Free TranslationFree Translation
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

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




Functional   /fˈəŋkʃənəl/   Listen
Functional

adjective
1.
Designed for or capable of a particular function or use.  "Functional architecture"
2.
Involving or affecting function rather than physiology.
3.
Relating to or based on function especially as opposed to structure.  "Delegates elected on a functional rather than a geographical basis"
4.
Fit or ready for use or service.  Synonyms: operable, operational, usable, useable.  "The lawnmower is a bit rusty but still usable" , "An operational aircraft" , "The dishwasher is now in working order"
5.
Designed for or adapted to a function or use.  "Functional architecture"
6.
(of e.g. a machine) performing or capable of performing.  Synonyms: operative, running, working.  "A functional set of brakes"



Related searches:



WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |





"Functional" Quotes from Famous Books



... early astylar temples the metopes were left open like the spaces between the ends of ceiling-rafters. In the earlier peripteral temples, as at Selinus, the triglyph-frieze is retained around the cella-wall under the ceiling of the colonnade, where it has no functional significance, as a survival from times antedating the adoption of the colonnade, when the tradition of a wooden roof-construction showing externally had not ...
— A Text-Book of the History of Architecture - Seventh Edition, revised • Alfred D. F. Hamlin

... often in Greek development, we are brought up against the immense formative power of fiction or romance. The simple Kore or Kouros was a figure of indistinct outline with no history or personality. Like the Roman functional gods, such beings were hardly persons; they melted easily one into another. But when the Greek imagination had once done its work upon them, a figure like Athena or Aphrodite had become, for all practical purposes, a definite person, almost as definite ...
— Five Stages of Greek Religion • Gilbert Murray

... they surely ought to have disappeared; or they are of some use to the animal, in which case they are of no use as arguments against Teleology. A similar, but still stronger, argument may be based upon the existence of teats, and even functional mammary glands, in male mammals. Numerous cases of "Gynaecomasty," or functionally active breasts in men, are on record, though there is no mammalian species whatever in which the male normally suckles the young. ...
— Critiques and Addresses • Thomas Henry Huxley

... importance were chosen as the bases of systematic work. And when, in the earlier part of the present century, De Candolle found that instead of a direct there was usually an inverse proportion between the functional and the taxonomic value of a structure, he was unable to suggest any reason for this apparently paradoxical fact. For, upon the theory of special creation, no reason can be assigned why organs of least importance to organisms ...
— Darwin, and After Darwin (Vol. 1 and 3, of 3) • George John Romanes

... Trinity Irving Abraham Isaac Jacob Origin of Acts Love Lord Eldon's Doctrine as to Grammar Schools Democracy The Eucharist St. John, xix. 11. Divinity of Christ Genuineness of Books of Moses Mosaic Prophecies Talent and Genius Motives and Impulses Constitutional and functional Life Hysteria Hydro-carbonic Gas Bitters and Tonics Specific Medicines Epistles to the Ephesians and Colossians Oaths Flogging Eloquence of Abuse The Americans Book of Job Translation of the Psalms Ancient Mariner Undine Martin ...
— Specimens of the Table Talk of S.T.Coleridge • Coleridge

... mind and their immediate correlation with the latest discoveries in the structure of the brain. The centre theory and the cell and neurone theory seemed obligatory starting-points. To-day we have become shy of such postulates of one-sided not sufficiently functional materialism. We now call for an interest in psychobiological facts in terms of critical common sense and in their own right—largely a product of psychiatry. There always is a place for elements, but there certainly is also a place for the large momentous facts of human life just ...
— A Psychiatric Milestone - Bloomingdale Hospital Centenary, 1821-1921 • Various

... wondered how I had ever endured those weary years far from the center of the country's financial life, its theaters and its great human drama. Give me the old Times Square and the East Fifties any day and you can keep Death Valley and functional architecture. I was at home at last and I foresaw a future of slow but sure progress toward a position of eminence and respectability. The undignified days of Miss Francis and Le ffacase faded from my mind and I was aware ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore

... Functional commissions Commission on Human Rights Commission on Narcotics Drugs Commission for Social Development Commission on the Status of Women Population Commission Statistical Commission Commission on Science and Technology for Development ...
— The 1993 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... bad. I saw Mrs. Ridley yesterday morning, and found her doing well. No sign of fever or any functional disturbance. She must have had some shock ...
— Danger - or Wounded in the House of a Friend • T. S. Arthur

... it). One should not always wear wet clothes. One should never take off one's body the garlands of flowers one may wear. Nor should one wear such garlands over one's outer garments. One should never even talk with a woman during the period of her functional change. One should not answer a call of nature on a field (where crops are grown) or at a place too near an inhabited village. One should never answer a call of nature on a water. One should first wash one's mouth thrice with water before eating any food. Having ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli

... scientific feat, he made haste to pretend that it had all along been meant as such, and was in fact the outcome of an elaborate scientific theory. In all this there is nothing for praise or admiration. It indicates the presence of moral disease; but fortunately it is functional rather than organic disease. He was right and sound at heart; but he spread his sails too readily to the great winds of popular favour, and the result was instability to himself, and often danger of ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young

... is opened and displays its leaves which calls out mental labor even to the degree of agony, to know the cause or causes that produce a failure of a limb in sensation, motion, nutrition, voluntary and involuntary functional exhibits. His mind will explore the bone, the ligament, the muscle, the fascia, the channels through which the blood travels from heart to local destiny, with lymphatics and their contents,—the nerves, the blood vessels and every channel through or over ...
— Philosophy of Osteopathy • Andrew T. Still

... is not yet developed as distinct from the military. Only one idea pervades the government, and that is the idea of absolute rule by brute force. Society has as yet developed few elements, has but few interests and little functional diversity; there are only two classes, the ruler and the ruled, the masters and the slaves. There being but few political and social interests to play among each other, there cannot be development for want of activity; there can be little progress of any kind. Such are the simple, unprogressive, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 1 January 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... has been drawn in the past between functional and organic diseases, the former including diseases where there is simply a derangement of function, like indigestion, and the latter comprehending the diseases where the organ is affected, like ulcer of the stomach. The more ...
— Three Thousand Years of Mental Healing • George Barton Cutten

... Wernicke, Kussmaul, it has become possible to make a topical division of most of the observed disturbances of speech of both kinds. In the first class, which comprises the impressive processes, we have to consider every functional disturbance of the peripheral ear, of the auditory nerve and of the central ends of the auditory nerve; in the second class, viz., the expressive processes, we consider every functional disturbance of ...
— The Mind of the Child, Part II • W. Preyer

... capsule, which continues to grow for months by the activity of a zone of cells between it and the foot, and may attain the length of an inch and a half. The wall of the capsule is several layers of cells thick, and since the epidermis contains functional stomata and the underlying cells possess chlorophyll it is capable of assimilation. In the centre of the capsule is a strand of narrow elongated cells forming the columella, and between this and the wall spores mixed with elaters are ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various

... plenty of time to make its search and take its pick among the bird-homes. Whether the process of evolution has similarly equipped our cow-bird I am not aware; but the vicious habits of the two birds are so identical that the same accommodating functional conditions might reasonably be expected. It is, indeed, an interesting fact well known to ornithologists that our own American cuckoos, both the yellow-billed and black-billed, although rudimentary nest-builders, still ...
— My Studio Neighbors • William Hamilton Gibson

... where the silver-haired lady sat pale and tearful, but courageous. "It is just as I thought," he said; "a clot of blood, due to external injury, has pressed for years above the left frontal region, causing hallucinations and irregularities of a functional character only. You needn't have the slightest fear of its proving hereditary. It's as purely accidental as a sprain or a wound. Your daughter, Mrs. Le Neve, couldn't possibly ...
— Michael's Crag • Grant Allen

... of age; universal for permanent residents living in the territory of Hong Kong for the past seven years; indirect election limited to about 100,000 professionals of electoral college and functional constituencies ...
— The 1997 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... at the moment, to establish the fact of variety, and to lead curious physiologists to a scientific classification of this prominent and well-deserving feature of the human face. I would recommend a proper distinction being observed between functional varieties, and those which arise from size, shape, or colour, of which, in a cursory way, may ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 13 Issue 367 - 25 Apr 1829 • Various

... fundamental truths as have been uttered about education in conjunction with a curious twist. It would be impossible to say better what is said in the first sentences. The three factors of educative development are (a) the native structure of our bodily organs and their functional activities; (b) the uses to which the activities of these organs are put under the influence of other persons; (c) their direct interaction with the environment. This statement certainly covers the ground. His other two propositions are equally ...
— Democracy and Education • John Dewey

... do not see that I have helped them one step towards the possession of the land.' Do you remember the old proverb about certain people who should not see half-finished work? All our work in this world has to be only what the physiologists call functional. God has a great scheme running on through ages. Joseph gives it a helping hand for a time, and then somebody else takes up the running, and carries the purpose forward a little further. A great ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren

... jarrings. Under such circumstances the treatment administered by the hands of non-practical or inexperienced people is akin, more often than not, to that popularly supposed to be effectual in suppressing slight functional disorders of the human system; namely, a prompt and appreciable dose of medicine for the one, a good stuffing of thick dark glue for the other. In both cases it may well be said that not unfrequently "the remedy is worse than the disease." Glue is a good thing in its way and when properly applied, ...
— The Repairing & Restoration of Violins - 'The Strad' Library, No. XII. • Horace Petherick

