"Corrosive" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... stinging, sharp, cutting, sarcastic, caustic, scathing, bitter, satirical, pungent, piquant; nipping, blasting; erosive, corrosive, acrid, mordant. ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... dreamed? Could he even speak of the enthusiasm which moved him to devote himself to the cause of freedom and a threatened nationality? In the presence of a man of the world the very effort to express himself would have acted as some corrosive acid, and stained with patches of absurdity the whole fabric of his dreams. He looked at Father Moran, and saw the priest's eyes lit with sympathy. He knew that he had a listener who would not scoff, who might, perhaps, even ...
— Hyacinth - 1906 • George A. Birmingham
... taken now to prolong the "life" of the big guns by using non-corrosive material for the charges. The United States has adopted a pure gun-cotton smokeless powder in which the temperature of combustion is not only lower than that of nitro-glycerine, but even lower than that of ordinary gunpowder. With the use of this there has been a very ...
— Marvels of Modern Science • Paul Severing
... to face, as you do, the ache of an unwanted love, tossed back to eat its way like a corrosive acid. Once, not long ago, I thought, perhaps, things were going to change for me. I thought he wanted me. But now I have come to know that it is to another woman he ...
— Bambi • Marjorie Benton Cooke
... to be avoided by all honest means, however, no man was more ready to avow: concealed poverty particularly, which he said was the general corrosive that destroyed the peace of almost every family; to which no evening perhaps ever returned without some new project for hiding the sorrows and dangers of the next day. "Want of money," says Dr. Johnson, ...
— Anecdotes of the late Samuel Johnson, LL.D. - during the last twenty years of his life • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... the cutting, thousands of years of soil washed down from those slopes too to change both mountains and river, and elk and panther vanished. And if along the Potomac's North Branch there was once a fine coal boom, there is now the boom's legacy in the form of gray dour towns and dark sad streams corrosive with mine acids. ...
— The Nation's River - The Department of the Interior Official Report on the Potomac • United States Department of the Interior
... assured me she destroyed them in a few days, after the following manner. She placed a dish of cracked shagbarks (of which they are more fond than of anything else) in the closet. They soon gathered upon it in troops. She then put some corrosive sublimate in a cup; ordered the dish to be carried carefully to the fire, and all its contents brushed in; while she swept the few that dropped upon the shelf into the cup, and, with a feather, wet all the cracks from whence they came, with corrosive ...
— The American Frugal Housewife • Lydia M. Child
... understood little of political complications, internal, or balance of power, external. In calculating the addenda of bills she frequently had recourse to digital aid. After completion of laconic epistolary compositions she abandoned the implement of calligraphy in the encaustic pigment, exposed to the corrosive action of copperas, green vitriol and nutgall. Unusual polysyllables of foreign origin she interpreted phonetically or by false analogy or by both: metempsychosis (met him pike hoses), alias (a mendacious ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... The men who go to the top in journalism, the big men of power and success and grasp, come through with a contempt for the public which they serve, compared to which the contempt of the public for the newspaper is as skim milk to corrosive sublimate." ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... but in ever increasing quantities, of arsenic, strychnine, opium, and prussic acid? That at last having attained the flower of youth, she drank habitually from vessels of gold, for her favourite beverages were so corrosive that no other substance ...
— The Twilight of the Gods, and Other Tales • Richard Garnett
... point of view this ground-note of pathos is an abiding defect in Gorki. He is lacking in the limpid clarity of sheer light-heartedness. Humour he has indeed. But his humour is bitter as gall, and corrosive as sulphuric acid. "Kain and Artem" may be cited ...
— Maxim Gorki • Hans Ostwald
... the forward air lock and pressed the "doorbell." The outer valve opened for him, and he cycled through. First Officer Karamchand met him and helped him doff armor. The other man on duty found an excuse to approach and listen; for monotony was as corrosive out here as ...
— The Burning Bridge • Poul William Anderson
... someone to see, someone to console her. She had a few shillings in her pocket, but she remembered her resolutions and for some time resented the impervious clutch of the temptation. But the sorrow that hung about her, that penetrated like a corrosive acid into the very marrow of her bones, grew momentarily more burning, more unendurable. Twenty times she tried to wrench it out of her heart. The landlady brought her up some tea; she could not drink it; it tasted like soapsuds in her mouth. Then, knowing well what the ...
— A Mummer's Wife • George Moore
... Murdoch himself seems to have been in dread of the burning element, for when, in after years, his house at Sycamore Hill changed owners, it was found that the smaller gas pipes therein were made of silver, possibly used to withstand the supposed corrosive effects of the gas. The copper-covered lead pipes were patented in 1819 by Mr. W. Phipson, of the Dog Pool Mills, the present compo being comparatively a modern introduction. Messengers, of Broad Street, and Cook, of Caroline Street ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell
... idea, whilst the decaying energies of his frame received a new impulse to second the resolutions of his working mind. The cold and unnatural atrocity of Gomez Arias burned in his brain; he felt the agonized throb of his injury run corrosive through his veins, and impart an uncontrollable desire of revenge; the fever of excitement rose superior to that which had laid him prostrate, and he seemed impatient at the weakness that ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio
... with kerosene. Wash all woodwork, shelves, and drawers with carbolic-acid water and inject it into any crack or opening where the pests appear. It has been suggested that ants can be kept out of drawers and closets by a "dead line" drawn with a brush dipped in corrosive sublimate one ounce, muriate of ammonia two ounces, and water one pint, while a powder of tartar emetic, dissolved in a saucer of water, seems to be effective in driving them away. Sponges wet with sweetened ...
