Free TranslationFree Translation
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

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




Viscous   /vˈɪskəs/   Listen
Viscous

adjective
1.
Having a relatively high resistance to flow.  Synonym: syrupy.
2.
Having the sticky properties of an adhesive.  Synonyms: gluey, glutinous, gummy, mucilaginous, pasty, sticky, viscid.



Related search:



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 |





"Viscous" Quotes from Famous Books



... tremor grinding through the hollow hush. There was a split, a splintering, a dull boom of titanic weight falling, miles away. They saw the puff of snow dust fly up in a toss of mist over the face of the distant upper crags. Then, a grinding tore the earth; something white glistening viscous crumpled—coiled with untellable furious speed, shaggy and formless, out from the upper peaks—coiled and writhed out like a giant python in titanic torture. For an instant, for less than the fraction ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut

... end. The cuticle is longitudinally striated, the lines having a slightly spiral course. They are not closely set, and fine cilia are thickly inserted along their edges. The endoplasm is granular and viscous. The motile organs consist of an adoral zone of membranelles, which stretch along the left edge of the peristome and the front edge of the body. The right edge of the peristome supports an undulating membrane. The nucleus is moniliform and extends the full length of the left side; ...
— Marine Protozoa from Woods Hole - Bulletin of the United States Fish Commission 21:415-468, 1901 • Gary N. Galkins

... With all the transforming influences to which American industrial society is subject, it to-day conforms more closely to a normal form than do the more conservative societies of Europe and far more closely than do the sluggish societies of Asia. A viscous liquid in a vessel may show a surface that is far from level; but a highly fluid substance will come nearly to a level, even though we shake the vessel containing it vigorously enough to create waves ...
— Essentials of Economic Theory - As Applied to Modern Problems of Industry and Public Policy • John Bates Clark

... thing. According to the stories, the layer grew thicker and harder to penetrate as the flyer reached the outer surface. The meteor would strike the most viscous part of the layer with its maximum energy. As its velocity dropped and its kinetic energy grew less, it would meet material easier to penetrate. On the other hand the flyer, coming from the earth, would meet material ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science January 1931 • Various

... engraving called 'Le Repos du Marin,' which depicted an old sailor drinking peacefully under a tree. All would have been well but for the small game; lice, a legacy from the French, enormous red slugs, which ate any food which lay about, and left a viscous trail behind every movement, countless swarms of mice and gigantic rats, some of which were so bold as to gnaw through the men's haversacks, as they slept, in search of the ...
— The War Service of the 1/4 Royal Berkshire Regiment (T. F.) • Charles Robert Mowbray Fraser Cruttwell

... they felt something strangely soft beneath their feet. Sparks crackled and leaped; they were walking in fire. Spendius touched the ground and perceived that it was carefully carpeted with lynx skins; then it seemed to them that a big cord, wet, cold, and viscous, was gliding between their legs. Through some fissures cut in the wall there fell thin white rays, and they advanced by this uncertain light. At last they distinguished a large black serpent. It darted quickly ...
— Salammbo • Gustave Flaubert

... spread out to dry; the pieces being from four to six, or more, feet in length, and half as broad. They are then given to another person, who joins the pieces, by smearing part of them over with the viscous juice of a berry, called tooo, which serves as a glue. Having been thus lengthened, they are laid over a large piece of wood, with a kind of stamp, made of a fibrous substance pretty closely interwoven, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 15 (of 18) • Robert Kerr

... influence—she had not regained full and independent domination of her powers. She moved as one in the throes of some hideous nightmare—slowly, painfully, as though each limb was hampered by a great weight, or as she were dragging her body through a viscous fluid. The aperture was close, ah, so close, yet, struggle as she would, she seemed to be making no appreciable ...
— The Chessmen of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... this all. 'Twas next the scene Of vague (and viscous) vegetations; Queer fissures gaped, with oozings green, And moist, unsavoury exhalations,— Faint wafts of wood decayed and sick, Till, where he meant to carve his Motto, Strange leathery fungi sprouted thick, And made it ...
— Collected Poems - In Two Volumes, Vol. II • Austin Dobson

