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Secretion   Listen
noun
Secretion  n.  
1.
The act of secreting or concealing; as, the secretion of dutiable goods.
2.
(Physiol.) The act of secreting; the process by which material is separated from the blood through the agency of the cells of the various glands and elaborated by the cells into new substances so as to form the various secretions, as the saliva, bile, and other digestive fluids. The process varies in the different glands, and hence are formed the various secretions.
3.
(Physiol.) Any substance or fluid secreted, or elaborated and emitted, as the gastric juice.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Secretion" Quotes from Famous Books



... than any other they had experienced during the last seven years. While the conversation was going on, plash made one, plash made another, plash made a third, by spurting a certain brownish secretion on the floor! I had often heard of this as an American habit, but always thought our cousins in this matter (as in many others) were caricatured. Here, however, was the actual fact, and that in the presence of a lady! Yet these were apparently very ...
— American Scenes, and Christian Slavery - A Recent Tour of Four Thousand Miles in the United States • Ebenezer Davies

... the universal demand for them, are evidence of this very common disease, which disease is rendered worse by the drugs taken for the relief of a foul intestinal alveus. An abnormal amount of watery secretion is forced by the drug into the foul canal, to mix there with its contents, of which the major portion is retained and re-absorbed into the system. And to make the bad condition and treatment worse, all such sufferers, as a rule, drink very ...
— Intestinal Ills • Alcinous Burton Jamison

... of the tooth; it is as if a broad flat tooth had been bent round upon itself to form a tube. The tube is open below and behind, in the curve, by a little slit. Above, it is open, and rests upon a tiny bag connected with a gland that corresponds to a gland in man for the secretion of saliva; but which, in the present case, secretes a poison. The fang, when out of use, is bent and hidden in a fleshy case; in feeding, it is rarely used. The viper catches for himself his birds or mice, after the manner of a harmless ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various

... cattle in this country find a speedy remedy for stopping the progress of this complaint in those applications which act chemically upon the morbid matter, such as the solutions of the vitriolum zinci and the vitriolum cupri, etc.] The animals become indisposed, and the secretion of milk is much lessened. Inflamed spots now begin to appear on different parts of the hands of the domestics employed in milking, and sometimes on the wrists, which quickly run on to suppuration, first assuming the appearance of the small ...
— The Harvard Classics Volume 38 - Scientific Papers (Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology) • Various

... process of Art judiciously removes from them all resemblance to Nature, I distinctly object to tears. Tears are scientifically described as a Secretion. I can understand that a secretion may be healthy or unhealthy, but I cannot see the interest of a secretion from a sentimental point of view. Perhaps my own secretions being all wrong together, I am a little prejudiced on the ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins

... milk' can be drawn out into fine, ropy fibers. It has an unpleasant taste, which is most marked in the cream. The causes which lead to the secretion of this milk ...
— Science in the Kitchen. • Mrs. E. E. Kellogg

... character exhibited by different sets of fissure veins which cut the same country rock seems incompatible with any theory of lateral secretion. These distinct systems are of different ages, of diversified composition, and have evidently drawn their supply of material from different sources. Hundreds of cases of this kind could be cited, but I will mention only a few; among others the Humboldt, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 446, July 19, 1884 • Various

... and of which the impression is seldom permanent. From this circumstance I have been led to conjecture that the general disparity of complexions in different nations might POSSIBLY be owing to the more or less copious secretion or redundance of that juice, rendering the skin more or less dark according to the qualities of the bile prevailing in the constitutions of each. But I fear such a hypothesis would not stand the test of experiment, as it might be expected to follow that, ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden

... the passengers suffered from nausea in consequence. Sir John Richardson writes: "I have known a dead skunk thrown over the stockades of a trading port produce instant nausea in several women in a house with closed doors, upwards of a hundred yards distant." The secretion is intensely inflammatory if ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale

... religion!' But the religion of God was soon so explained as to allay all their fears. It is the religion of science. Instead of Adam, our ancestry is traced to the most grotesque of creatures, thought is phosphorus, the soul complex nerves, and our moral sense a secretion of sugar. Do you want these views in England? Rest assured they are coming. And how are we to contend against them? Only by Divine truth. And where is Divine truth? In the Church of Christ—in the gospel of ...
— Lothair • Benjamin Disraeli

