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Phosphorus   /fˈɑsfərəs/   Listen
Phosphorus

noun
(pl. phosphori)
1.
A multivalent nonmetallic element of the nitrogen family that occurs commonly in inorganic phosphate rocks and as organic phosphates in all living cells; is highly reactive and occurs in several allotropic forms.  Synonyms: atomic number 15, P.
2.
A planet (usually Venus) seen just before sunrise in the eastern sky.  Synonyms: daystar, Lucifer, morning star.






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"Phosphorus" Quotes from Famous Books



... which mainly led to that opinion of Home which was expressed in Mr. Sludge, the Medium.' It appears that a lady (since dead) repeated to Mr. Browning a statement made to her by a lady and gentleman (since dead) as to their finding Home in the act of experimenting with phosphorus on the production of 'spirit lights,' 'which (so far as Mr. Browning remembers) were to be rubbed round the walls of the room, near the ceiling, so as to appear when the room was darkened. This piece of evidence powerfully ...
— Historical Mysteries • Andrew Lang

... (C{4}H{4}S), from which it may be freed by shaking with sulphuric acid. Its boiling point is 79 deg. C.; specific gravity at 0 deg. equals 0.9. It burns with a luminous smoky flame, and is a good solvent for fats, resins, sulphur, phosphorus, &c. Toluene was discovered in 1837, and is prepared from coal-tar. It boils at 110 deg. C., and is still liquid at 28 ...
— Nitro-Explosives: A Practical Treatise • P. Gerald Sanford

... petroleum from the great gusher. By day its greasy blackness glared in hideous contrast to the blue though brackish water; but now night lent its ugliness a strange disguise. All the faint twilight that remained glimmered on the gloss of its surface like phosphorus in the palm of a negro's hand; and as Nick passed on toward the town, stars shone out in its dark mirror. He could hear the thick splash of the gusher that rose and fell, like the beating of a giant's heart, ...
— The Port of Adventure • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson

... a part in determining the extraordinary length of time during which the tentacles remain inflected [page 133] over the hard grains of chemically prepared casein. But the tentacles remain inflected for an equally long time over finely powdered, precipitated phosphate of lime; phosphorus in this latter case evidently being the attraction, and animal matter in the case of casein. The leaves remain long inflected over insects, but it is doubtful how far this is due to the protection afforded by their chitinous integuments; for animal matter is soon extracted from insects ...
— Insectivorous Plants • Charles Darwin

... research, we can not help feeling that the day has hardly come for embracing physiology under either physics or psychology; the forming of the bile and the growing and waste of brain are yet, to our apprehension, too far removed from the gravitation of planets or the oxidation of phosphorus, on the one hand, as they are from the scintillations of wit or the severe march of reason on the other, for ready affiliation with either. We question decidedly whether Theology proper can, at the most, be ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. VI, June, 1862 - Devoted To Literature and National Policy • Various


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