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Phosphorus   Listen
noun
Phosphorus  n.  (pl. phosphori)  
1.
The morning star; Phosphor.
2.
(Chem.) A poisonous nonmetallic element of the nitrogen group, obtained as a white, or yellowish, translucent waxy substance, having a characteristic disagreeable smell; this waxy allotropic form is also called yellow phosphorus, to distinguish it from another allotropic form, red phosphorus. It is very active chemically, must be preserved under water, and unites with oxygen even at ordinary temperatures, giving a faint glow, whence its name. It always occurs combined, usually in phosphates, as in the mineral apatite, in bones, etc. It is used in the composition on the tips of friction matches, and for many other purposes. It is an essential component of the genetic material of all living organisms. The molecule contains four atoms. Symbol P. Atomic weight 31.0.
3.
(Chem.) Hence, any substance which shines in the dark like phosphorus, as certain phosphorescent bodies.
Bologna phosphorus (Chem.), sulphide of barium, which shines in the dark after exposure to light; so called because this property was discovered by a resident of Bologna. The term is sometimes applied to other compounds having similar properties.
Metallic phosphorus (Chem.), an allotropic modification of phosphorus, obtained as a gray metallic crystalline substance, having very inert chemical properties. It is obtained by heating ordinary phosphorus in a closed vessel at a high temperature.
Phosphorus disease (Med.), a disease common among workers in phosphorus, giving rise to necrosis of the jawbone, and other symptoms.
Red phosphorus, or Amorphous phosphorus (Chem.), an allotropic modification of phosphorus, obtained as a dark red powder by heating ordinary phosphorus in closed vessels. It is not poisonous, is not phosphorescent, and is only moderately active chemically. It is valuable as a chemical reagent, and is used in the composition of the friction surface on which safety matches are ignited.
Solar phosphori (Chem.), phosphorescent substances which shine in the dark after exposure to the sunlight or other intense light.
yellow phosphorus (Chem.), the waxy yellow allotropic form of elemental phosphorus. See also phosphorus (2).






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Phosphorus" Quotes from Famous Books



... was found to be entirely impractical for the purpose, because, you see, phosphorus must at intervals be placed where it can absorb the light in order to retain its brilliancy. Now as a man's watch stays most of the time in his pocket, a watch dial treated with phosphorus would have no opportunity to regain its phosphorescence. Hence ...
— Christopher and the Clockmakers • Sara Ware Bassett

... 54. PHOSPHORUS is contained in many parts of the system, but more particularly in the bones. It is generally found in combination with oxygen, forming phosphoric acid. The phosphoric acid is usually combined with alkaline bases; as lime in the bones, forming ...
— A Treatise on Anatomy, Physiology, and Hygiene (Revised Edition) • Calvin Cutter

... Mr. Hennessy. "If I was conthrollin' anny iv the gr-reat powers, I'd go down to th' Phosphorus an' take th' sultan be th' back iv th' neck an' give him wan, two, three. 'Tis a shame f'r him to be desthroyin' white people without anny man layin' hands on him. Th' man's no frind iv mine. He ought to be impeached an' ...
— Mr. Dooley in Peace and in War • Finley Peter Dunne

... opened one of the wrappers, I found what seemed to me a simple, crystalline salt of a white colour. The phial, to which I next turned my attention, might have been about half-full of a blood-red liquor, which was highly pungent to the sense of smell and seemed to me to contain phosphorus and some volatile ether. At the other ingredients I could make no guess. The book was an ordinary version-book, and contained little but a series of dates. These covered a period of many years, but I observed that the entries ceased nearly a year ago, and quite abruptly. Here and there a brief ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 5 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... lesser lake, formed entirely of petroleum from the great gusher. By day its greasy blackness glared in hideous contrast to the blue though brackish water; but now night lent its ugliness a strange disguise. All the faint twilight that remained glimmered on the gloss of its surface like phosphorus in the palm of a negro's hand; and as Nick passed on toward the town, stars shone out in its dark mirror. He could hear the thick splash of the gusher that rose and fell, like the beating of a giant's heart, and ...
— The Port of Adventure • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson

... Stuart Mill, son of the eminent James Mill, historian and philosopher, also Head Examiner of the East India House. Mr. and Mrs. Taylor had made out the list of people between them, choosing those whom they thought had sufficient phosphorus so they would enjoy meeting a great theological meteoric personality ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard

... "hair raising" effect may be produced by painting the entire body of one of the male guests with phosphorus. As this glowing nude stalks uncannily through the darkened rooms you may easily imagine the ...
— Perfect Behavior - A Guide for Ladies and Gentlemen in all Social Crises • Donald Ogden Stewart

... of commerce contains thiophene (C{4}H{4}S), from which it may be freed by shaking with sulphuric acid. Its boiling point is 79 deg. C.; specific gravity at 0 deg. equals 0.9. It burns with a luminous smoky flame, and is a good solvent for fats, resins, sulphur, phosphorus, &c. Toluene was discovered in 1837, and is prepared from coal-tar. It boils at 110 deg. C., and is still liquid at 28 ...
— Nitro-Explosives: A Practical Treatise • P. Gerald Sanford

... curious subject deserves further investigation. See Dictamnus. The ceasing to shine of this plant after twilight might induce one to conceive, that it absorbed and emitted light, like the Bolognian Phosphorus, or calcined oyster-shells, so well explained by Mr. B. Wilson, and by T. B. Beccari. Exper. on Phosphori, by B. Wilson. Dodsley. The light of the evening, at the same distance from noon, is much greater, as I have repeatedly observed, ...
— The Botanic Garden. Part II. - Containing The Loves of the Plants. A Poem. - With Philosophical Notes. • Erasmus Darwin

