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Rhythmical   Listen
adjective
Rhythmical, Rhythmic  adj.  Pertaining to, or of the nature of, rhythm "Day and night I worked my rhythmic thought."
Rhythmical accent. (Mus.) See Accent, n., 6 (c).






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Rhythmical" Quotes from Famous Books



... smaller duct on the right side—the right lymphatic duct. The duct or ducts may be displaced by a tumour or a mass of enlarged glands, and may be accidentally wounded in dissections at the root of the neck; jets of milky fluid—chyle—may at once escape from it. The jets are rhythmical and coincide with expiration. The injury may, however, not be observed at the time of operation, but later through the dressings being soaked with chyle—chylorrhoea. If the wound involves the only existing main duct and all the chyle escapes, the patient suffers from intense thirst, emaciation, ...
— Manual of Surgery - Volume First: General Surgery. Sixth Edition. • Alexis Thomson and Alexander Miles

... herself, though, for the most part, books which Mrs. Wilson characterised as very odd. Her voice, when she spoke, had a quite indescribable music in it; yet she neither sang nor played. Her habitual motion was more like a rhythmical gliding than an ordinary walk, yet she could not dance. Mrs. Wilson hinted at other and more serious peculiarities, which she either could not, or would not describe; always shaking her head gravely and sadly, ...
— The Portent & Other Stories • George MacDonald

... purely rhythmical nature of the pre-drum period, and pointed out, in contrast, the musical quality of the drum. This may seem somewhat strange, accustomed as we are to think of the drum as a purely rhythmical instrument. The sounds given ...
— Critical & Historical Essays - Lectures delivered at Columbia University • Edward MacDowell

... tired that night, and it was a luxury to lie flat upon my back on the beach, listening to the rhythmical thud of the big, long wave at my feet, and the song of the stars overhead. There is something unspeakably tranquillizing in the studded dome of heaven; there is also something unspeakably sad. It ...
— How to Cook Husbands • Elizabeth Strong Worthington

... not altogether gratuitous description of a spot celebrated in America for its picturesque situation and horrors, I resume the rhythmical tale of the chief of ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 3 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones

... the mist; and, emanating from it, a ray of similar light entered the motionless vapour. Then a movement, whose character it was not easy to discern, but which constantly became more and more evidently rhythmical and regular, commenced in the mist. Within a few moments the latter had dissolved, leaving in its place the semblance of stars, star-clusters, and golden nebulae, as dim and confused as that in the sword-belt of Orion, or as well defined as any of those called by astronomers planetary. "What seest ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg

... drawn open the shutter and revealed herself. But apart from maidenly shrinkings, familiarity with war had made her realize the sacred duties of a sentry, and she had remained in discreet seclusion, awake until his spell was over. But now the rhythmical beat of the heavy boots kept her from sleeping and would have irritated her nerves intolerably had not her sound common sense told her that the stout fellow who wore them was protecting her from the Hun, together with a million ...
— The Rough Road • William John Locke

... turned over in her sleep, leaving him free to rise, and stretch himself exhaustedly; and as he stood looking down upon the night's achievement, upon the rhythmical rise and fall of his wife's breast beneath its light covering, new fires were kindled in the man's deep heart; new intimations of the height and depth, and power of that 'grand impulsion,' which men call Love; and with these, a new humility ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver

... other actors and actresses in their startling dresses selected partners, and the stage seemed transformed into a wonderful garden of colour swinging to the music of a fountain that, under the inspiration of the moonlight, broke from its monotonous chant into rhythmical variations. Dick, like a great tulip in his red uniform, turned in the middle, and Miss Beaumont, in her long yellow dress, sprawled upon him. Her dress was open at both sides, and each time she passed in ...
— A Mummer's Wife • George Moore

... is incommensurable, I hold that Goethe's genius is essentially lyrical. Whatever else may be claimed for him, he is, first of all, and chiefly, a singer. Deepest in his nature, the most innate of all his faculties, was the faculty of song, of rhythmical utterance. The first to manifest itself in childhood, it was still active at the age of fourscore. The lyrical portions of the second part of "Faust," some of which were written a short time before his death, are as spirited, the versification ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord

... briefly as a 'master-builder,' had my ear been able to endure a sentence ending with two consecutive trochees, and each of those trochees ending with the same syllable er. Ah, reader! I would the gods had made thee rhythmical, that thou mightest comprehend the thousandth part of my labors in the evasion of cacophon. Phil. has a general dislike to the Puseyites, though he is too learned to be ignorant, (as are often the Low-Church, or Evangelical, party in England,) that, ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey

... suffering; they slew victims; they brought misfortune; they were also the source of good or "luck ". Man regarded spirits emotionally; he conjured them with emotion; he warded off their attacks with emotion; and his emotions were given rhythmical expression by means of ...
— Myths of Babylonia and Assyria • Donald A. Mackenzie