— The Complete Home • Various
... presence of some form of mercury, too. In that terrible moment my brain worked with the incredible swiftness of light. In a flash I knew that if I added malic acid to the mercury—perchloride of mercury or corrosive sublimate—I would have calomel or subchloride of mercury, the only thing that would switch the poison out of my system ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... sensible to make his trip to the bushes each night. For one thing he wanted to give the mildly corrosive process a chance to weaken the wires. It was a case for small doses. Also he could not afford to attract attention. His hardest job was keeping ...
— Tom Slade on a Transport • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... bored a hole in the propeller, and put in some sort of receptacle, or capsule, containing a corrosive acid. In due time, which happened to be when we took our first flight, the acid ate through whatever it was contained in, and then attacked the wood of the propeller blade. It weakened the wood so that the force used in whirling ...
— Tom Swift and his Aerial Warship - or, The Naval Terror of the Seas • Victor Appleton
... scolding and threatening of the latter, the stone was soon firmly lying over the opening of the fountain. Undine leaned thoughtfully over it and wrote with her beautiful fingers on its surface. She must, however, have had something very sharp and corrosive in her hand, for when she turned away and the servants drew near to examine the stone, they perceived all sorts of strange characters upon it, which none of them had seen ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... acids) were discovered, and the vitriols, alum, saltpetre, sal-ammoniac, ammonium carbonate, silver nitrate (lunar caustic) became better known. The compounds of mercury attracted considerable attention, mainly on account of their medicinal properties; mercuric oxide and corrosive sublimate were known to pseudo-Geber, and the nitrate and basic sulphate to "Basil Valentine." Antimony and its compounds formed the subject of an elaborate treatise ascribed to this last writer, who also contributed to our knowledge of the compounds of zinc, bismuth and arsenic. All ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 1 - "Chtelet" to "Chicago" • Various
... &c. (strengthen) 159. strike home, into home, hard home; make an impression. Adj. strong, energetic, forcible, active; intense, deep-dyed, severe, keen, vivid, sharp, acute, incisive, trenchant, brisk. rousing, irritation; poignant; virulent, caustic, corrosive, mordant, harsh, stringent; double-edged, double-shotted[obs3], double-distilled; drastic, escharotic|; racy &c. (pungent) 392. potent &c. (powerful) 157; radioactive. Adv. strongly &c. adj.; fortiter ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... for the great quantity of sugar which is commonly put in, it may destroy the native and genuine temper of the chocolate, sugar being such a corrosive salt, and such an hypocritical enemy of the body. Simeon Pauli (a learned Dane) thinks sugar to be one cause of our English consumption, and Dr. Willis blames it as one of our universal scurvies: therefore, when chocolate produces any ill effects, they may be often ...
— The Food of the Gods - A Popular Account of Cocoa • Brandon Head
... of this plant to the region of the stomach, with complete success, to expel an inordinate quantity of laudanum, in a case where the most active emetics, in the largest doses, were resorted to in vain. But most poisons, particularly the corrosive, are attended with so much exhaustion, that it would seem perilous to administer tobacco, lest by its own depressing effects, the powers of vitality might be irrecoverably extinguished. In many instances, however, it ...
— A Dissertation on the Medical Properties and Injurious Effects of the Habitual Use of Tobacco • A. McAllister
... of centuries the critical spirit, which is the spirit of science, has been invading the affairs of men. Humble but persistent corrosive of delusion, it has infiltrated the furthest bounds of ignorance and superstition. It has not dared to assert the supremacy of its fundamental views upon the everyday problems of human life because it was without ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.
... atmosphere and the absence of catholic traditions and associations act also as a corrosive on the faith of Catholics, particularly of our young people. Like a strong acid it eats away the teachings of good Christian parents and the impressions of a Catholic home. Only those who have seen at close range these sad soul transformations ...
— Catholic Problems in Western Canada • George Thomas Daly
... round upon his heel with the intention of shaming his countrymen by a corrosive remark or two. To his surprise and relief, the two young fellows who had been conversing had their shoulders turned towards him, and were gazing at one of the Louvre attendants who was polishing some brass-work at the other side ...
— The Captain of the Pole-Star and Other Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... uneasy in self-sacrifice, who had striven, who was striving still, to draw near to the gates of heaven, but who had not come upon the path which led up the mountain-side to them. Sorrow was stamped on the face, and something else, too—the seal of that corrosive disease of ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... for steam and gas engines are hardly adaptable for experiments in the direction of economising this source of power, one fatal objection in the majority of cases being the corrosive effects of the gases generated upon the insides of cylinders and other working parts. As soon as the force of the emission jet can be applied as a factor in giving motive power, the fact that no close-fitting parts are required for the places ...
— Twentieth Century Inventions - A Forecast • George Sutherland
... final attempt to frighten Siegfried by discoursing of the dragon's terrible jaws, poisonous breath, corrosive spittle, and deadly, stinging tail. Siegfried is not interested in the tail: he wants to know whether the dragon has a heart, being confident of his ability to stick Nothung into it if it exists. Reassured on this point, he ...
— The Perfect Wagnerite - A Commentary on the Niblung's Ring • George Bernard Shaw
... is to clip off the wool, to rub the parts affected with powdered lime or wood ashes, and afterwards to anoint them with currier's oil, which will heal the wounds, and secure the animals from future attack. Or dissolve half an ounce of corrosive sublimate in two quarts of soft water, and add a quarter of a pint of spirits of turpentine. Cut off the wool as far as it is infected, pour a few drops of the mixture in a circle round the maggots produced by the flies, ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton
... uncombined, giving to the bread a yellow color and an alkaline taste, and doing mischief to the delicate coating of the stomach. Alkalies, the class of chemicals to which soda and salaratus belong, when pure and strong, are powerful corrosive poisons. The acid used with the alkali to liberate the carbonic-acid gas in the process of bread-making, if rightly proportioned, destroys this poisonous property, and unites with it to form a new compound, which, although not a poison, ...
