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Diurnal   Listen
noun
Diurnal  n.  
1.
A daybook; a journal. (Obs.)
2.
(R. C. Ch.) A small volume containing the daily service for the "little hours," viz., prime, tierce, sext, nones, vespers, and compline.
3.
(Zool.) A diurnal bird or insect.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Diurnal" Quotes from Famous Books



... with the sun at new, and in opposition at the full, an atmospheric spring-tide may be supposed to exist, and to exert some sort of influence. But the existence of any atmospheric tide at all is denied by some naturalists, and is at most very problematical; and the absence of regular diurnal fluctuations of the barometric pressure favours the negative of this proposition. But, granting that it were so, and that the moon, in what is conventionally called the beginning of its course, and again in the middle, at the full, did produce changes ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 191, June 25, 1853 • Various

... Capricorn; they trace on papyrus or granite the direction of the celestial ocean, which goes from the east to the west; they have summed up the number of stars strewn over the blue robe of the Goddess Neith, and make the sun travel in the lower or the superior hemisphere with the twelve diurnal and the twelve nocturnal baris under the conduct of the hawk-headed pilot and of Neb Wa, the Lady of the Bark; they know that in the second half of the month of Tobi, Orion influences the left ear, and Sirius the heart; but they are absolutely ignorant why a woman prefers one man to another, ...
— The Works of Theophile Gautier, Volume 5 - The Romance of a Mummy and Egypt • Theophile Gautier

... those ensuing days fell on Larcher. Besides regular semi-diurnal calls on the young ladies and at Mrs. Haze's house, and regular consultations of police records, he made visits to every place he had ever known Davenport to frequent, and to every person he had ever known Davenport to be acquainted with. Only, for a ...
— The Mystery of Murray Davenport - A Story of New York at the Present Day • Robert Neilson Stephens

... results so beautiful, so unequivocal, and so useful, that he taxed with frivolousness the vague idea which Kepler entertained of attributing to the moon's attraction a certain share in the production of the diurnal and periodical movements of ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner

... indeed when the furnace door was opened for fuel, and he could see only the inanimate, ever-descending sheet of water—the reverse interior aspect of Hoho-hebee Falls—all suffused with the uncanny tawny light, but showing white and green tints like its diurnal outer aspect, instead of the colorless outlines, resembling a drawing of a cataract, which the cave knew by day. He did not pause to wonder whether the sudden transient illumination was visible without, or how it ...
— The Moonshiners At Hoho-Hebee Falls - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)

... was with jealousies possess'd, Am in a state of indolence and rest; Fearful no more of Frenchmen in disguise, Nor looking upon strangers as on spies,[2] But quite divested of my former spleen, Am unprovoked without, and calm within: And here I'll wait thy coming, till the sun Shall its diurnal course completely run. Think not that thou of sturdy bub shalt fail, My landlord's cellar stock'd with beer and ale, With every sort of malt that is in use, And every country's generous produce. The ready (for here Christian faith is ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift

... she now, no force; She does not hear or feel; Roll'd round on earth's diurnal course ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald

... that there is no physiological response given by the most highly organised animal tissue that is not also to be met with in the plant. He carried on "Researches on Diurnal Sleep" and showed that the plant is not equally sensitive to an external stimulus during day and night, and that there is a fundamental identity of life-reaction in plant and animal, as seen in a similar periodic insensibility in both, corresponding to what we call sleep. ...
— Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose - His Life and Speeches • Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose

... explain—and it was from out of the heart of the common life that he sang his rapturous lyrics of divine love. Here his works corroborate the traditional story of his life. Again and again he extols the life of home, the value and reality of diurnal existence, with its opportunities for love and renunciation; pouring contempt—upon the professional sanctity of the Yogi, who "has a great beard and matted locks, and looks like a goat," and on all who think it necessary to flee ...
— Songs of Kabir • Rabindranath Tagore (trans.)

... slept we do not know, but can imagine, for here is the Diurnal Record, made up in bed:—"December 29th, Saturday.—Dreamed Victoria Villa turned into a hydropathic establishment—that I was being frozen, thawed, and suffocated; did wake, this day, with an enlarged cheek—the influenza ...
— Christmas Comes but Once A Year - Showing What Mr. Brown Did, Thought, and Intended to Do, - during that Festive Season. • Luke Limner

... pincers, it extracts the white albuminous substance. I think this is as curious a case of instinct as ever I heard of, and likewise of adaptation in structure between two objects apparently so remote from each other in the scheme of nature, as a crab and a cocoa-nut tree. The Birgos is diurnal in its habits; but every night it is said to pay a visit to the sea, no doubt for the purpose of moistening its branchiae. The young are likewise hatched, and live for some time, on the coast. These crabs inhabit deep ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin

... Whatever idea may be adopted on this subject, if it is very certain that, independent of those exterior causes, which are competent to totally change its face, as the impulse of a comet may do, this globe contains within itself, a cause adequate to alter it entirely, since, besides the diurnal and sensible motion of the earth, it has one extremely slow, almost imperceptible, by which every thing must eventually be changed in it: this is the motion from whence depends the precession of the equinoctial ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 2 • Baron D'Holbach

... principles above expounded. If he firmly believes in the resemblance or identity of the ancient and present system of terrestrial changes, he will regard every fact collected respecting the cause in diurnal action as affording him a key to the interpretation of some mystery in the past. Events which have occurred at the most distant periods in the animate and inanimate world will be acknowledged to throw light on each other, and the deficiency of our ...
— The Harvard Classics Volume 38 - Scientific Papers (Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology) • Various

... every one tried to pierce the thick veil of clouds, but no one was rewarded for the trouble; besides, they were all mistaken in supposing they could see it by looking up at the sky, for on account of the diurnal movement of the globe the projectile was then, of course, shooting past ...
— The Moon-Voyage • Jules Verne

... winter is the time of year at which the larger birds of prey, both diurnal and nocturnal, rear up their broods. Throughout January the white-backed vultures are occupied in parental duties. The breeding season of these birds begins in October or November and ends in February or March. The nest, which ...
— A Bird Calendar for Northern India • Douglas Dewar

... below. There is an abstruse astrologer that saith, If it were not for two things that are constant (the one is, that the fixed stars ever stand a like distance one from another, and never come nearer together, nor go further asunder; the other, that the diurnal motion perpetually keepeth time), no individual would last one moment. Certain it is, that the matter is in a perpetual flux, and never at a stay. The great winding-sheets, that bury all things in oblivion, are two; deluges and earthquakes. As for conflagrations and great droughts, they ...
— Essays - The Essays Or Counsels, Civil And Moral, Of Francis Ld. - Verulam Viscount St. Albans • Francis Bacon

... always return to it even when it is set free at a considerable distance. Notwithstanding the fact these insects are blind, and that darkness reigns in this immense cavern, they have periods of rest corresponding with the diurnal rest-periods of kindred species living in daylight; hence, it is easy to study their habits ...
— The Dawn of Reason - or, Mental Traits in the Lower Animals • James Weir