... proceedings, Mr Swiveller observed him closely. Into one little chamber of this temple, he dropped an egg; into another some coffee; into a third a compact piece of raw steak from a neat tin case; into a fourth, he poured some water. Then, with the aid of a phosphorus-box and some matches, he procured a light and applied it to a spirit-lamp which had a place of its own below the temple; then, he shut down the lids of all the little chambers; then he opened them; and then, by some wonderful and unseen agency, the steak was done, the egg was boiled, the ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens

... constituents of glass, porcelain and paper, imparting to them a violet tinge; changes white phosphorus to yellow, oxygen to ozone, affects photograph plates and produces ...
— The Boy Mechanic: Volume 1 - 700 Things For Boys To Do • Popular Mechanics

... the "Spectator" was started as a daily in New York in Eighteen Hundred Ninety-eight. In one week it ran short on phosphorus and was obliged to quit. It took two years for Steele and Addison to write themselves out, and rather than let the quality of the periodical decline they discontinued its publication, quitting like the wise men they were at the ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard

... sat listening fitfully to the other men's gossip. Sometimes a sentence came to me; at one moment I was listening without hearing, the next I was hearing without listening. At last the phrase struck me—"Yes; dying horribly, like a rat of phosphorus." ...
— To-morrow? • Victoria Cross

... and he arose, groped his way across the room, discovered the panes with his outstretched hands, and placed his forehead close to them. There below, under the trees, the body of the little girl glittered like phosphorus, lighting up ...
— The works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 5 (of 8) - Une Vie and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant 1850-1893

... are carbon and oxygen taken into the leaves of the plant from the air as carbon dioxide, hydrogen, a constituent of water absorbed through the plant roots; nitrogen, taken from the soil by all plants also secured from the air by legumes. The other elements are phosphorus, potassium, magnesium, calcium, iron and sulphur, all of which are secured from the soil. The soil nitrogen is contained in the organic matter or humus, and to maintain the supply of nitrogen, we should keep the soil well stored with organic matter, making ...
— Twenty-Five Years in the Black Belt • William James Edwards

... upon it.' Besides being produced by electrical discharges in the atmosphere, it can be obtained artificially by the passing of what is called the electrical brush into the air from a moist wooden point, or by electrolyzed water or phosphorus. The process, when the latter substance is employed, is to put a small piece, clean scraped, about half an inch long, into a large bottle which contains just so much of water as to half cover the phosphorus, and then closing the mouth slightly, to guard against combustion, to leave it standing for ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 455 - Volume 18, New Series, September 18, 1852 • Various

... shins in the stern-sheets, with his waistcoat open, and his white shirt catching what light there was as greedily as the other; and his white face as conspicuous to my guilty mind as though we had rubbed it with phosphorus. Nor was I the only one to lay this last peril to heart. Raffles sat silent for several minutes on his thwart; and when he did dip his sculls it was to muffle his strokes so that even I could scarcely hear them, and to keep peering behind ...
— Mr. Justice Raffles • E. W. Hornung

... not dynamite; it was concentrated phosphorus," he said, without resentment. "Naturally it burned when you lighted it, but if you had not burned it I could easily have shown Madame la ...
— The Maids of Paradise • Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers

... provision of better sanitary conditions, the fencing off of dangerous machinery, the prohibition usually of dangerous processes or of the use of dangerous materials, such as lead or white phosphorus, all involve an addition small or large, to the cost of manufacture. If, however, there be in all these instances an increase in the cost of manufacture there are also results to the well-being of the workers, which, if ...
— The Trade Union Woman • Alice Henry

... must confess A secret unforgivingness, And shudder at the saving chrism Whose best New Birth is Pessimism; My soul—I mean the bit of phosphorus That fills the place of what that was for us— Can't bid its inward bores defiance With the new nursery-tales of science. What profits me, though doubt by doubt, As nail by nail, be driven out, 170 When every new one, like the last, Still holds my coffin-lid as fast? Would I ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell

... rationalise Hazlet's story. I had just put out the candle in my bedroom, when over my head I saw a handwriting on the wall in characters of light. I started out of bed, and for a moment fancied that I could read the words, and that somebody had been playing me a trick with phosphorus. But the next minute, I saw how it was; the moonlight was shining in through the little muslin folds of the lower blind, and as the folds were very symmetrical, the chequered reflection on the wall looked exactly ...
— Julian Home • Dean Frederic W. Farrar

... embracing physiology under either physics or psychology; the forming of the bile and the growing and waste of brain are yet, to our apprehension, too far removed from the gravitation of planets or the oxidation of phosphorus, on the one hand, as they are from the scintillations of wit or the severe march of reason on the other, for ready affiliation with either. We question decidedly whether Theology proper can, at the most, be more than a very restricted ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. VI, June, 1862 - Devoted To Literature and National Policy • Various

... active as phosphorus, biting everything that came near into the form that suited it, how could Mrs. Cadwallader feel that the Miss Brookes and their matrimonial prospects were alien to her? especially as it had been the habit of years for her to scold Mr. Brooke ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot

... A. bottle of phosphorus: used by housebreakers to light their lanthorns. Ding the phos; throw away the ...
— 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue • Captain Grose et al.

