Miles
... being concave, at the going down of the sun everything suddenly assumed a uniform robe of shade. The evening advanced from sunset to dusk long before Dick's arrival, and his progress during the latter portion of his walk through the trees was indicated by the flutter of terrified birds that ...
— Under the Greenwood Tree • Thomas Hardy
... brilliant as the Moon's. But the Earth's crescent, compared to the Lunar, was of dimensions much greater, being fully 4 times larger. You would have called it a vast, beautiful, but very thin bow extending over the sky. A few points, brighter than the rest, particularly in its concave part, revealed the presence of lofty mountains, probably the Himalayahs. But they disappeared every now and then under thick vapory spots, which are never seen on the Lunar disc. They were the thin concentric cloud rings ...
— All Around the Moon • Jules Verne
... Waianai Range lay low upon the western horizon. Eastward the bare, bold volcanic upheaval of Diamond Head gleamed in bold relief, reflecting the silver rays. Here and there through the foliage shone the soft-colored fires of Chinese lanterns, and farther away, along the concave shore, distant electric lights twinkled like answering signals to the stars in the vault of blue, and the "riding lights" of the few transports or warships, swinging ...
— Found in the Philippines - The Story of a Woman's Letters • Charles King
... They set men at work to devise another kind of telescope. In the new form, called the Reflecting Telescope, or "Reflector," the light coming from the object under observation was reflected into the eye-piece from the surface of a highly polished concave metallic mirror, or speculum, as it was called. It is to Sir Isaac Newton that the world is indebted for the reflecting telescope in its best form. That philosopher had set himself to investigate the causes of the rainbow-like, ...
— Astronomy of To-day - A Popular Introduction in Non-Technical Language • Cecil G. Dolmage
... with perfect excellence,—Aristotle now proceeds to settle wherein that excellence consists. This leads to a classification of the parts of the soul. The first distribution is, into Rational and Irrational; whether these two are separable in fact, or only logically separable (like concave and convex), is immaterial to the present enquiry. Of the irrational, the lowest portion is the Vegetative [Greek: phytikon], which seems most active in sleep; a state where bad men and good are on a par, and which is incapable ...
— Moral Science; A Compendium of Ethics • Alexander Bain
... words Clok'd their beginning; for the last he spake Agreed not with the first. But not the less My fear was at his saying; sith I drew To import worse perchance, than that he held, His mutilated speech. "Doth ever any Into this rueful concave's extreme depth Descend, out of the first degree, whose pain Is deprivation merely of sweet hope?" Thus I inquiring. "Rarely," he replied, "It chances, that among us any makes This journey, which I wend. Erewhile 'tis true Once ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... her!" roared Pete, and up she went, a great concave hollow of white like the half of a pear. The Lass's head went down, and now, instead of attempting to go over the waves, she ...
— The Harbor of Doubt • Frank Williams
... the hall. He was marching along a gallery overhanging one of the great streets of the moving platforms that traversed the city. Before him and behind him tramped his guards. The whole concave of the moving ways below was a congested mass of people marching, tramping to the left, shouting, waving hands and arms, pouring along a huge vista, shouting as they came into view, shouting as they passed, shouting as they receded, until the globes of electric light ...
— When the Sleeper Wakes • Herbert George Wells
... universal Host up sent A Shout that tore Hells Concave, and beyond Frighted the reign of Chaos and ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... Sips with rude mouth the salutary waves; Seeks round its cell the sanguine streams, that pass, And drinks with crimson gills the vital gas; Weaves with soft threads the blue meandering vein, The heart's red concave, and the silver brain; 20 Leads the long nerve, expands the impatient sense, And clothes in silken skin the nascent Ens. Erewhile, emerging from its liquid bed, It lifts in gelid air its nodding head; The lights first ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. I - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... the expense of the country; it is now high time that you should give the country their revenge. Since your withdrawing from this place, the fair sex are run into great extravagances. Their petticoats, which began to heave and swell before you left us, are now blown up into a most enormous concave, and rise every day more and more; in short, sir, since our women knew themselves to be out of the eye of the SPECTATOR, they will be kept within no compass. You praised them a little too soon, for the modesty of their headdresses; for as the humour of a sick person is often driven out of one limb ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... his purpose and was hurrying to fetch a heaping hatful of the dry clay. Before many minutes they had built a little concave dam, in which the down-seeping water ...
— Bloom of Cactus • Robert Ames Bennet
... yellowish-white belt, embracing the neck and shoulders, as a collar does a horse. These markings have given to each its specific name. They are farther distinguished, by the forehead of the white-lipped peccary being more hollowed or concave ...