... of my suspensive -state incapacitating me for any composition, save of letters to my best friend, to whom I wrote, or dictated by Alexander, every day; and every day was only supported by the same kind diurnal return. But when, at length, we were summoned to the vessel, and our goods and chattels were conveyed to the custom-house, and when the little portmanteau was produced, and found to be filled with manuscripts, the police officer who opened it began a rant of indignation and ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 3 • Madame D'Arblay

... the former of these, animal life seems most directly related; to the latter, the life of the vegetal orders. It is evident that the forms of animal life on the globe are necessarily determined by the periodic law of the Earth's diurnal rotation. This accounts for the alternations of waking and sleeping, working and resting, and so forth. In like manner the more inert vitality of the vegetable kingdom is determined by the periodic law of the Earth's ...
— Essays Towards a Theory of Knowledge • Alexander Philip

... of the parliament of 1649, which in spirit so strongly resemble the diurnal or hebdomadal effusions of the redoubtable French Hebert, Marat, and others of that stamp, one of the most remarkable is, "The Moderate, impartially communicating Martial Affairs to the Kingdom of England;" the monarchical title our commonwealth men had not ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli

... the whole of this day, the 3rd of January, without thinking further of the volcano, which could not, besides, be seen from the shore of Granite House. But once or twice, large shadows, veiling the sun, which described its diurnal arc through an extremely clear sky, indicated that a thick cloud of smoke passed between its disc and the island. The wind, blowing on the shore, carried all these vapours to the westward. Cyrus Harding and Gideon Spilett remarked these sombre appearances, and ...
— The Secret of the Island • W.H.G. Kingston (translation from Jules Verne)

... to explain how the sun, having set in the west, could get back to rise in the east without being seen if it was always the same sun. It was a great step to suppose the earth to be spherical, and to ascribe the diurnal motions to its rotation. Probably the greatest step ever made in astronomical theory was the placing of the sun, moon, and planets at different distances from the earth instead of having them stuck on the vault of heaven. It was a transition ...
— History of Astronomy • George Forbes

... skewer, and displaying the word 'Office,' it was clear that Mr Ralph Nickleby did, or pretended to do, business of some kind; and the fact, if it required any further circumstantial evidence, was abundantly demonstrated by the diurnal attendance, between the hours of half-past nine and five, of a sallow-faced man in rusty brown, who sat upon an uncommonly hard stool in a species of butler's pantry at the end of the passage, and always had a pen behind his ear when he ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens

... curiously flattened at opposite parts, for the insertion of two imaginary poles, which are supposed to penetrate and unite at the center; thus forming an axis on which the mighty orange turns with a regular diurnal revolution. ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving

... shots, fired by inexperienced hands. In reducing the plan of clubs to practical details, he insisted they were unequal, and even impossible. The minute appraisement, both of good and evil; reckoning up the diurnal merits of the men—the balance of which was to furnish their capital stock, to discharge their fines, to find them food and clothing, and liberty—he described as a gigantic scheme of finance.[223] He amused himself by supposing the number of chances which might intervene before, ...
— The History of Tasmania , Volume II (of 2) • John West

... it all happened, to Job, in the apparent compass of one piece of time not broken by diurnal intervals, not mitigated by recuperative cessations between blow and blow. It seemed to Rosalie that it was like that it happened also to her. There seemed no interval. It seemed to her wrath on wrath, visitation ...
— This Freedom • A. S. M. Hutchinson

... world, are well stocked with these pirates of the night. The vast majority of owls, being strictly nocturnal, escape observation. Usually the presence of any species of owl in a locality is made known only by its voice. I may here remark that diurnal birds know as little about nocturnal birds as the man in the street does, hence the savage manner in which they mob any luckless owl that happens to be abroad in the daytime. Birds are intensely conservative; ...
— Birds of the Indian Hills • Douglas Dewar

... city ward established a guard, Diurnal and nocturnal: Militia volunteers, light dragoons, and bombardiers, With an ...
— Ballads • William Makepeace Thackeray

... Scotland, Va. Rise and Progress of the Revolution, Trial of Aaron Burr, Diurnal Rotation of ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly

... articles of expense; these, I thought, could never be felt by such a fortune as that of the Earl of Glenthorn; but, for the information of those who have the same course to run or to avoid, I should observe, that my diurnal visits to jewellers' shops amounted, in time, to sums worth mentioning. Of the multitude of baubles that I bought, the rings, the seals, the chains, I will give no account; it would pass the belief of man, and the imagination of woman. Those who have ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth

... the lesson of renunciation, and was as familiar with the wreck of each day's wishes as with the diurnal setting of the sun. If her earthly career had taught her few book philosophies it had at least well practised her in this. Yet her experience had consisted less in a series of pure disappointments than in a series of substitutions. Continually ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy

... to me here by more than common persons, whether with or without ground I cannot say, having not heard one word from any Minister of our Court for the space of above seven weeks last past, or concerning myself anything out of England, save what I read in a London diurnal, that letters from me out of Portugal, by sea, signifying my then immediate return for Madrid, were come to hand. The like whereof having never happened to me before, so much as for a fortnight's time, ...
— Memoirs of Lady Fanshawe • Lady Fanshawe

... who to great learning, judgment, sagacity, and luminous fancy, joined unparalleled industry, gratified the British public for a long time with a diurnal paper wholly from his own pen, called "the Inspector." In the course of this work he gave some of the most admirable strictures upon the plays and players of his day. From that work we intend to give some select passages. The following is deserving of particular attention for ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 5, May 1810 • Various

... others — There was no remedy; Mr Campbell, being obliged to acquiesce, is fain to stop his ears with cotton; to fortify his head with three or four night-caps and every morning retire into the penetralia of his habitation, in order to avoid this diurnal annoyance. When the music ceases, he produces himself at an open window that looks into the courtyard, which is by this time filled with a crowd of his vassals and dependents, who worship his first appearance, by uncovering their heads, and bowing ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett

... shadow—if my life has no roots in the Eternal, nor any consciousness of a life that does not pass, and a light that never perishes, if it is derived from, directed to, 'cribbed, cabined, and confined' within this visible diurnal sphere, then it is all flat and unprofitable, an illusion while it seems to last, and all its pursuits are folly, its hopes dreams, its substances vapours, its years a lie. For, if life be thus short, I who live it am conscious of, and possess whether I be conscious of ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... appeared merely to breathe, Thaddeus, instead of his attendance, despatched regular notes of excuse to Harley Street. In answer to these, he commonly received little tender billets from Euphemia, the strain of which he seemed totally to overlook, by the cold respect he evinced in his continued diurnal apologies for absence. ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter

... through its diurnal epochs, of working and slumbering; and now, for the second time, most European and African mortals are asleep. But here, in this Whirlpool of Words, sleep falls not; the Night spreads her coverlid of Darkness over it in vain. Within is the sound of mere martyr invincibility; tempered with the ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle

... potentate, for a long series of time, appeared from the hour of twelve till that of two at a coffee-house near the 'Change, and had a seat (though without a canopy) sacred to himself, where he gave diurnal audiences concerning commerce, politics, tare and tret, usury and abatement, with all things necessary for helping the distressed, who were willing to give one limb for the better maintenance of the rest; or such joyous youths, whose philosophy is confined ...
— The Tatler, Volume 1, 1899 • George A. Aitken