... uncongenial conditions—as you do not mention particularly its examination by any author in its natural habitat. If such be the case, the contracted stigmatic chamber will offer no real difficulty, should the viscous exudations be only sufficient to render the mouth adhesive. For, as I have already shown, the pollen-tubes may be emitted in this condition, and effect fecundation without being in actual contact with the stigmatic ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin

... caverns running horizontally into the side of the rock, and in these were a number of those birds' nests so much prized by the Chinese epicures. They seemed to be composed of fine filaments, cemented together by a transparent viscous matter, not unlike what is left by the foam of the sea upon stones alternately covered by the tide, or those gelatinous animal substances found floating on every coast. The nests adhere to each other and to the sides of the cavern, mostly in horizontal ...
— Stories about the Instinct of Animals, Their Characters, and Habits • Thomas Bingley

... creeping mass of viscous tentacles, enormous staring eyes and globular heads. The cave was paved three deep with the horrible things, and they were attached to the it walls and roof ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science September 1930 • Various

... your mind never to touch a snake or go nearer to one than you can help, then I need scarcely tell you what you know already, that these are all alike hideous and repulsive in their aspect, being smeared from head to tail with a viscous and venomous slime, which, as your Shakespeare will tell you, leaves a trail even on fig-leaves when they have occasion to pass over such. This preparation would appear to line them inside as well as out, for there is no lack of ancient and modern testimony to the fact that they "slaver" ...
— Concerning Animals and Other Matters • E.H. Aitken, (AKA Edward Hamilton)

... not answer, only stared in the same viscous, heavy fashion, straight at him, as he stood recoiled, as if for safety, against ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence

... large tanks, well worked up, and then dried in the sun. Next, cases are made about six inches in diameter, resembling cannon-balls, of alternate layers of thin poppy-leaves, of the poppy-flowers and of the liquid juice, and these are an inch in thickness. The whole interior is then filled with the viscous fluid, and the balls are placed to dry in earthenware cups upon immense shelves with which many entire buildings are filled. The balls weighed two seers (four pounds), and were worth thirty-two rupees (sixteen dollars) each. They were packed in long wooden boxes with thin ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 15, No. 89, May, 1875 • Various

... an extremely unpleasant task, for there appears to be a sense of density and gross materiality about it which is indescribably loathsome to the liberated astral body, causing it the sense of pushing its way through some black, viscous fluid, while the inhabitants and influences encountered there are ...
— The Astral Plane - Its Scenery, Inhabitants and Phenomena • C. W. Leadbeater

... cord be fastened tightly round the arm, so that the force of the blood may be carried backward; then apply such things as may relax the womb, and assuage the heat of the blood, as poultices made of bran, linseed, mallows, dog's mercury and artiplex. If the blood be viscous and thick, add mugwort, calamint, dictain and betony to it, and let the patient take about the size of a nutmeg of Venic treacle, and syrup of mugwort every morning; make an injection of aloes, dog's mercury, linseed, groundsel, mugwort, fenugreek, ...
— The Works of Aristotle the Famous Philosopher • Anonymous

... year they went to Simplon, and met J.D. Forbes, the geologist, whose "viscous theory" of glaciers Ruskin adopted and defended with warmth later on, and to the Bell' Alp, long before it had been made a place of popular resort by Professor Tyndall's notice. The "Panorama of the Simplon from the Bell' Alp" is to be found in the St. George's (Ruskin) ...
— The Life of John Ruskin • W. G. Collingwood

... attended by the escape of steam or gases from the molten rock, but the lava being in a highly liquid state, the steam and gases dissolved in it escape quietly and without explosions. If, however, the molten rock is less completely fluid, or in a viscous condition, the vapors and gases contained in it find difficulty in escaping, and may be retained until, becoming concentrated in large volume, they break their way to the surface, producing violent explosions. Volcanoes ...
— The San Francisco Calamity • Various

