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Spiral   Listen
noun
Spiral  n.  
1.
(Geom.) A plane curve, not reentrant, described by a point, called the generatrix, moving along a straight line according to a mathematical law, while the line is revolving about a fixed point called the pole. Cf. Helix.
2.
Anything which has a spiral form, as a spiral shell.
Equiangular spiral,a plane curve which cuts all its generatrices at the same angle. Same as Logarithmic spiral, under Logarithmic.
Spiral of Archimedes, a spiral the law of which is that the generatrix moves uniformly along the revolving line, which also moves uniformly.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Spiral" Quotes from Famous Books



... construction and arrangement of stock, A, mouth piece, B, inhaling and exhaling tubes, C' C, plate, D, air tube, E', valve, E, spiral spring, b, valves, c c, rods, d d, fulcra, e e, arm, f, and rod, g, substantially in the manner and for ...
— Scientific American, Vol. 17, No. 26 December 28, 1867 • Various

... they consisted of conical mounds of earth, with square terraces. The principal mount was in the form of a cone, forty or fifty feet high, and two or three hundred yards in circumference at the base. It was flat at the top; a spiral track, leading from the ground to the summit, was still visible; and it was surmounted by a large and spreading cedar-tree. On the sides of the hill, facing the four cardinal points, were niches or centry-boxes, all entered from the ...
— Travels in North America, From Modern Writers • William Bingley

... sharp night, with a thin moon, like a scimitar, hanging bright in the sky, and a myriad of intense stars blinking in the heavens, above the steep roofs and spiral chimneys of Brandon Hall, and the ancient trees ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu

... The spiral form of many shells seem to have afforded a more frugal manner of covering the long tail of the fish with calcareous armour; since a single thin partition between the adjoining circles of the fish was sufficient to defend both surfaces, and thus much cretaceous matter is saved; and it is probable ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin

... tower, Tarrano was still occupied with us. Georg leaped to his feet. He left Argo lying there—ran over the spider-bridge; down a spiral metal stairway, across another bridge, and came upon the small park-like platform which stood at the bottom of the other tower. He had passed within sight of a few pedestrians. One of them shouted at him; ...
— Tarrano the Conqueror • Raymond King Cummings

... round and symmetrical, formed the center of the visible universe. On the marble table beside Andrews were some pieces of crisp bread with butter on them, a saucer of damson jam and a bowl with coffee and hot milk from which the steam rose in a faint spiral. His tunic was unbuttoned and he rested his head on his two hands, staring through his fingers at a thick pile of ruled paper full of hastily drawn signs, some in ink and some in pencil, where now and then he made a mark with a pencil. At the other edge ...
— Three Soldiers • John Dos Passos

... valley as beautiful as any in the Pyrenees, while it retains its own distinctive character, caused by the greater quantity of foliage, thus gaining in softness what it loses in grandeur. After crossing a fine bridge, about half-way up the valley, the road takes a spiral direction, called Le Limacon, the buttresses which support it being remarkable for the solidity and excellence of the masonry; and having made our way to the summit, the peak of the Monne above Cauteretz ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello

... have of late obtained the general name of Fire Towers, and our engraving represents the view of one of them, at Brechin, in Scotland. It consists of sixty regular courses of hewn stone, of a brighter colour than the adjoining church. It is 85 feet high to the cornice, whence rises a low, spiral-pointed roof of stone, with three or four windows, and on the top a vane, making 15 feet more, in all 100 feet from the ground, and measuring 48 feet in ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 333 - Vol. 12, Issue 333, September 27, 1828 • Various

... to shore. At last he thought he had reached a safe place. Glancing up and down the beach, he saw the opening of a cave out of which rose a spiral of smoke. ...
— The Adventures of Pinocchio • C. Collodi—Pseudonym of Carlo Lorenzini

... rather different picture. Here we reach definite survivals of Celtic traditions. There flourished in Britain before the Claudian conquest a vigorous native art, chiefly working in metal and enamel, and characterized by its love for spiral devices and its fantastic use of animal forms. This art—La Tene or Late Celtic or whatever it be styled—was common to all the Celtic lands of Europe just before the Christian era, but its vestiges ...
— The Romanization of Roman Britain • F. Haverfield

... relapse into barbarism and the cycle begin again. He did not himself state this conclusion directly or venture on any prediction. It is obvious how readily his doctrine could be adapted to the conception of Progress as a spiral movement. Evidently the corresponding periods in his cycles are not identical or really homogeneous. Whatever points of likeness may be discovered between early Greek or Roman and medieval societies, ...
— The Idea of Progress - An Inquiry Into Its Origin And Growth • J. B. Bury

... the superior Silurian limestone being a shale containing it, as may be evidenced by those visitors, who are persuaded to go under "the Sheet of Water," as the place is called where the Table Rock projects, and part of the cataract slides over it; for, on reaching the angle next to the spiral stair, a strong smell is plainly perceptible, something between rotten eggs and sulphur; and there you find a little trickling spring oozing out of the precipice tasting of those ...
— Canada and the Canadians - Volume I • Sir Richard Henry Bonnycastle