... forgives sins? Agni, Varuna, Indra, the Sun, etc. Who helps in war? Agni, P[u]shan, Indra, Soma, etc. Who sends rain? Indra, Parjanya, Soma, the Maruts, P[u]shan, etc. Who weds Dawn? The Acvins, the Sun, etc. The attributes must be functional or the identification ...
— The Religions of India - Handbooks On The History Of Religions, Volume 1, Edited By Morris Jastrow • Edward Washburn Hopkins

... employing any other organs, and the more intense his application the less locomotive does he become. On the other hand, however a man abuses his powers of motion in the way of work, he is at all events encouraging that collateral functional activity which mental labor discourages: he is quickening the heart, driving the blood through unused channels, hastening the breathing and increasing the secretions of the skin—all excellent results, ...
— Wear and Tear - or, Hints for the Overworked • Silas Weir Mitchell

... the Coroner with functional gravity, 'for three inquests; three?—no, pardon me, for four inquests, and for at least one charge ...
— The Dictator • Justin McCarthy

... asked me what I made out of her, and I can't make anything—that's the trouble, except that she seems pathetically grateful, and that I've grown absurdly fond of her. But she isn't improving as fast as she should, and Dr. Trent doesn't know whether or not to suspect functional complications. Her constitution seems excellent, her vitality unusual. Trent's impressed by her, he inclines to the theory that she has something on her mind, and if this is so she should get rid of it, tell it to somebody—in short, tell it to me. I know she's fond of ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... filled with hetarae, who were necessary adjuncts for the proper performance of the mysteries of Priapus. These Indians, however, will not allow women to enter into their sacred ceremonies, but, on the contrary, emasculate men (by occasioning organic and functional degeneration of the sexual organs), who serve as hetarae to the chiefs and shamans or priests.[I] These androgynes are called mujerados, a term which aptly ...
— Religion and Lust - or, The Psychical Correlation of Religious Emotion and Sexual Desire • James Weir

... recommend men to be added to the voting peerage. Life peers already exist. The law is represented by life peers. The lords spiritual are representative life peers—they are the senior bishops, and they are appointed to represent a corporation—the Established Church. So a generally non-hereditary functional nobility might come into being without any violent break with the present condition of things. The conversion of the American Senate would be a more difficult matter, because the method of appointment of Senators is more stereotyped altogether, and, since 1800, ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells

... Westenra's health I hasten to let you know at once that in my opinion there is not any functional disturbance or any malady that I know of. At the same time, I am not by any means satisfied with her appearance. She is woefully different from what she was when I saw her last. Of course you must bear in mind that I did not have full opportunity of examination such ...
— Dracula • Bram Stoker

... aqueducts in the Pullman area are probably gone although we haven't verified. Our big problem now is to find out what transfer systems are still functional and start salvaging what ...
— The Thirst Quenchers • Rick Raphael

... the reasons for the flattering (!) name of the town, "Culmination of Evils," is the great mortality of the community, which it has as a part of the great Javary district. Its inhabitants suffer from all the functional diseases found in other parts of the world, and, in addition, maladies which are typical of the region. Among the most important of these are the paludismus, or malarial swamp-fever, the yellow-fever, popularly recognised as the black vomit, and last but not least the ...
— In The Amazon Jungle - Adventures In Remote Parts Of The Upper Amazon River, Including A - Sojourn Among Cannibal Indians • Algot Lange

... of distribution may be distinguished: functional distribution is the attribution of value (yields) to wealth and labor considered impersonally, as groups of productive agents; and personal distribution is the actual movement of incomes into the control of persons.[1] Personal incomes, whether monetary, real, or psychic, are the sum ...
— Modern Economic Problems - Economics Vol. II • Frank Albert Fetter

... studying the marvellous manifestations of life in its outspoken beauty of leaf, bud, flower, fruit—things of not mere guess and fancy—he would undoubtedly have had a higher appreciation of what is most vital in nature, and less of what is simply material in a non-functional sense. With Mr. Herbert Spencer, he gratuitously sneers at the "old specific-creation hypothesis," or the divine fiat in the beginning; but without that fiat, where would he find his ephemeromorphs? or even the dead tissues used ...
— Life: Its True Genesis • R. W. Wright

... Westwood in his "Oriental Entomology") which have the hind legs very broad and densely hairy, so as exactly to imitate the brush-legged bees (Scopulipedes) which abound in the same country. In this case we have more than mere resemblance of colour, for that which is an important functional structure in the one group is imitated in another whose habits ...
— Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection - A Series of Essays • Alfred Russel Wallace