— The Hunters' Feast - Conversations Around the Camp Fire • Mayne Reid
... how Saturn wrecks, And bends, and corkscrews all the frame about, Doubles the hams, and crooks the straightest necks, Draws in the nape, and pushes forth the snout, Makes backs and stomachs concave or convex: Witness those pensioners called In and Out, Who all day watching first and second rater, Quaintly ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... there who wore spectacles, not because he had bad eyes, for they were very bright and good, but because nature had formed the lenses of a more than usually rounded shape, with the consequence that their owner was short-sighted and needed a pair of concave glasses to deal with the rays of light and lengthen the focus of the natural lenses. But, metaphorically and poetically, as somebody once wrote, every boy wore glasses of the couleur-de-rose type—those which make everything that is happily beautiful seem ...
— Glyn Severn's Schooldays • George Manville Fenn
... form, and they will say, A curved line. If they are then asked how they may know it is D, they will say, Because it is made of a perpendicular line and has a curved line behind. Further information may then be given. Turn the D letter up thus , and say, I want to teach you the difference between concave and convex: the under part of the curve is concave and the upper part of it is convex. Then say, I shall now take the letter away, and wish you to shew me concave and convex on one of your fingers; when they will ...
— The Infant System - For Developing the Intellectual and Moral Powers of all Children, - from One to Seven years of Age • Samuel Wilderspin
... turning and twisting it as he ripped off the thick and fibrous husk. Then he cracked each nut in half with a well-directed blow of a heavy knife. For the best copra-making, the half-nuts should be placed in the sun, concave side up. As the meats begin to dry, they shrink away from the shell and are readily removed, being then copra, the foundation of the many toilet preparations, soaps and creams, ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... of the Royal Society on March 12th, 1668, "Mr. Smethwick's glasses were tried again; and his telescope being compared with another longer telescope, and the object-glasses exchanged, was still found to exceed the other in goodness; and his burning concave being compared with a spherical burning-glass of almost twice the diameter, and held to the fire, it burnt gloves, whereas the other spherical ones would not burn at all."—"Sir Robert Southwell being lately returned from Portugal, where he had been ambassador from ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... sun is by nature hot and not cold, as has already been stated. If rays of fire play on a concave mirror when it is cold, the rays refracted by the mirror will be hotter than {156} the fire. The rays emitted from a sphere of glass filled with cold water, which are reflected from a fire, will be warmer than ...
— Thoughts on Art and Life • Leonardo da Vinci
... There sits, illustrious Sir, thy beauteous spouse; A gem-blaz'd circle beaming on her brows. Hail'd with acclaim among the heav'nly choirs, Her soul new-kindling with seraphic fires, To notes divine she tunes the vocal strings, While heav'n's high concave with the music rings. Virtue's rewards can mortal pencil paint? No—all descriptive arts, and eloquence are faint; Nor canst thou, Oliver, assent refuse To heav'nly tidings from the Afric muse. As soon may change thy laws, eternal fate, As the saint miss ...
— Religious and Moral Poems • Phillis Wheatley
... up, with the convex side uppermost, in a glass dish, reserving one cup apricot to go on the top, with the concave side uppermost. Take a few preserved cherries, and cut them in halves, and stick half a cherry in all the little holes or spaces where the apricots meet. Cut four little green leaves out of the angelica about the size of the thumb-nail, only a little longer; ...
— Cassell's Vegetarian Cookery - A Manual Of Cheap And Wholesome Diet • A. G. Payne
... neighbouring convent of the Capuchinas, and the same year the altar was concluded, and the Virgin brought back in solemn procession, in the midst of an innumerable multitude. This great altar, which cost from three to four hundred thousand dollars, is a concave hexagonal, in the midst of which rise two white marble pillars, and on each side two columns of rose-coloured marble, of the composite order, which support the arch. Between these are two pedestals, on which are the images ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca
... radiating aureole? What geological phenomenon had caused those ardent beams? This question justly occupied Barbicane. Under his eyes, in every direction, ran luminous furrows, with raised banks and concave middle, some ten miles, others more than twenty miles wide. These shining trails ran in certain places at least 300 leagues from Tycho, and seemed to cover, especially towards the east, north-east, and north, half the southern hemisphere. One of these furrows stretched as far as the ...
— The Moon-Voyage • Jules Verne
... rock. The mouth of it on the other side opened into a mighty amphitheatre with solid rock walls shooting vertically hundreds of feet upward. Vertically, he thought—with the back of his head between his shoulders as he looked up—they were more than vertical—they were actually concave. The Almighty had not only stored riches immeasurable in the hills behind him—He had driven this passage Himself to help puny man to reach them, and yet the wretched road was going toward them like a snail. On the fifth night, thereafter he was back there at the tunnel again from New ...