... clasp of the elm branches, and the whole landscape was in a pale, clear glow. Then Horace came. Rose started up. She stood for an instant irresolute, then she stole out of her room and down the spiral stair very noiselessly. She opened the front door before Horace could insert his key ...
— The Shoulders of Atlas - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... of an axis of hollow brass tube, eighteen inches in length, through which, upon a semi-spiral inclined at fifteen degrees, pass a series of steel wire radii, two feet long, and thus projecting a foot on either side. These radii are connected at the outer extremities by two bands of flattened wire—the whole in this manner forming the framework of ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... antelopes, with one species (A. nasomaculatus) from North Africa and Arabia. It is a little over 3 ft. high, yellowish white in colour, with a brown mane and a fringe of the same hue on the throat. Both sexes carry horns, which are ringed and form an open spiral. The addax is a desert antelope, and in habits probably resembles the gemsbuck. It is hunted by the Arabs for its flesh and to test the speed of their horses and greyhounds; it is during these hunting parties that the young are ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... the result would have been surprising, for they were as close as on an otter's skin, and growing in a peculiar manner. They looked as if a whirlwind had first attacked the crown of his head from behind, twisting up a spiral tuft in the centre, and laying the remainder flat, pointing forwards, along the sides. It seemed as if his hair had remained fixed and unmoved ever since. About his ears there were rows of small curls, like the ripple-marks on sand ...
— Skipper Worse • Alexander Lange Kielland

... before described, they had ceased to ascend the rapids in their canoes. He here found, as he had been told, below a traversing reach of bare breakers, a large, deep eddy of gently revolving water, in the centre of which lay tossing on the swell a broad spiral wreath of spotless foam. The hunter, in selecting these rapids, and especially this resting-spot of the ascending fish, as the place where he could safely warrant the taking of the needed supply of trout, had not spoken without knowledge; for it may well be doubted whether ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson

... one end to a round piece of bone, fourteen inches long, tapered to a point, and covered over with leather. This looks like a little whip, the handle of which is placed up and down the hair, and the strap wound round it in a number of spiral turns, making the tail thus equipped very much resemble one of those formerly worn by our seamen. The strap of this article of dress, which is altogether called a tŏglēēgă, is so made from the deerskin as to show, when bound round the hair, alternate turns of white and ...
— Journal of the Third Voyage for the Discovery of a North-West Passage • William Edward Parry

... newly planted trees is our greatest problem, which I control by a paper wrap made by cutting two inch sections from a 36 inch roll of cheap felt-base wall paper. It gradually weathers away during the second summer. I wrap from the top down in a spiral, and when I reach the bottom, I place a hand full of earth on the end of the paper. No tying is required. In this way I have reduced the mortality rate of young nut trees greatly. I am also a strong believer in cover crops and mulching, for ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Incorporated 39th Annual Report - at Norris, Tenn. September 13-15 1948 • Various

... Bontok Igorot Woman Elaborate Tattooing of the Head-hunter Bontok Igorot Constabulary Soldiers Bontok Igorot Slapping Game Gansas with Human Jaws as Handles Women and Girls Wearing Banana-leaf Skirts New School-house, Bontok Valley of the Rio Chico Kalinga Girl Looking Down the Rio Chico Spiral Camote Patch Madallam, Kalinga Headman Two Headmen of Lubuagan Kalinga Warriors Typical Kalinga House Conference at Lubuagan View of Lubuagan, Capital of Kalinga Kalinga Head-ax Igorot Shield Ifugao Carved Bowl Ifugao ...
— The Head Hunters of Northern Luzon From Ifugao to Kalinga • Cornelis De Witt Willcox

... he leaned, was about to make a quick move forward when a puff of smoke arose from below and sent him staggering backward, gasping with a terror I could hardly understand till I saw that the smoke had taken the form of a spiral and was sailing away before him in what to his disordered imagination must have looked like a gigantic image of the coil with which twice before on this day he had ...
— A Difficult Problem - 1900 • Anna Katharine Green (Mrs. Charles Rohlfs)

... Choulette if he had finished the portrait of Misery on his stick. Misery had now become a figure of Piety, and Choulette recognized the Virgin in it. He had even composed a quatrain which he was to write on it in spiral form—a didactic and moral quatrain. He would cease to write, except in the style of the commandments of God rendered into French verses. The four lines expressed simplicity and goodness. He consented to ...
— The Red Lily, Complete • Anatole France

... in the hazy distance, moving slowly down the valley, can be seen spiral columns of dust that resemble pillars of smoke. They ascend perpendicularly, incline like Pisa's leaning tower, or are beat at various angles, but always retaining the columnar form. They rise to great heights and vanish in space. ...
— Arizona Sketches • Joseph A. Munk

