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Momentum   Listen
noun
Momentum  n.  (pl. L. momenta, F. momentums)  
1.
(Mech.) The quantity of motion in a moving body, being always proportioned to the quantity of matter multiplied by the velocity; impetus.
2.
Essential element, or constituent element. "I shall state the several momenta of the distinction in separate propositions."
3.
A property of an activity or course of events, viewed as analogous to forward motion or to physical momentum (def. 1), such that the activity is believed to be able to continue moving forward without further application of force or effort; often used to describe an increase in the acquisition of public support for a purpose; as, as, the petition drive gained momentum when it was mentioned in the newspapers.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Momentum" Quotes from Famous Books



... disappeared into the huge archway of the tower and began to ascend the narrow stairs. But here her spirit failed her, and she paused. Standing motionless in the gloom, she could hear her heart beating wildly, and the folly of her intention became apparent. But the momentum of her original purpose presently urged her on, it seemed against her will and better judgement, until she stood before Leigh's half-open door. Had the door been closed, she might not have been able to bring herself to knock, she might have turned and departed as silently ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins

... to him again, then before he could divine her intention she had stooped and grasped the handle of the bag. Instantly all his attention was riveted upon that leather case and its secret. His hand shot out and gripped her arm, but she wrenched herself free. In doing so the bag was carried by the momentum of its release and was driven heavily against the wall. He heard a shivering crash as though a hundred ...
— The Green Rust • Edgar Wallace

... a pleasurable feeling of excitement and interest. It was a new experience for him and one he was bound to remember. Already the locomotive was gathering momentum. The little town was left behind in the gathering dusk and soon they were threading their narrow iron way through the solitude of the great mountains. Looking back on a sharp curve, and there were many of them on this mountain grade, Jim could see the crescent ...
— Frontier Boys in Frisco • Wyn Roosevelt

... must admit. With a population now reaching up toward a million and a half, and with all the forces that make for industrial, commercial and agricultural supremacy in full swing, and gathering new momentum yearly, Washington is moving onward and upward toward a position among the very elect of our great ...
— A Review of the Resources and Industries of the State of Washington, 1909 • Ithamar Howell

... driven it. Besides, there is moral force, mental force, the force of will, the force of reason, the force of honesty, the force of fraud, etc., and any number of other forces, all possessing more or less impetus or momentum, and capable of binding or coercing persons and things, in all their diversified relations, correlations, incidences, coincidences, affinities, antagonisms, and so on through an interminable chapter ...
— Life: Its True Genesis • R. W. Wright

... huge slab of rock, thirty or forty feet up the side of the Fall-off, started to slide with a great crunching and grinding; then, gathering momentum, it plunged down between us and the mouth of the cave and completely shut the opening from view. Powder smoke floated up from behind ...
— A Busy Year at the Old Squire's • Charles Asbury Stephens

... the danger of speculation does not reside in the width of its range, or even in the impetuosity of its vehemence. Indeed, the wider its reach, and the greater its energy, the better will it be for the interests of science. The only danger of speculation consists in its momentum being apt to carry away the mind from the more laborious work of adequate verification; and therefore a true scientific judgment consists in giving a free rein to speculation on the one hand, while holding ready the break of verification with the other. Now, it is just because Darwin did both these ...
— Darwin, and After Darwin (Vol. 1 and 3, of 3) • George John Romanes

... the private sector and attracting foreign investment to diversify the economy. Future prospects depend heavily on the maintenance of aid flows, the encouragement of tourism, remittances, and the momentum of the government's development program. Cape Verde has been exploring European ...
— The 2007 CIA World Factbook • United States

... single exception to its statement could be pointed out. Thus the Act of Parliament enjoining the registration of births, would be equally a law although no births were ever registered; whereas the law, that in a body moving in consequence of pressure the momentum generated is in proportion to the pressure, would entirely forfeit its legal character if, on any one occasion or in any circumstances, momentum were generated in any other proportion. It is essential, then, to the existence of a scientific law that there should be uniformity ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton

... man who is running wants to neutralise the impetus that carries him on he prepares a contrary impetus which is generated by his hanging backwards. This can be proved, since, if the impetus carries a moving body with a momentum equal to 4 and the moving body wants to turn and fall back with a momentum of 4, then one momentum neutralises the other contrary one, ...
— The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, Complete • Leonardo Da Vinci

... very splendid. But things were moving with the momentum gained by his father, Ivan the Great. It was Vasili's inheritance, not his reign, that was great. That inheritance he had maintained and increased. He had humiliated the nobility, had developed the movements initiated by his greater father, ...
— A Short History of Russia • Mary Platt Parmele

... whole earth, if need be, in its defence. He will overwhelm opposing counsel with the mere ferocity of his mien; he will overbear the Judge himself with the mere power of his lungs, and he will carry you through to a verdict with the mere momentum of his loyal support. Once he has made a cause his own, no other cause can survive the terror of his bushy eyebrows and his flaring face. He is a caged lion, but he does not grow thin or wasted in captivity. As ever, he grows stout and strong on his own enthusiasms. The cage will not hold much ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, March 28, 1917 • Various

