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Fluidity   Listen
noun
Fluidity  n.  The quality of being fluid or capable of flowing; a liquid, aeriform, or gaseous state; opposed to solidity. "It was this want of organization, this looseness and fluidity of the new movement, that made it penetrate through every class of society."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Fluidity" Quotes from Famous Books



... of the glass sheet or ware to be decorated, rubbed over uniformly with a cloth to make the ink adhere to the glass, and then the paper is moistened and taken off again, leaving the imprinted design behind. It is well to have the ink fairly thick, and rely on warmth to impart the necessary fluidity; otherwise the design may come away with the paper ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 1157, March 5, 1898 • Various

... of carrying and modulating the tone, in the expressive, melancholy manner of shading it off, Chopin was entirely himself. He had quite an individual way of attacking the keyboard, a supple, mellow touch, sonorous effects of a vaporous fluidity of which only ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks

... same thing as if they had formally decided in the last or neutral sense. It is not so. This illegitimate union of three contradictories fritters character away, breaks it up into discordant parts, and dissolves into mercurial fluidity that leavening sincerity and free and cheerful boldness, which come of harmonious principles of faith and action, and without which men can never walk as confident lovers of ...
— On Compromise • John Morley

... recommitted to the tomb, there were such measures taken to secure its preservation, that were it to be again disinterred even after as many centuries more had passed, it might be found retaining unbroken its gigantic proportions. There was molten pitch poured over the bones in a state of sufficient fluidity to permeate all their pores, and fill up the central hollows, and which, soon hardening around them, formed a bituminous matrix, in which they may lie unchanged for more than a thousand years. Now, exactly such ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller

... enumerated Buffon added what he called the "monuments," or what Hugh Miller, a century later, more aptly described as the Testimony of the Rocks. From a consideration of all these things, Buffon at length arrived at his succession of the Epochs, or Seven Ages of Nature, namely: (1) the Age of fluidity, or incandescence, when the earth and planets assumed their shape; (2) the Age of cooling, or consolidation, when the rocky interior of the earth and the great vitrescible masses at its surface were formed; ...
— The World's Greatest Books - Volume 15 - Science • Various

... spherical form. It had, in fact, acquired an independent existence; but it was still in a chaotic state. Its elements, which were hereafter to assume the three forms of solid, fluid, and gas, seem to have been still blended together. Of the three states, fluidity seems to have been that to which the mass most nearly approached. This seems to be indicated by the application of the term, waters, to the two parts into which it is now divided; for the Hebrew has no general word for "fluid," so that the only method of expressing it was by the use of this ...
— The Story of Creation as told by Theology and by Science • T. S. Ackland

... description to prophecy, it is to say that this equilibrium will not hold for very long. There are signs that the West after achieving the reforms which it needs to-day—reforms which will free its economic life from the credit monopolies of the East, and give it a greater fluidity in the marketing of its products—will follow the way of all agricultural communities to a rural and placid conservatism. The spirit of the pioneer does not survive forever: it is kept alive to-day, I believe, by certain unnatural irritants which may be summed up as absentee ownership. ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann

... the white crests of the lifted waves had suffused the whole ocean with a pinkish opal color: the darker parts of each wave seemed broken into facets instead of curves, and glittered sharply. The sea seemed to have lost its fluidity, and become vitreous; so much so, that it was difficult to believe that the waves which splintered across the Excelsior's bow did not fall upon her deck with the ring of ...
— The Crusade of the Excelsior • Bret Harte

... philosophy has been Darwinism. Indeed, the Pragmatic is the only philosophizing which has completely assimilated Evolution. The insight into the real fluidity of natural species ought long ago to have toned down the artificial rigidity of logical classifications. To know reality man can no longer rest in a 'timeless' contemplation of a static system; he must expand his thoughts so as to cope with a perpetually changing process. Since the world changes, ...
— Pragmatism • D.L. Murray