— Science in the Kitchen. • Mrs. E. E. Kellogg
... had been traveling the same road for many months,—denying his natural promptings, stifling a natural passion, surrendering himself to an obsession of vindictiveness, planning and striving to return evil for what he conceived to be evil, and being himself corrupted by the corrosive forces of hatred. ...
— Poor Man's Rock • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... been with them here, than that they should be closeted together in a spot so secluded, with rancour and cause for complaint in one heart, and a biting, deadly flame in the other, which once reaching up must from its very nature leave behind it a corrosive impress. I saw,-I felt,—but I did not desist from my investigations. A stick or two still smouldered on the hearthstone. In the ashes lay some scattered fragments of paper which crumbled at my touch. On the floor in front I espied only ...
— The House of the Whispering Pines • Anna Katharine Green
... Sir Henry Butcher, in whom she had for the first time encountered the ordinary love of the ordinary sentimental male. This left her so unmoved that she detested it, with all its ridiculous parade of emotions, its stealthy overtures, its corrosive dishonesty, which made a frank interchange of thought and feeling impossible.... The thing had happened to her before, but she had been too young to realise it, or to understand to the full its essential possessiveness, which to her ...
— Mummery - A Tale of Three Idealists • Gilbert Cannan
... The first, made by fire, is found, by long experience, in warm climates, to be too weak; the provisions cured with it turn rusty, and in six or eight months become unfit for use. The second kind, by the quantity of alum, or some other vicious quality in it, is so corrosive, that in less than twelve months, the meat cured with it is entirely deprived of all the fat, and the lean hardened, or so much consumed, as to be of little service. The same ill qualities are found in these salts with regard to fish: wherefore ...
— The Bounty of the Chesapeake - Fishing in Colonial Virginia • James Wharton
... 'omicide was not too black a name for all you've done. (Lady BELLEDAME shudders.) I might tell Miss ELFIE how you've blowed up a live Baronet, corrosive sublimated a gentle Lady, honly for 'aving, in a moment of candour, called you a hold cat, and distributed pison in a variety of forms about this smiling village; and, if that don't inspire her with distrust, I don't know the nature of children, that's ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 98, March 1, 1890 • Various
... ascertain that we had not brought the dreaded small-pox from the Ionian Islands. After being graciously and liberally allowed to land, we were visited by the local chapmen, whose goods appeared rather mixed—polished cowhorns and mildewed figs, dolls in costume and corrosive oranges; by the normal musical barber, who imitates at a humble distance bird and beast; and by the vendor of binoculars, who asks forty francs and who takes ten. The captain noted his protest at the Consulate, and claimed by way of sauvetage 200l. The owners offered ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton
... when he was a youth, some of the bones of his skull had to be removed, and from this time forth he never dared to remain long with his head uncovered. When he was fifty-nine he swallowed a certain corrosive poison, which did not kill him, but left him toothless. He was likewise round-shouldered, a stammerer, and subject to constant palpitation of the heart; but in compensation for these defects he had eyes which could see in the dark and which needed not spectacles ...
— Jerome Cardan - A Biographical Study • William George Waters
... only. soldado, m., soldier. solejar, m., sunny place. solemne, solemn. solemnidad, f., solemnity. soler, (ue), to be accustomed, be in the habit. solicitar, to solicit, ask, request. solicito,-a, solicitous, anxious. soliman, m., corrosive sublimate of mercury; hecho un ——, angry, furious, hopping mad. solo,-a, alone, only, mere, single. solo, adv., only, merely. soltar, (ue), to let loose; —— la carcajada, to burst into loud laughter. soltero,-a, unmarried, ...
— A First Spanish Reader • Erwin W. Roessler and Alfred Remy
... which the Strangler had traced, soon appeared on the surface, at first in characters of a pale rose-color, as fine as a hair; but such was the slowly corrosive power of the juice, that, as it worked and spread beneath the skin, they would become in a few hours of a violet red, and as apparent as they ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... imposition of societal breakdown over a lengthy period but without the application of massive destruction. This example is obviously not rapid but cumulative. In this example, both military and societal values are targets. Selective and focused force is applied. It is the long-term corrosive effects of the continuing breakdown in the system and society that ultimately compels an adversary to surrender or to accept terms. Shock and Awe are therefore not immediate either in application or in producing the end result. Economic ...
— Shock and Awe - Achieving Rapid Dominance • Harlan K. Ullman and James P. Wade
... the faces of the slaves, using a sharp point either of gold or of a thorn; they then fill the wounds with a kind of powder dampened with black or red juice, which forms an indelible dye and never disappears. The Spaniards took these slaves with them. It seems that this juice is corrosive and produces such terrible pain that the slaves are unable to eat on account of their sufferings. Both the kings who originally captured these slaves in war, and also the Spaniards, put them to work hunting ...
— De Orbe Novo, Volume 1 (of 2) - The Eight Decades of Peter Martyr D'Anghera • Trans. by Francis Augustus MacNutt
... Penicilium glaucum. They insinuate themselves between the fibre, causing a freer admission of air, and consequently hasten the decay. The substances most successfully used as preventives of decay are the salts of mercury, copper, and zinc. Bichloride of mercury (corrosive sublimate) is the material employed in the kyanization of timber, the probable mode of action being its combination with the albumen of the wood, to form an insoluble compound not susceptible of spontaneous decomposition, and therefore incapable of exciting fermentation. The antiseptic power of ...