... fell back on suggesting that the alleged mushrooms should be stewed, and the stew stirred with a silver spoon, when, if the spoon showed no discolouration, he would take back his opinion that they contained phosphorus in appreciable quantities. He was called an empiricist for his pains; and Mrs. Robinson (who hated a dispute and invariably melted at any allusion to the tutor's res angusta domi) weakly gave way. The mushrooms were cooked and pronounced excellent ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine

... used, aid digestion either directly or indirectly. The juicy ones act as dilutents, and their free use lessens the desire for alcohol and other stimulants. According to German analysts, the apple contains a larger percentage of phosphorus than any other fruit, or than any vegetable. In warm weather and in warm climates, when foods are not needed for a heat-producing purpose, the diet may well consist largely of fruits and succulent vegetables, eaten in combination with bread ...
— Science in the Kitchen. • Mrs. E. E. Kellogg

... "Phosphorus evidently," muttered Hamilton to himself, but he did not want to interrupt the lad now that he had started, and therefore ...
— The Boy With the U.S. Census • Francis Rolt-Wheeler

... of a Desiree loved him so dearly. Her eyes sparkled so even when talking of the most indifferent things with him. As objects dipped in phosphorus shine with equal splendor, so the most trivial words she said illuminated her pretty, radiant face. What a blissful rest it was for him after ...
— Fromont and Risler, Complete • Alphonse Daudet

... it, and you can take it out of the water and so have bottled oxygen. A lighted candle put into a jar of oxygen blazes up directly, and is consumed before you can say Jack Robinson. Charcoal burns away in it as fast, with beautiful bright sparks—phosphorus with a light that dazzles you to look at—and a piece of iron or steel just made red-hot at the end first, is burnt in oxygen quicker than a stick would be in common air. The experiment of burning things in oxygen beats ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Volume I. No. 9. - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 26, 1850 • Various

... red. The labour required to produce this small box of lights, as it is called, is wonderful—the chemist, the wood merchant, the mechanician (and I am sorry to say, also the surgeon, from the deleterious effects of the phosphorus on the human frame), have all to bring their work to bear on the production of this most useful article. Yet, after all, it is sold and bought for one penny a box. Messrs. Bryant & May profess to save your houses from ...
— Lectures on Popular and Scientific Subjects • John Sutherland Sinclair, Earl of Caithness

... him. "We call it the phosphorescence of the sea, because it resembles the glow emitted by phosphorus," he answered. "Those who have studied the subject say that it is caused by the presence of myriads of minute marine organisms, some soft and gelatinous, and others—such as the Crustacea—of a hard nature; but, in reality, under ...
— Twice Lost • W.H.G. Kingston

... not justified in saying that the solution of pure sugar, caused to ferment by means of yeast, contains none of the elements needed for the growth of yeast, neither nitrogen, sulphur nor phosphorus, and that, consequently, it should not be possible, by our theory, for the sugar to ferment. On the contrary, the solution does contain all these elements, as a consequence of the introduction and ...
— The Harvard Classics Volume 38 - Scientific Papers (Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology) • Various

... natural science. You sent it to her. She, with the help of it tried to find out what sorts of poisons could be most easily procured. For two whole days you deliberated together as to the best way of obtaining matches, the phosphorus of which is the most efficacious of poisons. But in vain. In great houses only the domestics have charge of the matches, it was impossible to get any. At last the girl hit on an expedient. She discovered that if you put a copper coin in a glass dish and pour strong vinegar over ...
— The Poor Plutocrats • Maurus Jokai

... that people were craning from far seats. Her bulk and her shadow effaced the man beside her. He seemed to cower a little. At eight the show began, and Mrs. Egg felt darkness as a blessing, although the shimmer from the screen ran like phosphorus over the bald head, and a flash of white between two parts of the advertisement showed the dark ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various

... is a great broad, seething river of fire,— white like strong moonshine: the glow is bright enough to read by. At its centre the trail is brightest;—towards either edge it pales off cloudily,—curling like smoke of phosphorus. Great sharp lights burst up momentarily through it like meteors. Weirder than this strange wake are the long slow fires that keep burning at a distance, out in the dark. Nebulous incandescences mount up from the depths, change form, ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn

... Herbert continued;—"I says: 'It's phosphorus, Aunt Julia.' I guess there's hardly anybody in the world doesn't know more than Aunt Julia, except about dresses and parasols and every other useless thing under the sun. She says: 'My! I always thought it was sulphur!' ...
— Gentle Julia • Booth Tarkington

... and probably fame as a chemist would have been thus attained, had not destiny led him into another direction. As it was, he did engage in some original chemical research. His first contributions to science were the fruits of his laboratory work; one of his papers was on the combination of phosphorus and hydrogen, and another on the combination of ...
— Great Astronomers • R. S. Ball

... Berzelius has thrown so much light, are the same as those distributed throughout the earth's crust, and are fifteen in number, namely, iron, nickel, cobalt, manganese, chromium, copper, arsenic, zinc, potash, soda, sulphur, phosphorus, and carbon, constituting altogether nearly one third of all the known simple bodies. Notwithstanding this similarity with the primary elements into which inorganic bodies are chemically reducible, the aspect of a‘rolites, owing to the ...
— COSMOS: A Sketch of the Physical Description of the Universe, Vol. 1 • Alexander von Humboldt

... often give contradictory results with the tensile test, were comparatively pure manganese steels, low in silicon, only exceptionally up to 0.2 per cent., but generally below 0.1 per cent., and with less than 0.1 per cent. of phosphorus and sulphur. On the other hand, rails with a tendency to break or split are low in carbon, with variable proportions of manganese, but contain much silicon, 0.3 to 0.9 per cent., and often above 0.1 per cent. of phosphorus. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 492, June 6, 1885 • Various

... any one of the classes so formed, such as the class animal or plant, or the class sulphur or phosphorus, or the class white or red, and consider in what particulars the individuals included in the class differ from those which do not come within it, we find a very remarkable diversity in this respect between ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill

... a sudden change came, fraught with disaster. The train, running one day at thirty miles an hour over a piece of poorly laid track, was thrown suddenly out of the perpendicular with a violent lurch, and, before Edison could catch it, a stick of phosphorus was jarred from its shelf, fell to the floor, and burst into flame. The car took fire, and the boy, in dismay, was still trying to quench the blaze when the conductor, a quick-tempered Scotchman, ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin

... combination with phosphoric, sulphuric, and other acids. Neither protein, nor fat, nor starch, nor sugar, nor any substance in the slightest degree resembling them, has formed part of the food of the bean. But the weights of the carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, phosphorus, sulphur, and other elementary bodies contained in the bean- plant, and in the seeds which it produces, are exactly equivalent to the weights of the same elements which have disappeared from the materials supplied to the bean during its growth. Whence it follows that the bean has taken in ...
— Discourses - Biological and Geological Essays • Thomas H. Huxley

... sometimes called by that name. It is caused by decaying vegetable matter, and exhibits itself in the form of gases of phosphorus, which appears to burn, but does not, like the vapor which is produced by rubbing certain ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: Exploring the Island • Roger Thompson Finlay

... new creed that would centre itself in man seems to me the poorest and the most baseless of all. If humanity be but a vibrion, a conglomeration of gases, a mere mould holding chemicals, a mere bundle of phosphorus and carbon, how can it contain the elements of worship? what matter when or how each bubble of it bursts? This is the weakness of all materialism when it attempts to ally itself with duty. It becomes ridiculous. The carpi diem of the classic sensualists, ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida

... the Sicilian's clothes they found, in a case, different powders, genuine mercury in vials and boxes, phosphorus in a glass bottle, and a ring, which we immediately knew to be magnetic, because it adhered to a steel button that by accident had been placed near it. In his coat-pockets were found a rosary, a Jew's beard, a dagger, and a brace of pocket-pistols. "Let ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller

... lay in the saving of gas and midnight oil to impecunious writers which its use was said to bring about, and when fully equipped consisted simply of a writing-table with all the appliances and conveniences thereof treated with phosphorus in such a manner that in the blackest of darkness they could all be seen readily. The ink even was phosphorescent. The paper was luminous in the dark. The penholders, pens, pen-wipers, mucilage-bottle, everything, in fact, that an author really needs for the production of literature, save ideas, ...
— The Booming of Acre Hill - And Other Reminiscences of Urban and Suburban Life • John Kendrick Bangs

... to that opinion of Home which was expressed in Mr. Sludge, the Medium.' It appears that a lady (since dead) repeated to Mr. Browning a statement made to her by a lady and gentleman (since dead) as to their finding Home in the act of experimenting with phosphorus on the production of 'spirit lights,' 'which (so far as Mr. Browning remembers) were to be rubbed round the walls of the room, near the ceiling, so as to appear when the room was darkened. This piece of evidence powerfully impressed Mr. Browning; ...
— Historical Mysteries • Andrew Lang

... word my uncle glided away; then I heard a rustle as of paper; there was the faint glow of a match dipped in a phosphorus bottle, the illumination of a large loose piece of paper, and then a torch was lit, showing us Garcia standing upon the extreme verge of the rocky point over the gulf; and at the same moment he drew the trigger of a pistol, to produce only a flash of the pan, which revealed to him his ...
— The Golden Magnet • George Manville Fenn

... wasteful. The abundance of land in past years seemed to justify our free use of it, nevertheless such use has in many cases resulted in a serious loss of fertility. Careless tillage and a failure to rotate crops have resulted in a heavy loss of nitrogen, potassium, phosphorus, ...
— Problems in American Democracy • Thames Ross Williamson

... first to practice extensively the experimental method of science. Through his researches the inventions of clocks, lenses, and the formula for extracting phosphorus, manganese, and bismuth were brought to light. Bitterly attacked by the clergy, he attempted to defend himself by stating that much which was ascribed to demons resulted from natural means. This statement but added fuel to the flame. For ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks

... has been intensely cold for the last three days, indicates a change this evening. Meteoric phenomena of a luminous character were universally referred to electricity, after Franklin's day. Chemistry has since put forth reasons why several of these phenomena should be attributed to phosphorus or hydrogen ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft

... Mercury (Hg) This is another name for quicksilver. Nickel (Ni) Nitrogen (N) About four fifths of the air is pure nitrogen. Oxygen (O) This is the part of the air we use in breathing. You got some out of water, and you will have it to deal with in another experiment. Phosphorus (P) Phosphorus makes matches glow in the dark, and it makes them strike easily. Platinum (Pt) Radium (Ra) Silver (Ag) Sodium (Na) You are not acquainted with sodium by itself, but when it is combined with the poison ...
— Common Science • Carleton W. Washburne

... notably Faraday, Gore, Pflaunder, and Brauner, have endeavored to prepare this element in the free state, but all attempts have hitherto proved futile. M. Moissau, after a long series of researches with the fluorides of phosphorus, and the highly poisonous arsenic trifluoride, has finally been able to liberate fluorine in the gaseous state from anhydrous hydrofluoric acid by electrolysis. This acid in the pure state is not an electrolyte, but when potassium fluoride ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 633, February 18, 1888 • Various

... divine unction, the minister needs blood; and he cannot make that out of tough leather. One reason why the apostles preached so powerfully was that they had healthy food. Fish was cheap along Galilee, and this, with unbolted bread, gave them plenty of phosphorus for brain food. These early ministers were never invited out to late suppers, with chicken salad and doughnuts. Nobody ever embroidered slippers for the big foot of Simon Peter, the fisherman preacher. ...
— Around The Tea-Table • T. De Witt Talmage

... physiologist, believed that phosphorus was essential to mental activity. Perhaps he did prove that. But he said: "No thought without phosphorus," and thought he had wiped the human soul out of existence. Philosophers do not laugh at Moleschott. But they would laugh at a savage who ...
— Editorials from the Hearst Newspapers • Arthur Brisbane

... merchandise, had the misfortune to lose it in the river. Then, says the journal, "we created a new fund, by cutting off the buttons from our clothes and preparing some eye-water and basilicon, to which were added some phials and small tin boxes in which we had once kept phosphorus. With this cargo two men set out in the morning to trade, and brought home three bushels of roots and some bread, which, in our situation, was as important as the return of ...
— Lewis and Clark - Meriwether Lewis and William Clark • William R. Lighton