... Dalai, from Dalpati, commander of an army, and Senapati, commander-in-chief; while others are occupational, as Maharana (painter), Dwari (gatekeeper) and Mangual (steersman of a boat). The latter names show, as might be expected, that the caste is partly of functional origin, while as regards the military names, the Hatwas say that they formerly fought against the Bhonslas, under one of the Uriya chiefs. They say that they have the perpetual privilege of contributing sixteen poles, called Naikas, for the car of Jagannath, ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India—Volume I (of IV) • R.V. Russell

... of males. Quantitative difference between sex factors. Old ideas of intersexuality. Modern surgery and human intersexes. Quantitative theory a Mendelian explanation. Peculiar complication in the case of man. Chemical life-cycles of the sexes. Functional-reproductive period and the sex problem. Relative significance of ...
— Taboo and Genetics • Melvin Moses Knight, Iva Lowther Peters, and Phyllis Mary Blanchard

... an ailment or affection and is not to be considered in itself as an anomalous condition. It is the manifestation of a structural or functional disorder of some part of the locomotory apparatus, characterized by a limping or halting gait. Therefore, any affection causing a sensation and sign of pain which is increased by the bearing of weight upon the affected member, or by the moving of such a distressed part, ...
— Lameness of the Horse - Veterinary Practitioners' Series, No. 1 • John Victor Lacroix

... any account, allow the breeding stock to become too fat. Proper feeding and exercise, of course, will prevent this. It will be found if this is not attended to that the organs of generation have lost their functional activity, and if pups are produced, are, as a rule, small and lack vigor. My experience with Bostons is that it is very desirable to breed them as often as they come in season; if allowed to go by it will be found increasingly harder to ...
— The Boston Terrier and All About It - A Practical, Scientific, and Up to Date Guide to the Breeding of the American Dog • Edward Axtell

... Man—could ever come out with, 'Pray, sir, have you had time to look at—MY Novel?'—She would rather die first. And yet to be silent altogether on the latest acquisition to the circulating libraries would bring on a functional derangement of her ladyship's organs of speech. Or how could pretty Miss Dulcet—all sentiment, it is true, but all bashful timidity—appall Captain Smirke from proposing with, 'Did not you think the ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... adjusted midway between the upper and lower planes with the margins extending beyond the edges; that in moving the supplementary planes equal and uniform angles of incidence are presented as distinguished from fluctuating angles of incidence. Such claimed functional effects, however, are strongly contradicted by the expert witness ...
— Flying Machines - Construction and Operation • W.J. Jackman and Thos. H. Russell

... sense in which this term is here used, and often used in biology, but is analogous to multiplication as understood in biology. The differentiation of an organ is its development for a special purpose, i. e., the organic, specialization is concomitant with functional specialization. When paws are differentiated into hands and feet, with the differentiation of the organs, there is a ...
— On Limitations To The Use Of Some Anthropologic Data - (1881 N 01 / 1879-1880 (pages 73-86)) • J. W. Powell

... of living nature in evolution, I have naturally approached the city from the side of its geographic and historic survey, its environment and functional change; yet it is but a step from these to the abstract interpretations of the economist or the politician, even of philosopher and moralist. Again, since in everyday practice co-ordinating the literal maps of each civic surveys with even more concretely detailed plans as gardener ...
— Civics: as Applied Sociology • Patrick Geddes

... organization, or else they must be superseded. A prejudice against centralization is as pernicious, provided centralization is necessary, as a prejudice in its favor. All rights under the law are functions in a democratic political organism and must be justified by their actual or presumable functional adequacy. ...
— The Promise Of American Life • Herbert David Croly

... have no a priori objection to the transmission of functional modifications whatever. In fact, as I told you, I should rather like ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 2 • Leonard Huxley

... body would continue to live and grow indefinitely, in the proper medium. That the cell life should continue after the soul life has ceased is very significant. It seems a legitimate inference from this fact that the human body is the organ or instrument of some agent that is not of the body. The functional or physiological life of the body as a whole, also seems quite independent of our conscious volitional or psychic life. That which repairs and renews the body, heals its wounds, controls and coordinates its parts, adapts it to its environment, carries on its processes during ...
— The Breath of Life • John Burroughs

... number of experiments has increased and the span of their deviations seems to have broadened. Under the circumstances an analysis of civilization must take for granted not only social change but the development of, human society along lines which link up the outstanding structural and functional ideas, institutions ...
— Civilization and Beyond - Learning From History • Scott Nearing