... and considerable difficulty seems to have been experienced in obtaining this. So long as we employed ordinary forms of taps or valves, so long (even with filtration) did we experience difficulties with the flow of viscous tar. But on the construction of valves specially designed for the regulation of its flow, the difficulty immediately disappeared, and there is no longer the slightest trouble on this account. The labor connected with the feeding of furnaces with ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 586, March 26, 1887 • Various

... in need even while we are sleeping; and the moment that any sound is admitted by it we are awakened even from sleep. It has a winding passage, lest anything should slip into it, as it might if it were straight and simple. Nature also hath taken the same precaution in making there a viscous humor, that if any little creatures should endeavor to creep in, they might stick in it as in bird-lime. The ears (by which we mean the outward part) are made prominent, to cover and preserve the hearing, lest the sound should be dissipated and escape before the sense is affected. Their ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero

... him to the waist, and, pouring the tar upon his naked body, emptied at the same time a bed of feathers on his head, which, adhering to the viscous fluid, gave him the appearance of a ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable

... woman's personality clung to me like a viscous web. I struggled against it, but it enwrapped me; I could ...
— To-morrow? • Victoria Cross

... off. 'I entered into the very midst of his treacherous enchantments, and yet escaped.' Lime-twigs snares; in allusion to the practice of catching birds by means of twigs smeared with a viscous substance (called on that account 'birdlime'). Shakespeare makes repeated allusion to this practice: see Macbeth, iv. 2. 34; Two Gent. ii. 2. 68; ii. Hen. VI. i. ...
— Milton's Comus • John Milton

... one. The expansion and the diminution of education here join hands. The newspaper actually steps into the place of culture, and he who, even as a scholar, wishes to voice any claim for education, must avail himself of this viscous stratum of communication which cements the seams between all forms of life, all classes, all arts, and all sciences, and which is as firm and reliable as news paper is, as a rule. In the newspaper the peculiar educational aims of the present culminate, just ...
— On the Future of our Educational Institutions • Friedrich Nietzsche

... limiting it, must be very superficial. To the East the cessation of the lightness of the soil and of the hollows is very abrupt, and strongly influences the tea, only a few small straggles being visible in that direction. The jungle here was choked with grasses, and the large viscous Acanthaceae of which we have elsewhere en route seen such abundance. The tree evidently, even in its large state, owes little gratitude to the sun, at least for direct rays, none of which I should think ever reach it. The Singfos however say, that it will only thrive in ...
— Journals of Travels in Assam, Burma, Bhootan, Afghanistan and The - Neighbouring Countries • William Griffith

... of a plump, round-shouldered young German, whose viscous hands had just left a syrup-cask, and whose wide blue eyes stared at this unaccustomed visitor with an honest wonder. He ventured to lead her as far as a door in a grimy glass partition which closed off a large room filled ...
— With the Procession • Henry B. Fuller

... fellow, Sis," explained Scott; "he exudes a sticky, viscous fluid from his pores which is slightly toxic. I'm going to try it ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers

... at odd hours in the backyard of the Institute was a phenomenon more than sufficiently remarkable to be talked about in Rockland. The viscous intelligence of a country-village is not easily stirred by the winds which ripple the fluent thought of great cities, but it holds every straw and entangles every insect that lights upon it. It soon became rumored in the town that the young master was a wonderful shot with the pistol. Some said ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... remedied: giving the maximum leap of a normal flea, it is always easy to raise the bed indefinitely from the ground—space upwards is unlimited—and the supporters of the bed may be made to meet in one pillar, coated with so viscous a substance as to put even ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v2 • Thomas de Quincey

... to the viscous deposit in the dome of the bell. "The protoplasmic substance is still there. It can be rebuilt, remolded to its original form any time I put the dog back in the bell and let the particles of eighty-five, which are suspended in the vacuum tubes, settle back into their ...
— The Raid on the Termites • Paul Ernst