... air, his wife having already sped upstairs to pacify Master Smith by a rhythmical and monotonous thumping on the back. Also she lifted up a thin and not particularly sweet voice and sang to him. Mr. Billing, finishing his supper in indignant silence, told himself grimly that he was "beginning to have enough ...
— Deep Waters, The Entire Collection • W.W. Jacobs

... has been made, represented by Professor Noire, to account for language by means of interjectional cries. This Max Mueller revengefully styled the "pooh-pooh" theory. In it is included the rhythmical sounds which a body of men make seemingly by a common impulse when engaged in a common work, such as the cries of sailors when hauling on a rope or pulling an oar, or the yell of savages in an attack. It also derives ...
— Sign Language Among North American Indians Compared With That Among Other Peoples And Deaf-Mutes • Garrick Mallery

... XCVII.] The one figure which he adopts from the Hindu Pantheon and constantly uses, is that of Krishna the Divine Flute Player. [Footnote: Nos. L, LIII, LXVIII.] He sees the supernal music, too, in its visual embodiment, as rhythmical movement: that mysterious dance of the universe before the face of Brahma, which is at once an act of worship and an expression of the infinite rapture of ...
— Songs of Kabir • Rabindranath Tagore (trans.)

... paddles flashing back the rays of the westering sun, was crossing the current from above and urging in for the eddy. Hay Stockard watched it intently. Three men rose and dipped, rose and dipped, in rhythmical precision; but a red bandanna, wrapped about the head of one, caught and ...
— The God of His Fathers • Jack London

... of the question. A shake of the head too quickly and the coiffure was imperilled; the movements that came within the prescribed circle of dignity within the circle of the crinoline were all of a rhythmical order. Women did not take to moving with freedom because the crinoline went out, but the crinoline went out when they took to moving with freedom. It went out simply because it was a confounded nuisance. It was a natural costume only as long as women imagined it was natural ...
— George Du Maurier, the Satirist of the Victorians • T. Martin Wood

... of the dancing, which was far more vivacious than that of western nations. The Poles were long considered to be the best dancers in the world. It was their great national amusement; and all danced, from noble to peasant, entering into it with spirit and enthusiasm, and uniting the perfection of rhythmical motion with the grace and ease peculiar to them, and to ...
— A Jacobite Exile - Being the Adventures of a Young Englishman in the Service of Charles the Twelfth of Sweden • G. A. Henty

... or carrying babies on their hips, youths like the Indian Bacchus with long curling hair, children of all ages, old men magnificent and fierce, all the generations of Asia pass and pass on, seen like a frieze against a rock background, blazing with colour, rhythmical and fluent, marching menacingly down out of infinite space on to this little oasis of Englishmen. Then, suddenly, they are an ocean; and the Anglo-Indian world floats upon it like an Atlantic liner. ...
— Appearances - Being Notes of Travel • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson

... obviously the same as "Arthgi," a bear-dog. The rhythmical run of the line seems, however, to point to the other as ...
— Y Gododin - A Poem on the Battle of Cattraeth • Aneurin

... that the beautiful message, Came from fond nature's glorious king, So I linked it in rhythmical measure, For you, my own darling, to sing. And as your clear voice gives it utterance, Think of her who has sent it to thee, As a love-laden token and blessing, From her fond heart far ...
— Home Lyrics • Hannah. S. Battersby

... "Unabhaengigkeitserklaerungen" seems to be "Independencedeclarations," which is no improvement upon "Declarations of Independence," so far as I can see. "Generalstaatsverordnetenversammlungen" seems to be "General-statesrepresentativesmeetings," as nearly as I can get at it—a mere rhythmical, gushy euphemism for "meetings of the legislature," I judge. We used to have a good deal of this sort of crime in our literature, but it has gone out now. We used to speak of a things as a "never-to-be-forgotten" circumstance, instead of cramping it ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... nights she had scarcely slept, and in the silence immediately round her the distant sounds gradually lost their dreary note, and became a rhythmical and soothing influence. She ...
— Missing • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... long days and nights of glory and of love, for intense hours of emotion and of life lived with exultant desperation. It was a melody that seemed to set the soul of Creation dancing before an ark. The tomtoms accompanied it with an irregular but rhythmical roar which Domini thought was like the deep-voiced shouting of squadrons of ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens

... a narrow path that entered a beech wood with a thickish undergrowth of holly, along which I followed him for several minutes, gradually decreasing the distance between us, until suddenly there fell on my ear a rhythmical, metallic sound like the clank of a pump. Soon after I caught the sound of men's voices, and then the constable struck off ...
— The Vanishing Man • R. Austin Freeman