... engender the sexual elements do not generally appear at the beginning of the embryonic life, it is none the less true that they are always formed out of those tissues of the embryo which have not undergone any particular functional differentiation, and whose cells are made of unmodified protoplasm.[8] In other words, the genetic power of the fertilized ovum weakens, the more it is spread over the growing mass of the tissues of the embryo; but, while it is being thus diluted, it is concentrating ...
— Creative Evolution • Henri Bergson

... grains produce functional disturbances and disease in the cow—and milk from such cows is ...
— Government By The Brewers? • Adolph Keitel

... Consumption is often inherited from fathers, because they furnish the body, yet more women die with it because of female obstructions. Hence women love passion in men, because it endows their offspring with strong functional vigor. ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis

... leaders: GOLKAR (quasi-official party based on functional groups), Lt. Gen. (Ret.) Wahono, general chairman; Indonesia Democracy Party (PDI—federation of former Nationalist and Christian Parties), Soeryadi, chairman; Development Unity Party (PPP, federation of former Islamic ...
— The 1990 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency

... is constant and not fluctuating. I am, therefore, not prepared to accept this third causative factor without question. Nevertheless I am perfectly willing to admit that other factors besides cerebral hyperaemia and anaemia may produce the functional variety of headache. There would seem to be ample ground for ascribing great causative importance to excessive irritation of the brain plasma itself. Hence those forms of headache which while, being ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 415, December 15, 1883 • Various

... four great classes, which are, in descending order of size, local, baptismal, functional, and nicknames. But we have a great many homonyms, names capable of two or more explanations. Thus Bell may be for Fr. le bel or from a shop-sign, Collet a diminutive of Nicholas or an aphetic form of acolyte. Dennis is usually for Dionysius, but sometimes for le Danois, the ...
— The Romance of Words (4th ed.) • Ernest Weekley

... and often are efficient psychic remedies for functional affections, in direct proportion to the user's faith in them. A certain sense of mystery seems essential. Given that, and plenty of confidence, and it matters not whether the inscriptions are biblical verses, unintelligible jargon, or ...
— Primitive Psycho-Therapy and Quackery • Robert Means Lawrence

... critical periods, when the divergence of the sexes becomes obvious to the most careless observer, the complicated apparatus peculiar to the female enters upon a condition of functional activity. "The ovaries, which constitute," says Dr. Dalton, "the 'essential parts'[3] of this apparatus, and certain accessory organs, are now rapidly developed." Previously they were inactive. During infancy and childhood all of them existed, or rather all the germs of them ...
— Sex in Education - or, A Fair Chance for Girls • Edward H. Clarke

... inheritance is not composed of these indefinitely made up fractional parts. We are interested rather in those more specific traits or characters, mental or physical, which, in the Mendelian view, are structural and functional units, making up a mosaic rather than a blend. The laws of heredity are concerned with the precise behavior, during a series of generations, of these specific unit characters. This behavior, as the study of Genetics shows, may be determined ...
— The Pivot of Civilization • Margaret Sanger

... plants to which my observations have of late years been confined. Therefore it seems to me rather rash to consider the slight differences between representative species, for instance those inhabiting the different islands of the same archipelago, as of no functional importance, and as not in any way due to natural selection. With respect to all adapted structures, and these are innumerable, I cannot see how M. Wagner's view throws any light, nor indeed do I see ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin

... and unscientifically the psychopathological literature of sex by such authors as Havelock Ellis, Krafft-Ebing, and Freud, are probably unsafe teachers of sex-hygiene. Especially is this true of the women of this type whose introspective morbidity has led them to diagnose their own functional disturbances as the direct result of "over-sexuality" and restraint from normal sexual expression—a diagnosis that is probably wrong nine times in ten cases. Such a woman is a very dangerous teacher of sex-hygiene for adolescent girls; and a positive menace to ...
— Sex-education - A series of lectures concerning knowledge of sex in its - relation to human life • Maurice Alpheus Bigelow

... because the normal acts of repeated movement insure a certain rate of nutrition which brings blood to the active parts, and without which the currents flow more largely around than through the muscles. The lessened blood-supply is a result of diminished functional movement, and we need to create a constant demand in the inactive parts. But, besides this, every active muscle is practically a throbbing heart, squeezing its vessels empty while in motion, and relaxing, so as to allow ...
— Fat and Blood - An Essay on the Treatment of Certain Forms of Neurasthenia and Hysteria • S. Weir Mitchell

... only must the nourishment of such a child be regarded, but the air it breathes, and the exercise that is given to it; as also, the careful removal of all functional derangements as they occur, by a timely application to the medical attendant, and maintaining, especially, a healthy condition of the digestive organs. All these points must be strictly followed out, if any good is ...
— The Maternal Management of Children, in Health and Disease. • Thomas Bull, M.D.