... in the records of the French Academy that, upon March 17, 1669, in the town of Chatillon-sur-Seine, fell a reddish substance that was "thick, viscous, and putrid." ...
— The Book of the Damned • Charles Fort

... diminution of the exposed land area. The point is a difficult one. One thing we may without much risk assume. The sub-aereal current of dissolved matter from the land to the ocean was accompanied by a sub-crustal flux from the ocean areas to the land areas; the heated viscous materials creeping from depths far beneath the ocean floor to depths beneath the roots of the mountains which arose around the oceans. Such movements took ages for their accomplishment. Indeed, they have been, probably, continuous ...
— The Birth-Time of the World and Other Scientific Essays • J. (John) Joly

... is subjected to distillation at a still higher temperature, resin oil, a very heavy turpentine, is given off, and a viscous substance known as pitch remains. A considerable amount of this is still made in the United States, but the greater part comes from the pine-forests of Russia and Scandinavia. When pine-wood is distilled, tar is the chief product. ...
— Commercial Geography - A Book for High Schools, Commercial Courses, and Business Colleges • Jacques W. Redway

... bullet. [41] At 8 P.M. we crossed one of the numerous drains which intersect this desert—"Biya Hablod," or the Girls' Water, a fiumara running from south-west to east and north-east. Although dry, it abounded in the Marer, a tree bearing yellowish red berries full of viscous juice like green gum,—edible but not nice,—and the brighter vegetation showed that water was near the surface. About two hours afterwards, as the sun became oppressive, we unloaded in a water-course, called by my companions Adad or the Acacia Gum ...
— First footsteps in East Africa • Richard F. Burton

... straight out, thrust it edge down into the oozy substance, used it as a kind of anchor and drew it to him. At first this technique seemed to advance him somewhat, but presently he appeared merely to disturb the viscous mass without going forward. He grew acutely discouraged; his back, shoulders, cramped, ached and burned. The brilliantly lighted schooner seemed to regress as he progressed. The sun was like an auger boring into the back of his head. His mind began to wander again, and a sudden fear came ...
— The Cruise of the Dry Dock • T. S. Stribling

... mud. These beasts have apparently given rise to the Arthropods. In a modified and later form they had taken to living in a tube, both for protection and because they found that they could not go through the mud, which had become too viscous for them. So they stand up in a tube and collect the sediment which is falling by means of tentacles. They spread from one locality to another by going through a plankton embryonic stage in their youth. They may be compared to the mason worms, ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard

... perpendicularly or a little obliquely, and where the soil is at all argillaceous, there is no difficulty in believing that the walls would slowly flow or slide inwards during very wet weather. When, however, the soil is sandy or mingled with many small stones, it can hardly be viscous enough to flow inwards during even the wettest weather; but another agency may here come into play. After much rain the ground swells, and as it cannot expand laterally, the surface rises; during dry weather it sinks again. For instance, ...
— The Formation of Vegetable Mould through the action of worms with • Charles Darwin

... on a large scale." He found that when equal weights of phenol and formaldehyde were mixed and warmed in the presence of an alkaline catalytic agent the solution separated into two layers, the upper aqueous and the lower a resinous precipitate. This resin was soft, viscous and soluble in alcohol or acetone. But if it was heated under pressure it changed into another and a new kind of resin that was hard, inelastic, unplastic, infusible and insoluble. The chemical name of this product is "polymerized oxybenzyl methylene glycol anhydride," but nobody ...
— Creative Chemistry - Descriptive of Recent Achievements in the Chemical Industries • Edwin E. Slosson

... potassium and mercuric iodides (potassium iodo-mercurate), introduced by Thoulet and subsequently investigated by V. Goldschmidt, has a density of 3.196 at 22.9. It is almost colourless and has a small coefficient of expansion; its hygroscopic properties, its viscous character, and its action on the skin, however, militate against its use. A. Duboin (Compt. rend., 1905, p. 141) has investigated the solutions of mercuric iodide in other alkaline iodides; sodium iodo-mercurate solution has a density of 3.46 at 26, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various