— Forty Centuries of Ink • David N. Carvalho
... charcoal, or cinders, you char it. If you burn it to ashes, you incinerate it. (This word is learned and but little used in ordinary discourse.) If you burn a dead body to ashes, you cremate it. If you burn or sear anything with a hot iron or a corrosive substance, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... Re-enter Heaven; or else in some mild zone Dwell, not unvisited of Heaven's fair light, Secure, and at the brightening orient beam Purge off this gloom: the soft delicious air, To heal the scar of these corrosive fires, Shall breathe her balm. But, first, whom shall we send In search of this new World? whom shall we find Sufficient? who shall tempt with wandering feet The dark, unbottomed, infinite Abyss, And through the ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton
... vulgar experience has taught us to reject the potato ball and cook the tomato. So of most of our remedies. The subchloride of mercury, calomel, is the great British specific; the protochloride of mercury, corrosive sublimate, kills like arsenic, but no chemist could have told us it would ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... The appeal was fruitless in its immediate effects, for the political party leaders were still dominated by the military; but ultimately, in conjunction with a dozen other appeals, its influence acted like a subtle corrosive upon the German ...
— Woodrow Wilson and the World War - A Chronicle of Our Own Times. • Charles Seymour
... of joy by numbers of persons of both sexes, most of them belonging to the better classes of society, displeased Fouche, and he determined to put a stop to it. Wretches were hired to mingle with the crowd and sprinkle corrosive liquids on the dresses of the females some of them were even instructed to commit acts of indecency, so that all respectable persons were driven from the gardens through the fear of being injured or insulted: ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... them, delivered them, and so to cricket, serene; but now, his mind, to apply the universal cant, was "in a transition state." A year's practice had chilled the youthful valour which used to scatter Epsom salts or oxalic acid, magnesia or corrosive sublimate. An experiment or two by himself and his compeers, with comments by the coroner, had enlightened him as to the final result on the human body of potent chemicals fearlessly administered, leaving him dark as to their distinctive ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... package was a box filled with a very strong acid," said the colonel. "Probably the box was made of soft metal, through which the acid would eat in a few hours. It was placed in the safe, and in time the corrosive worked through——" ...
— Jack O' Judgment • Edgar Wallace
... Brussels that new light had been thrown on the mysterious death of Sir Thomas Overbury. Winwood investigated in secret. An English lad, one Reeves, an apothecary's assistant, thinking himself dying, had confessed at Flushing that Overbury had been poisoned by an injection of corrosive sublimate. Reeves himself had given the injection on the orders of his master, Loubel, the apothecary who had attended Overbury on the day before his death. Winwood sought out Loubel, and from him went to Sir Gervase Elwes. The story he was able to make from what he had from the ...
— She Stands Accused • Victor MacClure
... be made to destroy or to counteract the organisms by swabbing the throat with strong antiseptic solutions, such as 1 in 1000 corrosive sublimate or 1 in 30 carbolic acid, or by spraying ...
— Manual of Surgery - Volume First: General Surgery. Sixth Edition. • Alexis Thomson and Alexander Miles
... gathered only after the lapse of aeons instead of years. The arts of fire were slowly elaborated until man had produced the crucible and the still, through which his labours culminated in metals purified, in acids vastly more corrosive than those of vegetation, in glass and porcelain equally resistant to flame and the electric wave. These were combined in an hour by Volta to build his cell, and in that hour began a new era for human faculty ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - Invention and Discovery • Various
... There was no corrosive bitterness of the vengeful in Jolly Roger's heart. For that reason even his enemies, the Police, had fallen into the habit of using the nickname which the wilderness people had given him. He did not hate these police. Curiously, he loved them. Their type was to him the living flesh ...
— The Country Beyond - A Romance of the Wilderness • James Oliver Curwood
... but, on looking at the result, was affrighted to find the features of the portrait blurred and indefinable; while the minute figure of a hand appeared where the cheek should have been. Aylmer snatched the metallic plate and threw it into a jar of corrosive acid. ...
— Mosses from an Old Manse and Other Stories • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... which are as new as now, that still hover about the political and amorous quips of the Greeks. The nose-crinkling ones of the French, more vinegar-acrid than perfumed, although a seventeenth-century proverb calls France "a monarchy tempered by epigrams." The didactic Teutonic ones, sharply corrosive. ...
— A Guide to Men - Being Encore Reflections of a Bachelor Girl • Helen Rowland
... interior surface with a solution of copper sulfate and lime, in order to destroy any fungi that may remain. The edges of the cavity are cut smooth in order to allow free growth of the cambium after the cavity is filled. Any antiseptic, such as corrosive sublimate, creosote, or even paint, may answer the purpose; creosote, however, possesses the most penetrating powers of any. The method of filling the cavities depends to a great extent on their size and form. Very large cavities with great openings are generally bricked on the outside, over ...
— Manual of Gardening (Second Edition) • L. H. Bailey
... afterwards, as they said, to draw it to a head, and at last thought it best to open it; so for a long time I had to suffer more from inconvenience than pain, although towards the end of the cure the continual touching with lunar caustic and other corrosive substances could not but give me very disagreeable prospects for every fresh day. The physician and surgeon both belonged to the Pious Separatists, although both were of highly different natural characters. ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... 20 and the end of June), that it ceases in the cooler weather, but on the other hand quickly reaches a great intensity if the patients expose themselves to heat and sunshine. An extraordinary violent sneezing then sets in, and a strongly corrosive thin discharge, with which much epithelium is thrown off. This increases, after a few hours, to a painful inflammation of the mucous membrane and of the outside of the nose, and excites fever with severe headache and great depression, if the patient cannot withdraw himself ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... shoal of frightened minnows. But elsewhere the river lay golden, solid, and painfully bright. Things afloat, in the slumberous procession of all Eastern rivers, swam downward imperceptibly, now blurred, now outlined in corrosive sharpness. ...