— The Trail of the Lonesome Pine • John Fox, Jr.
... discern an irregular pink crescent, with the concave side downwards, somewhere in the blackness beyond the bows. He rubbed his eyes, and said nothing, believing that the unaccustomed strain of gazing into the dark had affected his sight. But the pink crescent brightened and deepened, and speedily it ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy
... least a very striking analogy. Points on one side are frequently represented by hollows on the other, and even complicated figures occasionally find a counterpart, the configuration being always relatively convex or concave. This would seem to indicate very clearly that the mass had been forcibly rent asunder, either by the contractile process of heat, or a convulsion of the earth. The most difficult point to determine is why the bottom should be so flat and regular, and what kept the great mass on each side so far ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... the same way with curves; given two lines of equal length and enclose one with convex and the other with concave curves, and the line enclosed ...
— Color Value • C. R. Clifford
... receptacle through the lower plate; it penetrates the latter and then takes the form of a helicoidal or screw-shaped spiral, the rings of which, rising one over the other, occupy nearly the whole of the height of the tank. Before again issuing from it, this spiral runs into a small cone with a concave base, that is turned downward in the ...
— Five Weeks in a Balloon • Jules Verne
... or used in England, is a Greek idea for decoying thrashes. It is a whistle formed from two discs of thin silver or silvered copper, each the size of, or a little smaller than, a "graceless" florin, or say an inch across; those discs are—one fully concave, and the other slightly convex, both have a hole in the centre and are soldered together by their edges in the manner shown in Fig. 10. [Footnote: Since writing this I find there are now sold to boys, for the ...
— Practical Taxidermy • Montagu Browne
... became so shallow that it was little more than a lake of mud. The same facts were brought out at the bend of the river. On its convex side, Fig. 55, the water has rather further to go in getting round the bend than on its concave side B, it therefore flows more quickly, and carries away the soil of the bank and mud from the bottom. But on its concave aide where it flows more slowly it deposits material. There is at the bend a marked difference in depth at the two sides. On its convex ...
— Lessons on Soil • E. J. Russell
... problem might not be in reality its clue, I became aware of another listener. Its lean and dismal length was disproportionate to that small ship. It had on but dungarees and a singlet, and the singlet, because of the length of the figure, was concave at the stomach, where, having nothing to rest upon, it was corrugated through the weight of a head made brooding by a heavy black beard. Hairy wrists were thrust deeply into the pockets to hold up the trousers. ...
— London River • H. M. Tomlinson
... about the size of those of Yama-mai, Pernyi, or Mylitta, are rather flat and concave on one side, of an amber-yellow color and transparent, like those of sphingidae. When the larvae have absorbed the yellow liquid in the egg, and are fully developed; they can be seen through the shell of the egg, which is white or colorless when the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 344, August 5, 1882 • Various
... doorways and under the frequent arches. I remember distinctly among the beautiful nights of that time, the soft night of late winter which first showed me the scene you may behold from the Public Gardens at the end of the long concave line of the Riva degli Schiavoni. Lounging there upon the southern parapet of the Gardens, I turned from the dim bell-towers of the evanescent islands in the east (a solitary gondola gliding across ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... the dale of Balder with its sighing groves. Its song of birds, a home where peace might reign supreme. High rose the copper-bolted portal, and within Two colonnades supported on strong omoplates The vaulted canopy, and beautiful it hung Above the temple, like a concave shield of gold. At farthest end stood Balder's altar. It was hewn From one huge block of northern granite: round it coiled A graven serpent, covered o'er with written runes, - Profoundest thoughts from Vala and from Ha'vama'l; But in the wall above was left an ...
— Fridthjof's Saga • Esaias Tegner
... flame fluttered like a silk flag, throwing an angry swaying glare mingled with moving shadows over the poop, lighting up the concave surfaces of the sails, gleaming on the wet paint of the white rails. And young Powell turned his eyes to windward with a catch in ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... avoided, because it takes up so much of the back margins of the sheets, and is apt to make the book stiff in opening. On the other hand, a back that is quite flat has to be lined up stiffly, or it may become concave with use. ...
— Bookbinding, and the Care of Books - A handbook for Amateurs, Bookbinders & Librarians • Douglas Cockerell
... dreamily. 'I haf a rock-crystal lens which is permeable to this light, und which I can place in mine camera. I must have a concave mirror, not of glass, which is opaque to this ...