... obliged to confine myself almost exclusively to the one great mind, who far more than all others combined paved the way for the new science of biology to be founded by Darwin, namely, Lamarck." After showing that Lamarck established the functional, or what we would call the dynamic factors, he goes on to say that "Lamarck, although he clearly grasped the law of competition, or the struggle for existence, the law of adaptation, or the correspondence of the organism to the changing environment, the transmutation ...
— Lamarck, the Founder of Evolution - His Life and Work • Alpheus Spring Packard

... writer chooses the manufacture of bicycle balls in the works of the Symonds Rolling Machine Company, in Fitchburg, Mass. All of the work done in this factory was subjected to an accurate time study, and then was changed from day to piece work, through the assistance of functional foreman ship, etc. The particular operation to be described however, is that of inspecting bicycle balls before they were finally boxed for shipment. Many millions of these balls were inspected annually. When the writer ...
— Shop Management • Frederick Winslow Taylor

... principle of likeness and of its corollary, analysis by function rather than by trade, marks perhaps the greatest single step yet taken in the development of scientific business. The principle, however, has its dangers. Analysis by function implies functional specialization in research and a similar tendency in business practice. Without specialization there can be no adequate analysis of any large and complex body of facts. With too intense specialization there is always danger that the assembling ...
— Higher Education and Business Standards • Willard Eugene Hotchkiss

... about, that is. For instance, no matter how long we talked, it was very unlikely that we'd either of us tell the other anything complete or very accurate about how we lived from day to day, about our techniques of surviving and staying sane or at least functional—that would be too imprudent, it would go too much against the grain of any player of the murder game. Would I tell her, or anyone, about how I worked the ruses of playing dead and disguising myself as a woman, about my trick of picking a path just before dark and ...
— The Night of the Long Knives • Fritz Reuter Leiber

... one point of view a figure of Jewish and Christian mythology. The Jews, like other early peoples, believed in the existence of evil spirits or demons, to whose malignant agency they ascribed various diseases, both functional and organic, and in particular those unhappy cases of obsession, fixed idea, and multiple personality, which we should now class under the general head of insanity, and treat in asylums for the mentally ...
— Religious Reality • A.E.J. Rawlinson

... some of those playful freaks he says he learned in Edinburgh. We have had a great good time the last two days. He has not disappeared, or swallowed himself even once, or delivered himself of any fearful and mysterious prophecies. We have been talking transcendentalism. He knows as much about 'functional gamma' and 'All X is Y' and the rainbow, and so on, as you do yourself. I recommend him. I think he would be a charming companion for you. There he is now, with his pockets full of snakes and evil beasts. I wanted him to catch a golden ...
— Mr. Isaacs • F. Marion Crawford

... confused; but the confusion of confusion is that universal habit of savagery—the confusion of the objective with the subjective—so that the savage sees, hears, tastes, smells, feels the imaginings of his own mind. Subjectively determined sensuous processes are diseases in civilization, but normal, functional ...
— Sketch of the Mythology of the North American Indians • John Wesley Powell

... until they have attained the age of from two to three or four months. Their eyes, however, become suffused with tears at a much earlier age. It would appear, as already remarked, that the lacrymal glands do not, from the want of practice or some other cause, come to full functional activity at a very early period of life. With children at a somewhat later age, crying out or wailing from any distress is so regularly accompanied by the shedding of tears, that weeping and crying are ...
— The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals • Charles Darwin

... home villages located on the canyon bottom, and occupying much the same relation to the latter that Moen-kapi does to Oraibi, or that Nutria, Pescado, and Ojo Caliente do to Zuni; and that they are the functional analogues of the "watch towers" of the San Juan and of Zuni, and the brush shelters or "kisis" of Tusayan: in other words, they were horticultural outlooks occupied ...
— The Cliff Ruins of Canyon de Chelly, Arizona • Cosmos Mindeleff

... who contend that we ought frankly to accept this development and universalise it, basing our political organisation upon what they describe (in a blessed, Mesopotamic phrase) as "functional representation." The doctrine seems to have, for some minds, a strange plausibility. But is it not plain that it could not be justly carried out? Who could define or enumerate the "functions" that are to be represented? If you limit them to economic functions (as, in practice, the advocates of ...
— Essays in Liberalism - Being the Lectures and Papers Which Were Delivered at the - Liberal Summer School at Oxford, 1922 • Various

... too early to classify by kind of functional disorder the patients treated. Results from one patient have been described in ...
— Civics and Health • William H. Allen