... experimented upon consists of earthly ingredients or metallic oxides, the platinum wire is the best. If the latter is used a few additional turns should be given to the wire in consequence of the greater fluidity of the bead over that of borax. The microcosmic salt bead possesses the advantage over that of borax, that the colors of many substances are better discerned in it, and that it separates the acids, the more volatile ...
— A System of Instruction in the Practical Use of the Blowpipe • Anonymous

... to see a picture or two. It perhaps doesn't immensely matter what picture you choose: the whole affair is so charming. It is charming to wander through the light and shade of intricate canals, with perpetual architecture above you and perpetual fluidity beneath. It is charming to disembark at the polished steps of a little empty campo—a sunny shabby square with an old well in the middle, an old church on one side and tall Venetian windows looking down. Sometimes the windows are tenantless; sometimes a lady in a ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James

... group, fulness of the sinuses and veins of the brain, with effusion of serum into the ventricles and beneath the membranes. In the belladonna group, nil. In the alcohol group, signs of inflammation, congestion of brain and membranes, fluidity of blood, long-continued ...
— Aids to Forensic Medicine and Toxicology • W. G. Aitchison Robertson

... in which these two opposing conditions prevail there will be no hard and fast line; but with the downward increase of fluidity there will be a gradual failure of the mechanical conditions and an increase of the hydrostatic. Thus while the uppermost layers of the crust may be transported to the full amount of the crustal displacement acting from the south (speaking still of the Alps) deeper down there will ...
— The Birth-Time of the World and Other Scientific Essays • J. (John) Joly

... Paul had that in him which could be altered by the pathetic words of the Crucified One, "I am He whom thou persecutest." The man of the world or the politician would evade an appeal from the heaven of heavens, backed by the glory of seraphim and archangel. Miriam had a vitality, a susceptibility or fluidity of character—call it what you will—which did not need great provocation. There are some mortals on this earth to whom nothing more than a certain, summer morning very early, or a certain chance idea ...
— Miriam's Schooling and Other Papers - Gideon; Samuel; Saul; Miriam's Schooling; and Michael Trevanion • Mark Rutherford

... build. Mr. Carman's method, apparently, has been to imagine each lost lyric as discovered, and then to translate it; for the indefinable flavour of the translation is maintained throughout, though accompanied by the fluidity and freedom of purely ...
— Sappho: One Hundred Lyrics • Bliss Carman

... the Spenserian stanza, that beautiful romantic measure, to the most romantic poem of the ancient world—making the stanza yield him, too (what it never yielded to Byron), its treasures of fluidity and sweet ease—above all, bringing to his task a truly poetical sense and skill,—has produced a version of the 'Odyssey' much the most pleasing of those hitherto produced, and which is delightful to read."—Professor Arnold ...
— Cattle and Cattle-breeders • William M'Combie

... districts. But first we ought to bear in mind one fact. Quite apart from any change in proportion of population, there is an enormous interchange constantly taking place between adjoining counties and districts. The general fluidity of population has been of course vastly increased by new facilities of communication and migration; persons are less and less bound down to the village or county in which they were born. So we find that in England and Wales, only 739 out of each 1000 persons were ...
— Problems of Poverty • John A. Hobson

... the mere ideal character of which the philosopher is well aware, and which yet become necessary from the necessity of assuming a beginning; the original fluidity of the planet is the chief. Under some form or other it is expressed or implied in every system of cosmogony and even of geology, from Moses to Thales, and from Thales to Werner. This assumption originates in the same law of mind that gave rise to the prima materia of the Peripatetic ...
— Hints towards the formation of a more comprehensive theory of life. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... time the young composer was well versed in old and ancient music; he knew all the old scales, eight in number, and used them in his compositions with compelling charm. The influence of the old Gregorian chant has given his music a certain fluidity, free rhythm, a refinement, richness and ...
— The World's Great Men of Music - Story-Lives of Master Musicians • Harriette Brower

... and fruit cooler, Lake Como; as at first it did seem; but a tropical dining table, its surface a slab of light blue St. Pons marble in a state of fluidity. ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville

... though he had a gift of suggestion, of spiritual overtones, in a key of transcendentalism, that, in certain pages, far outshines Loti or Maupassant. Disciple of Herbert Spencer—he was forced because of his feminine fluidity to lean on a strong, positive brain—hater of social conventions, despiser of Christianity, a proselyte to a dozen creeds, from the black magic of Voodooism to Japanese Shintoism, he never quite rid himself of the spiritual deposits inherited from his Christian ancestry. ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker

... inches through the volcanic ashes. I descended by the eastern side, and was soon at the base of the great cone. I made my way by tortuous walking round the erupted masses of lava, and also by portions of the lava streams, which, on losing their original fluidity, had become piled up and contorted ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth

... He doesn't chop himself into distinct processes and compartments; and it would have frustrated this deeper purpose of my book to make it look, when printed, like a Baedeker's handbook of travel or a text-book of arithmetic. So far as books printed like this book force the fluidity of the facts upon the young teacher's attention, so far I am sure they tend to do his intellect a service, even though they may leave unsatisfied a craving (not altogether without its legitimate grounds) for more ...
— Talks To Teachers On Psychology; And To Students On Some Of Life's Ideals • William James

... pleasures of its dangers, in such fashion that Clementina listened with delight. He dwelt especially on the feeling almost of disembodiment, and existence as pure thought, arising from the all pervading clarity and fluidity, the suspension, and the ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald

... and putrefactive, is the natural decomposition of animal and vegetable matters, to which a certain degree of fluidity is necessary; for where vegetable and animal substances are dry, as sugar and glue for instance, and are kept so, no fermentation of ...
— The American Practical Brewer and Tanner • Joseph Coppinger

... weir which had a wall of this bottom- ice three feet high in a single night, be accounted for by radiation? It appears to me to be very easily accounted for by supposing that the water in the deep above was so quietly cooled down as to retain its fluidity until the shaking it got on flowing over the weir suddenly produced congelation. I think that radiation would not go on at the crown of ...
— Essays in Natural History and Agriculture • Thomas Garnett

... drink only as thirst incited. He was differently advised by an eminent Boston physician, who, taking a great interest in the case, wrote him that he should have great care to drink certain definite amounts for the necessary fluidity of the blood. I had to respond that thirst would duly indicate this need; that in my cases of protracted fasts from acute sicknesses not one had been advised to take even a teaspoonful of water for such reasons; that at the closing days before recovery of such cases there was only the ...
— The No Breakfast Plan and the Fasting-Cure • Edward Hooker Dewey

... food is reduced to a state of fluidity, the pyloric orifice of the stomach is unclosed, and it is thrust onwards through the alimentary canal, receiving in the duodenum the secretions of the liver and pancreas, after which it yields to the lacteals ...
— A Treatise on Anatomy, Physiology, and Hygiene (Revised Edition) • Calvin Cutter

... a couple of red herrings, to a person unaccustomed to salted meat, is of this kind; the increased action of the cutaneous vessels dissipates so much of our fluids by insensible perspiration, as to require above two quarts of water to restore the fluidity of the blood, and to wash the salt out of the system. ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin

... many features which I have indicated as pointing to a former fluidity of the earth may be explained here. We shall see in the course of this work that the mountain chains and other great irregularities of the earth's surface appear at a late stage in its development. Even as we find them to-day, ...
— The Story of Evolution • Joseph McCabe

... others' satisfaction what I have convinced myself is the case, the inference I think you will allow to be important. I cannot doubt that the molten matter beneath the earth's crust possesses a high degree of fluidity, almost like the sea beneath the block ice. By the way, I hope you will give me some Swedish case to quote, of shells being preserved on the surface, but not in contemporaneous ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin

... should have power to fix absolute rates, thus insuring stability of rate schedules, while the Wright bill provided that the Commissioners should fix maximum rates only, thus permitting the famous "fluidity" of schedules advocated by machine lobby ...
— Story of the Session of the California Legislature of 1909 • Franklin Hichborn

