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Air-tight   /ɛr-taɪt/   Listen
Air-tight

adjective
1.
Having no weak points.  Synonym: airtight.  "An airtight argument"
2.
Not allowing air or gas to pass in or out.  Synonyms: airtight, gas-tight.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Air-tight" Quotes from Famous Books



... part of the dough may be baked plain. To the balance add caraway seeds, a little citron, nutmeg or a few currants. If carefully baked and cooled, these rolls may be stored in an air-tight box and they will keep for several days. To reheat, place in an oven with a pan of boiling water for ten ...
— Mrs. Wilson's Cook Book - Numerous New Recipes Based on Present Economic Conditions • Mary A. Wilson

... resembled those of the better class of habitants, but with a difference due to the greater prosperity of the family in preceding generations. The main room had a huge fireplace, used only occasionally, for there was an air-tight stove connected with the chimney just above it, to afford greater warmth in winter. The other rooms Were chiefly detached, although there was an entry-like porch on the south front of the living-room, and a huge door opening at the east end, both ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten

... that nice air-tight that we had in the other house put up. If we had a fire in this old thing the heat would all ...
— The Shoulders of Atlas - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... the intention to remain as much as possible within the cars, yet since it was probable that necessity would arise for occasionally quitting the interior of the electrical ships, Mr. Edison had provided for this emergency by inventing an air-tight dress constructed somewhat after the manner of a diver's suit, but of much lighter material. Each ship was provided with several of these suits, by wearing which one could venture outside the car even when it was beyond the atmosphere of ...
— Edison's Conquest of Mars • Garrett Putman Serviss

... good imagination to get into any real warm trouble—and by the time you have gotten out of it again you have had to double its horse-power. That was Petey's daily recreation. In the morning he would think up an absolutely air-tight reason for being expelled from Siwash as a disturber, an anarchist, a superfluosity and a malefactor of great stealth. That night he would go to his room and figure out an equally good proof that nothing had happened or that whatever had happened was an act of Providence and not traceable ...
— At Good Old Siwash • George Fitch

... paper shades, giving a pleasant glow to the bare walls. A red quilt with white stars, rather the worse for many washings, covered the bed, and a gay cloth the table, where a judicious arrangement of books and baskets concealed the spots. The little air-tight stove was banished, and a pair of ancient andirons shone in the fire-light. Grandma's last and largest braided rug lay on the hearth, and her brass candlesticks adorned the bureau, over the mirror of which was festooned a white muslin skirt, ...
— Jack and Jill • Louisa May Alcott

... is called a Whitehall row-boat. She was seventeen feet long, and rowed very easily, and she carried a small mast with a spritsail. By Uncle John's orders an air-tight box, made of tin, was fitted into each end of the boat, so that, even if she were to be filled with water, the air in the tin boxes would float her. She was painted white outside, with a narrow blue streak, and dark brown inside. Harry named her the Whitewing; ...
— Harper's Young People, June 1, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... together, bind them with cotton yarn (see Fig. 65) that has been coated with grafting wax. This wax is made of equal parts of tallow, beeswax, and linseed oil. Smear the wax thoroughly over the whole joint, and make sure that the joint is completely air-tight. ...
— Agriculture for Beginners - Revised Edition • Charles William Burkett

... the universe but the commonplace. Right, too, if you stick to the regular routes of travel. But the Nomad's different. I'm just a rover when I'm at her controls, a vagabond in space—free as the ether that surrounds her air-tight hull. And, take it from me, there's something to see and do out there in space. Off the usual ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, November, 1930 • Various

... in the parcel-post delivery lies in the fact that perishable products—such as dressed chickens—cannot be handled in warm weather. I think that if the Post Office Department would cut some of its red tape and permit the shipment of air-tight packages in air-tight conveyors this particular problem could ...
— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer

... store all papers for platinum printing in an air-tight tin containing chloride of calcium, which must be dried by heating from time to time. For the cold bath, however, it is important to have moisture present during printing, or it may be after printing and before development. If the paper is left in a dampish ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 711, August 17, 1889 • Various

... a glass flask half full of distilled water, in which were various animal and vegetable substances: he then closed it with a good cork, through which were passed two glass tubes, bent at right angles, the whole being air-tight: it was next placed in a sand bath, and heated until the water boiled violently. While the watery vapor was escaping by the glass tubes, the Professor fastened at each end an apparatus which chemists employ for collecting carbonic acid: that ...
— A Theory of Creation: A Review of 'Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation' • Francis Bowen

... on all sides. Lieutenant Shaw assigned me one room in his hut, and Bennoch another, and made us as comfortable as kind hospitality could; but the huts are very small, and the rooms have no size at all; neither are they air-tight, and the sharp wind whistles in at the crevices; and, on the whole, of all discomfortable places, I am inclined to reckon Aldershott Camp the most so. I suppose the government has placed the camp on that windy ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... ridge or mountains practicable. A raft constructed of such materials as we can get here floated but indifferently with our canteens, one leaky air pillow, and our boiling vessels inverted, some of which were not air-tight, is ready for crossing tomorrow, the things and the men that swim but indifferently; many of the alligators close by in ...
— McKinlay's Journal of Exploration in the Interior of Australia • John McKinlay