... Machine Types. Shape or Form not Essential. A Stone as a Flying Machine. Power the Great Element. Gravity as Power. Mass and Element in Flying. Momentum a Factor. Resistance. How Resistance Affects Shape. Mass and Resistance. The Early Tendency to Eliminate Momentum. Light Machines Unstable. The Application of Power. The Supporting Surfaces. Area not the Essential Thing. The Law of Gravity. Gravity. Indestructibility of Gravitation. ...
— Aeroplanes • J. S. Zerbe***

... women, only a few men, had ventured forth, and the sound of the enemy's horses and shouting were still in the air. Susannah rose up, folding in her arms the body of the child; the momentum of her first intention was upon her will and muscles; she moved straight on toward the place where she had ...
— The Mormon Prophet • Lily Dougall

... Brussels, Turin and Vienna. Thus France was found equal in effective strength to all the states which were combined against her. For in the political, as in the natural world, there may be an equality of momentum between unequal bodies, when the body which is inferior in weight is ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... not a nimble-minded people. They cannot, to use a familiar metaphor, turn round in their own length. Their momentum is such as to carry them on for some distance in the direction wherein they have been moving, even after the order to stop has been given. They need time to appreciate, digest, and comprehend a new proposition. Timid they are not, nor, perhaps, exceptionally cautious, but they do ...
— Handbook of Home Rule (1887) • W. E. Gladstone et al.

... in a few minutes of the energy of position we had so laboriously gained by toiling up the other side. Over the bridge we rattled, bowled along the level stretch, and then into the gorge and once more down, till in another ten minutes the last fall had shot us out into the plain with mental momentum enough to carry us hilariously into Imaisurugi, where we put up ...
— Noto, An Unexplored Corner of Japan • Percival Lowell

... they had some one to leave it to, puzzled her. Always investing, then reinvesting the interest, and spending comparatively little of his income, his fortune had now reached the point where it was growing rapidly of its own momentum and, as there was nothing to which he looked forward, nothing he particularly wanted to do, he set himself the task of making it cross the half million mark, much as a man plays solitaire, to occupy his mind, betting against himself, to give point ...
— Dust • Mr. and Mrs. Haldeman-Julius

... packing under the seat. Just as the operator started back up the hill to get his tripod, in some unaccountable manner the brakes of the heavy truck loosened and the big vehicle started to roll slowly down the hill. So steep was the grade that the truck gained momentum at a ...
— The Boy Scout Fire Fighters • Irving Crump

... of believing that "everything is all right until it is proved otherwise." When the negative consequences were brought to light, and business really became interested, a constructive attitude was developed which gained its momentum from the countless examples where wives have been major reasons for the success of their husbands. Fortunately for every failure ...
— The Good Housekeeping Marriage Book • Various

... as yet too dazed to fully appreciate anything. He was dazed both by his own procedure and by that of the other man. It was as if two knights in a mock tourney had met, both riding at full speed. He had his own momentum and that of the other in ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... upon them as they swayed in a struggling mass, and as Aldous sprang to the combat one of the three reeled backward and fell as if struck by a battering-ram. In that same moment MacDonald went down, and Aldous struck a terrific blow with the butt of his heavy Savage. He missed, and the momentum of his blow carried him over MacDonald. He tripped and fell. By the time he had regained his, feet the two men had disappeared into the thick shadows of the spruce forest. Aldous whirled toward the third ...
— The Hunted Woman • James Oliver Curwood

... followed during 1868 and 1869. Francis Pierpont was replaced in the office of Provisional Governor by Henry Horatio Wells, a New Yorker who was favored by the Radical Republicans. Progress toward reconstitution of local government lost momentum as state ...
— The Fairfax County Courthouse • Ross D. Netherton

... the trap and the clog in his eagerness to reach the man with his nearest paw, and the impetus of the stroke, aided by the momentum of the circling clog, threw him from his balance. Probably a bullet in the back of the head had its effect also, for the huge bulk of the bear toppled forward and followed ...
— Bears I Have Met—and Others • Allen Kelly

... as to embellish a description. The principle of the vis inertiae, for example, seems to be identical in physics and metaphysics. It is not more true in the former, that a large body is with more difficulty set in motion than a smaller one, and that its subsequent momentum is commensurate with this difficulty, than it is, in the latter, that intellects of the vaster capacity, while more forcible, more constant, and more eventful in their movements than those of inferior grade, are yet the less ...
— Selections From Poe • J. Montgomery Gambrill

... fingers are on the pulse of the country, so what I say to you needs nothing in the way of substantiation. The truth is best. Notwithstanding all my efforts, and the efforts of every one of you, the great momentum of public feeling, from California to Massachusetts, has turned slowly towards the cause of our enemies. Washington is hopelessly against us. The huge supplies which leave these shores day by day ...
— The Pawns Count • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... to the edge of the precipice. Here they stopped short, and gazed affrighted at the gulf below. It was but for a moment. The irresistible momentum of the flying mass behind pushed them over. Down they came, absolutely a living cataract, upon the rocks below. Some struck on the projecting rocks in the descent, and their bodies were dashed almost in pieces, while their blood ...
— The Dog Crusoe and His Master - A Story of Adventure in the Western Prairies • Robert Michael Ballantyne

... refute them, had made him "a real doubter in many points of our religious doctrine;" and while he was still his brother's apprentice in Boston, he fell into disrepute as a skeptic. Apparently he gathered momentum in moving along this line of thought, until in England his disbelief took on for a time an extreme and objectionable form. His opinions then were "that nothing could possibly be wrong in the world; and that vice and virtue were empty distinctions, no such things existing." ...
— Benjamin Franklin • John Torrey Morse, Jr.