... of three parts. The first excites the secretion of sweat, the second is attended by convulsive movements of the features, the third gives to the Yogi a feeling of extraordinary lightness ...
— From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan • Helena Pretrovna Blavatsky

... landed, did we learn the truth. O joyous news! The hordes of Termans had been repulsed and were even then being slowly driven back! Our scientists had created in the laboratories a type of formic acid somewhat similar to the vesicatory secretion occurring within our own bodies—but infinitely more deadly! It had been used as a weapon against the Termans. And more! Huge walls of gaseous formic acid, held unwavering by electronic force fields, were being erected. ...
— Walls of Acid • Henry Hasse

... valuable substitute for honey. Summer feeding, 330. Bees with proper care need but little feeding. Quantity of honey necessary to winter a stock, 331. Feeding as a source of profit. Selling W. I. honey a cheat, 332. Honey not a secretion of the bee. Evaporation of its water the principal change it undergoes, 334. Folly of diluting the feed of bees too much. Feeders of cheap honey for market, deceivers or deceived, 335. Artificial liquid ...
— Langstroth on the Hive and the Honey-Bee - A Bee Keeper's Manual • L. L. Langstroth

... sold the Edition. And I look forward confidently to an aftermath; I do not think my health can be so hugely improved, without some subsequent improvement in my brains. Though, of course, there is the possibility that literature is a morbid secretion, and abhors health! I do not think it is possible to have fewer illusions than I. I sometimes wish I had more. They are amusing. But I cannot take myself seriously as an artist; the limitations are so obvious. I did take myself seriously as a workman of old, but my practice ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... of Hugh Worthington, they said, the Adah for whom Dr. Richards had sought so long in vain, and for whom Murdock, the wicked father, was seeking still for aught she knew to the contrary. Even the story of the doctor's secretion in the barn at Sunnymead was confessed. Nothing was withheld except the fact that even as he professed to love her, so she in turn loved him, or had done so before she knew it was a sin. Surprise had, for a few moments, stifled every other emotion, and Irving Stanley had sat like one suddenly bereft ...
— Bad Hugh • Mary Jane Holmes

... food, now in the form of a paste, passes into a pipe about 12 inches long (the Duodenum), into which pours the secretion of the pancreas and that of the liver (bile). The pancreatic juice acts upon the starch which has escaped the action of the saliva, and also continues the work of the stomach. It furthermore emulsifies the fat or divides it ...
— Papers on Health • John Kirk

... the structure and action of -a gland- [glands] a little more fully in a subsequent chapter. Here we will simply say that they are organs forming each its characteristic fluid or secretion, and sending it by a conduit, the duct, to the point where its presence is required. The saliva in our mouths, tears, and perspiration, are examples of the ...
— Text Book of Biology, Part 1: Vertebrata • H. G. Wells

... up? Is your breath foul? Have you lost all sense of smell? Are you troubled with hawking? Spitting? Weak, inflamed eyes? Dullness or dizziness of the head? Dryness or heat of the nose? Is your voice harsh or rough? Have you any difficulty in talking? Have you an excessive secretion of mucus or matter in the nasal passages, which must either be blown from the nose, or drop back behind the palate, or hawked or snuffed backward to the throat? Ringing or roaring or other noises ...
— The American Missionary — Volume 39, No. 03, March, 1885 • Various

... the separation of the carbon and hydrogen; but all the other substances which are in combination with these elements in the living tissues pass off in the secretions. The nitrogen undergoes a change, and is thrown out of the system by the kidneys. Their secretion, the urine, contains not only a compound rich in nitrogen, namely urea, but the sulphur of the tissues in the form of a sulphate, all the soluble salts of the blood and animal fluids, common salt, the phosphates, soda and potash. The carbon and hydrogen of the blood, of the muscular fibre, and ...
— Familiar Letters of Chemistry • Justus Liebig

... remember how, before the silkworm begins to spin, the viscid secretion is stored in the two long ducts at each side of the little creature's body. It is that material which it unites into a single thread in the spinaret, you know. Well, before the worm has a chance to spin, it is put into vinegar and this jellied silk is extracted. It is first soaked in ...
— The Story of Silk • Sara Ware Bassett