... an air-tight vessel, laying them the upper shell downward, so that the liquor will not run out when they open. Place this dish or vessel over a pot of boiling water where they will get the steam. Boil them rapidly until the shells ...
— The Whitehouse Cookbook (1887) - The Whole Comprising A Comprehensive Cyclopedia Of Information For - The Home • Mrs. F.L. Gillette

... His forty years of faithful, careful service on the sea was erased by the one mistake. It was a tremendous one, but let it be said to his credit that experts had declared that a ship with fifteen air-tight compartments could not sink, that if cut into halves both ends would ride the sea. The bulk-head was made to withstand any contact, and Captain Smith never dreamt of danger from icebergs. But when he saw his idol shattered, he did all a brave seaman could ...
— Wit, Humor, Reason, Rhetoric, Prose, Poetry and Story Woven into Eight Popular Lectures • George W. Bain

... and national economy, has been applied to this subject with its usual attendant success. The present method consists in the use of a common steam-boiler, of the capacity of from 100 to 150 gallons, from which the steam is conveyed by conductors into large wooden air-tight tubs, of 200 gallons capacity, containing the dried herb; from which it is conveyed, charged with the volatile principle of the plant, into a water-vat, containing the condenser. The water collected at the extremity of the condenser, although it does not readily commingle ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds

... air-tight cylindrical or oblong container placed below ground, in which raw sewage purifies itself by the inherent bacteria. The first stage takes place within the tank and the second in the porous pipes that constitute the disposal fields. From the moment household wastes ...
— If You're Going to Live in the Country • Thomas H. Ormsbee and Richmond Huntley

... allied vices. To cut the nut neatly an instrument is used like an enormous pair of nutcrackers with a sharp cutting edge. The lime should be made from oyster shells and it must be freshly burned and slaked. Exposure to the air soon spoils it, so a small, air-tight tin box is required to keep it in. Lastly, the betel leaf must be fresh, and in a hot climate green leaves do not keep their freshness without ...
— Concerning Animals and Other Matters • E.H. Aitken, (AKA Edward Hamilton)

... swimming about at ease beneath the surface, thoroughly aquatic in habits, but breathing a bubble of air which he carries about with him. When his supply is low he swims to a submarine castle of silk, so air-tight that he can keep it filled with a large bubble of air, upon which he draws from time ...
— The Log of the Sun - A Chronicle of Nature's Year • William Beebe

... truest household inspiration. I quite agree with one celebrated American author who holds that an open fireplace is an altar of patriotism. Would our Revolutionary fathers have gone barefooted and bleeding over snows to defend air-tight stoves and cooking-ranges? I trow not. It was the memory of the great open kitchen-fire, with its back log and fore stick of cord-wood, its roaring, hilarious voice of invitation, its dancing tongues of flame, that called to them through the snows of that dreadful ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... the automobile party inside the station. It was bitter cold in the room, for the winter chill had fallen with the close of the December day. The fire had died out in the air-tight iron stove in the room, and Mollie, Ruth and Grace could hardly ...
— The Automobile Girls At Washington • Laura Dent Crane

... the foundry that would not cast it for nothing. If only the wooden piece would serve for a moment's trial! But he knew that this was folly; it would not stand the enormous strain an instant, and the joints could not possibly be made air-tight. ...
— The Little City Of Hope - A Christmas Story • F. Marion Crawford

... you scorn our race; You captives of your air-tight halls, Wear out in-doors your sickly days, But leave us the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various

... opal glass table, and your eggs being tested by electric light; you might peer into huge refrigerators, ventilated by electric fans, and in which each tiny lamb chop reposed in a separate holder. Upon your own floor was a pantry, provided with hot and cold storage-rooms and an air-tight dumb-waiter; you might have your own private linen and crockery and plate, and your own family butler, if you wished. Your children, however, would not be permitted in the building, even though you were dying—this was a small concession which you made to a host ...
— The Metropolis • Upton Sinclair

... relentless finger, Points to the Purser's doom: He gulped the seltzer quickly— Then bust with an air-tight boom! ...
— A Fantasy of Mediterranean Travel • S. G. Bayne

... The whole of the shell of the vessel was double, with a packed space between the two skins; and each door opened into a small lobby, having another door on the farther side, to ensure that every part might be kept perfectly air-tight when required. ...
— To Mars via The Moon - An Astronomical Story • Mark Wicks

... door of the sitting-room, but paused on the threshold. Miss Phrony Marlin was sitting in the corner, weeping ostentatiously, with loud and prolonged sniffs. Her mother, a little withered woman like crumpled parchment, cowered witch-like over the air-tight stove, and looked at Calvin and then at her daughter, but ...
— The Wooing of Calvin Parks • Laura E. Richards