... in winter, when the straits are filled with ice, which, in the shape of floe, and berg, and pinnacle, pass in ghostly procession to and fro, as the wind wafts them, or they feel the diurnal impetus of the tides they cover, to escape in time from the narrow limits of the pass, and lose themselves in the vast ice-barrier that for five long months shuts out the havens of St. Jean ...
— Adrift in the Ice-Fields • Charles W. Hall

... not very closely allied, they have each the same red and black colours, and are very distinct from all the other butterflies of their respective countries. There is reason to believe also that many of the brilliantly coloured and weak-flying diurnal moths, like the fine tropical Agaristidae and burnet-moths, are similarly protected, and that their conspicuous colours serve as a warning of inedibility. The common burnet-moth (Anthrocera filipendula) and the equally ...
— Darwinism (1889) • Alfred Russel Wallace

... afternoon tide varies from that of the morning tide; sometimes one is the higher and sometimes the other, according to the declination of the sun and moon. This is called the "diurnal inequality." The average difference between the night and morning tides is about 5 in on the east coast and about 8in on the west coast. When there is a considerable difference in the height of high water of two consecutive tides, the ebb which follows the higher tide is lower than that following ...
— The Sewerage of Sea Coast Towns • Henry C. Adams

... faults which I had, nothing having come before the judgment-seat in the interim, I should, year after year, quarter after quarter, month after month—(not to mention sundry petty periodicals of still quicker revolution, "or weekly or diurnal")—have been, for at least seventeen years consecutively, dragged forth by them into the foremost ranks of the proscribed, and forced to abide the brunt of abuse, for faults directly opposite, and which I certainly had not. ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... the sun is the center of the solar system; and the earth, and all other planets, move round the sun in certain periodical times; that the sun revolves around his own axis, and round the common center of gravity included in his own surface; that the solar influence is the cause of the annual and diurnal motions of the earth, and that the motions of the earth must continue while the solar influence continues to act upon it; that no power but that of Jehovah can change this solar influence; that he can suspend the operation of this influence; that he can and does manipulate—handle the laws ...
— The Christian Foundation, February, 1880

... The heliacal rising of a constellation is when it comes from under the rays of the sun, and begins to appear before daylight. The achronical rising, on the contrary, is when it appears at the close of day, and in opposition of the sun's diurnal course. The heliacal rising of Orion is at present computed to be about the 6th of July; and about that time it is that he either causes or presages tempests ...
— Discourses on Satire and Epic Poetry • John Dryden

... drank a parting glass to old friends, turned into our births, and soon were cradled by the motion of the vessel into sweet repose. The events of the former evening, the novelty of the scene, and, above all, the magnificence of Nature, as she appeared when viewed from sea, in her diurnal progress through the transition 167of morning, noon, and night, all inspired my Muse to attempt poetic sketches of the character of the surrounding island scenery. A delightful pleasure I have endeavoured to convey to my readers ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle

... entirely in the meads for coolness and convenience, without driving in the cows. During the day the animals obsequiously followed the shadow of the smallest tree as it moved round the stem with the diurnal roll; and when the milkers came they could hardly stand ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy

... letter to Mr. McHenry, May 29th, he says: "I begin my diurnal course with the sun; if my hirelings are not in their places at that time, I send them messages of sorrow for their indisposition; having put these wheels in motion, I examine the state of things further. The more they ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing

... exclaims, There is a God: There is a God who lights ten thousand suns,[122] Round which revolve worlds wheeling amid worlds. He launched thy voyage through the vast abyss, He hears his universe, through all its orbs, As with one voice, proclaim, There is a God! Lifted above this dim diurnal sphere, 230 So fancy, rising with her theme, ascends, And voyaging the illimitable void, Where comets flame, sees other worlds and suns Emerge, and on this earth, like a dim speck, Looks down: nor in the wonderful and vast Of the dread scene magnificent, she views ...
— The Poetical Works of William Lisle Bowles, Vol. 1 • William Lisle Bowles

... has she now; no force, She neither hears nor sees, Roiled round in earth's diurnal course With ...
— English Literature: Modern - Home University Library Of Modern Knowledge • G. H. Mair

... round the world. It has no nation, it costs no weariness, it knows no bonds. The terrestrial scenery—the tourist's—is a prisoner compared with this. The tourist's scenery moves indeed, but only like Wordsworth's maiden, with earth's diurnal course; it is made as fast as its own graves. And for its changes it depends upon the mobility of the skies. The mere green flushing of its own sap makes only the least of its varieties; for the greater it must wait upon the visits of the light. Spring and autumn are inconsiderable events in ...
— Essays • Alice Meynell

... diurnal sphere" There floats a World that girds us like the space; On wandering clouds and gliding beams career Its ever-moving murmurous Populace. There, all the lovelier thoughts conceived below Ascending live, and in ...
— The Pilgrims Of The Rhine • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... towns, the more respectable inhabitants were dressed in mourning, thus announcing, that the death of some relation gave them a deep private interest in the public sorrow. The unemployed manufacturers crowded the streets, eagerly perusing libellous pamphlets, or diurnal chronicles, disputing furiously on points which none could clearly explain or indeed comprehend, asking for news as if it were bread, and shewing by the lean ferocity of their faces, and the squalid negligence of their attire, that from unpitied poverty ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West

... made, he replied that it Would be necessary to pour a bottle of sea-water into each river a fortnight before the sacrifice, and that this ceremony was to be performed by Semiramis in person, at the first diurnal ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt

... beheld her. Strangers rumble down from Boston by hundreds at a time. New faces throng in Essex Street. Railroad-hacks and omnibuses rattle over the pavements. There is a perceptible increase of oyster-shops, and other establishments for the accommodation of a transitory diurnal multitude. But a more important change awaits the venerable town. An immense accumulation of musty prejudices will be carried off by the free circulation of society. A peculiarity of character, of which the inhabitants themselves are hardly sensible, will be rubbed ...
— The Sister Years (From "Twice Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... precede the rainy monsoon, fitful and wayward, never continuing long in one stay, and lasting but four out of the twelve months. Rare is the wind from the west, rarer from the south-west. North-easters are a pronounced feature. They work up by diurnal and easy grades from gentleness to strength, thunder coming as a climax. After a succession of calm days and days of gentle breezes from the east-south-east and east, the north-easter begins softly, and daily gathers ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield

... has enabled M. Werl to make many experiments which firms with less space at their command would find it difficult to carry out on the same satisfactory scale. Such, for instance, is the system of racks in which the bottles repose while the wine undergoes its diurnal shaking. Instead of these racks being, as they commonly are, at almost upright angles, they are perfectly horizontal, which, in M. Werl's opinion, offers a material advantage, inasmuch as the bottles are all in readiness for disgorging ...
— Facts About Champagne and Other Sparkling Wines • Henry Vizetelly

... Mr Forster, you have had a famous nap," cried Mrs Beazely, in a tone of voice so loud as to put an immediate end to his slumber, as she entered his room with some hot water to assist him in that masculine operation, the diurnal painful return of which has been considered to be more than tantamount in suffering to the occasional "pleasing punishment which women bear." Although this cannot be proved until ladies are endowed with beards (which Heaven forfend!), or some ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat

... of the world's diurnal Experience, why plunge my soul in gloom With tidings that are ghastly and infernal? Why dim my morning eye with tales of doom, Of flood and fire, of pestilence and drouth— Leaving me down, distinctly, in ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, January 28, 1914 • Various

... the earth as never sun Has his diurnal journey run. And, Moon, slip past the ladders of air In a single flash, while your streaming hair Catches the stars and pulls them down To shine on some slumbering Chinese town. O Kindly Sun! Understanding Moon! Bring evening to crowd the footsteps ...
— A Dome of Many-Coloured Glass • Amy Lowell

... protracted performance of charades in the house of Luke Doyle, Kimmage, he had awaited with patience the apparition of the diurnal phenomenon, seated on a wall, his gaze turned in the direction ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce

... turn the balls round on the wires of the arithmeticon. Q. What are these motions called? A. Its motion round the sun is called its annual or yearly motion. Q. What is its other motion called? A. Its diurnal or daily motion. Q. What is caused by its motion round the sun? A. The succession of summer, winter, spring, and autumn, which are called the four seasons, is caused by this. Q. What is caused by its daily motion ...
— The Infant System - For Developing the Intellectual and Moral Powers of all Children, - from One to Seven years of Age • Samuel Wilderspin

... and the sense of unlikeness plays a decisive role in the diurnal schedule of the individual. His sense of resemblance to his father and mother, his kin and clan, mark him and them off against the cosmos as an alliance of defense and offense. Yet no matter how closely he is like them and they like him, he differs and varies, they differ ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.

... owl!" For although I had never seen its like before I knew it was an owl. Not until that moment had I known any owl except the common burrowing-owl of the plain, a small grey-and-white bird, half diurnal in its habits, with a pretty dove-like voice when it hooted round the ...
— Far Away and Long Ago • W. H. Hudson

... continent men never have nocturnal emissions. The reason may be sought in one of two directions: (1) The usual cause of absence of nocturnal emissions is to be found in the fact that in the man in question the seminal vesicles are periodically drained by involuntary diurnal emissions, occurring usually when the individual is at stool. These emissions are likely to occur once in two to four weeks and take the place of the nocturnal emission. (2) Rarely we find virile, continent men whose vesicular secretion is so scanty that they are never ...
— The Biology, Physiology and Sociology of Reproduction - Also Sexual Hygiene with Special Reference to the Male • Winfield S. Hall

... guess his native tint. His wife's qualities, if they had affected him at all, had acted negatively. He did not apologize for the mutton, and he wandered off after luncheon without pretending to wait for the diurnal coffee and liqueurs; while the few remarks that he had contributed to the conversation during the meal had not been in the direction of abstract conceptions of life. As he strayed away, with his vague oblique step, and the stoop that suggested the habit of dodging ...
— The Greater Inclination • Edith Wharton

... meridian, and vice versa. Declination is different for different places; it is at present west in Europe and Africa, and east in Asia and the greater part of North and South America. The declination is subject to (a) secular, (b) annual and (c) diurnal variations. These are classed as regular; others due to magnetic storms are transitory and are classed as irregular, (a) Secular variations. The following table shows the secular variations during some three hundred years at Paris. These changes are termed ...
— The Standard Electrical Dictionary - A Popular Dictionary of Words and Terms Used in the Practice - of Electrical Engineering • T. O'Conor Slone

... is the night Tide. On the Spring Tides the difference between the perpendicular rise of the night and day Tides is not less than 3 feet, which is a great deal where the Tides are so inconsiderable, as they are here.* (* This difference in the heights of consecutive tides is termed the diurnal inequality. It results from the tide wave being made up of a large number of undulations, some caused by the moon, some by the sun; some occurring twice a day, others only once. It occurs in all parts of the world, but is inconspicuous on the coasts of Europe. ...
— Captain Cook's Journal During the First Voyage Round the World • James Cook

... evening, from every village within three or four miles of the metropolis, may be remarked a tide of young men wending diurnal way to and from their respective desks and counters in the city, preceded by a ripple of errand-boys, and light porters, and followed by an ebb of plethoric elderly gentlemen in drab gaiters. Now these individuals compose—for the most part—that particular, yet indefinite ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various

... discoveries which Copernicus made relates to the rotation of the earth on its axis. That general diurnal movement, by which the stars and all other celestial bodies appear to be carried completely round the heavens once every twenty-four hours, had been accounted for by Ptolemy on the supposition that the apparent movements were the real movements. Ptolemy himself felt the extraordinary difficulty ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various

... as, though not in the same degree as, the estimates of others have varied at different times; but I myself have found that the more I read of it the more I liked and esteemed it; and I believe that, if I had a copy of my own and could turn it over in the proper diurnal and nocturnal fashion, not as duty- but as pleasure-reading, I should like it better still. Certain points that have appealed to me have been noticed already—its combination of sensuous and ideal passion is perhaps the most important of them; but there are not a few others, themselves by no ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury

... disobeys His laws and brings upon himself consequent suffering, it appears to him that God is angry. So it appears to us that night and darkness are caused by the going down of the sun, but the real truth is that the sun always shines and that night and darkness are caused by the earth's diurnal revolution on its axis. It will therefore be seen that if the Sacred Scriptures are the Word of God and in accordance with His works, they must contain both ...
— Personal Experience of a Physician • John Ellis

... it Does, and How it is allowed to Drain Away, Weakening, Emasculating and Dementing the Vicious and the Careless. Diurnal (daily) Emissions. Nocturnal (nightly) Emissions. Impalpable Oozings. Losses in the Urine. Losses ...
— Manhood Perfectly Restored • Unknown

... away before he has had time to make anything more lovely or lasting than a reputation as a hero. In the amazing fantasy The Cream of the Jest Mr. Cabell has embodied the visions of the romancer Felix Kennaston so substantially that Kennaston's diurnal walks in Lichfield seem hardly as real as those nightly ventures which under the guise of Horvendile he makes into the glowing land he has created. Nor are the two universes separated by any tight wall which the fancy must leap over: they flow with exquisite ...
— Contemporary American Novelists (1900-1920) • Carl Van Doren

... the facade of the local Mairie—Mrs. Callowgas became extensively reminiscent of her dear dead Lord Bishop. Protracted anecdotes of visitations and confirmation tours, excerpts from his sermons, speeches and charges, arch revelations of his diurnal and nocturnal conversation and habits—the latter tedious to the point of tears when not slightly immodest—poured from her widowed lips. The good lady overflowed. She frankly babbled. General Frayling listened, outwardly ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet

... not the worst of it. I disliked the abstruse studies of my new profession; but I absolutely hated the diurnal slavery of qualifying myself, in a social point of view, for future success in it. My fond medical parent insisted on introducing me to his whole connection. I went round visiting in the neat brougham—with a stethoscope and medical review in the front-pocket, with Doctor ...
— A Rogue's Life • Wilkie Collins

... the glorious Bard endear! Thus fair he walks in Man's diurnal sphere. But when, upborne on bright Invention's wings. He dares the realms of uncreated things, Forms more divine, more dreadful, start to view, Than ever Hades or Olympus knew. Round the dark cauldron, terrible and fell, The midnight Witches ...
— Poems (1828) • Thomas Gent

