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Miasma   /miˈæzmə/  /maɪˈæzmə/   Listen
Miasma

noun
(pl. miasmata)
1.
An unwholesome atmosphere.  Synonym: miasm.
2.
Unhealthy vapors rising from the ground or other sources.  Synonym: miasm.  "A miasma of cigar smoke"



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"Miasma" Quotes from Famous Books



... No! the miasma is dispelled: the curse is gone: the crimes are expiated. The devil in that jar is dispossessed, and with Simon's last gasp has returned unto his own place. The murderer is dead, and has thereby laid the ghost of his mate in ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper

... pain) 830; scourge &c. (punishment) 975; damnosa hereditas[Lat]; white elephant. sting, fang, thorn, tang, bramble, brier, nettle. poison, toxin; teratogen; leaven, virus venom; arsenic; antimony, tartar emetic; strychnine, nicotine; miasma, miasm[obs3], mephitis[obs3], malaria, azote[obs3], sewer gas; pest. [poisonous substances, examples] Albany hemp[obs3], arsenious oxide, arsenious acid; bichloride of mercury; carbonic acid, carbonic gas; choke damp, corrosive ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... Shall we rest at the Volscian Anxur,—the modern Terracina,—where the lofty rock stands like the giant that guards the last borders of the southern land of love? Away, away! and hold your breath as we flit above the Pontine Marshes. Dreary and desolate, their miasma is to the gardens we have passed what the rank commonplace of life is to the heart when it ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... as when shown him, through his second sight, by the spirit on the previous day. From the graves filled recently, and from many others, rose threads of coloured matter, in the form of gases, the forerunners of miasma. He now perceived shadowy figures flitting about on the ground and in the air, from whose eyes poured streams of immaterial tears. Their brains, hearts, and vertebral columns were the parts most easily seen, and they were filled with an inextinguishable anguish ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds • J. J. Astor

... insects, however high the instinct of the one, and however low the instincts of the other. With respect to the differences of race, a conjecture has occurred to me that much may be due to the correlation of complexion (and consequently hair) with constitution. Assume that a dusky individual best escaped miasma, and you will readily see what I mean. I persuaded the Director-General of the Medical Department of the Army to send printed forms to the surgeons of all regiments in tropical countries to ascertain this point, but I dare say I shall never get any returns. ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin

... they are indeed, whose air is putrid with the sickenin' miasma of moral loathsomness and deseese; whose walls are painted with hideous pictures of murder, rapine, lust, starvation, woe, and despair, earthly and eternal ruin. Shapes of the dreadful past, the hopeless future, ...
— Sweet Cicely - Or Josiah Allen as a Politician • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)

... of the Reformers was wonderful to the mind of President Viglius, who could find no language strong enough with which to characterize and to deplore such blasphemous conduct. The field-preaching seemed in the eyes of government to spread with the rapidity of a malignant pestilence. The miasma flew upon the wings of the wind. As early as 1562, there had been public preaching in the neighborhood of Ypres. The executions which followed, however, had for the time suppressed the practice both in that place as well as throughout Flanders and ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... arts and inventions by which any men of any time have separated truth from error. Of one blood are all the people of the earth, and whatsoever is done to the least of these little ones in some degree comes to me. We suffer from the miasma of the Indian jungles; we starve with the savages of the harvestless islands; we grow weak with the abused peasants of the Russian steppes, who leave us the legacy of their grippe. The great volcano which buries far off cities at its foot casts its pitying dust over us. ...
— The Call of the Twentieth Century • David Starr Jordan

... Is mightier than genius. Rightly used, It leads to grand achievements; all things yield Before its mystic presence, and its field Is broad as earth and heaven. But abused, It sweeps like a poison simoon on its course, Bearing miasma in its scorching breath, And leaving all ...
— Maurine and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox

... the windows, and that seemed to disperse it for a time. Then, just as I was going out, it returned; it seemed to envelop me like a filthy miasma. You know, sir, it's hard to explain just the way I felt about it—but it all amounts to this: I was glad ...
— Brood of the Witch-Queen • Sax Rohmer