... near the clearing in the forest, he both trembled and rejoiced, at the thought of soon being able to deliver his message to the woodmen. Coming yet nearer, however, he no longer saw any blue smoke curling up in a thin spiral between the straight stems of the forest trees. Neither did he hear any sound of saws sawing timber, or the men shouting to their horses. The whole place was silent and deserted. When he reached the clearing, nobody was there. Even the huts had gone. He would have thought he had mistaken the ...
— A Book of Quaker Saints • Lucy Violet Hodgkin

... some large, in some small, in others wanting to the female, or altogether absent from the breed. The most important varieties in Europe are the Spanish breeds, some with fine, others with crisp wool, in which the rams have long spiral horns; the English breeds, which differ greatly in size and in the quality of the wool; and, in the southern parts of Russia, the long-tailed breed. The breeds of sheep in India and in Africa are remarkable for the length of their legs, a very convex forehead, and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various

... the slightest trace of inflammation, nor any thing unnatural to be discovered in the part; there was merely a round worm, which was situated in the upper part of the intus-susceptio. The intestine was brought together by means of six spiral stitches, after the manner of the glover's suture, and the end of the silk was allowed to hang out of the ...
— North American Medical and Surgical Journal, Vol. 2, No. 3, July, 1826 • Various

... after leaving this you get to a rising ground on the western bank where stands a single hut, and about half a mile in the forest there are a few more: some of them square and some round, with spiral roofs. ...
— Wanderings In South America • Charles Waterton

... to note, and on which the different machines employed are designed, is this: The punches or matrices acting on the chain at its different points of progress are put in motion by spiral springs worked by means of tappets or cams distributed over the circumference of a cylinder, having a rotary movement imparted to it by pulleys ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 447, July 26, 1884 • Various

... small, circular apartment with walls of masonry and a broken spiral stairway leading up to a landing beside a narrow window. Rain streamed down from this window and trickled in black rivulets all over the walls. A very narrow doorway opened out of this circular room, from which the door was broken away, leaving two massive wrought-iron hinges sticking ...
— Tom Slade with the Boys Over There • Percy K. Fitzhugh

... axis, with leaves arranged regularly around and along it. At the top of the axis in the male plant rise the antheridia, surrounded by an envelope of modified leaves called the perigonium. The antheridia are stalked sacs, with a single wall of cells, and the spiral antherozoids arise by free-cell formation from the cells of the interior. They are discharged by the bursting of the antheridium, together with a mucilage formed of the degraded walls of their ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XXI., No. 531, March 6, 1886 • Various

... and Kathleen, watching her, agreed that it was exactly like the shortening of a horn spiral snake between the closing hands of a child. Mabel's distant feet drew near Mabel's long, lean arms grew shorter Mabel's face was no longer half a ...
— The Enchanted Castle • E. Nesbit

... close that it seemed each hilltop would bring them into view, and as the detonation puffed across the landscape, one even fancied one could feel the concussion in one's ear. Up from a field ahead of us an aeroplane rose and, in a wide spiral, went climbing up the sky, now almost cleared, and presently disappeared in the north. Then, after satisfying a sentry that our papers were correct—such things could be done in those first days—we got into Villers-Cotterets. Instead ...
— Antwerp to Gallipoli - A Year of the War on Many Fronts—and Behind Them • Arthur Ruhl

... bells used in China during the Chou dynasty (1122-225 B.C.) for the purpose of giving military signals. A Chinese origin is still more clearly indicated by the decorative designs, which show a combination of the circle, the triangle, and the spiral, obviously identical with the decorative motive* on Chinese drums of the Han dynasty (202 B.C.-A.D. 220). The circle and the triangle occur also in the sepulchral pottery of the Yamato sites, and considering the fact together with ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi

... take an oblique direction, but if its fall be interrupted by several contrary powers, which act upon it alternately, I am no longer competent to determine what line it will describe. It may be a parabola, an ellipsis, spiral, circular, &c. this will depend on the impulse, it receives, and the powers by ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 1 • Baron D'Holbach

... Thus in many breeds the horns are deficient in the ewe, though this likewise occurs occasionally with the female of the wild musmon. In the rams of the Wallachian breed, "the horns spring almost perpendicularly from the frontal bone, and then take a beautiful spiral form; in the ewes they protrude nearly at right angles from the head, and then become twisted in a singular manner." (3/82. 'Youatt on Sheep' page 138.) Mr. Hodgson states that the extraordinarily arched nose or chaffron, which is so highly developed in several foreign breeds, is characteristic of ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication - Volume I • Charles Darwin

... itself, dazzles the vision, and for a moment lights up the gray cloth, the border gimp, and Volodya's figure cowering in a corner. At the same moment, directly above our heads, a majestic roar resounds, which seems to rise ever higher and higher, and to spread ever wider and wider, in a vast spiral, gradually gaining force, until it passes into a deafening crash, which causes one to tremble and hold one's breath involuntarily. The wrath of God! how much poetry there is in this conception of ...
— Lectures on Russian Literature - Pushkin, Gogol, Turgenef, Tolstoy • Ivan Panin

