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Irreversible   Listen
adjective
Irreversible  adj.  
1.
Incapable of being reversed or turned about or back; incapable of being made to run backward; as, an irreversible engine; an irreversible process; an irreversible reaction.
2.
Incapable of being reversed, recalled, repealed, or annulled; as, an irreversible sentence or decree. "This rejection of the Jews, as it is not universal, so neither is it final and irreversible."
Synonyms: Irrevocable; irrepealable; unchangeable.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Irreversible" Quotes from Famous Books



... the temperature and atmosphere of the new world seemed close enough to Earth-norm. It had long ago been decided at the Academy that chances couldn't be taken with some unknown factor, possibly toxic, fatal and irreversible, in an unknown atmosphere. After a day or two of thorough laboratory analysis of the air they'd be able to chuck their spacesuits if all ...
— A World Called Crimson • Darius John Granger

... fire "burning with brimstone." But of Death and Hades it is only said that they were cast into a lake of fire. Their being cast into the depths of "a lake" signifies that they become incognizable entities, and "lake of fire" indicates that they remain such by an irreversible law, fire being the symbol of force of law (see Deut. xxxiii. 2). For this reason "the lake of fire" is put in apposition (in v. 14) with "the second death," which is the extinction of death. Now, Satan, the beast, and the false prophet, being regarded as personal existences ...
— An Essay on the Scriptural Doctrine of Immortality • James Challis

... government is distinctly prohibited. The greatest of their Sultans, and the last of the great ten, Soliman, known in European history as the Magnificent, is called by his compatriots the Regulator, on account of the irreversible sanction which he gave to the existing administration of affairs. "The magnitude and the splendour of the military achievements of Soliman," says Mr. Thornton, "are surpassed in the judgment of his people by the wisdom of his legislation. He has acquired the name of Canuni, ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman

... that which they burned, and burning that which they worshipped. It is only in this way that we shall acquire the means of judging whether the movement we have witnessed is a mere eddy of fashion, or truly one with the irreversible current of intellectual progress, and, like it, safe ...
— Darwiniana • Thomas Henry Huxley

... even more difficult for an individual to discover their optimum diet is the existence of genetic-based allergies and worse, developed allergies. Later in this chapter I will explain how a body can develop an allergy to a food that is probably irreversible. A weakened organ can also prevent digestion of ...
— How and When to Be Your Own Doctor • Dr. Isabelle A. Moser with Steve Solomon

... foreign immigrants who infest and corrupt our shores." This idea of the natural equality of the races he presented in the Genius a few weeks before with Darwinian breadth in the following admirable sentences: "I deny the postulate that God has made, by an irreversible decree, or any inherent qualities, one portion of the human race superior to another. No matter how many breeds are amalgamated—no matter how many shades of color intervene between tribes or nations give them the same chances to improve, ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke

... greatest; the following are among the chiefs who helped to transform the mental fabric of Europe in the age of Louis XIV: Descartes, Newton, Leibnitz, Locke, Boyle. Under these leaders the first firm irreversible advance was made out of the dim twilight of theology into the clear dawn of positive and ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson

... his punishment was the greatest; but not so his despair, for his fortitude was as great as his sufferings. His strength of mind was matchless as his strength of body; the vastness of his designs did not surpass the firm, inflexible determination with which he submitted to his irreversible doom, and final loss of all good. His power of action and of suffering was equal. He was the greatest power that was ever overthrown, with the strongest will left to resist or to endure. He was baffled, not confounded. He stood like a ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin

... of a FIRST in the shape of a most chaotic pure experience which sets us questions, of a SECOND in the way of fundamental categories, long ago wrought into the structure of our consciousness and practically irreversible, which define the general frame within which answers must fall, and of a THIRD which gives the detail of the answers in the shapes most congruous with all our present needs, is, as I take it, the essence of the humanistic conception. ...
— The Meaning of Truth • William James

... ourselves. This ever will arise from suffering women To intermix with men. But mark me well, Whoe'er henceforth dares disobey my orders— Be it man or woman, old or young— Vengeance shall burst upon him, the decree Stands irreversible, and he shall die. War is no female province, but the scene For men. Hence, home! nor spread your mischiefs here. Hear you, or not? Or speak I to ...
— Woman and the Republic • Helen Kendrick Johnson

... deadly sins trailing in the actual world their unchangeable irreversible consequences—all this is irrelevant. He ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill

... laws is universal and irreversible; the second is an induction from a vast number of observations, though it may possibly, and even probably, have to admit of exceptions. As a consequence of the second law, it follows that a peculiar relation frequently ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley

... There was nothing sentimentally Negrophil about the attitude of the Californians; indeed, they proclaimed an exceedingly sensible policy in the simple formula: "No Niggers, Slave or Free!" But as regards Slavery their decision was emphatic and apparently irreversible. ...
— A History of the United States • Cecil Chesterton

... had he committed!—But Sidwell? Was she liberal enough to take a personal interest in one who had renounced faith in revelation? He could not decide this question, for of Sidwell he knew much less than of her father. And it was idle to torment himself with such debate of the irreversible. ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing

... this melancholy spectacle of imbecility to the eyes of my audience, I know not. It may have been a few minutes only. To me it seemed an age; and I was just endued with a sufficient power of reflection to ask myself whether I had not better sit down at once in irreversible despair, when my wandering and hitherto vacant eyes caught a glance-a single ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms

... Indians down the Maumee to a fort recently built by the British, the forces of General Wayne attacked the Indians and inflicted upon them a disastrous defeat. This victory settled forever the occupancy of this territory by the white man, and the irreversible fate of the poor Indian, though, as it will appear hereafter, he struggled for this, his favorite region, for ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman

... will "come in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory," "the glory of the Father and all the holy angels," to summon every class, and all the generations of mankind, to his tribunal, and pronounce their final, irreversible, everlasting doom: then, like Moses, his servants will be vindicated from every charge, honoured by witnessing celestials, admitted through the gates into the city of the New Jerusalem, be emparadised forever in the ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. I • Francis Augustus Cox

... been a third time an offender, and whose expulsion was at this time deemed irreversible, was brought forth, as at some solemn auto da fe, arrayed in uncouth and most appalling attire—all trace of his late "watchet weeds" carefully effaced, he was exposed in a jacket, resembling those which London lamplighters formerly delighted in, with a cap of the same. The effect ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb



Words linked to "Irreversible" :   permanent, irreversibility



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