... heavily on the causeway and ran down seething to the sea; and another and another, filling the room with rhythmical thunders. But the voice of the sea was no longer the same in the darkness, where the Countess knelt in silence beside the bed—knelt, her head bowed on her clasped hands, as she had knelt before, ...
— Count Hannibal - A Romance of the Court of France • Stanley J. Weyman

... waving with golden grain or dark green corn that bent and tossed in the morning wind, was an inexhaustible delight. A few exquisitely white fleecy clouds, pushed across the deep blue sky by a southern breeze, made running shadows of rhythmical motion. ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand

... upon the floor, seemingly dazed at what had occurred; and then he turned upon his heel and strode out of the room between the two spearmen of the guard, who raised their weapons as he passed, and followed him with a quick, rhythmical tread down the broad ...
— Marzio's Crucifix and Zoroaster • F. Marion Crawford

... the stones at either side of him. He gave me no sign of greeting as I mounted the large grey horse which was awaiting me, but he looked thoughtfully at me from under his down-drawn brows, and his jaw muscles still throbbed with that stealthy rhythmical movement. I read a cold and settled malice in his set yellow face and his stern eyes. For my own part I sprang readily enough into the saddle, for the man's presence had, from the first, been loathsome to me, and I was right glad to be able to turn my back upon him. And so, with a stern quick ...
— Uncle Bernac - A Memory of the Empire • Arthur Conan Doyle

... The rhythmical, accustomed chug of the engines had fallen to quarter speed, leaving an uncanny stillness throughout the ship. Silently we slipped between the long piers, drew up on the waterside town, seized the buoy, and came to rest. All around us ...
— African Camp Fires • Stewart Edward White

... world whose cleverness he dreaded, whose institutions he loathed, whose angers he provoked, whose authorities he scandalised, whose crowds he hated, he went aside "botanizing" and "copying music"; every now and then hurling forth from his interludes of sentimental journeying a rhythmical torrent of eloquent prophecy in which he himself only half believed and of which, quite often, "the ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys

... impact, the club head should be allowed to follow the ball straight in the line of the flag as far as the arms will let it go, and then, having done everything that is possible, it swings itself out at the other side of the shoulders. The entire movement must be perfectly smooth and rhythmical; in the downward swing, while the club is gaining speed, there must not be the semblance of a jerk anywhere such as would cause a jump, or a double swing, or what might be called a cricket stroke. That, in a few lines, is the whole story of the downward swing; but ...
— The Complete Golfer [1905] • Harry Vardon

... of long-coated spectators sets towards the town, mingled with the parti-coloured, muddied figures of the players. I have been strolling half the afternoon along the river bank, watching the boats passing up and down; hearing the shrill cries of coxes, the measured plash of oars, the rhythmical rattle of rowlocks, intermingled at intervals with the harsh grinding of the chain-ferries. Five-and-twenty years ago I was rowing here myself in one of these boats, and I do not wish to renew the experience. I cannot ...
— From a College Window • Arthur Christopher Benson

... the sun, by depriving the moon of her light, adds no lustre to his own." "As the lotus floats in water, the heart rests in a pure body." "Ye cannot take riches to the grave, but he who succoureth the poor in this world shall find a better wealth hereafter." A babad or rhythmical ballad of semi-religious character belongs to every province, but though many details of temple worship—Buddhist, Hindu, and Mohammedan—may be gathered from the lengthy scroll, heroic and princely exploits, ...
— Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings

... other. For melody holds no absolute dominion over either verse or prose; its laws, never to be disregarded, prohibit rather than prescribe. Beyond the simple ordinances that determine the place of the rhyme in verse, and the average number of syllables, or rhythmical beats, that occur in the line, where shall laws be found to regulate the sequence of consonants and vowels from syllable to syllable? Those few artificial restrictions, which verse invents for itself, once agreed ...
— Style • Walter Raleigh

... them with his own. Barnes caught two or three sharp commands, rising above the pawing of horses' hoofs, and then a great clatter as the mounted horsemen rode off in the direction of the cross-roads. The beat of the hoofs became rhythmical as the animals steadied into ...
— Green Fancy • George Barr McCutcheon

... something of their gregarious disposition,—they scatter more; and at this time they prefer the sunniest exposures, and like to bask in the light and warmth. They assume every variety of attitude, but move always by the regular contraction and expansion of the disk, which rises and falls with rhythmical alternations, the average number of these movements being from twelve to fifteen in a minute. There can be no doubt that they perceive what is going on about them, and are very sensitive to changes in the state ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various

... clanked his chain as if in remonstrance; from behind the wall the uneasy fidgeting of the hungry horses could be plainly heard; while Tonio's noisy snoring rose and fell upon the still, damp air with rhythmical regularity. But over the old yellow caravan a curious and suspicious silence reigned; not a sound was to be heard within its wooden walls, not a glimmer of light came ...
— Two Little Travellers - A Story for Girls • Frances Browne Arthur