... itself is dead; it is a vast accumulation of the product of complete combustion, hydrogen burnt out. But just as dead worlds, which are the molecules of infinite space, shocking together, burst into spiral nebulae of flame which are the beginnings of live suns and planets and all luxuriant life thereon, so it seems as if the atoms of sea water, ever rushing to restless collision, burst continually into renewed life. All forms are in it, from the mightiest mammals ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard

... outcasts of the real world, an impossible world which has more than once painted the actual one in its likeness. What charming women of the provinces have since developed into a Eugenie Grandet, a Madame de Mortsauf, a Madame Claes! . . . What was wanting to Balzac in the hell of life, whose every spiral he descended, was virginity in love and ingenuousness in poetry. He always lost himself in the difficult places of style; and himself wept over the lack. When he wrote the Search for the Absolute, he was in quest of the ideal; but the ideal is that which one ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton

... closed and I was left standing alone in front of the closed door, and there was none around but myself. Then I was aware of a gust in the night-breeze blowing up for rain. Time had changed. Something had been taken from the future and something had been added to the past. The spiral gusts lifted the unseen litter of the street, and with them the harpies rose in my breast. And words impetuous would have burst out like the torrents of rain which the ...
— A Tramp's Sketches • Stephen Graham

... Returning by a spiral stairway, he carried the rebel flag in his hand. The proprietor of the hotel came out from a place of concealment, placed his double-barreled shot-gun nearly against Ellsworth's body and fired. The assassin ...
— The Life of Abraham Lincoln • Henry Ketcham

... Egyptians, Greeks—sought a solution of this august mystery in the doctrines of Transmigration and Anamnesis or Reminiscence. Nothing is whereto man is not kin. He knows all worlds and histories by virtue of having himself travelled the mystic spiral descent. Awaking through memory, the processes of his mind repeat the processes of the visible Kosmos. His unfolding is a hymn of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various

... towards the roots of her black hair. Wonderful hair was Flossie's. In those days she parted it in the middle and waved it symmetrically on either side of her low forehead; she brought it over her ears, covering all but the tips and the delicate pink lobes; she coiled it at the back in an elaborate spiral and twisted it into innumerable little curls about the nape of her neck. Unfortunately that neck was rather short; but she wore low collars which made the most of it. And then Flossie's features were so very correct. She had a correct little nose, neither straight ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair

... be conveniently divided into three groups: those which inhabit fresh water, those which breathe air and live on dry land, and lastly those which are confined to the sea. The land shells, or snails, have generally thin shells of spiral form and live upon vegetable matter, many of them laying small eggs which look like minute pearls. Their hiding places are under leaves in shady or moist places, under the bark of dead trees or stumps, ...
— Boy Scouts Handbook - The First Edition, 1911 • Boy Scouts of America

... me doin' the spiral dip at that. I don't mind indulgin' in a little foolish conversation now and then; but I hate to have it so one sided. And, honest, so far as I figured, he might have been readin' the label off a tea chest. So with that I counters with one of ...
— Odd Numbers - Being Further Chronicles of Shorty McCabe • Sewell Ford

... consider here only what may be called the quality of line. A line may be straight or broken, and if curved, curving continuously or brokenly, etc. That this quality of line is distinct from form may be shown by the simple experiment of turning a spiral—a logarithmic spiral, let us say—in different ways about its focus. The aesthetic effect of the figure is absolutely different in the different positions, and yet the feeling about the character of the line itself seems to remain the same. In ...
— The Psychology of Beauty • Ethel D. Puffer

... cigarette episode had been the weak bluff of one whose strength had suddenly deserted him. He had snatched at it to cover his weakness. But to the score or more who saw that spiral of smoke dissolving jauntily into air, no such thought was possible. The filmy wreath represented the acme of dare-devil recklessness, the final proof of gameness in John Beaudry's son. He had turned his back on a drunken ...
— The Sheriff's Son • William MacLeod Raine

... he watched the active movements of the little snake that suddenly raised itself like a piece of spiral spring, its spade-shaped head playing about menacingly about a foot ...
— Fitz the Filibuster • George Manville Fenn

... parlor, still making itself perceptible to sight by the starry gleam in which the motion of its wings enveloped it. The infant on the floor followed its course with his sagacious little eyes. After flying about the room, it returned in a spiral curve and settled again ...
— Mosses from an Old Manse and Other Stories • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... wings vigorously. No soaring now, no mounting heavenward, as I have seen him mount till his petty persecutor grew dizzy with the height and returned to earth. But the next day, with a fairly good breeze blowing, I watched two hawks for many minutes climbing their spiral stairway to the skies, till they became very small objects against the clouds, and not once did they flap their wings! Then one of them turned toward the mountain-top and sailed straight into the face of the wind, till he was probably over his mate or young, when, with half-folded ...
— Under the Maples • John Burroughs

... direct our telescopes to this Milky Way and find that what we took for nebula is for the most part an accumulation of countless millions of suns, each perhaps with its planets. Then, as we sweep the sky with our glass, we discover numberless little wreath-like spiral cloudlets, and find that they also are just such wreaths of countless millions of suns and solar systems, and that these seemingly tiny wreaths are revolving round some central body or system, which itself must revolve round some other, and that again round another ... until ...
— The Faust-Legend and Goethe's 'Faust' • H. B. Cotterill