... much concerning the body's chemistry. A great improvement in the method of such work has recently been secured by the device of inclosing the person who is the subject of the experiment in a respiration calorimeter. This is an air-tight chamber, artificially supplied with a constant stream of pure air, and from which the expired air, laden with the products of respiration, is withdrawn for purposes of analysis. The subject may remain in the ...
— The Evolution of Modern Medicine • William Osler

... than slept. The wind howled, and the house rocked just as our old Litchfield house used to. The cold has been so intense that the children have kept begging to get up from table at meal-times to warm feet and fingers. Our air-tight stoves warm all but the floor,—-heat your head and keep your feet freezing. If I sit by the open fire in the parlor my back freezes, if I sit in my bedroom and try to write my head aches and my feet are cold. I am projecting ...
— The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe • Charles Edward Stowe

... southern winter had been long in abeyance, many of the Cherokees of Citico Town were still in their airy summer residences, but in one of the conical "winter houses," stove-like, air-tight, windowless, plastered within and without with the impervious red clay of the region, after the fashion of the great rotunda, Tscholens, in view of his sudden seizure and complaint of the gentle breeze of the south as freighted with the chill of the ...
— The Frontiersmen • Charles Egbert Craddock

... fro beneath the arch of intermingling boughs. Now they can only rustle under my feet. Henceforth the gray parsonage begins to assume a larger importance, and draws to its fireside,—for the abomination of the air-tight stove is reserved till wintry weather,— draws closer and closer to its fireside the vagrant impulses that had gone wandering ...
— The Old Manse (From "Mosses From An Old Manse") • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... to give me elaborate instructions as to the preservation of the seed-pod in a perfectly dry and air-tight tin box, etc., at which point Miss Hope unceremoniously bundled ...
— Allan and the Holy Flower • H. Rider Haggard

... thing it contained and preserve it from the dangers of fire. The lid, which closed with a spring catch, released by the pressure of a tiny button, was perfectly fitted so that the box was in all probability air-tight. ...
— The Green Rust • Edgar Wallace

... a degree found nowhere in the drowsy Tropics of Africa. Dread of cold led the Yakuts of the Lena Valley to glaze the windows of their huts with slabs of ice, which are better nonconductors of heat and cold, and can be made more perfectly air-tight than glass. Hence these windows have been adopted by Russian colonists. The Eskimo devised the oil lamp, an invention found nowhere else in primitive America, and fishing tackle so perfect that white men coming to fish in Arctic waters found ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple

... to let—rooms panelled in white and gold, resplendent with rococo mouldings, and crowded with abominable furniture, intended to be coquettish—gilt chairs, scalloped tables, embroidered lambrequins, ottomans smothered in plush and fringe, beds draped with curtains until they were all but air-tight—in ...
— Affairs of State • Burton E. Stevenson

... little roll of my letters, wrapped them in oiled silk, bound them with twine, and, having put them in the bottle, got the old Jew broker to stopper, seal, and make it air-tight. While obeying my directions, he glanced at me now and then suspiciously from under his frost-white eyelashes. I believe he thought there was some evil deed on hand. In all this I had a dreary something—not pleasure—but a sad, lonely satisfaction. The impulse under which I acted, the ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte

... there were no chimneys, for the negro housewives do their cooking out of doors in the cool of the evening. The boy noticed that, by dark, all these windows and doors were closed tightly, for the Barbadian negro sleeps in an air-tight room. He does this, ostensibly, to keep out ten-inch-long centipedes, and bats, but, in reality, to keep out "jumbies" and ghosts, of which ...
— Plotting in Pirate Seas • Francis Rolt-Wheeler

... force the inner door by any means, and reach the grating, of which he had an indistinct recollection, he might hope to make himself heard. But the oaken door was immovable, as solid as the wall itself, into which it fitted air-tight. Even if he had had the requisite tools, there were no fastenings to be removed: the hinges were set on ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various

... a fleshy membrane, much in the manner that the cushions of a cat's paw overlap its claws when the animal is in a state of tranquillity; and by means of the projecting membrane, the hollow interior was rendered air-tight, and the vacuum completed: but in dealing with the hand—a soft substance—the thorns were laid bare, like the claws of a cat when stretched out in anger, and at least a thousand minute prickles were fixed in the skin at once. They failed to penetrate ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller

... of strawberries, take one pint of sugar; add a tablespoonful or two of water. Let sugar dissolve; then add fruit, and let boil. Can immediately in air-tight ...
— Recipes Tried and True • the Ladies' Aid Society

... every dollar he has won. I'm going to break that man, Jepson, if only as an example to these upstarts who are hounding Navajoa. I've got him by the heels and—but never mind that, let's see if our plans are air-tight. ...
— Rimrock Jones • Dane Coolidge

... the bright brass knocker of obsolete shape brought a woman-servant to the door, those faded scents in truth saluted him like wintry breath that had a faint remembrance in it of the bygone spring. He stepped into the sober, silent, air-tight house—one might have fancied it to have been stifled by Mutes in the Eastern manner—and the door, closing again, seemed to shut out sound and motion. The furniture was formal, grave, and quaker-like, but well-kept; and had as prepossessing ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens

... Maelstrom his last, or is he still pursuing a terrible vengeance? Will the confessions of his life, which he told me he had written, and which the last survivor of his fellow-exiles was to cast into the sea in an air-tight case, ever be found? ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VIII • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.