... geologist, Count Keyserling ("Bulletin de la Soc. Geolog.", 2nd Ser., tom. x, page 357), suggested that as new diseases, supposed to have been caused by some miasma have arisen and spread over the world, so at certain periods the germs of existing species may have been chemically affected by circumambient molecules of a particular nature, and thus have given rise ...
— On the Origin of Species - 6th Edition • Charles Darwin

... mind is felt throughout his work: what he paints, or sings, or writes, conveys a lesson while it pleases. On the other hand, depravity in an artist or a poet percolates through work which has in it nothing positive of evil, and a very miasma of poisonous influence may rise from the apparently innocuous creations of a tainted soul. Now Correggio is moralised in neither way—neither as a good nor as a bad man, neither as an acute thinker nor as a deliberate voluptuary. He is simply sensuous. On his own ground he is even very fresh ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds

... flamingoes. I could only succeed in bagging a few, as they were exceedingly shy, and made off as soon as the boat approached; moreover, the rushes were not thick enough to afford us an effectual concealment. As the miasma from the lake was sufficiently powerful to threaten fever, we returned to the caravanserai, where we breakfasted, and, after shooting a few quails, returned in our carriage, at one o'clock, to Bona. ...
— Notes in North Africa - Being a Guide to the Sportsman and Tourist in Algeria and Tunisia • W. G. Windham

... sewers of moral degradation, and when Domitian's frightful cruelty only equaled his gross sensualism. The saloon, the black plague of nineteenth century life, overlaps all other degrading evils, its miasma of death fills every rendezvous of degradation, and until its ever increasing power is checked, nay, more, until its power in American politics is broken, other allies in crime, debauchery, and moral death ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 24, November, 1891 • Various

... Indian's eternal hunting-ground for vast multitudes have no charm. But here rolls in the Bible heaven. No more sea—that is, no wide separation. No more night—that is, no insomnia. No more tears—that is, no heart-break. No more pain—that is, dismissal of lancet and bitter draught and miasma, and banishment of neuralgias and catalepsies and consumptions. All colors in the wall except gloomy black; all the music in the major-key, because celebrative and jubilant. River crystalline, gate crystalline, and skies ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage

... upon the yellow pallor of the first inhabitants of the western forests and doubtless correctly attributed this sickly appearance to the effects of malaria and miasma. The psychic influences of the forest wilderness also weighed heavily upon the spirits of the settlers, although, as Baily notes, it was the newcomers who felt the depression to an exaggerated degree. ...
— The Paths of Inland Commerce - A Chronicle of Trail, Road, and Waterway, Volume 21 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Archer B. Hulbert

... kiss. Then she withdrew herself. But for him the whole world was lit with happiness. He had heard the words which more than anything else he desired to hear. She could never take them back. Her melancholy was a miasma. He would ...
— The Survivor • E.Phillips Oppenheim

... of Buddhism against the too great influence which has been claimed for climate. Politics and society, in our opinion, had more to do with altering the religions of India than had a higher temperature and miasma. As a result of ease and sloth—for the Brahmans are now the divine pampered servants of established kings, not the energetic peers of a changing population of warriors—the priests had lost the inspiration that came from action; they now made no new hymns; they only ...
— The Religions of India - Handbooks On The History Of Religions, Volume 1, Edited By Morris Jastrow • Edward Washburn Hopkins

... Robertson, the traffic-manager of the Company. For the present I hold the surf along shore and the Ebumesu bar to be equally dangerous. The land-tongue between the two streams is the favourite haunt of mosquitoes and sand-flies, and it produces nothing save mud and mangroves, miasma and malaria. Yet here in 1873-74 loyal and stout-hearted King Blay defended himself against the whole Apollonian coast, which actively sympathised with the Ashantis. [Footnote: Captain Brackenbury, vol. ii, p. 29, The Ashanti War, &c., ...
— To The Gold Coast for Gold, Vol. II - A Personal Narrative • Richard Francis Burton and Verney Lovett Cameron