... land,—the sideway movement of the Sand-Crab,—the backward walk of the Crawfish,—the almost imperceptible gliding of the Sea-Anemone over the rock,—the graceful, rapid motion of the Pleurobrachia, with its endless change of curve and spiral. In short, every Family of animals has its characteristic action and its peculiar voice; and yet so little is this endless variety of rhythm and cadence both of motion and sound in the organic world understood, that we lack ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 54, April, 1862 • Various

... picture is one of these jays mounting from branch to branch around the stem of a pine tree, from the lower limbs to the top, as if he were ascending a spiral staircase. This seems to be one of their regulation habits when they find themselves under inspection. If you intrude on their domestic precincts, their cry is quite harsh, and bears no resemblance to the quaint calls of the eastern jays; nor does the plaintive note of the eastern representative, ...
— Birds of the Rockies • Leander Sylvester Keyser

... of Copenhagen is a most singular structure, formerly used as an observatory. It consists of two hollow cylinders between which is a spiral, gradually inclined foot-way leading from base to top. It is quite safe for a horse to ascend, and the Empress Catharine is said to have reached the summit on horseback. From the top of the Round Tower, the red-tiled roofs of the city lie spread out beneath the eye of the visitor, mingled ...
— Foot-prints of Travel - or, Journeyings in Many Lands • Maturin M. Ballou

... least the impression that you are merely talking because to talk is expected of you, otherwise you are slightly bored. I know that the popular picture of an Ideal Dinner for Two is one of an exquisitely gowned woman sitting so close to the man-she-loves that only a spiral table decoration prevents their noses from rubbing; with a quart bottle of champagne reclining in a drunken attitude in a bucket of ice, and a basket of choice fruit untouched on the table. But if you examine ...
— Over the Fireside with Silent Friends • Richard King

... garlands of colored lights, the statues on the peristyle and the steps also bearing lights. The bridge Louis XV., by which this Temple of Hymen was reached, formed in itself an avenue, whose double rows of lamps, and obelisks and more than a hundred columns, each surmounted by a star and connected by spiral festoons of colored lights, produced an effect so brilliant that it was almost unendurable to the naked eye. The cupola of the dome of Saint Genevieve was also magnificently lighted, and each side outlined by a double row of lamps. At each ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton

... cloth, which was not unhaunted by the ghosts of dead dinners, he became chastely and divinely happy. His mind floated away into the empyrean; he saw visions of a far more perfect Society; dreamed dreams of the ascending spiral whose law others had groped at, but he would be the first to formulate; caught and fondled the secret of the whole great Design; reduced it to a rule-of-thumb to do his bidding; bestrode the whole ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison

... unmanageable tinnitus in our ears. Like God, it may be but a large, vague idea toward which we grope to snuggle up against. It seems implicit in the doctrines of evolution. But how do we know that in man the spiral of life has not reached its apex, and that now, even now, the vortices of its descent are not beginning? How do we know that the From-man is to be a Superman and not a Subman? How can we dare to ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.

... Portugal. Here in the first place he regaled his guest with the flank of a kid served with cucumber, and fruit gathered early, and some native wine, scarcely good enough for the Venusian bard, but as rich as ambrosia to Scudamore. Then he supplied him with the finest tobacco that ever ascended in spiral incense to the cloud-compelling Jove. At every soft puff, away flew the blue-devils, pagan, or Christian, or even scientific; and the brightness of the sleep-forbidden eyes returned, and the sweetness of the smile so long gone hence in dread of trespass. ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore

... for the album, and Panshine, finding himself alone, took a cambric handkerchief out of his pocket, rubbed his nails and looked sideways at his hands. They were very white and well shaped; on the second finger of the left hand he wore a spiral gold ring. ...
— Liza - "A nest of nobles" • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev

... form. From whichever side they are seen, the curves are the perfection of flowing line. The colouring and ornament of each is a marvel and delight. Some are black, with white spots arranged in lines following the curves, and with the top of the blunt spiral white. These "black-and-white marble" patterns are followed by a whole series in which purple takes the place of black, and the spots are modified into scales. Then comes a row of rose-coloured shells, ...
— The Naturalist on the Thames • C. J. Cornish

... the most interesting pieces of work I know in Italy. I give their entire arrangement in Fig. XVIII.: both shafts have the same section, but one receives a half turn as it ascends, giving it an exquisite spiral contour: the plan of their bases, with their plinth, is given at 2, Plate II.; and note it carefully, for it is an epitome of all that we observed above, respecting the oblique and even square. It was asserted that the oblique ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume I (of 3) • John Ruskin

... made me think of England. Great oak chests stood against the walls, hung with rusting swords and armour and empty powder-horns. A carven seat was beside the cold hearth, and in a corner was a tall spinning-wheel, and the carven stair led in a spiral ascent of ...
— The Heart's Highway - A Romance of Virginia in the Seventeeth Century • Mary E. Wilkins