— The Grain Ship • Morgan Robertson
... Pimlico, will form the general entrance to the palace, a concave circular Ionic colonnade and lodges. Here the old octagon library of Buckingham-House is to remain, when raised and embellished after the manner of the Temple of the Winds: the remainder of this range is chiefly ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, - Issue 278, Supplementary Number (1828) • Various
... shipped A cupful aft, or deep in Neptune dipped. Plant cassias green around, thyme redolent, Full-flowering succory with heavy scent, And violet-beds to drink the channel'd stream. And let your hives (sewn concave, seam to seam, Of cork; or of the supple osier twined) Have narrow entrances; for frosts will bind Honey as hard as dog-days run it thin: —In bees' abhorrence each extreme's akin. Not purposeless they vie with wax to paste Their ...
— The Adventures of Harry Revel • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... agricultural fairs; both took a census of the people. Among both the land was divided per capita among the people; in Judea a new division was made every fifty years. The Peruvians renewed every year all the fires of the kingdom from the Temple of the Sun, the new fire being kindled from concave mirrors by the sun's rays. The Romans under Numa had precisely the same custom. The Peruvians had theatrical plays. They chewed the leaves of the coca mixed with lime, as the Hindoo to-day chews the leaves of the betel mixed with lime. Both ...
— The Antediluvian World • Ignatius Donnelly
... although, as found in the blood of man and the other mammals (Fig. 9), they have no nuclei.(6) Each one consists of a little mass of protoplasm, called the stroma, which contains a substance having a red color, known as hemoglobin. The shape of the red corpuscle is that of a circular disk with concave sides. It has a width of about 1/3200 of an inch (7.9 microns(7)) and a thickness of about 1/13000 of an inch (1.9 microns). The red corpuscles are exceedingly numerous, there being as many as five millions in a small drop ...
— Physiology and Hygiene for Secondary Schools • Francis M. Walters, A.M.
... to dive up into a huge black cloud of peculiarly forbidding aspect. This cloud appeared to remain stationary while he swept beneath it, and, having reached its central position, he observed that its under surface was concave towards the earth, and at that moment he became swept upwards in a vortex that set his balloon spinning and swinging violently, while he himself was afflicted with violent nausea and a feeling of suffocation. The cold experienced now became intense, ...
— The Dominion of the Air • J. M. Bacon
... of the Christian era, but has again turned towards the sharp-pointed, vigorous leaf of the Greeks. Its lobes are divided into three or five tines, each sharp at the tip; its centre lines, radiating from a central stem, bend like flames; its surfaces are concave, with deep V cutting, and it has one very marked peculiarity, that is, that as far as possible no tine is left displayed alone on the ground, but the tip of each is made to touch either the tip of a neighboring tine or the ribbon or moulding bounding the space in which ...
— The Brochure Series of Architectural Illustration, Volume 01, No. 04, April 1895 - Byzantine-Romanesque Windows in Southern Italy • Various
... Herodotus (ii. 109) formally attributes the invention of the sun-dial and polos to the Babylonians. The "polos" was a solar clock. It consisted of a concave hemisphere with a style rising from its centre: the shadow of the style described every day an arc of a circle parallel to the equator, and the daily parallels were divided into twelve or twenty-four ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 3 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... perceived form not as an appearance, but as a reality; saw with the eye the complexities of projection and depression perceivable by the hand. His craft was that of measurements, of minute proportion, of delicate concave and convex—in one word, of planes. His dull, malleable clay, and ductile, shining bronze had taught him nothing of the way in which light and shadow corrode, blur, and pattern a surface. His fancy, his skill, embraced the human ...
— Renaissance Fancies and Studies - Being a Sequel to Euphorion • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... that the shape of the hinder part of a solid body which travels through the air is of as much importance as the shape of the fore-part in diminishing resistance. He does not seem to have known that it is of more importance. He knew that the resistance of the air acting on concave wings, or planes, at a small angle of incidence was resolved chiefly into lift, and he suspected that the amount of the lift was greater than the mathematical theory of his day allowed. Above all, his treatise is stimulating, and suggests further ...
— The War in the Air; Vol. 1 - The Part played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force • Walter Raleigh
... Lord has scattered Bountifully on the sky, Some soul thought they there were spattered For an ornamental dye; The huge Opalescent Concave Wore the polish of a stone Which the fracturing fires engrave With a thunder-splitting tone; And the things they claimed as sponsors For the young religious thought Were the things that were the monsters Recently from ...
— A Williams Anthology - A Collection of the Verse and Prose of Williams College, 1798-1910 • Compiled by Edwin Partridge Lehman and Julian Park |