... He could see a man tossing hay in a field near by, and he watched the rhythmical movement of his fork ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine

... cleave the wall of darkness and open the way through which they galloped. The three tall, broad-shouldered, straight-backed figures sat their horses with constant grace, galloping abreast, neck to neck and heel to heel, without pause or slackened pace. The rhythmical, resounding hoof-beats made exhilarating music for their ears, and now and again Ellhorn's yell went calling across the empty darkness or the sound of Mead's or Tuttle's gun cleft the air. On and on through the night they went, their wiry ponies with ears closely laid and muscles ...
— With Hoops of Steel • Florence Finch Kelly

... an abandonment of all military strictness, and nothing is required of the men but to keep four abreast, and not lag behind. They are not required to keep step, though, with the rhythmical ear of our soldiers, they almost always instinctively did so; talking and singing are allowed, and of this privilege, at least, they eagerly availed themselves. On this day they were at the top of exhilaration. There was one broad grin from ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson

... the gracious Queen imagined and contrived that simple and witching costume which I have described to you so many times, and which I cannot think of even now in my dull age without being moved just as rhythmical and exquisite music moves one; for that was music, that dress—that is what it was—music that one saw with the eyes and felt in the heart. Yes, she was a poem, she was a dream, she was a spirit when she was ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc - Volume 1 (of 2) • Mark Twain

... brevity and precision is everywhere obvious. The omission of the cumbersome auxiliary, wherever permissible, already characteristically employed in his tale, is conspicuous, as in all his writings and letters. The words are arranged in rhythmical groups without falling into a monotonous sing song. Participial constructions, tending toward brevity, are more in evidence than in ordinary German prose. Sparingly, but with good reason and excellent handling, periodic structure is employed. ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke

... and I could hear nothing, but presently we detected the rhythmical beat of the hoofs of a horse approaching at a smart canter. Somebody was coming up from San Remo—for though a wheeled vehicle could not pass over the "forty rods," a horseman could pick his way—and knowing that nobody ever came that way in the "soft" season unless our house ...
— The Boys of Crawford's Basin - The Story of a Mountain Ranch in the Early Days of Colorado • Sidford F. Hamp

... shaduf men were singing and bending, singing and bending. And had the shaduf songs lulled him? Had they pushed him towards his dream? Now, as he listened to the brown men singing, he heard nothing but violence in their voices. And in their rhythmical movements only violence was expressed to him. When lunch came, he ate it hastily, without noticing what he was eating. Soon after he had finished, coffee was brought, not by the waiter, but by Hassan, who could no longer suppress another ...
— Bella Donna - A Novel • Robert Hichens

... before his look; her breast rose a little. The scar on his brow held her gaze, as one fascinated, but she drew away slightly and mechanically sought the tiny golden goblet at her elbow. Dreamily, dreamily, sounded the rhythmical music; heavily, so heavily hung the perfume in the air! Full of mist seemed the hall; the king, the queen, the countess, all of the party, unreal, fanciful. The touch of the goblet chilled her lips and she ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham

... motionless silence of the castaways, dropped upon the crags, and folded their wings for the night. Around the lonely islet thundered the ocean, whose waves rocked never-endingly, until Yaspard, gazing fixedly on them, felt as though the holme itself were some tremulous cradle swinging with the rhythmical ebb and flow of those ...
— Viking Boys • Jessie Margaret Edmondston Saxby

... awhile lost in ease when I heard a footstep approaching and the rhythmical rustling of drapery, and knew eyes were now regarding me that I feared, ...
— Henry Brocken - His Travels and Adventures in the Rich, Strange, Scarce-Imaginable Regions of Romance • Walter J. de la Mare

... essentials of Spanish poetry are (1) a fixed number of syllables in each verse (by verse we mean a single line of poetry); (2) a rhythmical arrangement of the syllables within the verse. Rime and assonance are hardly less important, but are not ...
— El Estudiante de Salamanca and Other Selections • George Tyler Northup

... advice and to permit the child to cry till he is utterly exhausted in body and in mind. It is unwise always to rock a baby to sleep; it is also unwise to allow him to scream himself into a state of hysteria. A quiet, darkened room, the steady pressure of the mother's hand in some rhythmical movement, will often quiet an incipient storm. The longer he cries, the more trouble it is to soothe him. Sleep provokes sleep, so that often we find restlessness and sound sleep alternating in a sort of cycle, a good week ...
— The Nervous Child • Hector Charles Cameron

... softened by distance and water, as they plied up and down the flowing highway. Once a barge went past under the Battersea bank, with music playing in the stern, and Ralph raised himself on his elbow to watch it as it went down the stream with flags flying behind, and the rhythmical throb of the row-locks sounding time to the ...
— The King's Achievement • Robert Hugh Benson