... cooked the food which no homesteader's cabin afforded, and at night slept luxuriously in her own comfortable bed which nearly filled her other room. All day she gave herself untiringly to her profession. In the evenings she sat by her small air-tight stove, read, and tatted! ...
— Virginia of Elk Creek Valley • Mary Ellen Chase

... wanted, for he began at once: "I'm all the latest improvements—compensation balance and jewelled in four holes; perfect for time, beauty, and workmanship; sound, strong, and accurate; with keyless action, and large full-dial second hand; air-tight, damp- tight, and dust-tight; seven guineas net and five per cent, to teetotalers. There, what do ...
— The Adventures of a Three-Guinea Watch • Talbot Baines Reed

... day the harvested nuts must be placed in cold storage at temperatures between 32 deg.F. and 45 deg.F. It has been found that a nearly air-tight container is required in order to maintain a relative humidity of 100% and prevent too much drying of the nuts. A 50-pound tin lard can with one 20d nail hole in the side near the lid has proven to be a good container for large quantities and these same cans also make good shipping containers ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Incorporated 39th Annual Report - at Norris, Tenn. September 13-15 1948 • Various

... perspiration, a little instrument, called "the scraper," is passed over the skin, and at each turn deposits the perspiration in an air-tight ...
— Another World - Fragments from the Star City of Montalluyah • Benjamin Lumley (AKA Hermes)

... seed it is common practice to specify that it shall be of the new crop, because tree seed kept in ordinary storage loses its vitality materially. When properly stored in air-tight receptacles, however, as is now done by some seed dealers, it will retain its germinative power for several years with only slight depreciation. Moreover, fresh seed, if improperly treated, may be of very poor quality, so that the age of the seed is of little value in the ...
— Practical Forestry in the Pacific Northwest • Edward Tyson Allen

... to be tested are placed, together with a Standard, in an air-tight chamber, to which an air pump is applied, so that, by partially exhausting the air, the Standard can be made to read much lower than the lowest pressure to which marine barometers are likely to be exposed; and by compressing the air it can be made to read higher ...
— Barometer and Weather Guide • Robert Fitzroy

... an opening at the bottom. This theory is sustained by the natural habits of bees in their wild state. Wild bees, that select their own abodes, are found in trees and crevices of rocks. They usually build their combs downward from their entrance, and their abode is air-tight at the bottom; they have no air only what is admitted at their entrance, near the top of their dwelling, and with no current of air only what they choose to produce by fanning. The purest atmosphere in ...
— Soil Culture • J. H. Walden

... touching each other. The upper portions of the barn were first filled and then the lower tiers, until the tobacco hung within two or three feet of the bottom. The barn itself was made of logs, the interstices closely chinked and daubed with clay, so as to make it almost air-tight. Around the building on the inside ran a large stone flue, like a chimney laid on the ground. Outside was a huge pile of wood and a liberal supply of charcoal. Nimbus thus described the process of curing: "Yer see, Capting, we fills de barn chock full, an' ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee

... was all arranged in a private talk before they set out, and he could not say, when I put the question to him, why Manderson should have concealed his intentions by giving out that he was going with Marlowe for a moonlight drive. This point, however, attracted no attention. Marlowe had an absolutely air-tight alibi in his presence at Southampton by six-thirty; nobody thought of him in connection with a murder which must have been committed after twelve-thirty—the hour at which Martin, the butler, had gone to bed. But it was the Manderson who came back from ...
— The Woman in Black • Edmund Clerihew Bentley

... films were sealed in air-tight tin boxes before we left America, and thus the material was in perfect condition when the cans were opened. We used plates almost altogether in the finer photographic work, for although they are heavier and more difficult to handle than films, nevertheless the results obtained are very ...
— Camps and Trails in China - A Narrative of Exploration, Adventure, and Sport in Little-Known China • Roy Chapman Andrews and Yvette Borup Andrews

... huge globe with bulging windows of glass in the front and several curious arrangements on it at other points. To it he fitted the rubber tubing and a little pump. Then he placed the globe over his head, like a diver's helmet, and fastened some air-tight rubber arrangement about his ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve

... moments, the huddling together of their bodies—for, the Professor being a spare man, there was room for them all on the back seat—the pile of rugs, the serviceable and all but air-tight hood, induced a pleasant warmth and a pleasant drowsiness. Where they were being driven they knew not. The perfectly upholstered seat eased their limbs, the easy swinging motion of the car soothed their spirits. They felt that already they ...
— A Christmas Mystery - The Story of Three Wise Men • William J. Locke