... important divisions in the order given, it may be said that the drawing-in of the carriage is effected through the medium of the "scroll" bands, which are attached to the carriage at one end, and to certain spiral scrolls or fusees at the other end. The scrolls being revolved, wind the cords or bands round them, so pulling in the carriage. There are usually two back scroll bands and one front band, the latter being a sort of check band upon the action of the other two. What is termed the "rim ...
— The Story of the Cotton Plant • Frederick Wilkinson

... the flower forms in straight lines; and in the eye of the flower where the threads cross, the two are sewn down at a single stitch. The spiral stems a sort of laid cord. Flower in blue, sewn with blue and outlined with gold; leaves, a bright fresh green stitched with olive. Japanese. ...
— Art in Needlework - A Book about Embroidery • Lewis F. Day

... that the unsymmetrical spiral forms of the shells of these and of all the Mollusca probably resulted from the action of the laws of heredity, modified ...
— Lamarck, the Founder of Evolution - His Life and Work • Alpheus Spring Packard

... cement, oil refining and transshipment, salt production, rum, aragonite, pharmaceuticals, spiral-welded steel pipe ...
— The 1998 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... Celtic illumination is at once treated as a matter of ornament. When the human figure appears it is remorselessly subjected to the same rules as the rest of the work; the hair and beard are spiral coils, the eyes, nostrils, and limbs are symmetrical flourishes. Colour is quite regardless of natural possibility. The hair and draperies are simply patterned as compartments of green or blue, ...
— Illuminated Manuscripts • John W. Bradley

... length and 1/102000 of an inch in thickness; and among the largest is a bacillus causing an animal disease which is 1/2000 of an inch in length and 1/25000 of an inch in diameter. Among the free-living non-pathogenic forms much larger examples are found. In shape bacteria are round, or rod-shaped, or spiral; the round forms are called micrococci, the rod-shaped bacilli and the spiral forms are called spirilli. A clearer idea of the size is possibly given by the calculation that a drop of water would contain one billion micrococci of the usual size. Their structure in a general way conforms with that ...
— Disease and Its Causes • William Thomas Councilman

... patent spiral hat-pin, warranted to hold the hat on in any weather, and he had a number of the pins handsomely made to present to visitors of the sex naturally requiring that sort of adornment and protection. It was a pretty and ingenious ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine

... is somewhat larger than the common sheep, is covered with brownish hair instead of wool, and is chiefly remarkable for its huge spiral horns, resembling those of a sheep, but frequently three feet in length, and from four to six inches ...
— The Young Trail Hunters • Samuel Woodworth Cozzens

... The pace was set at an ambling run over rocks that had cut Ledyard's boots to tatters before nightfall. He was quite unarmed; and just at dark the way seemed to end at a sandy shore, where the waves were already chopping over on the rising tide, and spiral columns of smoke betrayed the underground mud huts of those very Indian villages that had massacred the Russians a quarter of a century before. The guides had dived somewhere underground and, while Ledyard stood ...
— Vikings of the Pacific - The Adventures of the Explorers who Came from the West, Eastward • Agnes C. Laut

... secure a good view of Paris, her public buildings, chief hills, parks, and boulevards, monuments, and embankments. An imitation of Trajan's column in Rome, is 142 feet in height, and thirteen feet in diameter. It is constructed of masonry, encrusted with plates of bronze, forming a spiral band nearly 300 yards in length, on which are represented the "battle scenes of Napoleon during his campaign of 1805, and down to the battle of Austerlitz. The figures are three feet in height and many of them are portraits. The metal was obtained by melting down 1,200 Russian and Austrian ...
— Questionable Amusements and Worthy Substitutes • J. M. Judy

... the New York Observer I will state that a despatch sent round the world in a spiral direction westward 1,200 times, would not really arrive at its destination four years before it started. It is only ...
— If, Yes and Perhaps - Four Possibilities and Six Exaggerations with Some Bits of Fact • Edward Everett Hale

... on a sarcophagus of white marble with a colonnade carved on the face, the pillars channeled and spiral. In the centre is Jesus Christ, seated on a throne, instructing His apostles and a crowd, which is seen through the arcade, at the right a man, on the left a woman, on the cover are the twelve apostles with ...
— In Troubadour-Land - A Ramble in Provence and Languedoc • S. Baring-Gould

... therefrom,—ACH GOTT, he might have been a "SUCCESS of a Fritz" three times over! He might have been a German Cromwell; beckoning his People to fly, eagle-like, straight towards the Sun; instead of screwing about it in that sad, uncertain, and far too spiral manner!—But it lay not in him; not in his capabilities or opportunities, after all: and we but waste time ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. III. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Hohenzollerns In Brandenburg—1412-1718 • Thomas Carlyle

... that out steps a clean-cut, cheerful-faced young gent in a leather coat, goggled helmet, and spiral puttees. No wonder I stood starin'. Not that I hadn't seen plenty like him before, but I didn't know the woods was so ...
— The House of Torchy • Sewell Ford