— Dragon's blood • Henry Milner Rideout
... such as furniture, which cannot be boiled, are disinfected by the use of any one of several chemicals, such as sulphur, carbolic acid, chloride of lime, corrosive sublimate, etc. ...
— General Science • Bertha M. Clark
... loved nothing and nobody living, not even himself. He loved her—this man whose life was all behind him, and whose heart was of stone, and whose speech was acrid as the most corrosive element known to chemistry. But a few "passes" of sweet Sorceress Lilith's magical wand and the stone heart had split to fragments, pouring forth, giving release to, a warm well-spring. A well-spring? A very torrent, deep, fierce, strong, but not irresistible—as ...
— The Sign of the Spider • Bertram Mitford
... is the only industrial metal that at ordinary temperatures is a liquid. It is the base of the substance calomel, a chloride, and corrosive sublimate, a dichloride, both of which are employed as medicines. It is essential in the manufacture of thermometers and barometers, but is used chiefly, however, as a solvent of gold, which it separates from the finely powdered ...
— Commercial Geography - A Book for High Schools, Commercial Courses, and Business Colleges • Jacques W. Redway
... start. He denounced the selfish greed of gold, lawless passion, revenge,—and here the grim Doctor broke out into a strange passion and zeal of anathema against this deadly sin, making a dreadful picture of the ruin that it creates in the heart where it establishes itself, and how it makes a corrosive acid of those genial juices. Then he told the boy that the condition of all good was, in the first place, truth; then, courage; then, justice; then, mercy; out of which principles operating upon one another would come all brave, noble, high, unselfish actions, and the scorn of ...
— Doctor Grimshawe's Secret - A Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... of the face opposite him and the stoop of the shoulders, Manuel read a need for an active antidote against the corrosive poison of despair. ...
— The Lighted Match • Charles Neville Buck
... have withstood the corrosive effects of my hopeless passion, irritated as it was by my being in the vicinity of its object—by hearing perpetually of her beauty, and sometimes catching a glimpse of it,—I know not; but the Omrah, after a few months spent with his father-in-law, returned with his bride to his castle in the ...
— A Voyage to the Moon • George Tucker
... appearance of suffering from tetanus. His throat was contracted by re- peated spasms, his tongue was parched, his body swollen, and his pulse, though feeble, was rapid and irregular. The poor wretch's symptoms were precisely such as to lead us to sus- pect that he had taken some corrosive poison. Of course it was quite out of our power to administer any antidote; all that we could devise was to make him swallow something that might act as an emetic. I asked Curtis for a little of the lukewarm water. As the contents ...
— The Survivors of the Chancellor • Jules Verne
... to the last publication of your sister wit, Mrs. Piozzi? It is well that she has had the good nature to extract almost all the corrosive particles from the old growler's letters. By means of her benevolent chemistry, these effusions of that expansive but gloomy spirit taste more oily and sweet than one ...
— Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale) (2nd ed.) (2 vols.) • Mrs. Hester Lynch Piozzi
... impassively flooding the fields of death with its waves of light. In its yellowish glow, the pieces of the bayonets, the metal plates, the fittings of the guns were sparkling like bits of crystal. The damp night, the rain, the rust of time had not yet modified with their corrosive action these ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... waited on him, his eyebrows slightly raised, as if he were finding fault but without anger. For the first time in her life Daisy had a sensation of jealousy; but in the pale nostalgic form, rather than the yellow corrosive. ...
— IT and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... it had received and taken calomel, but that, having eaten a small piece of pickle shortly before, the conjunction of the vegetable acid with the calomel had formed, in the child's stomach, a precipitate of corrosive sublimate, from ...
— Courts and Criminals • Arthur Train
... and iron, or of lead and zinc (when the apparatus is built of galvanised steel), is exposed to the liquid bathing it; and since in both cases the lead is highly electro-negative to the iron or zinc, it is the iron or zinc which suffers attack, assuming the liquid to possess any corrosive properties whatever. Galvanised iron which has been injured during the joint-making presents a zinc-iron couple to the water, but the zinc protects the iron; if a lead solder is present, the iron will begin to corrode immediately the zinc has disappeared. In the absence of ...
— Acetylene, The Principles Of Its Generation And Use • F. H. Leeds and W. J. Atkinson Butterfield
... the army Colt from my pocket and ran softly abreast of the youngster. The corrosive terror of the earlier part of the evening had fled then, and my nerves had taken up a sort of dare-devil attitude toward all happenings that the future might hold in store. Besides, the more I thought of Leith, ...
— The White Waterfall • James Francis Dwyer
... for promoting the growth of whiskers and moustaches, are either perfumed and colored lard, or poisonous compounds, which contain quick lime, or corrosive sublimate, or some kindred substance. If you have any acquaintance who has ever used this means of covering his face with a manly down, ask him which came first, the beard, or a ...
— The Secrets Of The Great City • Edward Winslow Martin
... or three leagues from the mouth of the Jordan, and is of a thorny appearance, with small tapering leaves. Its fruit is exactly like that of the Egyptian lemon, both in size and colour. Before it is ripe it is filled with a corrosive and saline juice; when dried, it yields a blackish seed that may be compared to ashes, and which in taste resembles bitter pepper. There can be little doubt that this is the true apple of Sodom, which flatters the sight while it mocks ...