... hour that he could detain General Shafter's advancing army on the Siboney road increased his own chances of success and lessened those of his adversary; because the army of defense, already acclimated, could stand exposure to sun, rain, and miasma much better than the army of invasion could. Besides that, a column of five thousand regulars from Manzanillo was hurrying to his assistance, and it was of the utmost importance that these reinforcements should reach him before he should be forced into a decisive battle. Instead of resisting General ...
— Campaigning in Cuba • George Kennan

... consulted Dr. Goforth, on vaccination, milk-sickness and miasma, took the mail-packet for Gallipolis. Arlington, after transacting the business which brought him to Cincinnati, started for his distant Virginia home, not by water nor by the direct route through Kentucky to ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable

... re-leased, and the cure will be effected. In the old Athenian Anthesteria the blood of victims was poured over the unclean. A bath of bulls' blood was much in vogue as a baptism in the mysteries of Attis. The water must in ritual washings run off in order to carry away the miasma or unseen demon of disease; and accordingly in baptism the early Christians used living or running water. Nor was it enough that the person baptized should himself enter the water; the baptizer must pour it over his head, so that it run down his person. Similarly the Brahman takes care, ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... swept into the perdition from which it smoked up. Polygamy in Utah has warred against the marriage relation throughout the land. It is impossible to have such an awful sewer of iniquity sending up its miasma, which is wafted by the winds north, south, east, and west, without the whole ...
— The Wedding Ring - A Series of Discourses for Husbands and Wives and Those - Contemplating Matrimony • T. De Witt Talmage

... sick-sweet miasma hung like a cloud around him, drenching the room. With every breath it grew thicker. He searched the table top frantically, but there were no empty bottles. His head began to spin ...
— The Coffin Cure • Alan Edward Nourse

... account of the discovery of paludal miasma and of its natural history, I ought in the first place to state that I have not had the opportunity of reading or studying the great original treatise of Professor Salisbury. I am acquainted with it only ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 385, May 19, 1883 • Various

... medical diploma. The medicine that was chiefly wanted in the Double when the Trappists settled there was quinine. The demand upon it was very heavy years ago, but by removing to a great extent the cause of the fever-breeding miasma, the monks have been able to economize ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker

... who wrote back urgently for further particulars. Mrs. Wesley had indeed fallen into a low state of health, occasioned partly (as Kezzy declared in a letter) by "want of clothes or convenient meat," partly by the miasma from the floods. Ague was the commonest of maladies in the Isle of Axholme, and even the labourers fortified ...
— Hetty Wesley • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... after all far more desirable as a home than the crowded tenements of our larger cities, for those who occupied it had but to open the door and windows to breathe the pure air of heaven, uncontaminated by foul odors or the taint of miasma. ...
— From Canal Boy to President - Or The Boyhood and Manhood of James A. Garfield • Horatio Alger, Jr.

... exertion, compelled, from fatigue, to sit down in the deep black mud. Another respite from toil, and another hour or more of exertion, and I gave myself up for lost. The day was evidently fast closing in—the light overhead was not near so bright as it had been; and I knew that a night passed in the miasma of the cane was death. At last it became darker and darker. There could not be an hour of daylight remaining. I determined upon one more struggle, and, reeking as I was with perspiration and faint ...
— The Privateer's-Man - One hundred Years Ago • Frederick Marryat

... as a lounger in a plaid, but as a working farmer, sweating at his work, he may prolong and begin anew his life. Instead of the bath-chair, the spade; instead of the regulated walk, rough journeys in the forest, and the pure, rare air of the open mountains for the miasma of the sick-room—these are the changes offered him, with what promise of pleasure and of self-respect, with what a revolution in all his hopes and terrors, none but an invalid can know. Resignation, the cowardice that apes a kind of courage and that lives in the very air of health ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson

... different from the modern stuff. Altogether different. I'm not discussing Shakespeare. I don't want to Bowdlerize Shakespeare. I'm not that sort I quite agree. But this modern miasma—" ...
— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells

... broke another bolt before we got fairly rid of them, compelling us to wait an hour to have it mended. We were now in a low wet country, or one perfectly congenial to cholera; it was just the hour when the little demons of miasma are said to be the most active, and to complete the matter, we learned that the disease was in the village. The carriage-windows were closed, while I walked about, from door to door, to pacify uneasiness by curiosity. Use, however, ...
— A Residence in France - With An Excursion Up The Rhine, And A Second Visit To Switzerland • J. Fenimore Cooper

... was the utter absence of damp or miasma. After a blazing day, instead of hurrying in out of reach of poisonous vapours as the tropic-dweller must needs do, we could linger bare-headed, lightly clad, out of doors, listening to the distant roar ...
— Station Amusements • Lady Barker

... are generally well cared for, I saw tracts of considerable extent which, from original defect or unskillful management, stand below the water level of the country, and so are given over to flags, bogs and miasma, when only a foot or two of elevation is needed to render ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley

... prompt efficiency. He obviously had enough patients to keep his mind occupied. With the others the feeling of depression was unmistakable. From the instant they had driven through the automatic garage door, Brion had swum in this miasma of defeat. It was ...
— Planet of the Damned • Harry Harrison

... respite from toil and another hour more of exertion, and I gave myself up for lost. The day was evidently fast closing in, the light over head was not near so bright as it had been, and I knew that a night passed in the miasma of the cane swamp was death. At last it became darker and darker. There could not be an hour of daylight remaining. I determined upon one struggle more, and reeking as I was with perspiration, and faint with fatigue, I rose again, ...
— Stories about Animals: with Pictures to Match • Francis C. Woodworth

... my ease, and more freely than I do here. I know that I am hardly myself among these people,—or rather, I am hardly myself as you know me, and as I hope you always will know me. But, nevertheless, I am not so overcome by the miasma but what I can tell you how truly I love you. Even though my spirit should be here, which it is not, my heart would be on the Allington lawns. That dear ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope

... who permits, in her life, the alloy of vanity; the woman who lives upon flattery, coarse or fine, shall never be thus addressed, She is not immortal so far as her will is concerned, and every woman who does so creates miasma, whose spread is indefinite. The hand which casts into the waters of life a stone of offence knows not how far the circles thus caused may ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli

... was not moved in the slightest degree by these representations. He had considered it all, he said, and had made up his mind. As he saw it, all the risk, and all the fatigue too, which was quite as important a thing, were on the road, and whatever safety there was, whether from brigands or miasma, lay in ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille

... indication of an improvement, give her warm praise. Be careful about bestowing caresses upon her, as she needs to be guarded against hysteria, I should judge from your description. To some children they are the sunlight, to others miasma. ...
— A Woman of the World - Her Counsel to Other People's Sons and Daughters • Ella Wheeler Wilcox

... to the woman living in the miasma of perfume and secret fear. He heard again her wistful voice pronounce the names of far places, of Tarragona and Seriphos, investing them with the accent of an intense hopeless desire. He thought of the inexplicable place ...
— Wild Oranges • Joseph Hergesheimer

... her hands. He had an overwhelming desire to escape from the miasma of those ugly days, with their train of attendant thoughts ...
— The Evil Shepherd • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... poisons, and from the attacks of certain parasites. Hence it occurred to me, that negroes and other dark races might have acquired their dark tints by the darker individuals escaping from the deadly influence of the miasma of their native countries, during a ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin

... me for the moment. I had not thought of Jerry as being all these things. To me he was merely Jerry. But I struggled upward through the miasma of oppressive millions ...
— Paradise Garden - The Satirical Narrative of a Great Experiment • George Gibbs



Words linked to "Miasma" :   atmosphere, air pollution, miasmic, ambience, ambiance



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