... inflict upon it. I could not perceive a scratch, he was too busily employed in that said chair in forming plans for cutting up Europe; within three yards of his table was a little door, or rather trap door, by which you descended down the oddest spiral staircase you ever beheld into the Library, which was low and small; the books were few of them new, almost all standard works upon history—at least I am sure 4 out of 5 were historical—all of his own selection, and each stamped, as in fact was everything ...
— Before and after Waterloo - Letters from Edward Stanley, sometime Bishop of Norwich (1802;1814;1814) • Edward Stanley

... brightly-decked insect when it alights from flight upon foliage, and brings its wings together over its back after the manner of butterflies. At the left-hand corner is seen the head of the insect, magnified, showing the long spiral tongue. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 508, September 26, 1885 • Various

... fluting. That of the volutes is my first business. The lines denoting the ascending spirals, and the pencil dots not yet touched, are my guides, and, with small hand saw, No. 30, I cut very carefully, by a dot at a time just low enough to touch the spiral line at its junction, cutting the bit away sideways, of course, just by the said line, and then a small piece more, until I arrive at the end of where the spiral ceases, at its base; but now that the volute is developing, I am enabled to ...
— Violin Making - 'The Strad' Library, No. IX. • Walter H. Mayson

... of the induction of electrical currents have already been recognised and described: as those of magnetization; Ampere's experiments of bringing a copper disc near to a flat spiral; his repetition with electro-magnets of Arago's extraordinary experiments, and perhaps a few others. Still it appeared unlikely that these could be all the effects which induction by currents could produce; especially as, upon dispensing with iron, almost the ...
— Experimental Researches in Electricity, Volume 1 • Michael Faraday

... in the world to lift a bucket. It was not exactly that she could not lift a bucket, but that she could scarcely close her mind down to the fact that a bucket had to be lifted. Some spring of willingness seemed to be temporarily absent. To close her two hands on a floor-cloth and twist it into a spiral in order to wring it thoroughly was a thing which she found herself imagining she could do if she liked, but had not the least wish to do. These duties, even when she was engaged in them, had a curious quality of remoteness. The bucket into which her hand had been plunged a moment before ...
— Mary, Mary • James Stephens

... steeple is of the nearest church to where you live, and multiply that height by the necessary number, you will get some idea of the magnitude of this prodigious column. The lightning rod, that came down the side of it in a spiral line, looked like a spider's web that had been, by chance, blown against the chimney ...
— Rollo in Scotland • Jacob Abbott

... stretching along the ground like a tunnel. Far away in the distance, where it narrowed towards the opening, there was a sparkling, white spot; if he could get there, he might escape. He seemed to be travelling day and night towards that chink along unending spiral lines running within the surface of the tunnel; he travelled under compulsion and with great effort, slowly, like a snail, although within him something leapt up like a rabbit caught in a snare, or as if wings were ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various

... Up the spiral stone stairway of the tower ran Rafaela, passing the first landing where burned an electric light. Jack was close at her heels. At length they reached the top landing, and stood before the single door there. It was of stout ...
— The Radio Boys on the Mexican Border • Gerald Breckenridge

... year 1500, but who was the inventor is disputed. They were, however, of little value as time-keepers, before the application of the spiral spring as a regulator to the balance; the glory of this excellent invention lies between Dr. Hooke and M. Huygens; the English ascribing it to the former, the Dutch, French, &c., to the latter. Some assert that pocket-watches ...
— A Catechism of Familiar Things; Their History, and the Events Which Led to Their Discovery • Benziger Brothers

... same names can be given to the homologous bones in widely different animals. We see the same great law in the construction of the mouths of insects: what can be more different than the immensely long spiral proboscis of a sphinx-moth, the curious folded one of a bee or bug, and the great jaws of a beetle? Yet all these organs, serving for such widely different purposes, are formed by infinitely numerous modifications of an upper lip, mandibles, and two pairs of maxillae. The same law governs the ...
— On the Origin of Species - 6th Edition • Charles Darwin

... laugh both the current eschatologies to scorn. And the higher they ascend, as they follow the path, the more vividly do they realise how unimaginably high above them is the summit of the mountain which the path is ascending in spiral coils. ...
— What Is and What Might Be - A Study of Education in General and Elementary Education in Particular • Edmond Holmes

... Rosa, that I shall demolish this prison, stone for stone!" and the unfortunate man, whose strength was increased tenfold by his rage, began to shake the door with a great noise, little heeding that the thunder of his voice was re-echoing through the spiral staircase. ...
— The Black Tulip • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)

... light. This is a concession. This done, he opens a drawer behind the counter and removes a little bronze casket. The casket is placed on the counter. Slowly as if in a deep dream Sing Lee lights a match and holds it inside the casket. A thin spiral of lavender smoke unwinds from ...
— A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago • Ben Hecht