... We made loops in our course, turned sometimes right round, tried all sorts of antics to get clear of it, but to very little purpose. The moment the engine stopped it seemed as if the ship were sucked back. In spite of the Fram's weight and the momentum she usually has, we could in the present instance go at full speed till within a fathom or two of the edge of the ice, and hardly feel a shock when ...
— Farthest North - Being the Record of a Voyage of Exploration of the Ship 'Fram' 1893-1896 • Fridtjof Nansen

... "may I offer you a smoke? What? Oh, you're very much obliged and don't mind if you do. There you are, then." Aladdin sent out a great puff of white smoke; this turned into a blue wraith, drifted down the aisle, between the seats, gathering momentum as it went, and finally, with the rapidity of a mint julep mounting a sucked straw (that isn't split) and spun long and fine, it was drawn through a puncture of the isinglass in the stove door and went up the chimney in company with other smoke, and out into the storm. Aladdin, ...
— Aladdin O'Brien • Gouverneur Morris

... fourth, and they streamed into the kitchen, and settled on the floor, overlapping each other like a sequence laid out on a card-table. The clerk coming hastily with his torch ran an involuntary tilt against the fourth man, who, sharing the momentum of the mass, knocked him instantly on his back, the ace of that fair quint; and there he lay kicking and waving his torch, apparently in triumph, but really in convulsion, sense and wind being driven out ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade

... responded to the added impulse of the compressed air and shot through the water at a terrific speed. The sudden increase in momentum almost threw the boys from their feet, and they would have fallen had they not grasped ...
— Five Thousand Miles Underground • Roy Rockwood

... hide—was thrown over the front end of one of the komatik runners at the top, and if the place was steep the Eskimos, one on either side of the komatik, would cling on with their arms and brace their feet into the snow ahead, doing their utmost to hold back and reduce the momentum of the heavy sledge. To the uninitiated they would appear to be in imminent danger of having their legs broken, for the speed down some of the grades when the crust was hard and icy was terrific. When descending the gentler slopes we all rode, depending upon ...
— The Long Labrador Trail • Dillon Wallace

... is anything in the literature of the piano since the death of Beethoven which, for combined passion, dignity, breadth of style, weight of momentum, and irresistible plangency of emotion, is comparable to the four sonatas which have been considered here, I do not know of it. And I write these words with a perfectly definite consciousness of all that they ...
— Edward MacDowell • Lawrence Gilman

... which I have just described is the great river of Odd-Fellowship, and flows into the vast ocean of eternal peace, and such is the momentum and indestructibility of Odd-Fellowship, that, like a great river fed from inexhaustible sources, men may come and men may go, but it goes on ...
— The Jericho Road • W. Bion Adkins

... fluttered and fluttered, and screamed, "I'm stuck, I'm stuck!" till the anxious parent again seized the morsel and carried it to an iron railing, where she came down upon it for the space of a minute with all the force and momentum her beak could command. Then she offered it to her young a third time, but with the same result as before, except that this time the bird dropped it; but she reached the ground as soon as the cicada did, and taking it in her beak flew a little distance to a high ...
— Bird Stories from Burroughs - Sketches of Bird Life Taken from the Works of John Burroughs • John Burroughs

... stern, the central one being over the keelson. These bulkheads were braced one against the other, the outer ones against the hull of the boat, and all against the deck and floor timbers, thus making the whole weight of the boat add its momentum to that of the central bulkhead at the moment of collision. The hull was further stayed from side to side by iron rods and screw-bolts. As it would interfere with this plan of strengthening to drop the boilers into the hold, they were left in place; but a bulwark of oak two feet thick was ...
— The Gulf and Inland Waters - The Navy in the Civil War. Volume 3. • A. T. Mahan

... still a young woman, and it is sincerely to be hoped that improved health will give her the proper momentum for renewed exertions in a field where nobly sowing she ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various

... lives our colleges have gathered neither that momentum of years heavy with mighty names and weighty memories, nor of wealth heaping massive piles and drawing within their cloistered walls the learning of successive centuries which carries the European universities ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No 3, September, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various

... Ibises or the largest Herons with which they are associated, the stately birds stand in the foreground of the scenery of the valley.... Such ponderous bodies moving with slowly-beating wings give a great idea of momentum from mere weight, a force of motion without swiftness; for they plod along heavily, seeming to need every inch of their ample wings to sustain themselves." [Footnote: Birds of ...
— Houses and House-Life of the American Aborigines • Lewis H. Morgan