... requisites necessary. Most persons use a small portion of common salt and lime in the manufacture of pot-ash. After the lye is run off it is boiled down into black salts, which are melted into pot-ash, cooled off, and packed into air-tight barrels ...
— Twenty-Seven Years in Canada West - The Experience of an Early Settler (Volume I) • Samuel Strickland

... meanwhile had apparently taken Aunt Plenty at her word, and was turning the house upside down. A general revolution was evidently going on in the green-room, for the dark damask curtains were seen bundling away in Phebe's arms; the air-tight stove retiring to the cellar on Ben's shoulder; and the great bedstead going up garret in a fragmentary state, escorted by three bearers. Aunt Plenty was constantly on the trot among her store-rooms, camphor-chests, and linen-closets, looking as if the new order of things ...
— Eight Cousins • Louisa M. Alcott

... boiler up to the necks of the bottles, and place it on a slow fire. Heat very gradually until the water is at boiling point. Then take each bottle out with a cloth, fill with boiling water kept close at hand, and cover while boiling with air-tight stoppers. Another method is to fill the bottles nearly full with cold water or thin syrup, and boil for fifteen minutes. Messrs De Luca have received silver and bronze medals from the R.H.S. for self-closing ...
— The Book of Pears and Plums • Edward Bartrum

... spread over a mat, and, when it cools, fragments of the yeast (u khawiang) are sprinkled over it. After this it is placed in a basket, which is put in a wooden bowl. The basket is covered tightly with a cloth so as to be air-tight, and it is allowed to remain in this condition for a couple of days, during which time the liquor has oozed out into the bowl. To make ka'iad um the material, the rice or millet from which the ka'iad hiar was brewed, is made use of. It is placed in ...
— The Khasis • P. R. T. Gurdon

... represents a method for covering an open vessel, air-tight, with a receptacle into which a substance may be sublimed from the lower vessel. The lettering explains the ...
— The Story of Alchemy and the Beginnings of Chemistry • M. M. Pattison Muir

... the fact of the great change in the dogmatic communities which has been going on silently but surely. The licensing of a missionary, the transfer of a Professor from one department to another, the election of a Bishop,—each of these movements furnishes evidence that there is no such thing as an air-tight reservoir of ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... simple in the extreme. Attached to a heavy leather belt of cartridges hung a two-pound ax and a sheath knife. In his pocket reposed a compass, an air-tight tin of matches, and a map drawn on oiled paper of a district divided into sections. Some few of the sections were colored, which indicated that they belonged to private parties. All the rest was State or Government land. He carried in his ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White

... also happened to be a chance to play a matinee in the town you were jumping to, you took your suit-case to the theater, lugged it from there after the performance, to the station, and spent an indefinite number of hours thereafter, in an air-tight waiting-room. Waiting, be it observed, for a chance to curl up in a seat in the day-coach, when the ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster

... Oriental night, spangled with large and brilliant stars, brilliant yet mellow, unlike the crisp scintillating presentment in northern latitudes, might have served as an illustration of an air-tight bowl, flung down relentlessly upon this part of the world. Inside this figurative bowl it was chill, yet the air was stirless. It was without refreshment; it became a labor and not an exhilaration to ...
— Parrot & Co. • Harold MacGrath

... sitting-room we had both a fireplace and an "air-tight" for the coldest weather. In grandmother Ruth's room there was a "fireside companion," and in the front room a "soapstone comfort," with sides and top of a certain kind of variegated limestone that held heat ...
— A Busy Year at the Old Squire's • Charles Asbury Stephens

... important undertaking, to which I replied. Mr. Waterhouse also spoke a few words on the same subject, and concluded with three cheers for the Queen and three for the Prince of Wales. At one foot south from the foot of the tree is buried, about eight inches below the ground, an air-tight tin case, in which is a paper with ...
— Explorations in Australia, The Journals of John McDouall Stuart • John McDouall Stuart

... concubines of the Sultan who had once been noted for their influence and beauty. The cages—I can think of no better description—were of red lacquer, about four feet square, with glass sides, and, so far as I could see, entirely air-tight. They looked not unlike large goldfish aquariums. As they were passing us the procession halted for a few moments and the panting coolies lowered their burdens to the ground. Whereupon Hawkinson, who is no respecter of persons when the business of getting pictures ...
— Where the Strange Trails Go Down • E. Alexander Powell

... such an extent that it was "browned" only by the developed tar vapors. A fire was next started within a building covered with a tar paper roof; the flame touched the roof boarding, which partly commenced to char and smoulder, but the bright burning of the wood was prevented by the air-tight condition of the roof; the fire gases could not escape from the building. The smoke collecting under the roof prevented the entrance of fresh air, in consequence of which the want of oxygen smothered the fire. The roofing paper remained unchanged. By making openings in ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 821, Sep. 26, 1891 • Various