... in terms of stimulation and response. It may be well to take a particular case. Swimming on the part of a duckling is, from the biological point of view, a typical example of instinctive behaviour. Gently lower a recently hatched bird into water: coordinated movements of the limbs follow in rhythmical sequence. The behaviour is new to the individual though it is no doubt closely related to that of walking, which is no less instinctive. There is a group of stimuli afforded by the "presentation" which results from ...
— Evolution in Modern Thought • Ernst Haeckel

... big, empty, lonely church, and there and then I delivered my first lecture! I shall never forget the feeling of power and of delight which came upon me as my voice rolled down the aisles, and the passion in me broke into balanced sentences, and never paused for rhythmical expression, while I felt that all I wanted was to see the church full of upturned faces, instead of the emptiness of the silent pews. And as though in a dream the solitude became peopled, and I saw the listening ...
— Autobiographical Sketches • Annie Besant

... Epistles; and, altogether, left us to think that, by something called Ritschlian interpretations, the whole Bible was knocked into a cocked hat. Then he began to build up what he had thrown down; and on he went, in his rhythmical, musical way, when just as he declared that "the basal document on which everything is founded is the ur-evangelium, which is the underlying cryptic element of the Synoptic Gospels,"—just as he reached that point, and was going on about Tatian's "Diatessaron," a ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan

... before me, leagues behind, Clamor warring wastes of flood, All the streams of all the worlds Flung together, mad of mood; Through the canon beats a sound, Regular of interval, Distant, drumming, muffled, dull, Thunderously rhythmical; ...
— Dreams and Dust • Don Marquis

... aboard in a large package in Victoria Dock, London, just before we started for Rouen, France. And in the shadowy life of the F. C. T. C. lies the secret of that, my last employment in my calling, which in a remote sense interrupted the rhythmical development of Nina ...
— A Personal Record • Joseph Conrad

... banjo and began to tune it for an accompaniment to his songs. He had a mellow rhythmical voice that always brought the crowd. He began with his favorite that never failed to please his master. The way he rolled his eyes and sang with his hands and feet and every muscle of his body was the source of unending interest ...
— The Southerner - A Romance of the Real Lincoln • Thomas Dixon

... effective screen, in the true meaning of the word, the conducting tube or coating may also act, by reason of its conductivity, as a sort of equalizer or dampener of the bombardment against the stem. To be explicit, I assume the action as follows: Suppose a rhythmical bombardment to occur against the conducting tube by reason of its imperfect action as a screen, it certainly must happen that some molecules, or atoms, strike the tube sooner than others. Those which come first in contact with it give up their superfluous charge, and the ...
— Experiments with Alternate Currents of High Potential and High - Frequency • Nikola Tesla

... thus constituted by the metrical or rhythmical structure of its sentences; and is not necessarily any more figurative or obscure than prose writing. It is, also, a term sometimes applied to the language of excited imagination ...
— A Brief Commentary on the Apocalypse • Sylvester Bliss

... been called Allusive pieces. They are very remarkable, and more numerous than the metaphorical. They often commence with a couple of lines which are repeated without change, or with slight rhythmical changes, in all the stanzas. In other pieces different stanzas have allusive lines peculiar to themselves. Those lines are descriptive, for the most part, of some object or circumstance in the animal or vegetable world, and after them the poet proceeds to his proper ...
— The Shih King • James Legge

... waving their arms, swaying their bodies, and clapping their breasts in perfect time, opened with an introductory. The performers remained seated, except two, and once three, and twice a single soloist. These stood in the group, making a slight movement with the feet and rhythmical quiver of the body as they sang. There was a pause after the introductory, and then the real business of the opera—for it was no less—began; an opera where every singer was an accomplished actor. The leading man, in an impassioned ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... the following compartment, the mess-room and sleeping quarters for the crew. Solid, rhythmical snores were issuing from the cook's open mouth as he lay sprawled out on his bunk; the smell of coffee hovered in the air; the cabin was quiet and comfortable with an atmosphere of sleep and rest. The radio-man, reading in his bunk, looked ...
— Hawk Carse • Anthony Gilmore

... in the rowlocks, the rhythmical dip, and the ripple of water against the boat were restful in their monotony. She felt her eyes closing as something slipped through her fingers—Susie's boot, with its long damp laces! She looked at her lap in horror, and tried to push the dreadful object ...
— Troublesome Comforts - A Story for Children • Geraldine Glasgow

... his store houses, and the rank grasses, at their seeding time, are his chief support." Another writer, whose study of this bird has been made with care, calls our American Goldfinch one of the loveliest of birds. With his elegant plumage, his rhythmical, undulatory flight, his beautiful song, and his more beautiful soul, he ought to be one of the best beloved, if not one of the most famous; but he has never yet had half his deserts. He is like the Chickadee, and yet different. He ...
— Birds Illustrated by Colour Photography, Vol II. No. 4, October, 1897 • Various

