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Tympanum   /tˈɪmpənəm/   Listen
Tympanum

noun
(pl. E. tympanums, L. tympana)
1.
The main cavity of the ear; between the eardrum and the inner ear.  Synonyms: middle ear, tympanic cavity.
2.
The membrane in the ear that vibrates to sound.  Synonyms: eardrum, myringa, tympanic membrane.
3.
A large hemispherical brass or copper percussion instrument with a drumhead that can be tuned by adjusting the tension on it.  Synonyms: kettle, kettledrum, timpani, tympani.






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"Tympanum" Quotes from Famous Books



... 3. From the repetition of sounds at certain intervals of time; as we hear them with greater facility and accuracy, when we expect them; because they are then excited by volition, as well as by irritation, or at least the tympanum is then better adapted to assist their production; hence the two musical times or bars; and hence the rhimes in poetry give pleasure, as well as the measure of the verse: and lastly the pleasure we receive from music, arises from the associations of agreeable ...
— The Temple of Nature; or, the Origin of Society - A Poem, with Philosophical Notes • Erasmus Darwin

... eyes open?—Yes! and his mouth too. Surprise has this effect—to make one dumb, Yet leave the gate which Eloquence slips through As wide as if a long speech were to come. Nigh and more nigh the awful echoes drew, Tremendous to a mortal tympanum: His eyes were open, and (as was before Stated) his mouth. What ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron

... with their parent, Architecture, and were the aids of Religion and Government. On the friezes of Greek temples, we see coloured bas-reliefs representing sacrifices, battles, processions, games—all in some sort religious. On the pediments we see painted sculptures more or less united with the tympanum, and having for subjects the triumphs of gods or heroes. Even when we come to statues that are definitely separated from the buildings to which they pertain, we still find them coloured; and only in the later periods of Greek civilisation does the differentiation of ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer

... the cabinet consisted of a series of drawers, rising one above the other, and terminated by a triangular pediment, its tympanum ornamented with some beautiful little bronzes. The drawers themselves were concealed by two doors, opening in the centre, and covered with a most intricate design ...
— The Mystery Of The Boule Cabinet - A Detective Story • Burton Egbert Stevenson

... splintered themes—melodies they are not—in the Pierrot Lunaire. I have been informed that the ear should play a secondary role in this "new" music; no longer through the porches of the ear must filter plangent tones, wooing the tympanum with ravishing accords. It is now the "inner ear," which is symbolic of a higher type of musical art. A complete disassociation of ideas, harmonies, rhythmic life, architectonic is demanded. To quote an admirer of the Vienna revolutionist: "The entire man in you must be made over ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker

... is, in certain events, another world of the senses in which our organs perceive nothing, a world which is closed to us. The eye of the camera sees the invisible and photographs the image of the ultra-violet rays; the tympanum of the microphone hears what to us is silence. A scientific toy, a chemical contrivance surpass us in sensibility. Would it be rash to attribute similar faculties to the delicate organization of the insect, even with regard to agencies unknown to our ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre

... churchyard, with two or three gravestones and no church, at Dalderby, we reach the village of Haltham. Here we have a church of considerable interest. Taking the exterior first, we find a remarkable semi-circular tympanum over the door, within the porch on the south. It has a kind of Maltese cross within a circle, with a second circle running through the limbs of the cross. Below this is a small round object, with an oblong on each ...
— Records of Woodhall Spa and Neighbourhood - Historical, Anecdotal, Physiographical, and Archaeological, with Other Matter • J. Conway Walter

... the almost savage character of the work, abundant on tympanum and doorway without, above all on the immense capitals of the nave within, is the sculpture which offended Bernard. A sumptuous band of it, a carved guipure of singular boldness, passes continuously round ...
— Miscellaneous Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater

... effort, screams at every accident. Everything that is done in the universe seems to be done only to make a noise upon it. Every morning, whatsoever thing has been changed, and whatsoever thing has been unchanged, during the night, comes up to batter its report on the omni-audient tympanum of the universe, the drum-head of the press. And then we are inside of it. It may be music to the gods who dwell beyond the blue ether, but it is terrible confusion ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various

... had become accustomed to carving pedimental groups in wood, the first examples that we have in stone would not show so great inability to deal with the conditions of pedimental composition. If ever the tympanum was simply painted or filled with a group in terracotta, it is easy to see why the fashion died and why consequently we can bring forward no direct proof to-day. It was simply that only figures in the round can satisfy the requirements of a pedimental composition. The strong ...
— The American Journal of Archaeology, 1893-1 • Various

... within the ears, so attached to three small bones that are mutually sustaining, and the first of which rests on the small membrane that covers the cavity we call the tympanum of the ear, that all the diverse vibrations which the surrounding air communicates to this membrane are transmitted to the mind by these nerves, and these vibrations give rise, according to their diversity, to the sensations of ...
— The Principles of Philosophy • Rene Descartes

... it is that the impressions described were all there was time for, and that when Donaldson turned and spoke we saw his lips move but could hear no sound. Our speed had been such that the pressure of the air upon the tympanum of the ear left us deaf for some minutes. We had made a dash of two miles into cloudland and had accomplished it, we three firmly believed, in ...
— The Red-Blooded Heroes of the Frontier • Edgar Beecher Bronson

... sonorous surged around him; warm glances of love were reaching out for his face, still cold with the coldness of the grave; and a friend's warm palm caressed his blue, heavy hand. And music played the tympanum and the pipe, the cithara and the harp. It was as though bees hummed, grasshoppers chirped and birds warbled over the happy house ...
— Famous Modern Ghost Stories • Various

... Santa Croce. They are made of terra-cotta, while the rest of the work is in stone, and designed in such a way that the children are superfluous. They are, however, undoubtedly by Donatello, and may have been added as an afterthought. Two stand on either side of the curved tympanum, clinging to each other as they look downwards, and afraid of falling over the steep precipice. Their attitude is shy and timid, as Leonardo said was advisable when making little children standing still.[150] Though ...
— Donatello • David Lindsay, Earl of Crawford



Words linked to "Tympanum" :   bodily cavity, kettle, cavity, timpanist, stirrup, hammer, Eustachian tube, bonelet, auditory tube, anvil, stapes, ossiculum, auditory apparatus, ear, cavum, perforated eardrum, malleus, umbo, tympanist, tissue layer, percussive instrument, ossicle, membrane, percussion instrument, incus



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