... fever, comes on rather suddenly with a chill of greater or less severity and a violent headache. The temperature frequently rises to 105, and the fever, instead of being intermittent, runs continuously with little, if any, diurnal variation. If the attack is not a very severe one the headache gradually subsides; the temperature falls to 102 or 103, and in the course of three or four days the disease begins to yield to treatment. In some cases the fever is interrupted by a second chill, followed by another rise of ...
— Campaigning in Cuba • George Kennan

... but ill conversation to themselves, and others, and instead of celebrating, censure their superiors. It is by a curious person, and industrious friend of mine, observ'd, that the sap of this tree rises and descends with the sun's diurnal course (which it visibly slackens in the night) and more plentifully at the root on the south side, though those roots cut on the north were larger, and less distant from the body of the tree; and not only distill'd from the ends, which were next the stem, but from those which were cut off ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn

... multifarious as those of a Land's Husband (not inferior to his Father in that respect); and, like the benefits of the diurnal Sun, are to be considered incessant, innumerable and, in result to us-ward, SILENT also, impossible to speak of in this place. From the highest pitch of State-craft (Russian Czarina now fallen plainly hostile, ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVI. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Ten Years of Peace.—1746-1756. • Thomas Carlyle

... says he has written in the preface to Ripley Revived. He there says, after naming other works: "Two English Poems I wrote, declaring the whole secret, which are lost. Also an Enchiridion of Experiments, together with a Diurnal of Meditations, in which were many Philosophical receipts, declaring the whole secret, with an Aenigma annexed; which also fell into such hands which I conceive will never restore it. This last was written in English." Can this Enchiridion and Diurnal be Sl. MS. 1741? I find no ...
— Poems of Henry Vaughan, Silurist, Volume II • Henry Vaughan

... Conversation among the Beau Monde next Winter, to send you an account of the present State of Wit in Town; which, without further Preface, I shall therefore endeavour to perform, and give you the Histories and Characters of all our Periodical Papers, whether Monthly, Weekly, or Diurnal, with the same freedom I used to send you our other ...
— The Present State of Wit (1711) - In A Letter To A Friend In The Country • John Gay

... magistrality, it cannot but seem a matter of great profit, to see before them the several opinions touching the foundations of nature. Not for any exact truth that can be expected in those theories; for as the same phenomena in astronomy are satisfied by this received astronomy of the diurnal motion, and the proper motions of the planets, with their eccentrics and epicycles, and likewise by the theory of Copernicus, who supposed the earth to move, and the calculations are indifferently agreeable ...
— The Advancement of Learning • Francis Bacon

... vitality, there seems to be,—I think I may venture to say there is,—a rhythmic undulation in the flow of the vital force. The "dynamo" which furnishes the working powers of consciousness and action has its annual, its monthly, its diurnal waves, even its momentary ripples, in the current it furnishes. There are greater and lesser curves in the movement of every day's life,—a series of ascending and descending movements, a periodicity depending on the very nature of the force at work in the living organism. Thus we ...
— Over the Teacups • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... and westerly movements—so clearly shown by philosophers to be the consequences of cold polar currents of air—warm equatorial currents—and diurnal rotation of the earth;[30] are grand ruling phenomena of meteorology—to which storms, and all local changes, occurring but occasionally, are subordinate and exceptional. Further investigations into electrical and chemical peculiarities will probably throw additional ...
— Barometer and Weather Guide • Robert Fitzroy

... day, clear, dry, hard, and windy, the river rumpled and crumpled, the sky intense, distant objects strangely near; a day full of strong light, unusual; an extraordinary lightness and clearness all around the horizon, as if there were a diurnal aurora streaming up and burning through the sunlight; smoke from the first spring fires rising up in various directions,—a day that winnowed the air, and left no film in the sky. At night, how the ...
— A Year in the Fields • John Burroughs

... that I begin my diurnal course with the sun; that, if my hirelings are not in their places at that time, I send them messages of sorrow for their indisposition; that, having put these wheels in motion, I examine the state of things further; that, the more they are probed, the deeper I find the ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing

... but paid no particular attention to the study of astronomy. Maestlin, the professor of mathematics, whose lectures he attended, upheld the Copernican theory, and Kepler, who adopted the views of his teacher, wrote an essay in favour of the diurnal rotation of the Earth, in which he supported the more recent astronomical doctrines. In 1594, a vacancy having occurred in the professorship of astronomy at Gratz consequent upon the death of George Stadt, Kepler was appointed his successor. He did not seek this office, as he felt no particular ...
— The Astronomy of Milton's 'Paradise Lost' • Thomas Orchard

... and very dull men. The ethos of the satiric persona was something they could not understand. Although some of the Dunces knew their classics well and although all of them, we may presume, read the Roman satirists, one did not, typically, in Grub Street consult one's Horace with diurnal hand; one consulted the public. Literature to them was sold. They were not deeply concerned about absolute standards of right and wrong, about works of imagination which justify an entire civilization, about the problem of tradition ...
— Two Poems Against Pope - One Epistle to Mr. A. Pope and the Blatant Beast • Leonard Welsted

... and loyalty. Here he began a paper war with the opposite party, and wrote some smart satires against the Rebels, especially the Scots. His poem called the Mixt Assembly; his character of a London Diurnal, and a Committee-man, are thought to contain the true spirit of satire, and a just representation of the general confusion of the times. From Oxford he went to the garrison of Newark, where he acted as judge advocate till ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume II • Theophilus Cibber

... the possibility of delaying old age, and I do not see why his method should not be applied to the diurnal need of sleep. No vital process seems to be absolutely fated in itself; it is a thing conditioned and capable of modification. If Metchnikoff is right—and to a certain extent he must be right—the decay of age is due to changing organic ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells

... of the methods employed allow the diurnal variations both of velocity and altitude to be successfully measured. The velocity observations confirm the results that have been obtained from mountain stations—that, though the general travel of the middle and higher clouds is much greater than that of the surface winds, the diurnal ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 611, September 17, 1887 • Various

... dropsies, imprisonments, and other valuable calamities, having got together a pretty handsome sum, I determined to quit a business which had always gone rather against my conscience, and in a more liberal way still to indulge my talents for fiction and embellishment, through my favourite channels of diurnal communication—and so, sir, you have my history. Sneer. Most obligingly communicative indeed! and your confession, if published, might certainly serve the cause of true charity, by rescuing the most useful channels of appeal to benevolence from the cant ...
— Scarborough and the Critic • Sheridan

... Cave had been speedily directed to the bird-like creatures he had seen so abundantly present in each of his earlier visions. His first impression was soon corrected, and he considered for a time that they might represent a diurnal species of bat. Then he thought, grotesquely enough, that they might be cherubs. Their heads were round and curiously human, and it was the eyes of one of them that had so startled him on his second ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells

... as good if the thermometer indicates a temperature differing from that of the whole instrument by more than a degree. For every degree of temperature the attached thermometer differs from the barometer, the observation will be faulty to the extent of about 0.003 in., which in discussions of diurnal range, &c., ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various