... that we have drugs with which we can diminish or increase the number of heart beats per minute, dilate or contract the pupils of the eye, check or stimulate the secretion of mucus, sedate or irritate the nervous system, etc., but all that is accomplished is temporary stimulation or sedation, and such juggling does not cure. The practice of medicine is today what it has been in the ...
— Maintaining Health • R. L. Alsaker

... analysis of a complex series of interactions including a study of the action of the banking systems, and the methods of industrial finance. To attempt to state the various forms of capital would involve the same process—for capital is to some extent a secretion of the whole industrial organization. For present purposes it is better to disregard the finer shades of interaction involved in the process of creation of capital and the provision of capital to industry important ...
— The Settlement of Wage Disputes • Herbert Feis

... trestle-bridges in the routes of English enterprise to let the travellers through. When a business firm becomes fairly built up, it lasts a hundred years or more. Shop-signs are not taken down except by the weather; new fronts grow so slowly along the ancient streets that they appear to be deposited by secretion, like corals and shells. I took a book to a printer, and found he was the grandson of the man who published "Junius" in 1769, doing business in the same dingy court and office, with the old regularity and deliberation. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 92, June, 1865 • Various

... course—it was a manifestation of a combination of Toxins (or anti-Toxins, I forget which); there was no God—the idea of God was the result of another combination of Toxins, akin to a belief in the former illusion. Roughly speaking, I think his general position was that as Toxins are a secretion of microbes (I am certain of that phrase, anyhow), so thought and spiritual experiences and so forth are a secretion of the brain. I know it sounded all very brilliant and unanswerable and analogous to other things. He hardly ever took the trouble to say all this; he was far too much ...
— None Other Gods • Robert Hugh Benson

... large, with the exception of a gigantic Dipterocarpus, wood-oil or dammar tree; of this particular tree I have seen specimens measuring 100 feet from the base to the first branch. The wood is of no value, nor have I seen any use made in Assam of the resinous secretion, which is in great vogue on the Tenasserim Coast for the construction of ...
— Journals of Travels in Assam, Burma, Bhootan, Afghanistan and The - Neighbouring Countries • William Griffith

... rich in protein, is not suitable, because, after a meal, the animal must have a certain feeling of fullness in order to be comfortable and quiet, and the digestive organs require a relatively large volume of contents to fill them to the point where secretion is properly stimulated and their activity is most efficient. If too much protein is in the ration there is a waste of expensive feed, and the tendency is for the animal to become thin. It is evident that a cow can not thrive ...
— Special Report on Diseases of Cattle • U.S. Department of Agriculture

... constitutional peculiarity in individuals, the painful variety of the albino is sometimes produced in the hottest countries. Certain internal diseases, and different medicines, change the beautiful bloom of the young and healthy into repulsive and unnatural tints. A peculiar secretion of the carbon abounding in the human frame produces the jet black of the negro's skin, and enables him to bear without inconvenience the terrible sultriness of his native land.[212] The dark races, inferior in animal and intellectual powers to the white man, are yet nearly free from the deformities ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton

... of this tribe is almost exclusively used by the ants. But I have tasted the honey-like secretion of an Australian lecanium living; on the leaves of Eucalyptus dumosus; and the manna mentioned in Scripture is considered the secretion of Coccus manniparus (Ehrenberg) that feeds on a tamarix, and whose product is still used by the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 286 - June 25, 1881 • Various

... leading the tranquil yet busy life of the monks, and trying to read the baffling riddle of its completeness. At that moment it seemed to him of vastly more importance to discover the exact nature of the soul—whether it was in fact a metaphysical entity, as these men believed, or a mere secretion of the brain, as he had been taught to think—than to go back and govern his people. For what mattered the rest, if he had ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton

... place, there is a constant film of the secretion called saliva always flowing in the mouth. It comes from glands in the throat and mouth, and is very necessary to ...
— Joe Strong The Boy Fire-Eater - The Most Dangerous Performance on Record • Vance Barnum

... eat unmoistened food, when thirsty, will dispute its uses as a solvent. Tobacco seems to be a direct stimulant to the salivary apparatus. Habit blunts this effect only to a limited extent. The old smoker has usually some increase of this secretion, although he does not expectorate. But if he does not waste this product, he swallows it, it is said, in a state unfit to promote digestion. The saliva owes its peculiarity to one of its components, called ptyalin. And this element possesses the remarkable power of converting ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various