... exerted? Great names like Webster and Choate rise at once to memory, but I refer more particularly to the mighty influence exerted by the vast numbers, unrecognized upon the theatre of national reputation, which the college has sent into all the spheres of activity and duty. When I think of the vast momentum for good which has originated here, and is now in unchecked progress, and must extend beyond all the limits of conception, I cannot help feeling that it is a great and precious privilege to be in some way identified as a member of this college. It does not diminish my satisfaction ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith

... of the pavement close to the cab. Ivan with a quick oath wheeled inward, and struck savagely at the superintendent's face. Foyle's grip did not relax. He merely lowered his head, seemingly without haste, and, as the man swung forward with the momentum of the blow, jabbed with his own free hand at his body. So neatly was it done that passers-by saw nothing but an apparently drunken man collapse on the pavement in spite of the endeavours of his friend ...
— The Grell Mystery • Frank Froest

... through a part of it, and by skillful maneuvering circumvented the rest. But even as the obstacle was passed, the coach dropped with an ominous lurch on one side, and the off fore wheel flew off in the darkness. Bill threw the horses back on their haunches; but, before their momentum could be checked, the near hind wheel slipped away, the vehicle rocked violently, plunged backwards and forwards, ...
— The Story of a Mine • Bret Harte

... with "Gene." Rolling together we were scarcely ever overmatched, and he was the better man of the two. He rolled a slow, insinuating ball. It appeared to amble aimlessly down the alley, threatening to stop or to sidle off into the gutter for repose. But it generally had enough momentum and direction to reach the centre pin quartering, which thereupon, with its nine brothers, seemed suddenly smitten with the panic so dear to the bowler's heart. I never knew another bowler so quick to discover the tricks and peculiarities of an alley or so crafty ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson

... which he knows how to command by a well-considered obedience to all its varying humours. If the Sophists are partly the cause they are still more the effect of the social environment. They had discovered, had ascertained with much acuteness, the actual momentum of the society which maintained them, and they meant only, by regulating, to maintain it. Protagoras, the chief of Sophists, had avowedly applied to ethics the physics or metaphysics of Heraclitus. And now it was as if the disintegrating Heraclitean fire had taken hold on actual life, ...
— Plato and Platonism • Walter Horatio Pater

... the land. In the peculiar disposition and character of the prevailing strata of Orkney, as certainly as in the power of the tides which sweep athwart its coasts, and the wide extent of sea which, stretching around it, gives the waves scope to gather bulk and momentum, may be found the secret of the extraordinary height to which the surf sometimes rises against its walls of rock. During the fiercer tempests, masses of foam shoot upwards against the precipices, like inverted cataracts, fully two hundred feet over the ordinary tide-level, and, washing ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller

... excitement and yields to a momentary passion to lynch a prisoner, or a revolutionary mob that loots and burns out of a sheer desire for destruction. Such a group has not even the value of a safety-valve, for its passion gathers momentum as it goes, and, like a conflagration, it cannot be stopped until it has burned itself out or met a solid wall of ...
— Society - Its Origin and Development • Henry Kalloch Rowe

... woman's respectability. There was response, to Maisie's view, I may say at once, in the jump of that respectability to its feet: it was itself capable of one of the leaps, one of the bounds just mentioned, and it carried its charge, with this momentum and while Mrs. Beale popped into Sir Claude's chamber, straight away to where, at the end of the passage, pupil and governess were quartered. The greatest stride of all, for that matter, was that within a few seconds the pupil had, in another ...
— What Maisie Knew • Henry James

... momentum, energy, mass are not mere abstract expressions of the results of scientific inquiry. They are words of power, which stir their souls like ...
— Five of Maxwell's Papers • James Clerk Maxwell

... is usually measured by their weight, i.e. by gravity. Its absolute measurement must be in terms of momentum. The true estimate of the Energy of a body moving under the impulse of a constant Force is stated in the formula 1/2MV{2}. To ascertain M, therefore, we must have given F and V, and these are both conceptions the original idea of which is derived ...
— Essays Towards a Theory of Knowledge • Alexander Philip

... twang of a bow-string, Mackenzie swept low to the ground, and a bonebarbed arrow passed over him into the breast of the Bear, whose momentum carried him over his crouching foe. The next instant Mackenzie was up and about. The bear lay motionless, but across the fire was the Shaman, drawing a second arrow. Mackenzie's knife leaped short in the air. He caught the heavy blade by the point. There was a flash of light ...
— The Son of the Wolf • Jack London

... since, funds collected by voluntary subscription, an office opened, and a central school established, with a view to the qualification of teachers for the superintendence of auxiliary schools throughout the country. The enterprise was proceeding vigorously and with daily increasing momentum when Dissension, the evil genius of Ireland, broke out among its leading supporters, which has resulted in the division of the original Society into two, one of them sustaining Mr. Mooney and the other claiming to ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley

... change would take place in the course of these aerial currents, both above and below. It must be recollected that a volume of air, when once put in motion, will move on, like any other body, by the mere force of its own momentum, till that motion is destroyed by its friction against the substances along or through which it is impelled. Any one who has observed the ring of smoke sometimes projected from the mouth of a cannon will be sensible that this ...
— The Lieutenant and Commander - Being Autobigraphical Sketches of His Own Career, from - Fragments of Voyages and Travels • Basil Hall