... themselves this indefiniteness of mechanical reaction is clearly traceable. Two boys throwing stones will always differ more or less in their attitudes, as will two billiard-players. The familiar fact that each individual has a characteristic gait, illustrates the point still better. The rhythmical motion of the leg is simple, and on the Cuvierian hypothesis, should react on the body in some uniform way. But in consequence of those slight differences of structure which consist with identity of species, no two individuals make exactly similar movements ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer

... "Yvytot," the first purely fanciful ballad I ever wrote. I have been at work on it for two months, and I think it is the best piece of literary work I have done, although it is somewhat above the class of work that is popular. You will like it for its rhythmical smoothness and for its weirdness. But Mrs. Field prefers "Krinken," "Marthy's Younkit," et id omne genus. My next verse will be "John Smith, U.S.A.," a poem suggested by seeing this autograph at Gilley's. In it I shall use the Yankee, the Hoosier, the ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson

... this singer and artist makes no direct attempt to be poetical, any more than he does to be melodious or rhythmical. He approaches these qualities and results as it were from beneath, and always indirectly; they are drawn to him, not he to them; and if they appear absent from his page at first, it is because we have been looking for them in the customary places on the outside, where he never puts ...
— Birds and Poets • John Burroughs

... style. His English is vernacular, idiomatic, universal; varying with the subject; homely in the continuous narrative; racy and pungent in his lively and often rapid discourse; and, when occasion requires, "a model of unaffected dignity and rhythmical flow;" but always plain, strong, and natural. However, in speaking of his style, we do not so much intend his words as his entire mode of expression. A thought is like a gem; but like a gem it may be spoiled in the ...
— Life of Bunyan • Rev. James Hamilton

... on the floor below, the stillness in the cottage was merrily broken by an outburst of dance-music—with a rhythmical thump-thump of feet, keeping time to the cheerful tune. Toff was playing his fiddle; and Toff's boy was dancing to his ...
— The Fallen Leaves • Wilkie Collins

... left the room had been so calm and measured, his back so straight, the swing of his cane so rhythmical, his firm military tread so full of courage and determination, that I had not followed him. When he is in these moods it is best to let him have his own way. Fitz and I had discovered this some days before, when we tried to dissuade him from planting ...
— Colonel Carter's Christmas and The Romance of an Old-Fashioned Gentleman • F. Hopkinson Smith

... embraces and holds with his two pairs of hind-legs, the male sways his head and corselet up and down, all in a piece. This oscillatory movement has not the fiery precipitation of that of the Cantharides; it is calmer and as it were rhythmical. The abdomen moreover remains motionless and seems unskilled in those slaps, as of a washerwoman's bat, which the amorous denizen of the ash-tree so ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre

... lifeless bodies, and as if only one demoniacal eye gleamed forth out of them all. Now look and listen—you can never listen enough! When you again observe the orchestra, now loftily storming, now fervently wailing, when you notice the quick tightening of every muscle and the rhythmical necessity of every gesture, then you too will feel what a pre-established harmony there is between leader and followers, and how in the hierarchy of spirits everything impels us towards the establishment ...
— On the Future of our Educational Institutions • Friedrich Nietzsche

... common of vulgar errors in regard to works of art. In the first place one must remind our enthusiastic German that it is an engraving and not a woman that we are discussing; and that this engraving is extremely beautiful in arabesque and black and white pattern, rich, rhythmical and harmonious; and that there is no reason why our taste should be violated in having to bow submissively before such beauties as these, which it is a pleasure to worship. Now we come to the subject as ...
— Albert Durer • T. Sturge Moore

... leave of her nearly as inconsolable friends in the Household, she at length found herself seated in the car with the Baron, who had dispensed with the usual attendants. And then the Courtyard, with the mass of upturned faces and waving hands, slowly sank to the rhythmical beating of the storks' wings as they obeyed the order, "To the Palace ...
— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey

... farther and say with Mr. Grant Allen that everything high and ennobling in our nature springs directly from the fact of sex. He claims that to it 'we owe our love of color, of graceful forms, of melodious sound, of rhythmical motion, the evolution of music, of poetry, of romance, of painting, of sculpture, of decorative art, of dramatic entertainment. From it,' he says, 'springs the love of beauty, around it all beautiful arts circle as their centre. ...
— Almost A Man • Mary Wood-Allen

... find a name of such distinction as the late Laureate's formally opposed to Tyrwhitt, and committed to the opinion which may seem to have been Dryden's, that the verse of Chaucer is "rhythmical, not metrical." This hardly self-explicating distinction of Dr Geo. Fred. Nott's, Southey in his Life of Cowper has explained in set terms—a verse for which the number of beats or accents is ruled is rhythmical—for ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various