... undulate, urbanity, usurious, uxorious, vacillate, vacuous, vandalism, variegate velocity, venal, venereal, venial, venous, veracious, verdant, verisimilitude, vernacular, versatile, vestal, vibratory, vicarious, vicissitude, virulence, viscid, viscous, vitiate, vitreous, vituperate, vivacious, volatile, volition, voluminous, voluptuary, voluptuous, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor

... and much further, the conversation went, while I groped in slime after viscous roots, nursing and sparing little spears of grass, and retreating (even with outcry) from the prod of the wild lime. I wonder if any one had ever the same attitude to Nature as I hold, and have held for so long? This business fascinates ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... started, looked up, and encountered a window stuffed with four savage fragments of crowding Face: four livid, shaggy disks focussing hungrily; four pair of uncouth eyes rapidly smouldering; eight lips shaking in a toothless and viscous titter. Suddenly above and behind these terrors rose a single horror of beauty—a crisp vital head, a young ivory, actual face, a night of firm, alive, icy hair, a white, large, ...
— The Enormous Room • Edward Estlin Cummings

... part of the stalk, as well as the leaves of the calyx, are beset with viscous hairs, in which respect it does not perfectly accord with LINNAEUS's description. Vid. Sp. Pl. ed. 3. ...
— The Botanical Magazine, Vol. 6 - Or, Flower-Garden Displayed • William Curtis

... because bubbles often appear as coming out of the rock into the vitreous scum on the surface of each wave: in some cases they have broken and left circular rings with raised edges, peculiar to any boiling viscous fluid. In many cases they have cooled as round pustules, as if a bullet were enclosed; on breaking them the internal surface is covered with a crop of beautiful crystals of silver with their heads all directed to the centre of the bubble, ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume II (of 2), 1869-1873 • David Livingstone

... with whom it is a just and prudent zeal lest their conjugial love should be violated, and thence a just grief if it is violated; and an unjust jealousy with those who are naturally suspicious, and whose minds are sickly in consequence of viscous and bilious blood. Moreover, all jealousy is by some accounted a vice; which is particularly the case with whoremongers, who censure even a just jealousy. The term JEALOUSY (zelotypia) is derived from ZELI TYPUS (the type of zeal), and there ...
— The Delights of Wisdom Pertaining to Conjugial Love • Emanuel Swedenborg

... down, and placed herself so that the point of her nose just touched the selvedge of the swarming hosts, having caused the youngster by her side to do the same. Then throwing out a long worm-like tongue, which glittered with a viscous coating, she drew it back again covered with ants. These passed into her mouth, and thence, of course, into her capacious stomach. The tongue, which was more than a foot in length, and nearly as thick as a quill, was again thrown out, and again drawn back, and this operation she continued, the ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid

... the cargo and passenger boat, Rochambeau, of the Compagnie Generale was being loaded with American supplies for the France of the Great War. A hot August sun struck spots and ripples of glancing radiance from the viscous, oily surface of the foul basin in which she lay inert; the air was full of sounds, the wheezing of engines, the rattling of cog-checks, and the rumble of wheels and hoofs which swept, in sultry puffs of noise and odor, from the pavements on the land. Falling from the exhausts, ...
— A Volunteer Poilu • Henry Sheahan

... write, &c.] An insect breeze. Breezes often bring along with them great quantities of insects, which some are of opinion, are generated from viscous exhalations in the air; but our Author makes them proceed from a cow's dung, and afterwards become a plague to that whence it ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler

... a matter of course; the salamander, like a fish, is a cold-blooded animal. The viscous humor which is secreted by the skin of the salamander is able to protect them for a short time from injury by fire, by means of the same phenomenon by which a hand, previously wetted, can be plunged into ...
— Adventures of a Young Naturalist • Lucien Biart