... the appearance of melted silver; it is neither ductile nor malleable in this state; it is a substance so volatile, when heated, that it may be evaporated like water; it is always seen in a fluid state, even in temperate climates, as a very small portion of heat is sufficient to preserve its fluidity. It is used to separate gold and silver from the foreign matter found with those metals. Calomel, a valuable medicine, and vermilion, a color, are ...
— A Catechism of Familiar Things; Their History, and the Events Which Led to Their Discovery • Benziger Brothers

... nearly in the state in which we see it, fit for the preservation of the beings he placed on it. But it is said, we have a proof that he did not create it in its present solid form, but in a state of fluidity: because its present shape of an oblate spheroid is precisely that, which a fluid mass revolving on ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson

... removal with forceps. Pus may become very thick and gummy from the administration of morphin. Opiates do not lessen pus formation, but they do lessen the normal secretions that ordinarily increase the quantity and fluidity of the pus. When to this is added the dessicating effect of the air inhaled through the cannula, unmoistened by the upper air-passages, the secretions may be so thick as to form crusts and plugs that are equivalent to foreign bodies and require removal with forceps. Diphtheritic membrane in ...
— Bronchoscopy and Esophagoscopy - A Manual of Peroral Endoscopy and Laryngeal Surgery • Chevalier Jackson

... at once that, theoretically at least, there was no room in such a community for the modern landless labourer. Where all the workers were paid by their tenancy of land, where, in other words, fixity and stability of possession were the very basis of social life, the fluidity of labour was impossible. Men could not wander from place to place offering to employers the hire of their toil. Yet we feel sure that, in actual fact, wherever the population increased, there must have grown up in the process ...
— Mediaeval Socialism • Bede Jarrett

... invariable delights and no besetting sin. Such a man will not become an habitual drunkard; he will not become anything "habitual." But with another type of man habit is indeed second nature. Instead of the permanent fluidity of my particular case, such people are continually tending to solidify and harden. Their memories set, their opinions set, their methods of expression set, their delights recur and recur, they convert initiative ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells

... tools.[25] It deals with solids and geometrical figures, and its instrument is logic. But according to Bergson it has an inherent incapacity to deal with life.[26] When we contrast the rigidity and superficiality of intellect with the fluidity, sympathy and intimacy of intuition, we see at once wherein {119} lies the true creative power of man. Development, when carried too exclusively along the lines of intellect, means loss of will-power; and we have seen how, not individuals alone, but entire nations, ...
— Christianity and Ethics - A Handbook of Christian Ethics • Archibald B. C. Alexander

... made. It is apt to dry up in round spots, and which sometimes print from the negative. He also adds, that one ounce of the collodio-amber varnish as recommended by him will, with care, from its great fluidity and ready-flowing qualities, effectually varnish upwards of thirty glass negatives of the quarter plate size: thus the real ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 210, November 5, 1853 • Various

... such places, has been dissolved, and a new structure has been assumed, which is peculiar to a certain state of the calcareous earth. This change is produced by crystallisation, in consequence of a previous state of fluidity, which has so disposed the concreting parts, as to allow them to assume a regular shape and structure proper to that substance. A body, whose external form has been modified by this process, is called a crystal; one whose internal arrangement of parts is ...
— Theory of the Earth, Volume 1 (of 4) • James Hutton

... not know me, Pyrophilus, would perchance think I endeavour'd to impose upon You by relating this Experiment, which I have several times try'd, but the Reason why the Phaenomena mention'd have not been taken notice of, may be, that unless Lead be brought to a much higher degree of Fusion or Fluidity than is usual, or than is indeed requisite to make it melt, the Phaenomena I mention'd will scarce at all disclose themselves; And we have also observ'd that this successive appearing and vanishing of vivid Colours, was wont ...
— Experiments and Considerations Touching Colours (1664) • Robert Boyle



Words linked to "Fluidity" :   fluidness, fluid, runniness, thinness



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