... he could focus his sight upon them, these "shadows," without any light to cast them, moved in distorted guise there on the deck with a motion that was somehow rhythmical—a great movement as of ...
— The Centaur • Algernon Blackwood

... satisfactory: the English critics, generally sustaining the translator in his views concerning the secondary importance of form in Poetry, practically discouraged any further attempt; and no one, familiar with rhythmical expression through the needs of his own nature, had devoted the necessary love and patience to an adequate reproduction of the great work ...
— Faust • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

... though it obscured the moon it brought no sign of rain. The lights gleamed out one by one in the houses of the town. The fishing smacks came slowly up the river to their anchorage, impelled by the oars of their crews which struck the water with sharp, rhythmical strokes, and with their sails distended on the chance of catching an occasional puff of the dropping wind to help them along. A couple of steamers passed, sending up volumes of black smoke and myriads of sparks from their double stacks, and lashing the water into foam ...
— Facing the Flag • Jules Verne

... which I took care to ensure an intelligible rendering by this means, I might point to a certain passage in the second movement of the symphony, where the whole of the string instruments play the principal and rhythmical figure in C major for the first time; it is written in triple octaves, which play uninterruptedly in unison and, to a certain degree, serve as an accompaniment to the second theme, which is only performed by feeble wood instruments. As fortissimo is indicated ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner

... in regular succession, kept time to the rhythmical ring of the iron shoes on the frozen ground as the horse returned with me, still at a steady ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand

... with dung and straw, the noise of the stamping was deadened; a man's voice talking to the animals and swearing at them was heard from the rear of the building. A faint tickle grew soon into a clear and continuous jingling, rhythmical with the movements of the horses, now stopping, now resuming in a sudden peal accompanied by the deadened noise of an ...
— Mademoiselle Fifi • Guy de Maupassant

... awful to be in the hands of the wholesale professional dealers in misfortune; undertakers and jailers magnetize you in a moment, and you pass out of the individual life you were living into the rhythmical movements of their horrible machinery. Do the worst thing you can, or suffer the worst that can be thought of, you find yourself in a category of humanity that stretches back as far as Cain, and with an expert ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes

... young—Hetty found a mischievous pleasure in noticing his almost too open admiration for Flora Schuyler, who sat close beside them. A girl was singing indifferently, and when she stopped, Miss Allonby raised her head as a rhythmical sound became audible through the closing chords of ...
— The Cattle-Baron's Daughter • Harold Bindloss

... an agreement of their corresponding functions, as one organ in respect to time. The action of the auricles is synchronous; that of the ventricles is the same; that of the auricles and ventricles is consentaneous; and that of the whole heart is rhythmical, or harmonious—the diastole of the auricles occurring in harmonical time with the systole of the ventricles, and vice versa. By this correlative action of both hearts, the pulmonary and systemic circulations ...
— Surgical Anatomy • Joseph Maclise

... bent their heads, and presently they too heard the sound that had reached the keener sense of the warrior—a rhythmical beat and hum made by many paddles as the man-hunters, who had hidden behind the island, were dashing forward in hot haste to catch the Okapi, which they expected would be landing its crew. But the Okapi slipped on, and had a very good lead when Hassan and his slave- hunters set up a ...
— In Search of the Okapi - A Story of Adventure in Central Africa • Ernest Glanville

... and her spirits, which had been somewhat depressed at the parting from her father and Reynolds, revived. There was nothing which thrilled and stimulated her so much as riding on Midnight through the great wilderness. Her lithe, supple body swayed in a rhythmical motion as the horse sped on his way. Riding was one of the few attractions which made the northland tolerable, and she wondered what she would do outside ...
— Glen of the High North • H. A. Cody

... describing intense, passionate feeling, his power of painting wild pictures of horror, his gifts for conveying his thoughts in rolling, rhythmical periods of eloquence, that make Melmoth a memory-haunting book. With all his faults Maturin was the greatest as well as the last ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead

... I think, that the old instinct which tended to make a division between poetry and prose is being gradually obliterated. The rhythmical structure of poetry, and above all the device of rhyme, is essentially immature and childish: the use by poets of rhythmical beat and verbal assonance is simply the endeavour to captivate what is a primeval and even barbarous instinct. The pleasure which children take in beating their hands upon ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson

... advantage. You attack me after I've been dancing for two hours, while I'm still reeling drunk with the movement, when I've lost my head, when I've got no mind left but only a rhythmical body! It's as bad as making love to someone you've drugged ...
— Crome Yellow • Aldous Huxley

... feel the rhythm of poetry, or of perfect prose, which is, of course, in its own way, no less rhythmical, every sensation of sound sends through me a diffusive wave of nervous energy. I am the rhythm because I imitate it in myself. I march to noble music in all my veins, even though I may be sitting decorously ...
— The Psychology of Beauty • Ethel D. Puffer