... widely used for road construction and maintenance, especially for road surfaces subjected to motor traffic. Materials of this character that are employed in highway work possess varying degrees of adhesiveness, and while they may be semi-solid or viscous liquids at air temperature, they melt on the application of heat and can be made sufficiently fluid to mix with the mineral aggregates that may be used in the road surface. Upon cooling, the bituminous materials return to the previous state and impart a certain amount of plasticity to the ...
— American Rural Highways • T. R. Agg

... plant, they generally have the appearance of chambers, like the cells in a bee-hive, with firm walls and a fluid or pulpy content. But some cells, especially young ones, are entirely without the enveloping membrane, or stiff wall. Hence we now generally describe the cell as a living, viscous particle of protoplasm, enclosing a firmer nucleus in its albuminoid body. There may be an enclosing membrane, as there actually is in the case of most of the plants; but it may be wholly lacking, as is the case with most of ...
— The Evolution of Man, V.1. • Ernst Haeckel

... ended as a mass of viscous fluid splashed heavily against the ship. Harkness whirled about to face the rocks. He was calm now and controlled, but under his quiet courage was a fear that gripped him. A fear of what he should find! ...
— Astounding Stories, May, 1931 • Various

... that I examine is Anthidium septemdentatum. A spoon: yes, it is just that. Powerful mandibles, shaped like an isosceles triangle, flat above, hollowed out below; and no indentations, none whatsoever. A splendid tool, as you say, for gathering the viscous pellet; quite as efficacious in its kind of work as is the rake of the toothed mandibles for gathering cotton. Here certainly is a creature potently-gifted, even though it be for a poor little task, the scooping up of two ...
— Bramble-bees and Others • J. Henri Fabre

... feeling that something material was clinging to him, was on his hands and face, and in his throat—and as his brain cleared he understood that it was the sense of his own loathed personality that stuck to him like some thick viscous substance. ...
— Tales Of Men And Ghosts • Edith Wharton

... sort that are due the rainbow hues seen in the feathers of certain birds, and sometimes in spiders' webs. The latter, although very fine, are not simple, for they are composed of a large number of pieces joined together by a viscous substance, and thus ...
— Young Folks' Library, Volume XI (of 20) - Wonders of Earth, Sea and Sky • Various

... one paw advanced. Its striped mask was light and dark grey in the moonlight, grey but faintly tinged with ruddiness; its mouth was a little open, its fangs and a pendant of viscous saliva shone vivid. Its great round-pupilled eyes regarded him stedfastly. At last the nightmare of Benham's childhood had come true, and he was face to face ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells

... Hooker; "but in reality pearls are identical with the substance which we call mother-of-pearl, which lines the shell of the oyster. It is, indeed, the result of disease. When any substance intrudes into the shell the animal puts forth a viscous liquor, which agglomerates and hardens till the pearl is formed. It is said, indeed, in some places, that the divers pierce the shells of the oysters, and thus increase the number of pearls. It has also been discovered that oysters which ...
— In the Eastern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston

... specimens with such a will. But who does quite outgrow his childish delights? And to make of the play of childhood the work of middle life, must be to foil the primal curse to the very letter. What more enchanting pastime than to wade all day in viscous mud, hearing your feet plash when you put them in, and suck as you draw them out; while the higher part of you is busied building a parapet of gluey soil, smoothing it down on the sides and top, and crowning your masterpiece with a row of sprigs along the crest? And ...
— Noto, An Unexplored Corner of Japan • Percival Lowell

... near the top; its exterior bark is blackish, the foliage thick, and the leaf, of a dark green above and pale below, is smooth, not very pointed, and larger than those of most forest trees. It produces clusters of an oblong fruit, of the size of a plum, and full of a viscous, sweetish juice, rather agreeable to the taste. The ordinary circumference of a good tree is three or four feet; when cut down, the head lopped off and exterior white wood chipped away, a black log remains of about ...
— A Voyage to Terra Australis Volume 2 • Matthew Flinders