... which the blocking first occurs is the connective tissues or the tissues that connect every part with every other. It is here that the lymph is secreted, and as the lymph joins the thoracic duct which conveys the products of digestion to the blood, it is obvious that lymph-secretion is a complementary digestive process and it is also obvious how blocking up of the connective tissues, which is the immediate cause of anorexia and inanition, usually comes ...
— The Healthy Life, Vol. V, Nos. 24-28 - The Independent Health Magazine • Various

... removed. The place was cleaned up by workmen, and Marable's search—if that was what his constant roving about the laboratory could be called—ceased for a time. The chemist's report came in. The black liquid was some sort of animal secretion, melonotic probably. ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science July 1930 • Various

... elliptical in outline, with long axis longitudinal and about 9 millimeters in length. The gland presents a roughened and granular appearance, and fewer hairs grow upon it than elsewhere on the back. The hairs in the vicinity are frequently matted, as if with a secretion. In worn stage of pelage the gland may be visible from above without separating the hairs. Bailey has suggested that this functions as an oil gland for dressing the fur, and our observations bear out this view. Kangaroo rats kept in captivity ...
— Life History of the Kangaroo Rat • Charles T. Vorhies and Walter P. Taylor

... are sure to have means of protection that do not at once appear. In the case of the newt it is evidently an acrid or other disagreeable secretion, which would cause any animal to repent that took it in its mouth. It is even less concerned at being caught than is the skunk, or porcupine, ...
— Under the Maples • John Burroughs

... YOUNGISH leaves; and after 14 hours these edges are beautifully folded over so as to clasp the flies, thus bringing the glands into contact with the upper surfaces of the flies, and they are now secreting copiously above and below the flies and no doubt absorbing. The acid secretion has run down the channelled edge and has collected in the spoon-shaped extremity, where no doubt the glands are absorbing the delicious soup. The leaf on one side looks just like the helix of a human ear, if you were to stuff flies within the fold. ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin

... the Father, etc. This done, he would take the toad in his hand and gently rub it on the inflamed part, and the toad, enraged at such treatment, would swell himself up almost to bursting and exude a poisonous milky secretion from his warty skin. That was all, and ...
— Far Away and Long Ago • W. H. Hudson

... to Egypt, the next year, and Jacob, reluctantly is compelled to allow Benjamin to go with them. The unexpected feast which Joseph made for them, sitting himself at another table—the greater portions given to Benjamin, the deception played upon them by the secretion of Joseph's silver cup in Benjamin's sack, as if he were a thief, the distress of all the sons of Jacob, the eloquent pleadings of Judah, the restrained tears of Joseph, the discovery of himself to them, the generosity of Pharaoh, the return of Jacob's children laden not only with corn but ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord

... to be learned; it is an art, to be practised. Ability comes by doing. Wisdom comes not from others; it is a secretion of experience. ...
— 21 • Frank Crane

... fast, and this makes it necessary for the youthful crayfish to "moult" or shed their shells eight times in their first twelvemonth of life, as the shell is rigid and does not grow with the body. The constant secretion of the lime necessary to make these shells is so exhausting to the youthful crayfish that only a small number ever grow up. In America, where a large freshwater crayfish nearly a foot long is found, its burrowing habits are ...
— The Naturalist on the Thames • C. J. Cornish

... by De la Beche ("Geological Manual," page 143), on the authority of Mr. Lloyd, who surveyed the Isthmus of Panama, that some specimens of Polypifers, placed by him in a sheltered pool of water, were found in the course of a few days firmly fixed by the secretion of a stony matter, to the bottom) and several feet in length, must have been very great. The fact of the different kinds of coral, when placed in one clump, having increased in extremely unequal ratios, is very interesting, as it shows ...
— Coral Reefs • Charles Darwin

... their proper colours. Mr. Wallace has, also, recorded[695] a still more singular fact. "The Indians (of S. America) have a curious art by which they change the colours of the feathers of many birds. They pluck out those from the part they wish to paint, and inoculate the fresh wound with the milky secretion from the skin of a small toad. The feathers grow of a brilliant yellow colour, and on being plucked out, it is said, grow again of the same colour ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Volume II (of 2) • Charles Darwin