... whereas he actually smoked a tilted Pittsburg stogy. We speak of him by the operatic name of Camille; he was prosaically called Campbell. You think he worked out of doors at rosy dawn; he painted habitually in an air-tight attic ...
— The Collectors • Frank Jewett Mather

... stairs to her chamber. In a plain, air-tight coffin, lay all that was left of the slave girl. Her hands were crossed on her bosom; her long, glossy, brown hair fell over her neck, and on her face was the look the angels wear. She seemed ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol III, Issue VI, June, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... of the remainder of the analysis, and the heating value of the fuel, a portion of this dried sample should be thoroughly pulverized, and if it is to be kept, should be placed in an air-tight receptacle. One gram of the pulverized sample should be weighed into a porcelain crucible equipped with a well fitting lid. This crucible should be supported on a platinum triangle and heated for seven minutes over the full flame ...
— Steam, Its Generation and Use • Babcock & Wilcox Co.

... woman, 'what does Mr. Tate have screens for?' Then, with her blamed, sassy little nose all crinkled up; 'my! how it does smell. I should think if Mr. Tate had anything, he'd have an air-tight ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock

... water for repairs; a wet dock is a place where vessels are kept afloat at a certain level while they are loaded and unloaded; a sectional dock is a contrivance for raising vessels out of the water on a series of air-tight boxes. A dock, then, is a place into which things are received; hence, a man might fall into a dock, but could no more fall off a dock than he could fall off a hole. A wharf is a sort of quay built ...
— The Verbalist • Thomas Embly Osmun, (AKA Alfred Ayres)

... for treating cloth differs materially from that originally proposed by Mr. Thompson. His plan was to use an air-tight keir in conjunction with a gas-holder. It is obvious that the "continuous" process would not answer for yarns; Thompson's keir is, therefore, employed for these and ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 530, February 27, 1886 • Various

... invited her to get into a boat; and the Chia consort descended from the chair and stepped into the craft, when the expanse of a limpid stream met her gaze, whose grandeur resembled that of the dragon in its listless course. The stone bannisters, on each side, were one mass of air-tight lanterns, of every colour, made of crystal or glass, which threw out a light like the lustre of silver or the ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin

... Even this brief sketch of treatment would be imperfect without at least a mention of it, and if it possesses all the value claimed for it by persons of judgment who have reported it to me, it will form an indispensable part of our apparatus on Lord's Island. This is an air-tight iron box of strongly-riveted boiler plates, with a bottom and top fifteen feet square and sides ten feet high; thick plate-glass bull's-eyes in each side sufficiently large to light the interior as clearly as an ordinary room; ...
— The Opium Habit • Horace B. Day

... with there would not even be any tinned peaches. Tinned peaches come from California. Somebody grows them there. That man must be kept going, fed, clothed sufficiently, housed, while the peach trees grow. He must be financed. Somebody else collects the peaches, puts them into tins, solders air-tight lids on them, pastes labels round them. He works with borrowed money. Somebody packs the tins in huge cases, puts them in trains, piles them into ships, despatches them to London, getting his power to do these things in ...
— Gossamer - 1915 • George A. Birmingham

... tarragon should be dried in June and July, just before flowering; mint in June and July; thyme, marjoram and savory in July and August; basil and sage in August and September; all herbs should be gathered in the sun-shine, and dried by artificial heat; their flavor is best preserved by keeping them in air-tight tin cans, or in tightly ...
— Twenty-Five Cent Dinners for Families of Six • Juliet Corson

... yeast infection, but it is still a moot point whether the cooler or its equivalent can be entirely dispensed with for all classes of beers. A rational alteration would appear to be to place the cooler in an air-tight chamber supplied with purified and sterilized air. This principle has already been applied to the refrigerator, and apparently with success. In America the cooler is frequently replaced by a cooling tank, an enclosed vessel of some depth, capable of artificial aeration. It is not ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various

... of these figures cannot be altered, ever so little, except for the worse. Besides possessing the desirable qualities already described, they answer as nurseries for the rearing of the young, and as small air-tight vessels in which the honey is preserved from souring or candying. Every prudent housewife who puts up her preserves in tumblers, or small glass jars, and carefully pastes them over, to keep out the air, will understand the value of ...
— Langstroth on the Hive and the Honey-Bee - A Bee Keeper's Manual • L. L. Langstroth

... universal remedy for febrile affections, and indeed for sickness of almost any kind; this is the temascal, a sort of hot air bath, shaped not unlike a sentry-box, and built of wicker-work, and afterwards plastered with mud until it becomes air-tight. There is one of these machines at the Weber Creek washings, which has been run up by the Indians during the last few days. One of them used it for the first time this afternoon, and to my surprise is still alive. After a great fire had been made up close to the door—a narrow ...
— California • J. Tyrwhitt Brooks