... West was forced to give ground. Manabozho drove him across rivers and over mountains and lakes, and at last he came to the brink of this world. 'Hold,' cried he, 'my son, you know my power and that it is impossible to kill me.'"[167-1] What is this but the diurnal combat of light and darkness, carried on from what time "the jocund morn stands tiptoe on the misty mountain tops," across the wide world to the sunset, the struggle that knows no end, for both ...
— The Myths of the New World - A Treatise on the Symbolism and Mythology of the Red Race of America • Daniel G. Brinton

... of mine Firm and secure for ever shine. Let these, my work, remain secure Long as the earth and heaven endure. This, all ye Gods, I crave: do you Allow the boon for which I sue." Then all the Gods their answer made: "So be it, Saint, as thou hast prayed. Beyond the sun's diurnal way Thy countless stars in heaven shall stay: And 'mid them hung, as one divine, Head downward shall Trisanku shine; And all thy stars shall ever fling Their ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI

... a very different story from that of the earth's moving round her axis, in her diurnal rotation, with her progress in her elliptick orbit which brings about the year, and constitutes that variety and vicissitude of seasons we enjoy;—though I own it suggested the thought,—as I believe the greatest of our boasted improvements and ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne

... called great; and should it happen to be very large, great great, which is an Italian idiom also. This occasions their computations of time and space to be very confused and incorrect. Of the former they have no measure but the visible diurnal motion of the sun or the monthly revolution of ...
— A Complete Account of the Settlement at Port Jackson • Watkin Tench

... In that great diurnal of the eighteenth-century navy, the Captains' Letters and Admirals' Dispatches, no volume can be opened without striking the broad trail of destitution, misery and heart-break, to mention no worse consequences, left by the gang. At nearly ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson

... powerful, dark-dispelling sun, Now thou art risen, and thy day begun. How shrink the shrouding mists before thy face, As up thou spring'st to thy diurnal race! How darkness chases darkness to the west, As shades of light on light rise radiant from thy crest! For thee, great source of strength, emblem of might, In hours of darkest gloom there is no night. Thou ...
— Fifty years & Other Poems • James Weldon Johnson

... now diurnal, from on high over the Straits of Dover, and stretching from city to city. By night Paris and London seem each as a little swarm of lights surrounded by a halo; by day as a confused glitter of white and ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy

... shade, 180 And continents of sand, will turn his gaze To mark the windings of a scanty rill That murmurs at his feet? The high-born soul Disdains to rest her heaven-aspiring wing Beneath its native quarry. Tired of earth And this diurnal scene, she springs aloft Through fields of air; pursues the flying storm; Rides on the vollied lightning through the heavens; Or, yoked with whirlwinds and the northern blast, Sweeps the long tract of day. Then high she soars 190 The blue profound, and hovering round the sun ...
— Poetical Works of Akenside - [Edited by George Gilfillan] • Mark Akenside

... possession of the English, safe from Spanish interference; and he listened reverently to Sir Humphrey's quaint proofs, half true, half fantastic, of such a passage, which Raleigh detailed to him—of the Primum Mobile, and its diurnal motion from east to west, in obedience to which the sea-current flowed westward ever round the Cape of Good Hope, and being unable to pass through the narrow strait between South America and the ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley

... heard she had been for her box, but left no address, he sent Pearman to hunt for her. He could not find her. She avoided the house, but sent a woman for her diurnal love letters. Dr. Staines sent the woman back to fetch her. She came, received her box, her letters, and the balance of her wages, which was small, for Staines ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade

... a future state," "metempsychosis of nature," "nefandous villanies," "diurnal and annual," "my visive faculty," "soul-transparent and diaphonous," "translucid ray," "terrene enjoyments," "our minds are clarified," "types both of the ante and post-diluvian world," "the tenuity thereof," "the aereal heavens," "effluxes of divine ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 66, February 1, 1851 • Various

... 1534, is the date assigned for the trial, "befoir the Bishop of Ross, be ane commission of the Bischope of Sanctandrois," of Kirk and others. (Diurnal of Occurrents, p. 18.) Of these persons, Calderwood informs us, that Sir William Kirk, as his name denotes, was a priest; but "whether he compeared and abjured, or fled, we can find no certaintie;" that Adam Dayes, or Dease, was "a ship-wright ...
— The Works of John Knox, Vol. 1 (of 6) • John Knox

... "darkness visible" in which Mr. Shelley veils his subject, some beautiful imagery and poetical expressions: but he appears to be a poet "whose eye, in a fine phrenzy rolling," seeks only such objects as are "above this visible diurnal sphere;" and therefore we entreat him, for the sake of his reviewers as well as of his other readers, (if he has any,) to subjoin to his next publication an ordo, a glossary, and copious notes, illustrative of his allusions and explanatory of ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney

... earth goes round with the outer heaven and sun; although the whole question depends on the relation of earth and sun, their movements are nowhere precisely described. But if we suppose, with Mr. Grote, that the diurnal rotation of the earth on its axis and the revolution of the sun and outer heaven precisely coincide, it would be difficult to imagine that Plato was unaware of the consequence. For though he was ignorant ...
— Timaeus • Plato

... look on me, From Thy throne eternal; Make pure unto Thee This my hymn diurnal. I my grateful voice would blend, With ...
— Gladys, the Reaper • Anne Beale

... deserve little credit. However, they devote their lives to their children, and those who have the misfortune to be their intimate friends are doomed to see them half the day, or all day long, go through the part of the good mother in all its diurnal monotony of lessons and caresses. All this may be vastly right—it is a pity it is so tiresome. For my part I cannot conceive how persons of superior taste and talents can submit to it, unless it be to make themselves a reputation, and that you know ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth

... Man," so I have heard my uncle, who was a learned hedgehog, say,—"the animal man is a diurnal animal; he comes out and feeds in the daytime." But a second cousin, who had travelled as far as Covent Garden, and who lived for many years in a London kitchen, told me that he thought my uncle was wrong, and that man comes out and feeds ...
— Brothers of Pity and Other Tales of Beasts and Men • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing

... motion; and had we run a line nearer to the end of the glacier, the motion would have been slower still. At the end itself it is nearly insensible. [Footnote: The snout of the Aletsch Glacier has a diurnal motion of less than two inches, while a mile or so above the snout the velocity is eighteen inches. The spreading out of the moraine is here very striking.] Now I submit that this is not the Place to seek for the scooping ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall

... course of the sun or the shape of the earth; but as all the apparent movements of the celestial bodies depend on the same principle, and the first observation leads on to all the rest, less effort is needed, though more time, to proceed from the diurnal revolution to the calculation of eclipses, than to get a thorough understanding of day ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau

... caldron in the Gulf of Mexico, it carries a freight of caloric towards the North Atlantic. Owing partly to the diurnal motion of the Earth on its axis, its flow trends towards the east; hence its warm waters embrace our favoured coasts, and ameliorate our climate, while the eastern sea-board of North America is left, in winter, to the rigour of ...
— The Ocean and its Wonders • R.M. Ballantyne

... she now, no force; She neither hears nor sees; Roll'd round in earth's diurnal course With rocks, and stones, ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various

... pun, it was the pomposity of our father Adam that first brought "poetic diction" into vogue. When the curse has fallen in Eden he makes a long speech for the comfort of Eve, in the course of which he alludes to "the graceful locks of these fair spreading trees," speaks of the sun as "this diurnal star," and, studying protection against the ...
— Milton • Sir Walter Alexander Raleigh