... down the screen just after we'd seen a spirit face floating above it. In the confusion some one struck a light, and there was our medium—standing on the chair without his coat, and wrapping some transparent India muslin about himself, which had been dipped in phosphorus I believe, so that it gave out a curious shimmering light in the dark. You may suppose I never went in for materialistic ...
— The Mystery of a Turkish Bath • E.M. Gollan (AKA Rita)

... corpulent, tightly belted, the Captain wore, cropped almost close, his red hair, the fiery filaments of which, when under the reflection of certain lights, might have given the impression as though his face had been rubbed with phosphorus. Two teeth lost in a night orgy and brawl, he did not exactly remember now, caused him to spit out indistinct words which one could not always understand. He was bald only on the top of his head, like a tonsured monk, with a crop of short, curly hair, golden and shiny, around ...
— Mademoiselle Fifi • Guy de Maupassant

... fools have sucked their allegory From these damp walls, and taken but the form. Know ye not these?' and Gareth lookt and read— In letters like to those the vexillary Hath left crag-carven o'er the streaming Gelt— 'PHOSPHORUS,' then 'MERIDIES'—'HESPERUS'— 'NOX'—'MORS,' beneath five figures, armed men, Slab after slab, their faces forward all, And running down the Soul, a Shape that fled With broken wings, torn raiment and loose hair, For help and shelter to the hermit's ...
— Idylls of the King • Alfred, Lord Tennyson

... explained Mrs. Medford. "I drew the skeleton outlines on the sheets with phosphorus. Of course they'll be visible ...
— Frank Merriwell's Pursuit - How to Win • Burt L. Standish

... had slipped through his fingers, so he was determined to see the third. 'Pray, Mr. Borrow, who were they?' He held up three fingers of his left hand and pointed them off with the forefinger of the right: the first, Daniel O'Connell; the second, Lamplighter (the sire of Phosphorus, Lord Berners's winner of the Derby); the third, Anna Gurney. ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas

... have died at Woking as the result of eating phosphorus. The owner was apparently unaware that it has taken years to accustom the American pig ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, May 5, 1920 • Various

... Herschel's new discoveries, which have been carried further and extended by our young naturalist, are very beautifully connected with that observation which I have frequently told you of—that Bolognian phosphorus does not receive any light on the yellow-red side of the spectrum, but certainly does so on the blue-red side. The physical colors are thereby identified with the chemical colors. The time and care which I have devoted to this subject give me the greatest advantage in judging of new observations, ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. III • Kuno Francke (Editor-in-Chief)

... downstairs to the packing-room and saw a lot of phosphorus in jars of water. I wanted to fix up a ghost for Billy, my mate, so I nicked a bit and slipped it into my ...
— On the Track • Henry Lawson

... charge of a ton each. The furnaces have a mid-rib dividing the product into two balls of 10 cwt., which are shingled under a 10-ton hammer. The iron is of exceptional purity, containing less than 0.01 per cent. of phosphorus and sulphur. I should add that the two rotating furnaces produce 50 tons of billets in ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XV., No. 388, June 9, 1883 • Various

... hairs; before their opening they are concave, and enveloped one in the other. We observed no mark of spontaneous motion, no sign of irritability, not even on the application of galvanic electricity. The stem is not woody, but almost of a horny substance, like the stem of the Gorgons. Azote and phosphorus having been abundantly found in several cryptogamous plants, an appeal to chemistry would be useless to determine whether this organized substance belonged to the animal or vegetable kingdom. Its great analogy to several sea-plants, with adiantum leaves, especially the genus caulerpa of M. ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt

... furthermore safe to state at the present time that fertile soils should contain at least the following twenty elements: Nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, calcium, magnesium, sulphur, hydrogen, carbon, oxygen, iron, sodium, chlorine, aluminum, silicon, manganese, copper, zinc, boron, iodine, ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Thirty-Seventh Annual Report • Various

... crashed through the window and exploded with a globe of yellow flame the size of a basketball; dense clouds of phosphorus pentoxide gushed from it and the sprinkler system switched on, ...
— The Adventurer • Cyril M. Kornbluth

... good times in England since the poor began to speculate upon their condition. Formerly they jogged on with as little reflection as horses; the whistling ploughman went cheek by jowl with his brother that neighed. Now the biped carries a box of phosphorus in his leather breeches; and in the dead of night the half-illuminated beast steals his magic potion into a cleft in a barn, and half the country is grinning with new fires. Farmer Graystock said something to the touchy rustic that he did not relish, and he writes his ...
— The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb

... oversee the details executed by the Secretaries of State. The public fully appreciate this dazzling Minister. He is nothing more than a 'petit-maitre', without talents or information, who has a little phosphorus in his mind. There is a thing well worthy of remark, Sire; that is, the open war carried on against religion. Henceforward there can spring up no new sects, because the general belief has been shaken, that no one feels inclined to occupy himself with difference ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XV. and XVI., Volume 1 • Madame du Hausset, and of an Unknown English Girl and the Princess Lamballe

... 7.8 percent; iron 4.5 percent; calcium 3.5 percent; sodium 2.4 percent; potassium 2.4 percent; magnesium 2.2 percent. Besides these which are most important there is about 0.2 percent of hydrogen and the same amount of carbon. Then there is a little phosphorus, a little sulphur, a little fluorine, and small amounts of all of the rest of the ...
— Letters of a Radio-Engineer to His Son • John Mills

... in a bottle plunged in water, heated to about 150 degrees of Fahrenheit; introduce into it half an ounce of phosphorus for every pound of lard; then add a pint of proof spirit, or whisky; cork the bottle firmly after its contents have been heated to 150 degrees, taking it at the same time out of the water, and agitate smartly till the phosphorus becomes uniformly diffused, forming a milky-looking ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous

... a gentleman on his travels in Italy to his friend in England, is the following curious account of an experiment tried with the Bolognian stone, of which phosphorus is made. ...
— Apparitions; or, The Mystery of Ghosts, Hobgoblins, and Haunted Houses Developed • Joseph Taylor

... opened my eyes. Against the tapestry at the further corner of the room, in the dark shadow, stood a figure. It stood out quite boldly, emanating from itself a curious light. I had no time to think of phosphorus. It never occurred to me that any trick was being played upon me. I felt certain that I was looking at my ancestor, Barrington Cressley, who had come back to torture me in order to make me give up ...
— A Master of Mysteries • L. T. Meade

... vulcanite goods, an improvement on the status quo; great and wholly unexpected reduction on biscuits; but starch very bad (this was on "an excellent day for the small things"). Other reports dealt with steel scrap, phosphorus, faience, and so forth, and by tabulated figures set off the total of losses and gains. Lord Granville, thanking him for these constant reports, remarked with serene detachment that they were "as interesting as lists of the betting in the newspapers just before ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke V1 • Stephen Gwynn

... Certainly in some instances it has that effect. I remember, for example, some thirty years ago, visiting a lucifer-match factory in which the hands employed worked habitually in an atmosphere impregnated with the fumes of phosphorus, which produce insidious and very painful diseases. Such a thing is hardly possible nowadays. On the other hand, official inspection, like Factory Acts, everywhere gives rise to a good deal of dissatisfaction and does ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace

... burned slowly through that part of the sky where the pink began to fade into the blue. Charlie went forward and set the side lights—red on the port rigging, green on the starboard. As he passed Wilbur, who was leaning over the rail and watching the phosphorus flashing just under the ...
— Moran of the Lady Letty • Frank Norris

... magnesia are not abundant in urinary calculi of the horse, the phosphates being present to excess in the urine in only two conditions—(a) when the ration is excessive and especially rich in phosphorus (wheat, bran, beans, peas, vetches, rape cake, oil cake, cottonseed cake); and (b) when, through the morbid, destructive changes in the living tissues, and especially of the bones, a great quantity of phosphorus is given off as a waste product. Under ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture

... yet he could not say that he wholly liked it. This was a strange creature—highly gifted, doubtless, but hardly comfortable. He was too "thick" with ghosts. One scarcely knew whether he spent most of his time "on earth or in hell," as Saul crudely phrased it. The faint smell of phosphorus that he carried about with him, which was only due to his imperfect ablutions after his seances, impressed Saul's imagination as going to show that Bott was a little too intimate with the under-ground powers. He stood chewing a shaving and weighing the matter in his mind a moment before ...
— The Bread-winners - A Social Study • John Hay

... Exchange; in 1702 Richard Bronas, tobacconist, was at the "Horse Shoe," Bread Street; and in 1766 Mr. Hoppie, of the "Oil Jar: Old Change, Watling Street End," advertised that he "sold a newly invented phosphorus powder for lighting pipes quickly in about half a minute. Ask for ...
— The Social History of Smoking • G. L. Apperson

... he said, "if you want to signal, wet your hands and rub the phosphorus off the matches. Turn your hands, palms in our direction, so no one can see from the other ...
— Boy Scouts in the Coal Caverns • Major Archibald Lee Fletcher

... from time to time to repair the engine and replace its worn parts. The essential chemical difference between starch and protein is that the latter contains nitrogen and a small amount of sulphur and phosphorus. The most common forms in which protein is used for food are the glutens of the grains, the legumes, nuts, cheese, the white of ...
— The Mother and Her Child • William S. Sadler

... the jewellery had, though in value this chest came near to being worth as much as all the others put together. The fixed transported posture of the pirate, his little shining eyes intent upon the bars, his form in the candle-light looking like a sketch of a strange, wildly-apparelled man done in phosphorus, coupled with the loom of the black chests, the sense of our desolation, the folly of our enjoyment of the sight of the treasure in the face of our pitiable and dismal plight, the melancholy storming of the wind, moaning like the rumble of thunder heard in ...
— The Frozen Pirate • W. Clark Russell

... make sport of and to delude us; we call to our assistance the artifices of the charlatans, who do so many things which pass for supernatural in the eyes of the ignorant. Philosophers, by means of certain glasses, and what are called magic lanterns, by optical secrets, sympathetic powders, by their phosphorus, and lately by means of the electrical machine, show us an infinite number of things which the simpletons take for magic, because they know not how ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet

... series, to the most elementary manifestations of life, and thence, finally, to matter. If it is not admitted that pure matter is a man in a state of torpor, it must be admitted that man is a melange of carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, azote, phosphorus—a melange which has been brought little by little to perfection. Such is the final inference from the doctrine which we are examining; and there are theorists who deduce it clearly. Now what is it that goes on in the minds of these savants? When the object is to banish God from nature, ...
— The Heavenly Father - Lectures on Modern Atheism • Ernest Naville

... etc., give cream, white of eggs, olive or linseed oil (no oil with phosphorus poisoning). ...
— Rhymes of the Rookies • W. E. Christian

... apprehension, man's volitions and his prayers are states of emotion, inseparably connected in their manifestations with changes in his cerebral structure, with relative elevation of temperature, and with the elimination of oxygen and phosphorus, in other words with chemico-vital phenomena and the transformation of force. Science also adds that there is a constant interaction of all force, and it is not prepared to deny that the force expended ...
— The Religious Sentiment - Its Source and Aim: A Contribution to the Science and - Philosophy of Religion • Daniel G. Brinton

... these remarkable terms: "Can I then bring myself to cut the string and let you go? I confess I could not if your bodily frame were strong, and promised to last for half a century. But as you burn with the intenseness and rapid blaze of phosphorus, why should we not make the most of you? Your flame may last as long, and perhaps longer, in Arabia than in India. Where should the phoenix build her odoriferous nest but in the land prophetically called the 'blessed'? And where shall we ever expect but ...
— Pioneers and Founders - or, Recent Workers in the Mission field • Charlotte Mary Yonge