— Palestine or the Holy Land - From the Earliest Period to the Present Time • Michael Russell
... must be the work of some democrat, some aspirant to supreme power, who resolves to maintain it, exercising a domination too hazardous for legitimacy. I will only scrape from the chambers the effervescence of superficial letters and corrosive law. ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... on account of its containing "such a corrosive salt" as sugar. Mum is a peculiar kind of ...
— Cocoa and Chocolate - Their History from Plantation to Consumer • Arthur W. Knapp
... to explain, but shrewdly suspect it may be the Cause of Stones, Colicks, Obstructions, and several other Chronical Distempers; for if we consider that the sediments of Malt-liquors are the refuse of a corrupted Grain, loaded with the igneous acid Particles of the Malt, and then again with the corrosive sharp Particles of the Yeast, it must consequently be very pernicious to the British human Body especially, which certainly suffers much from the animal Salts of the great Quantities of Flesh that we Eat more than People of any other Nation whatsoever; ...
— The London and Country Brewer • Anonymous
... heaven-lov'd seraph, haste, On pity's wings upborne, a world's wide woes Invoke thy smiles extatic, long effac'd, Beneath the tear which all corrosive flows; While reason shudders, let ambition weep, When wounding truth records what it has done: Records the hosts consign'd to death's cold sleep, Conspicuous 'mid the pomp of conflicts won! Shall not the fiend relent, while ...
— Poetic Sketches • Thomas Gent
... effect, but as organic parts of the whole. It scintillates with wit, though it lacks humor. It is the just medium of expression for his characters, those types of modern intellectuals, affected by the corrosive skepticism of the period and in turn buoyed by the light-hearted temperament and depressed by the passive melancholy that are indigenous to Vienna. It is this literary excellence that renders works ...
— The German Classics, v. 20 - Masterpieces of German Literature • Various
... souls, even in the very soil of this land of his, where the Etruscans had once quarried the tombs of their dead, and as an art motive it absorbed his whole feeling. When, later in life, material success came to invade his nature, its influence as a corrosive at once appears in his art creation. The touch of ideal beauty leaves his figures; drawing, colour, composition become mere hasty ...
— Perugino • Selwyn Brinton
... it should have about the consistency and smoothness of cream; for leather, it can be thicker. For very thick leather a little thin glue may be added. Paste made with alum will keep about a fortnight, but can be kept longer by the addition of corrosive sublimate in the proportion of one part of corrosive sublimate to a thousand parts of paste. Corrosive sublimate, being a deadly poison, will prevent the attack of bookworms or other insects, but for the same reason ...
— Bookbinding, and the Care of Books - A handbook for Amateurs, Bookbinders & Librarians • Douglas Cockerell
... Metals, spiritual, intangible, incombustible, without any mixture of earthly Aquosity; it is that Celestial water, whereof very much hath been written; for by this Spirit of Mercury all Metals, may if need require, be broken, opened, and resolved into their first Matter, without Corrosive; it renews the age of Man or Beast, even as the Eagles; it consumes all evil, and conducts a long Age to long Life. This Spirit of Mercury is the Master-Key of my Second Key, whereof I wrote in the beginning; wherefore I will call; Come ye Blessed of ...
— Of Natural and Supernatural Things • Basilius Valentinus
... offensive in manner, or unseemly in habit; of all the irksome, humiliating, or sometimes ludicrous circumstances and situations. And also, in this close association, the bad moods, the strifes, and resentments, are pressed into immediate, lasting, corrosive contact with whatever should be the most vital to social happiness. If there be, into the account, the wants, anxieties, and vexations of severe poverty, they will generally aggravate all that is destructive ...
— An Essay on the Evils of Popular Ignorance • John Foster
... corrosive sublimation. It is a torture which consecrates. One can consent to it for the first hour; one seats oneself on the throne of glowing iron, one places on one's head the crown of hot iron, one accepts the globe of red hot iron, one takes the sceptre of red hot ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... amongst the capitals of culture? Why should it take its tone from London? That centripetal force which draws villages to towns and towns to capitals everywhere tends to concentrate in one city a country's culture, and to brand as provincial that which is not of the centre. But the centre is corrosive of originality, and if now and then a great man does abide therein, it is because he has the gift of solitude amid crowds, and is not obnoxious to the contagion of the common thought. The Scotch School, though its effort to emancipate itself from ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... consumption. And what that incredibly intense bombardment impinges up is ... is altered. Profoundly and obscuredly altered, so that the atmosphere emitted from the crater is quite definitely no longer air as we know it. It may be corrosive, it may be poisonous in one or another of a hundred fashions, it may be merely new and different; but it is no longer the air which we human beings are used to breathing. And it is this fact, rather than the destruction of the planet itself, which would end the possibility of life upon ...
— The Vortex Blaster • Edward Elmer Smith
... in the girl's composition the esthetic element, the sense of colour and form. In their visits to the theatre there was nothing Mrs. Rooth more insisted on than the unprofitableness of deceit, as shown by the most distinguished authors—the folly and degradation, the corrosive effect on the spirit, of tortuous ways. Their companion soon gave up the futile task of piecing together her incongruous references to her early life and her family in England. He renounced even the doctrine ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... different qualities of the wood of Norfolk Island and New South Wales, perhaps the difference of soil may in some measure be traced. That of Norfolk Island is light and porous: it rots and turns into mould in two years. Besides its hardness that of Port Jackson abounds with red corrosive gum, which contributes ...
— A Complete Account of the Settlement at Port Jackson • Watkin Tench
... flat-cars always stood, engaged in the work of carrying away the cliffs, in which they were aided and abetted by giant derricks and the fiends of dynamite and nitro-glycerin. Limekilns burned all the time, turning the companionable gray ledges into something offensive and corrosive. One must now board a street-car, and ride away beyond Lynhurst Park before one could find the good and pure ...