... imitating all the proper symptoms again. The patient's recent improvement had been due, no doubt, to one of those rallies that may interrupt the progress of many diseases—though in a case of this sort, whether due to a functional or a pathological cause, Dr. Fallows had never seen nor heard of an arrest—much less a ...
— Sacrifice • Stephen French Whitman

... in the room as though it were an enemy. It didn't look finished. It didn't even look safe. But she trusted James, although she felt at that moment that she would grow old and die before she understood why and how any collection of apparatus could be functional and still be so ...
— The Fourth R • George Oliver Smith

... Virchow from whom, twenty-five years ago, I learnt in Wuerzburg that the soul-functions of man and animals depend on mechanical processes in the soul-organs; that these organs are, like all other organs, composed of cells, and that the functional activity of an organ is nothing more than the sum of the activity of all the cells which compose it? Is this the same Virchow whose most vital doctrine it was that all the physical and psychical processes of the human organism were to be referred to the mechanics of cell life; who supported ...
— Freedom in Science and Teaching. - from the German of Ernst Haeckel • Ernst Haeckel

... noted. In the natural order Rosaceae, the series Querciflorae, and the very anomalous genus Casuarina and others, instead of a single macrospore a more or less extensive sporogenous tissue is formed, but only one cell proceeds to the formation of a functional female cell. In Casuarina, Juglans and the order Corylaceae, the pollen-tube does not enter by means of the micropyle, but passing down the ovary wall and through the placenta, enters at the chalazal end of the ovule. Such ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 2, Part 1, Slice 1 • Various

... DIFFERENCE IN ITS PHYSICAL NATURE, climate and soil may produce in this animal, his functional characteristics are the same in whatever part of the world he may be found; and whether in the trackless forests of South America, the coral isles of Polynesia, the jungles of India, or the spicy brakes of Sumatra, he is everywhere known for ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton

... when it is in a state of virtual congealment or emptiness, as in a trance or ecstasy; or when it is in a state of repose, without tendency to change. Secondly, the organism is self-complete when it is at the highest possible point of tone, of functional efficiency, of enhanced life. Then a combination of favorable stimulation and repose ...
— The Psychology of Beauty • Ethel D. Puffer

... the region of the heart or irregularity of its action is due to organic disease, to functional disturbance, or to referred causes is often extremely difficult. Some of the most disturbing sensations in the region of the heart are not due to any organic trouble, and yet the patient is fearful that such sensations mean some kind of heart ...
— DISTURBANCES OF THE HEART • OLIVER T. OSBORNE, A.M., M.D.

... to cause. It is an axiom of logic that cause is preferable to effect as a basis of those classifications designed for scientific research. Hence the functional basis is preferred in all cases in which it can be applied. A condenser for the fumes of zinc is much more like a condenser for the fumes of acid or the vapor of water than it is like the art of recovering zinc from its ores, ...
— The Classification of Patents • United States Patent Office

... involved is the amount of labor required to make the change, the possibility of making it need never be questioned. Breaking the habit of excessive use of drugs, tobacco, tea and coffee, or alcohol, will occasion much discomfort, hardship, and even functional disturbance, but these ills are only temporary, and the organism soon returns to its ...
— Parent and Child Vol. III., Child Study and Training • Mosiah Hall

... to speak—seems to be that of a gentleman. But it is impossible to get any response out of him, for anything connected with the war. And yet we doubt whether there is any actual brain lesion. So far it seems to be severe functional disturbance—which is neurasthenia—aggravated by his wounds and general state. But the condition is getting worse steadily. It is very sad, and very touching. However, you will get it all out of Vincent. You must have some dinner first. I ...
— Missing • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... end is, as a rule, broadly rounded. The ventral surface is finely striate, and this surface alone is ciliated. The lines of cilia converge at the mouth, and at this region the cilia are somewhat larger and more distinct, thus forming a functional adoral zone. The mouth is median and is situated in the anterior half of the body. It is surrounded by a well-defined armature, composed usually of from 10 to 16 rods. The contractile vacuoles are quite varied and ...
— Marine Protozoa from Woods Hole - Bulletin of the United States Fish Commission 21:415-468, 1901 • Gary N. Galkins

... Symptoms.—For the relief of pain, rest is essential. The inflamed part should be placed in a splint or other appliance which will prevent movement, and steps must be taken to reduce its functional activity as far as possible. Locally, warm and moist dressings, such as a poultice or fomentation, may be used. To make a fomentation, a piece of flannel or lint is wrung out of very hot water or antiseptic lotion and ...
— Manual of Surgery - Volume First: General Surgery. Sixth Edition. • Alexis Thomson and Alexander Miles