... it is made. As you set foot in the pinched passage, the sound of your tread proves the whole fabric a thing of lath and sand. The ceilings, the walls, confess themselves neither water-tight nor air-tight. Whatever you touch is at once ...
— The Nether World • George Gissing

... zinc-lined box or tank in which I had been accustomed to keep the specimens which were in process of preparation. I brought the burglar into the laboratory and deposited him in the tank, shutting the air-tight lid and securing it with a padlock. For further security I locked the cupboard, and, when I had washed the floor of the lobby and dried it with methylated spirit, all traces of the previous night's activities were obliterated. If the police wanted to look over the museum and laboratory, ...
— The Uttermost Farthing - A Savant's Vendetta • R. Austin Freeman

... times its own volume of water. If a filter paper, holding a wet precipitate, be placed upon a layer of this earth, it will become quite dry in a very short space of time. Mr. Austen also remarked that substances retain their heat for several days when placed in cork boxes. To keep a substance air-tight, it may be placed in a flask, the neck painted with a solution of india rubber in chloroform, and a plate of glass laid upon it. The solvent quickly evaporates, leaving a delicate film of rubber, which holds ...
— Scientific American, Volume XXXVI., No. 8, February 24, 1877 • Various

... with nutritious food in a condensed form. The sausage was made on strictly scientific principles. It contained peas and beef, and salt and pepper, and starch and gum-arabic, and it was stuffed in the skins by a machine which exhausted the air, so that it would be air-tight. Bradley said that his sausage would keep in any climate. You might lay it on the equator and let the tropical sun scorch it, and it would remain as sweet and fresh as ever; and Bradley said that there was more flesh-and-muscle-producing ...
— Elbow-Room - A Novel Without a Plot • Charles Heber Clark (AKA Max Adeler)

... to state here that the English invention of preserving meat in air-tight canisters had only recently been attempted in Sydney; and it was then to be regarded merely as an experiment to try whether a new and important article of colonial export could not be produced. ...
— Narrative Of The Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Commanded By The Late Captain Owen Stanley, R.N., F.R.S. Etc. During The Years 1846-1850. Including Discoveries And Surveys In New Guinea, The Louisiade • John MacGillivray

... was existing, with the intention of introducing within this barricade, by means of my condenser, a quantity of this same atmosphere sufficiently condensed for the purposes of respiration. With this object in view I had prepared a very strong perfectly air-tight, but flexible gum-elastic bag. In this bag, which was of sufficient dimensions, the entire car was in a manner placed. That is to say, it (the bag) was drawn over the whole bottom of the car, up ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... cheerfully. "But why should they worry you, old chap? Everything is securely packed in air-tight, zinc-lined cases, so that there was really no very serious cause for anxiety or fear, even of an explosion. Such a thing could not possibly happen except by the downright deliberate act of some evil—disposed ...
— The Cruise of the Thetis - A Tale of the Cuban Insurrection • Harry Collingwood

... translated into English, in 1770, by Van Engestroem. Bergman extended its use, and after him Ghan and the venerable Berzelius (1821). The blowpipe most generally used in chemical examinations is composed of the following parts: (Fig. 1.) A is a little reservoir made air-tight by grinding the part B into it. This reservoir serves the purpose of retaining the moisture with which the air from the mouth is charged. A small conical tube is fitted to this reservoir. This tube terminates ...
— A System of Instruction in the Practical Use of the Blowpipe • Anonymous

... a comfortable low-ceiled room, warmed by an air-tight stove, and furnished with a cot-bed, half a dozen chairs, a large wooden spittoon filled with saw-dust, a looking-glass, and a table. The floor was covered with strips of rag carpet, very neat and of a pretty, quiet ...
— The Communistic Societies of the United States • Charles Nordhoff

... close upon our heels even since our descent into the under world, assure us in soothing tones that the place is vacant. We are suspicious and persist in our investigation; still no response. The door is then forced by the "special," and behold four of the "seven sleepers" packed into this air-tight compartment, and insensible even to the hearty greeting we ...
— In the Footprints of the Padres • Charles Warren Stoddard

... superiority which they furnish for building construction, should not be polluted, since any pollution in the vicinity influences the quality of air which may get into the house. The method of preventing such ingress is plainly to water-proof the outside walls of the cellar and provide an air-tight floor over the cellar bottom. Methods of doing this will be ...
— Rural Hygiene • Henry N. Ogden

... to be dry the bottom of the drying cylinder is removed, and the cotton pushed out from the top by means of a piece of flat wood fixed on a broom-handle. It is then packed away in galvanised- iron air-tight cases, and is ready for the next operation. At some works the cotton is dried upon shelves in a drying house through which hot air circulates, the shelves being of canvas or of brass wire netting. The hot air must pass under the shelves and through the cotton, or the process ...
— Nitro-Explosives: A Practical Treatise • P. Gerald Sanford