... starting. This is used by Fromundus with great effect. It appears never to have occurred to him to test the matter by dropping a stone from the topmast of a ship. Bezenburg has mathematically demonstrated just such an aberration in falling bodies, as is mathematically required by the diurnal motion of the earth. See Jevons, Principles of Science, pp. 388, ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White

... themselves, as the prodigious current which set them through the Straits of Le Maire with such rapidity, could not have originated from any such cause. Currents are well known to be occasioned by the tides, the diurnal revolution of the earth, and by prevailing winds, influenced and directed by the bendings of coasts, the interposition of islands, and the position of straits. No such currents could possibly come from rivers in an austral land, locked up in ever-during frost, should ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr

... great analogy with the "Book of Respirations," a translation of which will be added here. Both refer to the resurrection and renewed birth of Osiris (the type of man after his death), who, in this quality, is identified with the sun, the diurnal renewal of which constantly recalled the idea of a birth eternally renewed. The object of the prayers recited by Isis and Nephthys is to effect the resurrection of their brother Osiris, and also that of the defunct to whom the papyrus ...
— Egyptian Literature

... others, and especially through his joining the weekly society's meetings there, for prayer and conference, he was effectually brought off from that way, and perhaps it was this that made the writer of the diurnal (who was no friend of his) say, "That if Mr. Guthrie had continued fixt to his first principles, he had been a star of the first magnitude in Scotland." Whenas he came to judge for himself, he happily departed ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie

... stubbornness and pride of heart of Mr. Woolly would not give over, and the next pass [he] was killed on the spot. The Earl fled to Chelsea, and there took water and escaped. The jury found it chance-medley."—Rugge's "Diurnal," ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys

... gaiety and sprightliness of the dwellers in garrets is probably the increase of that vertiginous motion, with which we are carried round by the diurnal revolution of the earth. The power of agitation upon the spirits is well known; every man has felt his heart lightened in a rapid vehicle, or on a galloping horse; and nothing is plainer, than that he who towers to the fifth story, is whirled through more space by every circumrotation, ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson

... also of Babylonian origin (Herod., ii., 109). The gnomon seems to have consisted of a column, the shadow of which was thrown on a flight of twelve steps representing the twelve double hours into which the diurnal revolutions of the earth were divided and which thus ...
— Babylonians and Assyrians, Life and Customs • Rev. A. H. Sayce

... the hour, when of diurnal heat No reliques chafe the cold beams of the moon, O'erpower'd by earth, or planetary sway Of Saturn; and the geomancer sees His Greater Fortune up the east ascend, Where gray dawn checkers first the shadowy cone; When 'fore me in my dream a woman's shape There came, with lips ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante

... diurnal moth that possessed a most powerful and delicious scent. Vic, who had never noticed it before, was delighted, and proposed my catching them in quantities and turning them into scent. Whilst on the subject of scent, I might mention that in these forests I would often come ...
— Wanderings Among South Sea Savages And in Borneo and the Philippines • H. Wilfrid Walker

... my responsibility ends and his commences. Man is a self-acting machine. He cannot cease to be a machine; but, though self-acting, he may lose the powers of self-guidance, and in a wrong course his very vitalities hurry him to perdition. Young, he is an organism ripening to the set mechanic diurnal round, and while so he needs all the angels to hold watch over him that he grow straight and healthy, and fit for what machinal duties he may ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... juncture, and, womanlike, without a single cluck of warning, the leghorn ceased her diurnal laying, and, after a spasmodic week, during which she scattered three or four eggs on the little girl's bed, gave no further ...
— The Biography of a Prairie Girl • Eleanor Gates

... has gone out of the family. Know, then, it was nothing less than setting up a daily paper, on the plan of the "Times," but devoted entirely to Art, Literature, and Science,—Mental Progress, in short; I say on the plan of the "Times," for it was to imitate the mighty machinery of that diurnal illuminator. It was to be the Literary Salmoneus of the Political Jupiter, and rattle its thunder over the bridge of knowledge. It was to have correspondents in all parts of the globe; everything that related to the chronicle of the mind, from the labor of the missionary ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... opposite all his endeavours had answered to the sole end and intention which he had proposed to himself, how could it avoid having terrible effects upon a head and heart so furnished as his? However, the poor remainders of his coat bore all the punishment. The orient sun never entered upon his diurnal progress without missing a piece of it. He hired a tailor to stitch up the collar so close that it was ready to choke him, and squeezed out his eyes at such a rate as one could see nothing but the white. What little was left of the main substance of the coat he rubbed every day for two hours against ...
— A Tale of a Tub • Jonathan Swift

... swiftness of our progress through the air by the rapidity with which the villages seemed to fly away from under our feet; so that it seemed, from the tranquillity with which we moved, that we were borne along by the diurnal movement of the globe. Often we wished to descend, in order to learn what the people were crying to us the simplicity of our arrangements enabled us to rise, to descend, to move in horizontal or oblique lines, as we pleased and as often as we ...
— Wonderful Balloon Ascents - or, the Conquest of the Skies • Fulgence Marion

... and right good feeling to our diurnal and hebdomadal amusers and instructors, I cannot but consider that gazette and newspaper reviewers are insufficient and unsatisfactory judges of literature, if not indeed sometimes erring guides to the public taste; the main cause of this consisting in ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper

... gems and burnished gold; Nor could the Wind-God's son withdraw His rapt gaze from the sight he saw, By Visvakarma's(813) self proclaimed The noblest work his hand had framed. Uplifted in the air it glowed Bright as the sun's diurnal road. The eye might scan the wondrous frame And vainly seek one spot to blame, So fine was every part and fair With gems inlaid with lavish care. No precious stones so rich adorn The cars wherein the Gods are borne, Prize of the all-resistless might That sprang from pain ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI

... males are provided with weapons for fighting; some live in pairs and shew mutual affection; many have the power of stridulating when excited; many are furnished with the most extraordinary horns, apparently for the sake of ornament; and some, which are diurnal in their habits, are gorgeously coloured. Lastly, several of the largest beetles in the world belong to this family, which was placed by Linnaeus and Fabricius as the head of the Order. (72. Westwood, 'Modern Classification,' vol. i. ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin

... It finds them like wheels which are driven by an eternal stream, and which must turn and turn for ever, until they fall to pieces. To inquire, then, what would happen if labour ceased to exert itself is like inquiring what would happen if the earth were to retard its diurnal motion, or if some natural force—for example, that of gravitation—were to strike work for the sake of intimidating the cause of all things. Such suppositions are for practical purposes meaningless. But with the directive ability of the few, as opposed to the directed labour ...
— A Critical Examination of Socialism • William Hurrell Mallock

... of it, with their dreary round of domestic duties. She was not a week home, and already sleep was her dearest friend, and to open her eyes in the morning upon the sunny but silent room and miss the clangour of Edinburgh streets was a diurnal grief. ...
— Gilian The Dreamer - His Fancy, His Love and Adventure • Neil Munro