... in level to the original gallery string-course; accordingly the main arches are highly stilted above it. The absence of the second string-course is a faulty development, for a string-course at the vault level would be a functional member, whereas at the ...
— Byzantine Churches in Constantinople - Their History and Architecture • Alexander Van Millingen

... them sleeping in the open with their bodies covered with frost or freezing rain; he had also seen them wade through boiling water. As to the second, they had practically no sex-inhibitions; they were all of the same gender, true, functional, hermaphrodites. Any individual among them could bear young, or fertilize the ova of any other individual. Fifteen years ago, when he had come to Uller as a former Terran Federation captain newly commissioned colonel in the army of the Uller Company, it had taken ...
— Uller Uprising • Henry Beam Piper, John D. Clark and John F. Carr

... uro-genital organs in the vertebrata; M.L. is the middle line of the body, G. is the genital organ, Pr. is the pronephros, or fore kidney, a structure which is never developed in the dog-fish, but which has functional importance in the tadpole and cod, and appears as a transitory rudiment in the chick. A duct, which is often spoken of as the pronephric duct (p.d.), and which we have figured under that name, is always developed. Anteriorly it opens into the body cavity. It is also ...
— Text Book of Biology, Part 1: Vertebrata • H. G. Wells

... effective of all, the kind commands of one whom I deem it an honour, as it is a necessity, to obey in most things—I went away from business. I went away without hope. I did not expect cure. I believed functional derangement had become, at last, organic disease—and that my days were numbered. I tried the water cure, homoeopathy, allopathy— everything. Some day, I must recount my consultations, on the same Sunday, ...
— Canada and the States • Edward William Watkin

... is the presence of a problem. The problem is the best chance for the child to secure the adjustment of means to ends. This adjustment of means to ends in a problem situation, is real thinking and is the use of the highest power of which man is capable, that of functional consciousness. The real need of doing things is the best element essential to the problem. Through a problem which expresses such a genuine need, to learn to know himself, to realize his capacities and his limitations, and to secure for himself ...
— A Study of Fairy Tales • Laura F. Kready

... course of sprouts designed to find out if the applicant is capable of violent exertion and to discover any minor weaknesses; an examination of eyes, ears, teeth, and nose; and, finally, a cursory scrutiny for functional disorders. ...
— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer

... scientific conception of the chemical element. Study of some prototypes of physical substances in the light of the levity-gravity polarity. The functional concept of matter. The complete order of polarities - cold-warm, dry-moist - in the doctrine of the four elements. The position of sulphur and phosphorus in this respect. Vulcanism and snow-formation as manifestations of functional sulphur and phosphorus respectively. ...
— Man or Matter • Ernst Lehrs

... excrement, begins to grow over its body. The female loses legs and feelers, and never acquires wings, becoming little more than a sluggish egg-bag (fig. 7 e). The male on the other hand passes into a second larval stage in which there are no functional legs, but rudiments of legs and of wings are present on the epidermis beneath the cuticle, as shown by B.O. Schmidt for Aspidiotus (1885). The penultimate instar of this sex in which the wing-rudiments are visible ...
— The Life-Story of Insects • Geo. H. Carpenter

... currents of morphological thought are to my mind three—the functional or synthetic, the formal or transcendental, and the ...
— Form and Function - A Contribution to the History of Animal Morphology • E. S. (Edward Stuart) Russell

... Men fight among themselves as animals do not, because of their differences. We should prefer to think of these differences, however, neither as a phase of biological differentiation as structural change nor as functional adaptation by differentiation of reactions to the same stimuli, but as the effect of the new consciousness of desires that came with the rise of man from the animal stage, and the conditions under which ...
— The Psychology of Nations - A Contribution to the Philosophy of History • G.E. Partridge

... much of what passes for hallucination proper belongs in reality to the hybrid case, being an illusive interpretation of some induced visual cloud or blur. I spoke of the ever-varying patterns in the optical field; these, under some slight functional change, may become more consciously present, and be interpreted into fantasmal appearances. Many cases could be adduced to support ...
— Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development • Francis Galton

... a substantial entity, and therefore may be conceived as immortal, that it is not a mere functional operation accompanying the organic life, a phantom procession of conscious states filing off on the stage of the cerebrum "in a dead march of mere effects," that it is not, as old Aristoxenus dreamed, ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger

... instances like the preceding could be found to-day. Menstruation after hysterectomy and ovariotomy has been attributed to the incomplete removal of the organs in question, yet upon postmortem examination of some cases no vestige of the functional organs in ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould



Words linked to "Functional" :   role, pathology, practical, function, serviceable, organic, utilitarian, functioning, use, purpose, useful, structural, nonfunctional



Copyright © 2024 e-Free Translation.com