... be seen, had lost almost exactly 50 per cent. of its value as an illuminant, owing to the excessive heating to which it had been, exposed. Some of the liquid hydrocarbons formed at the same time are not limpid fluids like benzene, which is less viscous than water, but are thick oily substances, or even tars. They therefore tend to block the tubes of the apparatus with great persistence, while the tar adheres to the calcium carbide and causes its further attack by water to be very irregular, or even altogether impossible. ...
— Acetylene, The Principles Of Its Generation And Use • F. H. Leeds and W. J. Atkinson Butterfield

... under a rainy sky, I found the Rawi active on Sundays and Thursdays, the market days. The favourite place was the "Soko de barra," or large bazar, outside the town whose condition is that of Suez and Bayrut half a century ago. It is a foul slope; now slippery with viscous mud, then powdery with fetid dust, dotted with graves and decaying tombs, unclean booths, gargottes and tattered tents, and frequented by women, mere bundles of unclean rags, and by men wearing the haik or burnus, a Franciscan frock, tending their squatting camels and chaffering ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton

... of fire, shiver, and break, and form again, and gradually harden and cohere, now crushed into ridges and pits, now extended into plains, and tossing the hissing seas from bed to bed, as the levels of the viscous surface rose and fell. Wonderful, too, when the crust was formed and life became possible, how everywhere, in wet or dry, hot or cold alike, wherever footing could be found, came up and flourished and ...
— The Meaning of Good—A Dialogue • G. Lowes Dickinson

... as well as the other job, three months ago, it'll be something to see," he promised. "These volcanoes have been dormant for, oh, maybe as long as a thousand years; there ought to be a pretty good head of gas down there. And the magma'll be thick, viscous stuff, like basalt on Terra. Of course, this won't be anything like basalt in composition—it'll be intensely compressed metallic fluorides, with a very high metal-content. The volcanoes we shot three months ago yielded a fine flow of lava with all sorts of metals—nickel, ...
— Uller Uprising • Henry Beam Piper, John D. Clark and John F. Carr

... and his extremities were chilled, when he noticed from the wash of the water that he was near the shore. Soon he felt the ground under his feet; but, the moment he touched it, he sank up to his waist into the viscous and tenacious slime, which makes all the Cochin China rivers ...
— The Clique of Gold • Emile Gaboriau

... White-wine, till halfe be consumed, then straine it through a clean cloath, and drink thereof a quarter of a pint, somewhat warme, morning and evening, for three dayes, it will purge away all viscous or obstructions stopping the passage ...
— A Book of Fruits and Flowers • Anonymous

... offered an irresistible invitation to the mumbling fly which had escaped with the Wildcat from the Sheriff's office. The fly enjoyed the viscous environment until he succeeded in getting himself all squashed up in an instinctive gesture back of which were the clutching fingers of the Wildcat's ...
— Lady Luck • Hugh Wiley

... known as a physiologist and anatomist, after a careful study of the salivary glands, finds that each of the three, common to nearly all animals, furnishes a different secretion. The saliva from the sublingual gland is viscous and sticky, fit to moisten the surface of substances, but not to penetrate them, giving them a coat which facilitates their being swallowed. That from the parotid gland, on the contrary, is thin and watery, easily penetrates substances taken into the mouth, and thereby favours ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 452 - Volume 18, New Series, August 28, 1852 • Various

... glass jar, some five feet in height and filled with viscous fluid of a light amber colour. Out from this peered a hideous, dog-like face, low-browed, with pointed ears and a nose almost hoggishly flat. By the death-grin of the face the gleaming fangs were revealed; and the body, the long yellow-grey body, rested, or seemed to ...
— The Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer

... of this fountaine hath an incisive and abstersive faculty to cut, and loosen the viscous and clammy humours of the body, and to make meable the grosse: as also by its piercing and penetrating power, subtilty of parts, and by his deterging and desiccative qualities to open all the obstructions, ...
— Spadacrene Anglica - The English Spa Fountain • Edmund Deane

... of the liquid in which they were immersed; but it was found that these vanes or flutings had but little or no effect upon water or liquids of similar viscosity, and Professor Bjerkes was led to adopt highly viscous fluids, such as Glycerin or maize sirup, both of which substances are well adapted for the experiments, being at the same time both highly viscous and perfectly transparent and colorless. In seeking, for the purpose of this research, a fluid medium which shall possess analogous ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 488, May 9, 1885 • Various

... of rock seemed presently to melt. Like a tiny volcano, at their feet, lava from it was flowing down. A little stream of melted rock, viscous, bubbling a trifle; red at the edges, white within, and with wisps of smoke curling up ...
— Tarrano the Conqueror • Raymond King Cummings

... drops of lead and antimony came up with the stream. It finally occurred to a well-borer that if he could make his drill hard enough and get it down far enough, keeping it cool by solidified carbonic acid during the proceeding, he would reach a point at which most of the metals would be viscous, if not actually molten, and on being freed from the pressure of the crust they would expand, and reach the surface in a stream. This experiment he performed near the hot geysers in Yellowstone Park, and what was his delight, on reaching a depth scarcely half a mile beyond his usual stopping-place, ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds - A Romance of the Future • John Jacob Astor

... dark pyramid, or Poplar pale, Scoop from the Aider's leaf its oozy flood, Or strip the Chestnut's resin-coated bud, Skim the light tear that tips Narcissus' ray, Or round the Hollyhock's hoar fragrance play. Soon temper'd to their will through eve's low beam, And link'd in airy bands the viscous stream, They waft their nut-brown loads exulting home, That form a fret-work for the future comb; Caulk every chink where rushing winds may roar, And seal their circling ramparts to the ...
— Langstroth on the Hive and the Honey-Bee - A Bee Keeper's Manual • L. L. Langstroth

... was crossing the brook which flows partly over and partly under the road at the horse watering-place, he looked down into the dell among the tangles of birch and the thick viscous foliage of the green-berried elder. There he caught the flash of a light dress, and as he climbed the opposite grassy bank on his way to the village, he saw immediately beneath him the maiden of his dreams and his love-verses. Now she leaped merrily from stone to stone; ...
— The Lilac Sunbonnet • S.R. Crockett

... the Rochling coal-gas generator contains considerable quantities of phenols (B.P.200-250C.), and the author has protected the use of these for the production of synthetic tannins by Ger. Pat, 262,558. A deep brown viscous mass is obtained which, when partly neutralised, yields similar results to those given by the product above ...
— Synthetic Tannins • Georg Grasser

... he says, and yet very few say all they mean, for words are slippery and thought is viscous; but since Bacon and Newton, English thought had gone on impatiently protesting that no one must try to know the unknowable at the same time that every one went on thinking about it. The result was as chaotic as kinetic gas; but with the thought a historian had nothing ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams

... be present at birth, or may result from the rupture of a cystic swelling, which has become infected. Clear viscous fluid exudes from it, and, when the fistula is complete and the lumen sufficiently wide, particles of food may escape. As the track is tortuous, it is seldom possible to pass a probe along it, but its extent and course may be recognised by injecting an emulsion ...
— Manual of Surgery Volume Second: Extremities—Head—Neck. Sixth Edition. • Alexander Miles

... Their gardens afford them no great variety, but they have always some vegetables on the table. Potatoes at least are never wanting, which, though they have not known them long, are now one of the principal parts of their food. They are not of the mealy, but the viscous kind. ...
— A Journey to the Western Isles of Scotland • Samuel Johnson



Words linked to "Viscous" :   gummy, adhesive, mucilaginous, thick, viscosity



Copyright © 2024 e-Free Translation.com