— Aladdin & Co. - A Romance of Yankee Magic • Herbert Quick
... cylindrical; like a mammoth soft blue-white stovepipe doubled in two, its largest part some two feet in diameter. Still more I scraped, and then abruptly I leaped out of the hole and away from the filthy thing; frantically unstopping and tilting the heavy carboys, and precipitating their corrosive contents one after another down that charnel gulf and upon the unthinkable abnormality whose ...
— The Shunned House • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... also state in this connection that, only two weeks previous to my receiving news of the poisoning of the mare, I examined for Mr. Belmont the contents of the stomach of a colt which died very mysteriously, and found large quantities of corrosive sublimate to ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 385, May 19, 1883 • Various
... sag-suits could walk about on Dara. They could work on Dara. They could loot with impunity and all contamination must remain outside the suits, and on their return to their ships they would simply stand in the airlocks while corrosive gases swirled around them, killing any possible organism of disease. Then, for extra assurance, when air from Weald filled the airlock again, the men would burn the outer plastic covering and step into the ship without ...
— This World Is Taboo • Murray Leinster
... presence of chromatogenous bacteria which are found attached to the hairs of the part in agglutinated masses. The axilla is the favorite site. Treatment consists of frequent soap-and-water washings, and the application of boric acid, resorcin, and corrosive sublimate lotions. ...
— Essentials of Diseases of the Skin • Henry Weightman Stelwagon
... anxiety; and opium had already so far produced its legitimate results that he connived at their delusion if he did not confirm it by actual assertion. It is one of the diabolical qualities of this habit that it soon weakens and at last destroys all truth and honor in the soul, eating them out with a corrosive ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... which had no thought—for that which had no sentience—for that which was soulless, yet of which matter formed no portion—for all this nothingness, yet for all this immortality, the grave was still a home, and the corrosive hours, co-mates. ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... considered to be the founders of modern experimental science. They were relatively skillful chemists, for they discovered a number of new compounds (such as alcohol, aqua regia, nitric acid, and corrosive sublimate) and understood the preparation of mercury and of various oxides of metals. In medicine the Arabs based their investigations on those of the Greeks, [27] but made many additional contributions to ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER
... correspondent of the Review. He stated that a white powder was rubbed on the gums of the patient, after which the tooth was easily pulled from its socket; and this I can substantiate, noting, however, that the action of the powder (corrosive sublimate) is not quite so rapid as represented. A short time since I witnessed an operation of this kind. The operator rubbed the powder on the gum as described, but then directed the patient to wait a little. After perhaps ten minutes' interval, ...
— Chinese Sketches • Herbert A. Giles
... and kept in the reduced state only by artificial means. Between these extremes there are all possible degrees of transition, some metals more nearly resembling the 'noble', others more nearly the 'corrosive', metals. ...
— Man or Matter • Ernst Lehrs
... nature, if the paper be changed a few hours after the specimens have been laid in, preserve all their characters admirably; and if in the course of a few weeks there is an opportunity of washing them with a solution of turpentine and corrosive sublimate, submitting them again to pressure for a few hours merely to prevent their shrinking, there will be no fear of their suffering from ...
— Fungi: Their Nature and Uses • Mordecai Cubitt Cooke
... the corrosive effects of the sea, and of the elements in the water and in the rock. As these rocks are limestone formations, we may be able to see some beautiful decorations within, if the cave is of ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: Exploring the Island • Roger Thompson Finlay
... value of a man merely a question of dynamics. The number of shops, especially of drinking-shops—sordid cafes and flashy buvettes, where the enterprising poisoners of the coal-miner stood behind their zinc counters pouring out the corrosive absinthe and the beetroot brandy—told of the prosperity of Cransac. Evidently it was a place in which money could be earned by those prepared to accept the conditions. The women wore better clothes than the wives of the peasants; but ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... have already stated that I have no objection to the plug, if the engineer did not know it was there, so if you must use one, attend to it, and every time you clean your boiler scrape the upper or water end of the plug with a knife, and be careful to remove any corrosive matter that may have collected on it, and then treat your boiler exactly as though there was no such a thing as a safety plug in it. A safety plug was not designed to let you run with any lower ...
— Rough and Tumble Engineering • James H. Maggard
... a new use for gold by inventing a process by which it could be hardened and tempered, assuming a wonderful toughness and elasticity without losing its non-corrosive property, and in this form it rapidly took the place ...
— The Moon Metal • Garrett P. Serviss
... off of Miss Pendergasses' double back-action, self-adjusting, anti-corrosive, herring-bone, powerloom lamp, don't it, my dear cousin?' asked Gregory, who had been regaled several times with an account of a wonderful lamp that burnt one hour at a cost of only ten cents, or ten hours at a cost of one ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 1 January 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... cigar-shaped mangrove-bud, bobbing vertically, through the ocean, until it chanced to touch the new-risen coral reef. The mangrove, alone of all trees, will sprout and grow in salt water. The mangrove's trunk, alone of all trunks, is impervious to the corrosive ...
— Black Caesar's Clan • Albert Payson Terhune
... ferried across the busy Scheldt, the white blaze of his passion cooled; but the biting irony of his estate ate, corrosive, into his soul. Hollow-eyed he glared vacantly into space, pale lips unmoving, his features ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... stupefaction, if not his joy, I read on the eastern side of the huge block of stone, the same characters, half eaten away by the corrosive action of time, the name, to me a ...
