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Valve   /vælv/   Listen
noun
Valve  n.  
1.
A door; especially, one of a pair of folding doors, or one of the leaves of such a door. "Swift through the valves the visionary fair Repassed." "Heavily closed,... the valves of the barn doors."
2.
A lid, plug, or cover, applied to an aperture so that by its movement, as by swinging, lifting and falling, sliding, turning, or the like, it will open or close the aperture to permit or prevent passage, as of a fluid. Note: A valve may act automatically so as to be opened by the effort of a fluid to pass in one direction, and closed by the effort to pass in the other direction, as a clack valve; or it may be opened or closed by hand or by mechanism, as a screw valve, or a slide valve.
3.
(Anat.) One or more membranous partitions, flaps, or folds, which permit the passage of the contents of a vessel or cavity in one direction, but stop or retard the flow in the opposite direction; as, the ileocolic, mitral, and semilunar valves.
4.
(Bot.)
(a)
One of the pieces into which a capsule naturally separates when it bursts.
(b)
One of the two similar portions of the shell of a diatom.
(c)
A small portion of certain anthers, which opens like a trapdoor to allow the pollen to escape, as in the barberry.
5.
(Zool.) One of the pieces or divisions of bivalve or multivalve shells.
Air valve, Ball valve, Check valve, etc. See under Air. Ball, Check, etc.
Double-beat valve, a kind of balance valve usually consisting of a movable, open-ended, turban-shaped shell provided with two faces of nearly equal diameters, one above another, which rest upon two corresponding seats when the valve is closed.
Equilibrium valve.
(a)
A balance valve. See under Balance.
(b)
A valve for permitting air, steam, water, etc., to pass into or out of a chamber so as to establish or maintain equal pressure within and without.
Valve chest (Mach.), a chamber in which a valve works; especially (Steam Engine), the steam chest; called in England valve box, and valve casing. See Steam chest, under Steam.
Valve face (Mach.), that part of the surface of a valve which comes in contact with the valve seat.
Valve gear, or Valve motion (Steam Engine), the system of parts by which motion is given to the valve or valves for the distribution of steam in the cylinder. For an illustration of one form of valve gear, see Link motion.
Valve seat. (Mach.)
(a)
The fixed surface on which a valve rests or against which it presses.
(b)
A part or piece on which such a surface is formed.
Valve stem (Mach.), a rod attached to a valve, for moving it.
Valve yoke (Mach.), a strap embracing a slide valve and connecting it to the valve stem.





Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48


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"Valve" Quotes from Famous Books



... shook the west coast of South America for more than 2,500 miles, by which many thousands of the inhabitants perished, and many more were rendered homeless. Slight shocks were felt in many parts of Europe, and even in England. Vesuvius was our safety-valve. The pressure must have been very great which opened two new craters in the Atrio del Cavallo and forced out such a mass of matter. There is no evidence that water had been concerned in the late eruption of ...
— Personal Recollections, from Early Life to Old Age, of Mary Somerville • Mary Somerville
... Miller slapped the regulator between the guide rods. As the three young men again threw themselves upon the chain and forced the regulator into place, the crucial moment had arrived. The controlling valve of the regulator was open, of course, and as the rushing gas was again concentrated into one stream, a new fiery jet shot upward. But the lateral streams had been controlled and again Ewen applied the wrench to thread ...
— On the Edge of the Arctic - An Aeroplane in Snowland • Harry Lincoln Sayler
... Fig. 12 are two rods, one vertical and the other inclined. The straight or vertical rod is attached by suitable levers and rods to the set-on handles at each end of the machine and to the valve of the water pipe near the top of the frame, while the upper end of the inclined or oblique rod is fulcrumed on a rod projecting from the frame. The lower or curved end of the oblique rod rests against the boss of one of the ...
— The Jute Industry: From Seed to Finished Cloth • T. Woodhouse and P. Kilgour
... lunacy at noonday in a crowded street, and to walk along through a dim maze of extravagances,— partly conscious of then, but unable to resist the impulse to give way to them! A long-suppressed nature might be represented as bursting out in this way, for want of any other safety-valve. ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... an air torpedo proposed by the same inventor. The air reservoir, C, revolves along with the gearings under the action of the pneumatic machine, D. The central shaft is hollow, so as to serve as a conduit. The admission of air into the slide valve of the machine is regulated by a clockwork which actuates a slide in an aperture whose form and dimensions are so calculated that the speed remains as constant as possible toward the end ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 711, August 17, 1889 • Various


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