... these the rations were carefully distributed, butter in the centre, whole biscuits near the top. Then the tanks were tightly closed, and one man operated with palm and sail-needle, sewing them up with twine. At the same time, a side-line was run in pemmican which was removed semi-frozen from the air-tight tins, and shaved into small pieces with a strong sheath-knife. Butter, too, arrived from the refrigerator-store and was subdivided into two-ounce or ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson

... cold that week and was more than usually exacting. She finally took to her bed in an air-tight room with a mustard plaster and an electric heating pad, expressing her intention of staying there until her cold was cured. "But you ought to have some fresh air," protested Hinpoha, "you'll smother in there ...
— The Camp Fire Girls at School • Hildegard G. Frey

... had just arrived from Pedro, bringing doctors and nurses, also several "helmets." These "helmets" were strange looking contrivances, fastened over the head and shoulders, air-tight, and provided with oxygen sufficient to last for an hour or more. The men who wore them sat in a big bucket which was let down the shaft with a windlass, and every now and then they pulled on a signal-cord ...
— King Coal - A Novel • Upton Sinclair

... served me breakfast and helped me dress. He, too, complained of inability to sleep. He had been bunked with Nancy in one of the rooms in the 'midship-house. Wada described the situation. The tiny room, made of steel, was air-tight when the steel door was closed. And Nancy insisted on keeping the door closed. As a result Wada, in the upper bunk, had stifled. He told me that the air had got so bad that the flame of the lamp, no matter how high it was turned, guttered ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London

... questions asked by the public. Some person asked him if the gulls flying around the ship were sea-gulls, and whether they had been brought on especially for the Fair. Another asked why the guns were plugged up at the end with pieces of wood. A marine said the plugs of wood made them air-tight, so that they wouldn't sink if they fell overboard. Maybe the man believed ...
— The Adventures of Uncle Jeremiah and Family at the Great Fair - Their Observations and Triumphs • Charles McCellan Stevens (AKA 'Quondam')

... acetates are being used for auto goggles and gas masks as well as for windows in leather curtains and transparent coverings for index cards. A new use that has lately become important is the varnishing of aeroplane wings, as it does not readily absorb water or catch fire and makes the cloth taut and air-tight. Aeroplane wings can be made of cellulose acetate sheets as transparent as those of a dragon-fly and not easy to see ...
— Creative Chemistry - Descriptive of Recent Achievements in the Chemical Industries • Edwin E. Slosson

... great blood-vessels are placed in and completely fill an air-tight, distensiblecage, which is ...
— The Four Epochs of Woman's Life • Anna M. Galbraith

... any of my readers nowadays would be stirred by an appeal to strike for his furnace or his air-tight stove. ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar

... before it is too late! Well, I suppose you are curious to know how an open boat like this can float in such an angry, boiling sea. I will tell you how it is accomplished; the sides of the boat are lined with hollow boxes of copper, which being perfectly air-tight, render her buoyant, even when full of water, or loaded to the ...
— Thrilling Stories Of The Ocean • Marmaduke Park

... Dr. Parsons is diligently engaged, this cold March afternoon, to the music of his crackling air-tight stove. He is deeply absorbed in his task, and we may peep in and not disturb him. He has a large number of books spread out before him; but looking them over, we miss Lange's Commentaries, Bengel's Gnomon, Cobb on Galatians,—those safe and sound authorities always provided ...
— Saint Patrick - 1887 • Heman White Chaplin

... thoracic duct, etc., to the vast circulatory system. Here it is yanked back and forth through the heart, lungs and capillaries, and if anything is left to fork over to the disease, it has to squeeze into the long, bony, air-tight socket that holds the spinal cord. All this is done without seeing the patient's spinal cord before or after taking. If it could be taken out, and hung over a clothes line and cleansed with benzine, and then treated with insect powder, or rolled in corn ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye

... soil, and the roots should be divided every two or three years. Chamomile roots are divided and subdivided in spring. Herbs should be harvested on a fine day, just before they are in full bloom. Tie them up in small bunches and hang in the shade to dry, then wrap in paper and store in air-tight vessels, or rub the leaves to a powder and keep in tightly-corked bottles. They will retain their ...
— Gardening for the Million • Alfred Pink

... found useful. For raffia use the Diamond dyes which are intended for wool or silk. Wash the raffia first. The color will be improved by soaking the raffia a day in alum water, one-half pound to the gallon. Dye once used can be kept in an air-tight dish and reheated ...
— Hand-Loom Weaving - A Manual for School and Home • Mattie Phipps Todd

... sandy beaches, the breaking of waves, and the rush of salt winds. In the centre of the mantel-shelf stood a stuffed sea-gull; on either side shells were banked. The fire-place was flanked by great branches of coral, and on the top of the air-tight stove there stood always in summer-time, when there was no fire, a superb nautilus shell, like a little pearl vessel. The corner what-not, too, had its shelves heaped with shells and coral and choice bits of rainbow lava from volcanic islands. Between the ...
— Jane Field - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman



Words linked to "Air-tight" :   tight, invulnerable



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