... processes of sublimation, filtration, distillation, and crystallization; they invented the alembic, the retort, the sand-bath, the water-bath and other valuable instruments. To them is due the discovery of antimony, sulphuric ether and phosphorus, the cupellation of gold and silver, the determining of the properties of saltpetre and its use in gunpowder, and the discovery of the distillation of essential oils. This was the success of failure, a wondrous process of Nature for the highest growth,—a mighty lesson ...
— The Majesty of Calmness • William George Jordan

... avoidance of all dissipation, and his life entirely devoted to duty; while his subjects were still asleep, say they, the Prince was already busied with their affairs, for he rose very early. A poet of the time makes Phosphorus complain that he is ever anticipated by the King of Prussia. His manners were gracious, familiar, sincere, and deliberate. His conversation indicated "righteous and princely thoughts." Those essays, written by him, which we have read, exhibit ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson

... reach across the waves from one end of the sea to the other. Each fish carried a phosphorescent lantern and was dressed in ceremonial robes, gleaming blue and pink and silver; and the waves as they rose and fell and broke that night seemed to be rolling masses of white and green fire, for the phosphorus shone with double brilliancy in honor ...
— Japanese Fairy Tales • Yei Theodora Ozaki

... Phosphorus it must be done with. If you leave a bit of codfish for instance. I could see the bluey silver over it. Night I went down to the pantry in the kitchen. Don't like all the smells in it waiting to rush out. What was it she wanted? The Malaga raisins. Thinking of Spain. ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce

... peculiar material, out of which the House was constructed. It was—as I have mentioned, earlier—of a deep, green color. Yet, now that I had come so close to it, I perceived that it fluctuated at times, though slightly—glowing and fading, much as do the fumes of phosphorus, when rubbed upon ...
— The House on the Borderland • William Hope Hodgson

... thought to the employed; the article to be made is generally the only object considered. They do not care if a man spends the whole of his life upon the head of a pin, or in making a screw in a watch factory. They take no notice of the occupations that ruin, or the phosphorus, the dust, the arsenic that destroys the health, that shortens the lives of many workers; of the cramped condition of the ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden

... is composed of the root of the plant, with which we have nothing to do here. This root of the plant which is to grow is embedded in a mass of cells full of fatty bodies. These bodies present this remarkable particularity, that they contain among their elements sulphur and phosphorus. When you dehydrate by alcohol 100 grammes of the embryo of wheat, obtained by the same means as the membrane (a process indicated later on), this embryo, treated with ether, produces 20 grammes of oils composed elementarily ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 275 • Various

... officer on watch reported he could hear the cattle bellowing on shore. On a second night we witnessed a splendid scene of natural fireworks; the mast-head and yard-arm-ends shone with St. Elmo's light; and the form of the vane could almost be traced, as if it had been rubbed with phosphorus. The sea was so highly luminous, that the tracks of the penguins were marked by a fiery wake, and the darkness of the sky was momentarily illuminated by the ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin

... from all the other European mushrooms: it is phosphorescent. On the lower surface and there only, it sheds a soft, white gleam, similar to that of the glowworm. It lights up to celebrate its nuptials and the emission of its spores. There is no question of chemist's phosphorus here. This is a slow combustion, a sort of more active respiration than usual. The luminous emission is extinguished in the unbreathable gases, nitrogen and carbonic acid; it continues in aerated water; it ceases in water deprived of its air by boiling. It is exceedingly ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre

... short, red-faced man, who was tightly girthed in at the waist, had his red hair cropped quite close to his head, and in certain lights he almost looked as if he had been rubbed over with phosphorus. He had lost two front teeth one night, though he could not quite remember how, and this made him speak so that he could not always be understood, and he had a bald patch on the top of his head, which made him look rather like a monk, with a fringe of curly, bright, golden hair ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant

... also formed by treating oleic acid with fuming hydriodic acid in the presence of phosphorus, while other solid acids are obtained by the action of sulphuric acid or ...
— The Handbook of Soap Manufacture • W. H. Simmons

... needs as often as possible a fresh soil, and a renewal of seed from some distant source. The need for a change of soil is made apparent by an analysis of the root, which contains large proportions of potash, phosphorus, and sulphur, with smaller proportions of magnesia and lime, without which the plant cannot prosper. A succession of heavy crops of Potatoes on the same land may be said to take from the soil its available potash and phosphates, and this crop will not, ...
— The Culture of Vegetables and Flowers From Seeds and Roots, 16th Edition • Sutton and Sons

... little rack at the right of each scout were several small bombs of various kinds. Some were intended to set on fire whatever they came in contact with, being of phosphorus. Others were explosive bombs, pure and simple, while some were flares, intended to light up the scene at night and ...
— Air Service Boys in the Big Battle • Charles Amory Beach

... more fruitful paths of scientific thought—the paths which have led to the most precious inventions; and among these are clocks, lenses, and burning specula, which were given by him to the world, directly or indirectly. In his writings are found formulae for extracting phosphorus, manganese, and bismuth. It is even claimed, with much appearance of justice, that he investigated the power of steam, and he seems to have very nearly reached some of the principal doctrines of modern chemistry. But it should be borne ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White

... them is that triumph of pure reason, chess, an unadulterated product of the brain—i.e., of phosphorus—i.e., of fish. Nobody stakes money on chess or offers a prize to the best player. Honor at that board is its own reward. So when we are told of the Centennial Chess Tournament we recognize at once the fitness of the word borrowed ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XVII, No. 102. June, 1876. • Various

... Turk's-head broom, with phosphorus eyes, and a sheet round the handle,' said Theodora. 'It had a grand effect when Arthur stood on the second landing-place, and raised it above the balusters—a sort ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge

... essential to all living bodies: carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, sulphur, potassium. Besides these there are several others usually present, but not apparently essential to all organisms. These include phosphorus, iron, ...
— Elements of Structural and Systematic Botany - For High Schools and Elementary College Courses • Douglas Houghton Campbell

... bottle, a box and a silver candlestick which stood all ready, a wax taper which the black placed upon the side-table, and then, as cleverly as if he had seen it done scores of times, he took the stopper out of the little bottle, from which a strong odour of phosphorus arose, took a match from the box, and thrust it into the bottle, with the result that he brought it out burning, after the fashion of our fathers' time before the invention of lucifer matches and congreve lights—a fashion adopted when a letter had been written and the writer, who knew not adhesive ...
— Hunting the Skipper - The Cruise of the "Seafowl" Sloop • George Manville Fenn

... all purposes of science. It has become a thing incurably mysterious and infinite; this mortal has put on immortality. Even what we call our material desires are spiritual, because they are human. Science can analyse a pork-chop, and say how much of it is phosphorus and how much is protein; but science cannot analyse any man's wish for a pork-chop, and say how much of it is hunger, how much custom, how much nervous fancy, how much a haunting love of the beautiful. The man's desire ...
— Heretics • Gilbert K. Chesterton

... literary historian, though his poems are of little value. Palmblad, besides being a critic, is the author of several novels and translations from the Greek. These three writers belonged to the Phosphoric School, so called from a periodical called "The Phosphorus," which ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta

... way is suggestive only,—not breaking bubbles with Thor's hammer, but puffing them away with the breath of a Clown, or shivering them with the light laugh of a genial cynic. Men go about to prove the existence of a God! Was it a bit of phosphorus, that brain whose creations are so real, that, mixing with them, we feel as if we ourselves were but fleeting ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell

... copies) a special diet-sheet, and talks of "proteids", notices a slight cloudiness in his urine, and underlines "The Uric-Acid Diathesis" in one of his pamphlets. Then his heart bumps, he diagnoses anew, and so goes on, usually ending by taking phosphorus for his "brain fag". Then he finds he has a disease unknown to the faculty, which discovery interests him as intensely as ...
— Epilepsy, Hysteria, and Neurasthenia • Isaac G. Briggs

... when phosphorus is burned in oxygen gas; the gas becomes diminished, the phosphorus increased, in weight, and converted into an acid, and a great quantity of heat is given out. The same is the case when charcoal is burned in this ...
— Popular Lectures on Zoonomia - Or The Laws of Animal Life, in Health and Disease • Thomas Garnett

... broader breast. In that rare atmosphere of the Sierra foothills,—that air pungent with balsamic odor, that ethereal cordial at once bracing and exhilarating,—he may have found food and nourishment, or a subtle chemistry that transmuted ass's milk to lime and phosphorus. Stumpy inclined to the belief that it was the latter and good nursing. "Me and that ass," he would say, "has been father and mother to him! Don't you," he would add, apostrophizing the helpless bundle before him, "never go ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte

... egg. Do not, however, entertain the idea that you are not eating any meat products when eggs are included in your diet. Eggs must be classed as animal food, but they are very nourishing. They contain a good supply of lime, sulphur, iron, phosphorus and other mineral salts in addition to their protein and fats. It may also be said that milk should be classed as animal food, though it is of special value from a nutritive standpoint. Milk, cheese and other milk ...
— Vitality Supreme • Bernarr Macfadden

... heat-waves and ultra-violet waves which we do not want, that 90 per cent. or more of the power used in illumination is wasted. Would that the glow-worm, or even the dead herring, would yield us its secret! Phosphorus is the one thing we know as yet that suits the purpose, and—it smells! Indeed, our artificial light is not only extravagant in cost, but often poor in colour. The unwary person often buys a garment by artificial light, and is disgusted next ...
— The Outline of Science, Vol. 1 (of 4) - A Plain Story Simply Told • J. Arthur Thomson

... swifter than the ascent, but no less fatiguing. By the time we reached the school, an hour after dark, I was very tired. But Keene was in one of his moods of exhilaration. He glowed like a piece of phosphorus that has been ...
— The Blue Flower, and Others • Henry van Dyke

... present in the cavern at various heights, was shown by immersing in it various combustibles in a state of inflammation. I found that phosphorus would continue lighted at about two feet from the bottom, whilst a sulphur match went out a few inches above, and a wax taper at ...
— Wonders of Creation • Anonymous

... spodos], ruins). Ehrlich has made a corresponding observation for the products of dissolution of the white blood corpuscles, and has proved that the splenic tumour which occurs in many infectious diseases and in phosphorus poisoning is to a large extent caused by the parenchyma of the spleen taking up the remains of ...
— Histology of the Blood - Normal and Pathological • Paul Ehrlich

... requested to experiment and report on such occasions, thought his last hour had come, and he and the camel men moaned and groaned the greater part of the night. The water seemed not only saturated with salt, but tasted of lead and phosphorus, and was ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor

... of mine," observed Fisher, gloomily, "putting phosphorus on the target; but the only chance to make him jump was to give him the horrors suddenly. And when he saw the face he'd shot at shining on the target he practiced on, all lit up with an infernal light, he did jump. Quite enough for my own ...
— The Man Who Knew Too Much • G.K. Chesterton

... before the dawn, and saw the morning break, grand as the eternity out of which it came, and for many days after, he strove to express this tranquillity, and lo! his chisel had fashioned out of marble the form of a beautiful youth, Phosphorus, whose aspect is such that it is said all persons who look on it become silent. The poet also resigns himself to his mood, and that thought which agitated him is expressed, but alter idem, in a manner totally new. The expression is organic, or the new type which things themselves ...
— Essays, Second Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson



Words linked to "Phosphorus" :   lucifer, apatite, planet, chemical element, morning star, daystar, P, element, atomic number 15, phosphorous, phosphoric, major planet



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