... of the Royal Institution an ornamental lamp was placed on the library table, the elegant transparent paintings and spiral devices of which were kept in rotary motion by the action of the current of heated air issuing from the chimneys of the lamp, which contrivance is well adapted to a number of purposes ...
— Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 276 - Volume 10, No. 276, October 6, 1827 • Various

... they had reached the void of space, for, though the sun blazed with a splendour they had never before seen, the firmament was intensely black, and the stars shone as at midnight. Here they began to change their course to a curve beginning with a spiral, by charging the Callisto apergetically, and directing the current towards the moon, to act as an aid to the lunar attraction, while still allowing the earth to repel, and their motion gradually became the resultant of the two forces, the change from a straight line being ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds • J. J. Astor

... point the true house may be said to have commenced, for, just above this course, the opening for the door was left, and the little space in the centre for the spiral staircase which was to lead to the ...
— The Story of the Rock • R.M. Ballantyne

... in Vol. I., being only rounded a little on its side to fit it to the shaft. The next step was to place a leaf beneath each of the truncations (fig. 4, Plate II., San Giacomo de Lorio), the end of the leaf curling over at the top in a somewhat formal spiral, partly connected with the traditional volute of the Corinthian capital. The sides are then enriched by the addition of some ornament, as a shield (fig. 7) or rose (fig. 10), and we have the formed capital of the early Gothic. Fig. 10, being from the palace of Marco Querini, is certainly ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume III (of 3) • John Ruskin

... roared about the great verandas and into the glassless windows with all the vehemence of a New England snowstorm. It caught our well-protected punkah-lamps, and turned their broad flames into spiral columns of smoke. Ever and again a flash of lightning flared in our eyes, and revealed the water of the narrow straits ...
— Tales of the Malayan Coast - From Penang to the Philippines • Rounsevelle Wildman

... ball of white-hot iron is placed, and forced with a rotary motion through a spiral passage, the diameter of which is constantly diminishing. The effect of this operation is to squeeze all the slag and cinder out of the ball, and force the iron to assume the shape of a short thick cylinder, called "a bloom." This process was formerly performed by ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 11, - No. 22, January, 1873 • Various

... the long slant of the ledge, the more interested the bears became. Here the crows and gulls had not had time to capture all the prizes. There were savoury blue-shelled mussels clinging under the tips of the rocks; plump, spiral whelks between the oozy tresses of the seaweed; orange starfish and bristly sea-urchins in the shallow pools. All these dainties had shells that the cub's young teeth could easily crush, and they yielded meaty morsels that made beetles and grubs ...
— The House in the Water - A Book of Animal Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts

... of a Bunsen pile worked with bichromate of potash, which makes no smell; an induction coil carries the electricity generated by the pile into communication with a lantern of peculiar construction; in this lantern there is a spiral glass tube from which the air has been excluded, and in which remains only a residuum of carbonic acid gas or of nitrogen. When the apparatus is put in action this gas becomes luminous, producing a white steady light. The pile and coil are ...
— A Journey to the Interior of the Earth • Jules Verne

... climbing, climbing, writing an invisible spiral in the air. Bland half turned his head, and Johnny caught his meaning with telepathic keenness. They were going to loop, and Bland wanted him to yield the control and to watch closely how the ...
— The Thunder Bird • B. M. Bower

... the cabin window and nodded to the assistant pilot, who dropped overboard a signal smoke ball that left behind, as it fell, a greenish spiral trail. Straightway, the Commodore's seaplane, a mile distant, broke out a line of flags whereupon six flyers from six different points leaped ahead like sky hounds on the scent, shooting forward and downward towards their mighty prey. The remainder of ...
— The Conquest of America - A Romance of Disaster and Victory • Cleveland Moffett

... would not observe his presence, she was stone deaf and stone blind: there was no James. This nettled him. And she miscalculated him. He merely took another circuit, and rose another flight higher on the spiral of his spiritual egotism. He believed himself finely and sacredly in the right, that he was frustrated by lower beings, above whom it was his duty to rise, to soar. So he soared to serene heights, ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence

... as if his shoe belonged there, and back through space went the twisting oval, in a long spiral curve, while the cohorts of both teams loosed the yells that had been ...
— The Boys of Columbia High on the Gridiron • Graham B. Forbes

... earth through space is spiral, so that it is all the time advancing into new regions along with the sun. She is on a boundless voyage of discovery, and her human crew are born and die in widely separated tracts of space. Think of the distance over which ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XV., No. 388, June 9, 1883 • Various

... after year beheld the silent toil That spread his lustrous coil; Still, as the spiral grew, He left the past year's dwelling for the new, Stole with soft step its shining archway through, Built up its idle door, Stretched in his last-found home, and ...
— Standard Selections • Various



Words linked to "Spiral" :   helix, spiral nebula, spiral spring, voluted, twist, coiling, double helix, coil, economic process, turn, turbinate, spiral galaxy, ornament, decoration, helical, structure, coiled, gyrate, deflationary spiral, volute, ornamentation, corkscrew, construction, spiral ratchet screwdriver, inflationary spiral, curved shape, rotation, spiraling, rotary motion, whorl, whorled, hank



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