... book. In the first instance the ejaculated fluid is precisely as that observed in such cases as those of the eunuchs and of Velutti, mentioned by Mondat, and consisted of an azooespermic discharge, made up mainly from the secretion of the seminal vesicles, the accessory glands of the urethra, the prostate, and Cowper's glands, as well as the discharge from the secretory glands distributed along the course of the urethral mucous membrane. Some of the cases of this form of impotence have exhibited ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino

... this marsh-plant are purple, and have a fringe very unlike other vegetable productions. And, which is curious, at the point of every thread of this erect fringe stands a pellucid drop of mucilage, resembling a ducal coronet. This mucus is a secretion from certain glands, and like the viscous material round the flower-stalks of Silene (catchfly) prevents small insects from infesting the leaves. As the ear-wax in animals seems to be in part designed to prevent fleas and ...
— The Botanic Garden. Part II. - Containing The Loves of the Plants. A Poem. - With Philosophical Notes. • Erasmus Darwin

... secretion within the pitcher's rim, which some say is intoxicating, others that it is an anesthetic, invites insects to a fatal feast. It is a simple enough matter for them to walk into the pitcher over the band of stiff ...
— Wild Flowers Worth Knowing • Neltje Blanchan et al

... that, rather than permit their little ones to enter the schools, they hid them in rice holes, where they were often suffocated. King Radama reigned at that time, and, being a convert himself, he naturally desired the conversion of his people. He reasoned with them, and prohibited the secretion of the unfortunate children, and after a time, by God's blessing, the people became aware of the advantage of the schools and many were converted from the error of their ways, and died rejoicing in God their Saviour. But Radama died also; and there arose ...
— The World of Waters - A Peaceful Progress o'er the Unpathed Sea • Mrs. David Osborne

... easy now to understand the formation of what the old surgeons called "cold" abscesses, and to account for the difference in appearance of its puriform secretion from the pus of acute abscesses. Careful search in the fluid coming from such "cold" abscesses reveals the presence of the bacillus of tuberculosis, and proves that a "cold" abscess is not a true abscess, but a lesion ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 810, July 11, 1891 • Various

... appetite return, and with it his health; see the new man. See her that was radiant with health and loveliness bloated and too early withering away; want of exercise or mental anguish, or some lurking disease has deranged the internal organs of digestion, assimilation, or secretion till they do their ill. Her blood is vitiated, her health is gone. Give her these PILLS to stimulate the vital principle into renewed vigor, to cast out the obstructions, and infuse a new vitality into the blend. Now look again—the roses ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 2, No 6, December 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... stomach several small pebbles, as in the gizzard of a bird. This slug, when disturbed, emits a very fine purplish-red fluid, which stains the water for the space of a foot around. Besides this means of defence, an acrid secretion, which is spread over its body, causes a sharp, stinging sensation, similar to that produced by ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin

... digestion is a fact familiar to almost every one; but, I believe, it is not so generally known, that it will with no less certainty retard and alter the nature of the secretion furnished by the breasts of the lactescent female. Violent affections of the mind will cause the milk to become thin and yellowish, and to acquire noxious properties: even the fond mother's anxiety, while hanging over the couch of her sick ...
— Remarks on the Subject of Lactation • Edward Morton

... structure of its hair, in its hairy muzzle, and in having interdigital glands on all its feet. Like goats, it has no sub-orbital gland nor distinct pit. Like the chamois, it has a gland below and behind the ear, the secretion of which has a caprine odor. It has also glands on the rump. It is like the giraffe in total absence of the accessory hoofs, even to the metapodials which support them. It differs from all hollow horned ungulates in having deciduous horns with a fork or anterior branch. There is not the ...
— American Big Game in Its Haunts • Various



Words linked to "Secretion" :   organic process, lacrimal secretion, autacoid, hypersecretion, spittle, humour, internal secretion, sebum, lachrymal secretion, galactosis, ganoin, nectar, liquid body substance, synovial fluid, mucus, pheromone, secrete, endocrine, royal jelly, intestinal juice, musk, biological process, perspiration, humor, body fluid, sudor, saliva, sweat



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