... has been well observed, that every one who declaims warmly, or grows intent upon a subject, rises into a sort of blank verse or measured prose. The merchant, as described in Chaucer, went on his way "sounding always the increase of his winning." Every prose-writer has more or less of rhythmical adaptation, except poets, who, when deprived of the regular mechanism of verse, seem to have no principle of modulation left ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin

... resonant meaning, or a meaning resonance. If you read the line, "The sun is warm, the sky is clear," you do not experience separately the image of a warm sun and clear sky, on the one side, and certain unintelligible rhythmical sounds on the other; nor yet do you experience them together, side by side; but you experience the one in the other. And in like manner when you are really reading Hamlet, the action and the characters are not something which ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)

... but a number of pieces strung together, a collection of reflections arranged in accordance with aesthetic rules. It is certainly the standard of an artist's greatness to note what he can take in with a single glance and set out in rhythmical form. The infinite profusion of images and incidents in the Homeric epic must force us to admit that such a wide range of vision is next to impossible. Where, however, a poet is unable to observe artistically with a single glance, he usually piles conception on conception, and endeavours ...
— Homer and Classical Philology • Friedrich Nietzsche

... are irritated, and this causes slowing of the pulse, contraction of the small arteries, and increase of the arterial tension which tends to maintain an adequate circulation in the vital centres in the medulla. The Cheyne-Stokes respiration is due to rhythmical variations in the arterial tension: during the period of fall the centres become anaemic and the respiration fails; during the rise the medulla is again supplied with blood, and ...
— Manual of Surgery Volume Second: Extremities—Head—Neck. Sixth Edition. • Alexander Miles

... decision. He opened his lips, but the words he had planned to speak were never uttered. The strong, rhythmical dip of oars suddenly beat ...
— Jim Spurling, Fisherman - or Making Good • Albert Walter Tolman

... looked at the wall now instead of the floor, and breathed unevenly and quickly. His right hand, resting on the table near which he sat, softly closed and opened, opened and closed its supple muscular fingers, with a curious, rhythmical movement. He waited to hear more. And Julius groaned out, with his elbows on the parted wooden mantelshelf, and his ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves

... also in other arts, such as that of the shepherd's pipe, which are essentially similar to these. In dancing, rhythm alone is used without 'harmony'; for even dancing imitates character, emotion, and action, by rhythmical movement. ...
— Poetics • Aristotle

... some of the men I knew best fishing there with a sort of dragnet. It is a tedious process, and I sat for a long time on the sand watching the net being put out, and then drawn in again by eight men working together with a slow rhythmical movement. ...
— The Aran Islands • John M. Synge

... roll to the spindle, and, quite forgetting aunt Ann, began stepping back and forth in a rhythmical march of feminine service. The low hum of her spinning filled the air, and she seemed to be wrapped about by an atmosphere of remoteness and memory. Even aunt Ann was impressed by it; and once, beginning ...
— Tiverton Tales • Alice Brown

... melody: and though this is not generally thought requisite in a modern hymn, it is asking nothing extra of a choir that would sing the plain-song tunes; for even if they are sung in unison, they must first be known by heart (otherwise their rhythmical freedom, which defies notation, and is indispensable to their beauty, cannot be approached), and when once a choir has got thus far, the under parts, being phrased with the melody, will easily follow ...
— A Practical Discourse on Some Principles of Hymn-Singing • Robert Bridges

... we plodded along the dusty roads, our thoughts became as dusty as they; all thought indeed stopped, thinking broke down, or proceeded only passively in a sort of rhythmical cadence of the confused material of thought, and we found ourselves mechanically repeating some familiar measure which timed with our tread; some verse of the Robin Hood ballads, for instance, which one can recommend ...
— Excursions • Henry D. Thoreau

... degree of pendulous swing is brought about in a series of waves so timed, and of such a length, that the duration of the swing coincides with the period required for one wave to succeed another. The increasing slope of the ship's decks, due to the inertia of this continuous rhythmical motion, often amounts to far more than the angle made by the declivity of the wave as compared with the sea level; and it is, of course, a source of serious danger in the eyes ...
— Twentieth Century Inventions - A Forecast • George Sutherland

... the brains of certain bright young women and sombre young and middle-aged men who were arranged in clasped couples: with the result that the brains of the women and men sent orders to their legs, arms, eyes, and they shifted to and fro in rhythmical movements. Each woman placed herself very close—breast against breast—to each man, yielding her volition absolutely to his, and (if the man was the taller) often gazing up into his face with an ecstatic expression of ...
— Mr. Prohack • E. Arnold Bennett



Words linked to "Rhythmical" :   jazzy, measured, rhythm, tripping, sapphic, regular, throbbing, singsong, metrical, chantlike, rhythmic



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