... alarm seized her with such violence, that she lost all consciousness—a circumstance of which those who handed her along were ignorant. The consequence, as might be expected, was dreadful; for as one of the young men was receiving her hand, that he might pass her to the next, she lost her momentum, and was instantaneously precipitated ...
— The Ned M'Keown Stories - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton

... who holds the rope, watching for the faintest sensation of resistance in the muscles of his arm, at last feels something drawing against the drag, calls to the oarsmen to stop rowing, lets the line slip through his fingers till the boat's momentum is a little spent, lest he should lose his hold, then he draws on his line gently, and while the boat drifts back, he reverently, as becomes one handling the dead, brings the drag to the surface, and finds that its hooks have brought ...
— The Mystery of Metropolisville • Edward Eggleston

... so readily to the urgings of the professor of mathematics?—himself urged in turn, perhaps, by a wife for whose little affair one extra man at the opening of the fall season counted, and counted hugely. Why must he now expose himself to the boundless aplomb and momentum of this woman of forty-odd who was finding amusement in treating him as a "college boy"? "Boy" indeed she had actually called him: well, perhaps his present position made all this possible. He was not yet out in the world on his own. In the background of "down state" was ...
— Bertram Cope's Year • Henry Blake Fuller

... when we backed out and 'straightened up' for the start—the boat pausing for a 'good ready,' in the old-fashioned way, and the black smoke piling out of the chimneys equally in the old-fashioned way. Then we began to gather momentum, and presently were fairly under way and booming along. It was all as natural and familiar—and so were the shoreward sights—as if there had been no break in my river life. There was a 'cub,' and I judged that he would take the wheel now; and he did. Captain Bixby stepped into the pilot- ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... would turn after his first alarm and tear down to the stable. I resolved to push on in the hope of finding a wider portion of the path, or at least of meeting the animal before he had acquired uncontrollable momentum. ...
— A Truthful Woman in Southern California • Kate Sanborn

... system, which had been essential to the launching of this modern period of production, and which had given to it so much of its irresistible momentum, at length brought the economic organization to a point of development where, in some fields of production, it was no longer a benefit. The accumulation of capital had become so large,—and with new inventions the possible output had become so abundant, that it was well nigh impossible to ...
— The business career in its public relations • Albert Shaw

... prejudices of mankind, it would have been well enough. Burke, for instance, was a writer who revered the prejudices of a modern society as deeply as Macaulay did; he believed society to be founded on prejudices and held compact by them. Yet what size there is in Burke, what fine perspective, what momentum, what edification! It may be pleaded that there is the literature of edification, and there is the literature of knowledge, and that the qualities proper to the one cannot lawfully be expected from the other, and would only be very much out of place if they ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Volume I (of 3) - Essay 4: Macaulay • John Morley

... discouraged now, were we to weaken and slack off, the whole structure we have built, these past eight years, would come apart and fall away. Never then, no matter by what stringent means, could our free world regain the ground, the time, the sheer momentum, lost by such a move. There can and should be changes and improvements in our programs, to meet new situations, serve new needs. But to desert the spirit of our basic policies, to step back from them now, ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... of the buck struck him he was thrown like a limp dummy toward the fallen tree, and, in reality, his greatest peril was therefrom. Had he been driven with full momentum against the solid trunk, he would have been killed as if ...
— Through Forest and Fire - Wild-Woods Series No. 1 • Edward Ellis

... in Rumania. The Russian corps arriving on the installment plan were swept away by the momentum of the advancing enemy, who could not be halted until the fortified line of the Sereth ...
— World's War Events, Vol. II • Various

... in operation it went ahead of its own momentum. Both men grabbed what food and sleep they could. The computers gulped down Neel's figures and spat out tape-reels of answers that demanded even more facts. Costa and his unseen helpers were kept ...
— The K-Factor • Harry Harrison (AKA Henry Maxwell Dempsey)

... the momentum of their rush carried them hopelessly far out, where they were again confused as to which way to go, and many were stuck in the mire which was concealed by the snow, except here and there an opening above a spring from which there issued a steaming vapor. The ...
— Indian Child Life • Charles A. Eastman

... of the stretcher and tilt it up to get it over the obstacle. With the antigrav full on it keeps its momentum and goes on moving up. I try to check it, but the wind ...
— The Lost Kafoozalum • Pauline Ashwell

... to turn backward the telescope of that advanced age, with its lenses of more spiritual mentality, indicating the gain of intellectual momentum, on the early footsteps of Christian Science as planted in the pathway of this generation; to note the impetus thereby given to Christianity; to con the facts surrounding the cradle of this grand verity—that the sick are healed and sinners saved, not by matter, but ...
— Pulpit and Press (6th Edition) • Mary Baker Eddy

... the driver of a lighted vehicle which might, after all, be moving, one of the men put out his hand and switched off the headlights, and the car glided forward on its own momentum. ...
— The Happy Foreigner • Enid Bagnold

... from its aerial support by the gradual sapping of the spring at its roots, or by the crumbling of the bark from the heat, had slipped, made a half revolution, and, falling, overbore the lesser trees in its path, and tore, in its resistless momentum, a broad opening to ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte

... the author made a spiritual discov- ery, the scientific evidence of which has accumulated to 380:24 prove that the divine Mind produces in man health, harmony, and immortality. Gradu- ally this evidence will gather momentum and clearness, 380:27 until it reaches its culmination of scientific statement and proof. Nothing is more disheartening than to believe that there is a power opposite to God, or good, and that 380:30 God endows this opposing power with ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy

... no idea how the weight of this sack assists me in escaping, by increasing my momentum," said the one who carried the plunder; "suppose ...
— Cobwebs From an Empty Skull • Ambrose Bierce (AKA: Dod Grile)

... boulder on the slope. The stone rocked but did not fall. Again the lad exerted himself until his muscles cracked under the strain. The boulder tottered for a moment and then rolled down the slope, gathering momentum as it rolled. It was deflected from the direct line of the female's attack, but a smaller stone it dislodged struck her on the shoulder and knocked ...
— B. C. 30,000 • Sterner St. Paul Meek

... warm work and plenty of it. For the life of me I can't tell you how the battle began. Our men came forward in an irregular manner, rushing onward impetuously, halting unnecessarily, with no master mind directing. It seemed at first as if the mere momentum of the march carried us under the enemy's fire; and then there was foolish delay. By the aid of my powerful glass I was convinced that we might have walked right over the first thin Rebel line on the ...
— His Sombre Rivals • E. P. Roe

... instances what seemed to him unreasonable, deserves to be called the father of rationalism. The works of Des Cartes, Leibnitz, Wolf, Kant's "Religion within the Bounds of Pure Reason," together with the influence and the writings of many other eminent philosophers, gradually gave momentum to the impulse and popularity to the habits of free thought and criticism even in the realm of theology. The dogmatic scheme of the dominant Church was firmly seized, many errors shaken out to the light and exposed, and many long received opinions questioned ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger

... planets and the ponderous stars whirling their terrific masses with awful, and if it might be so, clamorous velocity, and thundering through the fields of unresisting space with furious gigantic momentum, such as the mighty avalanche most feebly figures, and thus describing with chafing eccentricities and frightful deflections, their mighty centre-seeking and centre-flying circles, we should behold in the nakedness ...
— The Education of Catholic Girls • Janet Erskine Stuart

... out "He's mine, Ive! He's mine!" I held my fire, God help me; so did your dad—held it till the bull had passed the death-line. You know with charging buffalo there's more to stop than just life. There's weight and momentum and there's a rage that no other, man or beast, ...
— Through stained glass • George Agnew Chamberlain

... of the fourteenth century gave way to the religious madness of the sixteenth. Men's ideas were changing, and it is a very dangerous thing to change the ideas of men. For the momentum of the change is out of all proportion to its importance, and the barriers of human reason may melt before it. It is a mere matter of historical fact that no oppression has half the dangers of an obvious reform. At Ypres the Reformers were first in the field. They had swept through Flanders, ...
— A Surgeon in Belgium • Henry Sessions Souttar

... if the aeroplane is travelling slowly, say at 20 miles an hour, the curve of the trajectory will be flatter, and if a head wind be prevailing it may even be swept backwards somewhat after it has lost its forward momentum, and describe a trajectory similar to ...
— Aeroplanes and Dirigibles of War • Frederick A. Talbot

... in bewilderment at Swann's pale features. His amazement at being brought so strangely face to face with this man made him deaf to the increasing roar of the waters and blind to the greater momentum of ...
— The Day of the Beast • Zane Grey

... a plan, and the first step in it was to stop the bomb. He threw himself in front of it and tried to hold it by his arms and the weight of his body, but the weight and the momentum of the moving bomb were too great and he was pushed aside; but he had stopped its movement somewhat so that when it struck the rail on the other side of the deck it did not explode. He jumped for it as it bounded back ...
— Winning a Cause - World War Stories • John Gilbert Thompson and Inez Bigwood

... and prey upon the ponderous and slow moving Horned and Armored Dinosaurs with which its remains are found, and whose massive cuirass and weapons of defense are well matched with its teeth and claws. The momentum of its huge body involved a seemingly slow and lumbering action, an inertia of its movements, difficult to start and difficult to shift or to stop. Such movements are widely different from the agile swiftness which we naturally associate with a beast of prey. But an animal which exceeds ...
— Dinosaurs - With Special Reference to the American Museum Collections • William Diller Matthew

... true, and with almost undiminished force, upon the neck of Myles's war-horse, and just behind the ears. The animal staggered forward, and then fell upon its knees, and at the same instant the other, as though by the impetus of the rush, dashed full upon it with all the momentum lent by the weight of iron it carried. The shock was irresistible, and the stunned and wounded horse was flung upon the ground, rolling over and over. As his horse fell, Myles wrenched one of his feet out of the stirrup; ...
— Men of Iron • Ernie Howard Pyle

... stern with fearful momentum, so close—but clear of the giant hull—that the gunner's mate at the stern torpedo tube took his chew of tobacco and, as he afterwards put it, "torpedoed the battleship with his eyes shut." Now the stern was pointed directly toward the Arizona, hardly five yards ...
— Prince or Chauffeur? - A Story of Newport • Lawrence Perry