— A Journey to the Centre of the Earth • Jules Verne
... she had no fear of poison. Her head physician, however, chose to take precautions. He desired one of her ladies to have always at hand a bottle of fresh, good oil of sweet almonds, which, with milk, is an antidote against corrosive poisons. He was uneasy at the queen's habit of sweetening draughts of water from a sugar-basin which stood open in her apartment. He was afraid of this sugar being poisoned. The lady therefore kept a great quantity of sugar pounded in ...
— The Peasant and the Prince • Harriet Martineau
... they do not make such good specimens. When the specimens are dried and placed in the herbarium they must be protected from insects. Some are already infested with insects which the process of drying does not kill. They must be either poisoned with corrosive sublimate in alcohol, or fumigated with carbon disulphide, and if the latter it must be repeated one or two times at an interval of a month to catch those which were in the egg state the first time. When placed in the herbarium or in a box for storage, naphtha balls can be ...
— Studies of American Fungi. Mushrooms, Edible, Poisonous, etc. • George Francis Atkinson
... such quiet hours of heart-to-heart intimacy that constitute true marriage. For in these uneventful moments links are forged and soldered strong enough to resist the buffeting of storms, or the deadlier, corrosive influence of those minor miseries which poison the very core ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... of mercury {Sweet sublimate of mercury, { { calomel, aquila alba. mercury { { {corrosive of {Corrosive sublimate of ...
— Elements of Chemistry, - In a New Systematic Order, Containing all the Modern Discoveries • Antoine Lavoisier
... rocks are everywhere slowly wasting away. They are broken in pieces by frost, by tree roots, and by heat and cold. They dissolve and decompose under the chemical action of water and the various corrosive substances which it contains, leaving their insoluble residues as residual clays and sands upon the surface. As a result there is everywhere forming a mantle of rock waste which covers the land. It is well to imagine how the country ...
— The Elements of Geology • William Harmon Norton
... eggs, and how they can be prevented.—[They cannot be "prevented." The most common cause is insect vermin. If these are found, burn all the old nests, use Persian powder freely on the birds, and paint the cracks in the cages with corrosive sublimate, and then ...
— Little Folks (Septemeber 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... she had been a mother twice before, had never felt toward either of the other children at all as she did now toward this little boy. She could not bear to be parted from him. Somehow that terrible corrosive selfishness had been blessedly taken away from her—for a little while only? She only felt at first that she must not think of those horrible depths, for fear of slipping back into the pit again; even to think of the slimy ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... have gone up. Already the corrosive process has begun. And every diminution of our tolerance, each new act of enforced conformity, each idle accusation, each demonstration of hysteria-each new restrictive law—is one more sign that we can lose the battle ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... means of liquors and tints boiled with penetrating oil in order to produce light and shadow with wood of various colours, making the lights with the whitest pieces of the spindle tree; to shade, some singed the wood by firing, others used oil of sulphur, or a solution of corrosive sublimate and arsenic. The "most solemn" masters of tarsia in Florence were the Majani, La Cecca, Il Francione, and the da San Gallo. The first name which he gives is that of Giuliano da Majano (1432-90), architect and sculptor, who executed as his first work the seats and presses of the ...
— Intarsia and Marquetry • F. Hamilton Jackson
... still more valuable by mixing with it a single scruple either of the tincture of corals, or sapphire, or hyacinth, or a solution of pearls, or of potable gold, if it can be obtained free of all corrosive matter! In order to render the medicine universal for all diseases which can be cured by perspiration, and which, he says, form a third of those which attack the human frame, he combines it with antimony, ...
— The Martyrs of Science, or, The lives of Galileo, Tycho Brahe, and Kepler • David Brewster
... Acid).—This acid is used to form some of the most volatile and sensitive compounds employed in the Daguerreotype. It is one of the most dangerous bodies to experiment with: it is volatile and corrosive, giving off dense white fumes in the air. It combines with water with great heat. At 32 deg. it condenses into a colorless fluid, with a density 1.069. It is obtained from decomposition of fluorspar by strong sulphuric acid. It readily dissolves the silica in glass, and consequently cannot be kept ...
— American Handbook of the Daguerrotype • Samuel D. Humphrey
... to find the features of the portrait blurred and indefinable; while the minute figure of a hand appeared where the cheek should have been. Alymer snatched the metallic plate and threw it into a jar of corrosive[5] acid. ...
— Short-Stories • Various
... Portuguese men-of-war known by the name Physalia pelagica, like big, oblong bladders with a pearly sheen, spreading their membranes to the wind, letting their blue tentacles drift like silken threads; to the eye delightful jellyfish, to the touch actual nettles that ooze a corrosive liquid. Among the articulates there were annelid worms one and a half meters long, furnished with a pink proboscis, equipped with 1,700 organs of locomotion, snaking through the waters, and as they went, throwing off every gleam in the ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... to my cost in bygone experiments, the pine-caterpillar wields a violently corrosive poison, which produces a painful rash upon the hands. It must therefore, one would think, form a somewhat highly seasoned diet. The beetles, however, delight in it. No matter how many flocks I provide them with, they are all consumed. But no one, that I know of, has ever found the Golden Gardener ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre
... is either a monad or a dyad. Symbolize its ous and ic oxides and chlorides. Which of the following are is salts, and which are ous, and why? HgNO3, Hg(NO3)2, HgCl, HgCl2? Calomel, HgCl or Hg2Cl2, used in medicine, and corrosive sublimate, HgCl2, are illustrations of the ous and ic salts. The former is insoluble, the latter soluble. All soluble compounds of Hg are virulent poisons, for which the antidote is the white of egg, albumen. With it they coagulate or ...
— An Introduction to Chemical Science • R.P. Williams |