... echoed upon his passage with a ghostly jar, shop after shop displayed its shuttered front and its commercial legend; and meanwhile he steered his course, under day's effulgent dome and through this encampment of diurnal sleepers, lonely ...
— The Dynamiter • Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny van de Grift Stevenson

... such as he only, who "in darkness, and with danger compassed round," soared "beyond this visible diurnal sphere," and whose song was of mercy and judgment, have men wisely resolved to dwell only on what is pure and high and cognate with their thoughts of heaven. Still, as we keep descending from height to height in the regions of song, we desire to ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various

... good, ever since it hath been of 17 or 18 degrees Southern Latitude, and that about the middle of November last, and sooner, unless it have been too small: That however it hath been seen in Holland ever since the 2d. of December last, at which time, according to his reckoning, the Diurnal motion of the Comet should already amount to 17 or 18 minutes. He finds, that this Star moveth just enough in the Plan of a Great Circle, which inclineth to the Equinoctial about 30 degrees, and to the Ecliptick about 49d. or 491/2 cutting the Equator ...
— Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society - Vol 1 - 1666 • Various

... the decent burgess who, in 1572, kept The Diurnal of such daily events as he deemed important, cautiously records the death of the great Scottish Reformer. The sorrows, the "cumber" of which Knox was "alleged" to bear the blame, did not end with his death. They persisted in the conspiracies ...
— John Knox and the Reformation • Andrew Lang

... flexible tail, which I picked up and brought back to Miller—it showed none of the speed of the nine-banded armadillos we met on our jaguar-hunt. Judging by its actions, as it trotted about before it saw me, it must be diurnal in habits. It ...
— Through the Brazilian Wilderness • Theodore Roosevelt

... be an island, insomuch as the sea runneth by nature circularly from the east to the west, following the diurnal motion of the Primum Mobile, and carrieth with it all inferior bodies movable, as well celestial as elemental; which motion of the waters is most evidently seen in the sea, which lieth on the south side of Africa, where the current that runneth ...
— Voyages in Search of the North-West Passage • Richard Hakluyt

... prowling along the roads and about the fields stalking butterflies and diurnal moths with the caution of a red Indian on the warpath and the stealth of a tiger in the jungle; when mystified folk met me at night, a lantern suspended from my neck, a haversack across my shoulders, a bottle-belt about my waist, and armed with a butterfly net, the consensus of opinion ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler

... been Ministers who knew the springs of that public opinion which is delivered ready digested to the nation every morning, and who have not scrupled to work them for their own diurnal glorification, even although the recoil might injure their colleagues. But Lord Russell has never bowed the knee to the potentates of the Press; he has offered no sacrifice of invitations to social editors; and social editors have accordingly failed ...
— Prime Ministers and Some Others - A Book of Reminiscences • George W. E. Russell

... element: Lest from this flying steed unreined (as once Bellerophon, though from a lower clime), Dismounted, on th' Aleian field I fall, Erroneous there to wander, and forlorn. Half yet remains unsung, but narrower bound Within the visible diurnal sphere: Standing on earth, not rapt above the pole, More safe I sing with mortal voice, unchanged To hoarse or mute, though fallen on evil days, On evil days though fallen, and evil tongues; In darkness, and ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various

... casual; and if the face of the earth was so laid out by design, it was for some good reason. But what that reason may be, it will be difficult to shew. Perhaps this disposition may be of service to keep up a proper balance; or, it may assist toward the diurnal rotation of the earth, the free motions of the tides, &c.; or the water on one side may give a freer passage to the rays of the sun, and being convex and transparent, may concentrate, or at least condense, the solar rays internally, for some benefit ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 15 (of 18) • Robert Kerr

... mentioned to sanction my themes, Their hearts beat with mine, and make real my dreams; Their memories with mine their diurnal course run, True as night to the stars and as day to the sun; And as they are now so their memories will be, While sense, truth, and reason ...
— Life and Remains of John Clare - "The Northamptonshire Peasant Poet" • J. L. Cherry

... the world. Few visit it, unless driven by stern necessity; and still fewer are disposed to struggle against the enervating influence of the climate, and keep up even so much of intellectual activity as may suffice to fill a diurnal page of Journal or Commonplace Book. In his descriptions of the settlements of the various nations of Europe, along that coast, and of the native tribes, and their trade and intercourse with the whites, the ...
— Journal of an African Cruiser • Horatio Bridge

... diurnal round Each day-span's sum of hours In peerless ease, without jolt or bound Or ...
— Moments of Vision • Thomas Hardy

... skies. They are constantly turning a new page to view. The wind sets the types on this blue ground, and the inquiring may always read a new truth there. There are things there written with such fine and subtile tinctures, paler than the juice of limes, that to the diurnal eye they leave no trace, and only the chemistry of night reveals them. Every man's daylight firmament answers in his mind to the brightness of the ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau

... gives place to a nervous restlessness; at the least tremor it leaps violently, and often swims actively from one food-plant to another. This blue fit lasts till daybreak, and is then succeeded by the prawn's diurnal tint. ...
— The Outline of Science, Vol. 1 (of 4) - A Plain Story Simply Told • J. Arthur Thomson

... its axis than on the other. There could be but one diameter drawn through such a slice, which would divide it into two equal parts. On every other possible diameter, the parts would hang unequal. This would produce an irregularity in the diurnal rotation. We may, therefore, conclude it impossible for the poles of the earth to shift, if it was made spheroidical; and that it would be made spheroidical, though solid, to obtain this end. I use this reasoning only on the ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson

... expansive waste: Tears gush'd while thus his Pyrrha he address'd: "O sister! wife! O woman sole preserv'd!— "By nature, kindred, and the marriage-bed, "To me most closely join'd. Now nearer still "By mutual perils. We, of all the earth "Beheld by Sol in his diurnal course, "We two alone remain. The mighty deep "Entombs the rest. Nor sure our safety yet; "Still hang the clouds dark louring. Wretched wife, "What if preserv'd alone? What hadst thou done "Of me bereft? How singly borne the shock? "Where found condolement in thy load of grief? "For ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid

... is to the sun's diurnal course; which rising in the east, and by revolution lowering, or setting in the west, becomes the opposite of itself. WARB.] This is an obscure passage. The explanation which Dr. Warburton has offered is such, that I can add nothing to ...
— Notes to Shakespeare, Volume III: The Tragedies • Samuel Johnson

... direction in which the storm is approaching and travels more rapidly than the storm's center. The best and surest of all warnings, however, will be found in the barometer. In every case there is great barometric disturbance. Accordingly, if the barometer falls rapidly, or even if the regularity of its diurnal variation be interrupted, danger may be apprehended. No positive rule can be given as to the amount of depression to be expected, but at the center of some of the storms the barometer is said to stand fully 2 inches lower than outside ...
— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead

... and instructs his solicitor, but a man who has been knocked down by a motor-bus every day of the year will have begun to feel that he is taking part in an august and soul-cleansing ritual. He will await the diurnal stroke of fate with the same lowly and pious joy as animated the Hindoos awaiting Juggernaut. His bruises will be decorations, worn with the modest pride of the veteran. He will cry aloud, in the words of the late W.E. Henley, "My head ...
— A Christmas Garland • Max Beerbohm



Words linked to "Diurnal" :   nocturnal, biology, biological science, diurnal variation, periodical



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