... far. With its first contact with the water a great crack split the night air; and a little further, the ship split into hundreds of small pieces, all of which slid along the surface of the water until, their momentum lost, they came to a stop and slowly sank from view. A dozen figures were left threshing on the surface; but one by one they disappeared, till there were only four left. Then one of the four ...
— Astounding Stories, July, 1931 • Various

... The huge stone kept to the ground at first, then, gathering a wild momentum, it went bounding into the air. About half-way down the hill it struck a tree several inches through and cut it clean off. This turned its course a little, and the negro in the cart, who heard the noise, saw ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine

... held back until the chief had taken his place at the head of the procession. It now became plain that his was the task of using the mysterious nogock, over whose loss he had seemed so concerned. Even as his bidarka shot forward with its own momentum, he drew out from the forward hatch this sacred instrument and fitted to it the short harpoon. He made over the weapon some mysterious passes with one hand, and as he fitted the harpoon or heavy dart to the throwing-stick he blew three times on the point ...
— The Young Alaskans • Emerson Hough

... victories of his son Henry the Fifth, had buried the hopes of every competitor, under the despair of all reconquest and recovery. I say, that human reason might so have judged, were not this passage of Casaubon also true; "Dies, hora, momentum, evertendis dominationibus sufficit, quae adamantinis credebantur radicibus esse fundatae:" "A day, an hour, a moment, is enough to overturn the things, that seemed to have been founded and ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot

... of vexation, I opened the door, and she sprang in with the momentum of a ball hurled by ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz

... safer distance the path of destruction was a bright slash across space, growing into the distance with its momentum. It was annihilation, too awful for triumph; there was only horror in it. Tulan knew that with this overwhelming tactic he'd written a new text-book for action against an inferior fleet. He hoped it would never be printed. Sweating and weak, ...
— Tulan • Carroll Mather Capps

... worried about the outcome. He must get his car beyond that narrow cut. If it jumped the track or ran into an obstruction, or if the Sioux spied him in time, then his work would not be well done. He welcomed the gathering momentum, yet was fearful of the curve he saw a long distance ahead. When he reached that he would be going at a high rate of speed—too fast to ...
— The U.P. Trail • Zane Grey

... in his seat, to which, as has been said, he had strapped himself. His head lay on the rim, apparently a mass of streaming crimson. His machine, a renovated Fokker, was tipsily zigzagging along without any guidance except its stabilizer and its own momentum. ...
— Our Pilots in the Air • Captain William B. Perry

... bread in silence; but he no longer attacks it with the cheery bites of old, poor Garrone! now that he has lost his mother. But he is always as good as bread himself. When one of us ran back to obtain the momentum for leaping a ditch, he ran to the other side, and held out his hands to us; and as Precossi was afraid of cows, having been tossed by one when a child, Garrone placed himself in front of him every time that we passed any. We mounted up to Santa Margherita, and then went down the decline ...
— Cuore (Heart) - An Italian Schoolboy's Journal • Edmondo De Amicis

... than political empire, and the English of the New World and the Antipodes are strong and vigorous as ever. But the political empire under which they are nominally assembled is perishing. The political machine known as the British Empire is running down. In the hands of its management it is losing momentum every day. ...
— The People of the Abyss • Jack London

... afterwards segment into drops which fly off and subside (see Fig. 8), to be followed by a second series which again subside (Fig. 11), to be again succeeded by a third set. In fact, so long as there is any downward momentum the drop and the air behind it are penetrating the liquid, and so long must there be an upward flow of displaced liquid. Much of this flow is seen to be directed into the arms along the channels determined by the segmentation of the annular rim. This reproduction ...
— The Splash of a Drop • A. M. Worthington

... ruling regime is a mixture of military elite and an Islamist party that came to power in a 1989 coup. Some northern opposition parties have made common cause with the southern rebels and entered the war as a part of an anti-government alliance. Peace talks gained momentum in 2002-03 with the signing of several accords, including ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency

... the line the weight of the gun should not exceed ten pounds. Now, if we reduce the rifle to that weight, and preserve the ratio of 1-500 as that of the ball, we reduce its range; for the momentum being, as every school-boy knows, in proportion to weight as well as velocity, a projectile which may be perfectly sure for two or three hundred yards flies wide of the mark at six hundred, and can hardly be found at a thousand. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IX., March, 1862., No. LIII. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics, • Various

... down-hill, entirely foreign to European ideas on the subject. When they arrived at the summit there was no talk of putting on the drag, nor any drag to put on, but away the horses went, first at a rapid trot, and soon at full gallop; by which means the equipage acquired sufficient momentum to carry it part of the way up the next hill before the animals relapsed into the slow walk which the steepness of the ascent imposed upon them. Indeed this part of the route would have been a very tedious one (for the country about was almost entirely ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various

... on, gaining momentum, "I don't reckon you'll be forgetting Arkansas, and the ague and rattlesnakes? And how the small-pox swooped down on that camp of cane shacks? And how the quinine gave out, and—and the tobacco? ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle

... following up a previous position, "if you cut upwards, the blow, by losing the additional momentum of your weight, will be less destructive, and at the same time effect the true purpose of war, that ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper

... matter, a and b, attract each other, it is a fundamental principle of mechanics, (commonly known as the "Third Law of Motion") that whatever amount of momentum is produced in a, an equal and opposite momentum must be produced in b. Hence if the mutual action remain undisturbed, the two particles will approach each other and finally meet. On their union, the two momenta ...
— The Story of Creation as told by Theology and by Science • T. S. Ackland

... of the Loyalists felt with regard to the justice of the position taken up by the British government greatly weakened the hands of the Loyalist party in the early stages of the Revolution. It was only as the Revolution gained momentum that the party grew in vigour and numbers. A variety of factors contributed to this result. In the first place there were the excesses of the revolutionary mob. When the mob took to sacking private houses, ...
— The United Empire Loyalists - A Chronicle of the Great Migration - Volume 13 (of 32) in the series Chronicles of Canada • W. Stewart Wallace

... Intercollegiate Peace Association, like that of most social movements, was slow in the first few years of its existence, but with the gradual accretion of new states it has gained in momentum, and is to-day increasing with such rapidity that only the lack of financial support will prevent it from embracing in its contests within another two years practically every state in the Union. Starting with two states at the Earlham Conference ...
— Prize Orations of the Intercollegiate Peace Association • Intercollegiate Peace Association

... he was falling,—and then again when he saw him seated.—Ill-timed complaisance;—had not the fellow better have stopped his horse, and got off and help'd him?—Sir, he did all that his situation would allow;—but the Momentum of the coach-horse was so great, that Obadiah could not do it all at once; he rode in a circle three times round Dr. Slop, before he could fully accomplish it any how;—and at the last, when he did stop his beast, 'twas done with such an explosion of ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne

... artistic significance he may have started with, in his eagerness to display his skill and knowledge. As for the rabble, their work has now the interest of prize exhibitions at local art schools, and their number merely helped to accelerate the momentum with which Florentine art rushed to its end. But out of even mere dexterity a certain benefit to art may come. Men without feeling for the significant may yet perfect a thousand matters which make rendering easier and quicker for the man who comes ...
— The Florentine Painters of the Renaissance - With An Index To Their Works • Bernhard Berenson

... surface greatly increases the pressure which the diving rudders can exert in forcing the submersible under water. This effect may be so marked that it becomes excessive, and Sueter emphasizes the point that vessels at high speed, when moving under water, may, on account of the momentum attained, submerge to excessive depths. To eliminate this tendency, there is a hydrostatic safety system which automatically causes the discharge of water from the ballast-tank when dangerous pressures are reached, thus bringing the submersible to a higher ...
— The Journal of Submarine Commander von Forstner • Georg-Guenther von Forstner

... Rojas nor his men had time to move. The black-skinned bandit's face turned a dirty white; his jaw dropped; he would have shrieked if Gale had not hit him. The blow swept him backward against his men. Then Gale's heavy body, swiftly following with the momentum of that rush, struck the little group of rebels. They went down with table and chairs ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey

... to produce the defeat it dreads, was beginning to creep over them. It finds utterance both in the dream and in its translation. The tiny loaf worked effects disproportioned to its size. A rock thundering down the hillside might have mass and momentum enough to level a line of tents, but one poor loaf to do it! Some mightier than human hand must have set it going on its career. So the soldier interprets that God had delivered the ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... quantity. Consequently, reality in a phenomenon has intensive quantity, that is, a degree. If we consider this reality as cause (be it of sensation or of another reality in the phenomenon, for example, a change), we call the degree of reality in its character of cause a momentum, for example, the momentum of weight; and for this reason, that the degree only indicates that quantity the apprehension of which is not successive, but instantaneous. This, however, I touch upon only in passing, for with causality I have at ...
— The Critique of Pure Reason • Immanuel Kant

... passed by, with the Taft Administration steadily losing prestige, and the revolt of the Progressives within the Republican party continually gathering momentum. Then came 1912, the ...
— Theodore Roosevelt and His Times - A Chronicle of the Progressive Movement; Volume 47 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Harold Howland

... meantime another economic movement gained momentum under the leadership of George Henry Evans, who was a land reformer and may be called a precursor of Henry George. Evans inaugurated a campaign for free farms to entice to the land the unprosperous toilers of the ...
— The Armies of Labor - Volume 40 in The Chronicles Of America Series • Samuel P. Orth

... and future intentions, the mounting tension between Nemo and hot-tempered harpooner Ned Land, and Ned's ongoing schemes to escape from the Nautilus. These unifying threads tighten the narrative and accelerate its momentum. ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne

... men have an erratic habit in walking. It is passion rather than any mere intellectual momentum which drives them from the tomb. There is, moreover, in Burke a variety and a humanity which appeals in some one of its phases and moods to all of us in turn. The great store-house of his emotions and his phrases has the catholicity of the Bible. Each ...
— Shelley, Godwin and Their Circle • H. N. Brailsford



Words linked to "Momentum" :   force, forcefulness, strength, physical property, angular momentum, impulse



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