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Decompose   /dˌikəmpˈoʊz/   Listen
Decompose

verb
(past & past part. decomposed; pres. part. decomposing)
1.
Separate (substances) into constituent elements or parts.  Synonyms: break down, break up.
2.
Lose a stored charge, magnetic flux, or current.  Synonyms: decay, disintegrate.
3.
Break down.  Synonyms: molder, moulder, rot.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Decompose" Quotes from Famous Books



... itching, or tickling), without any idea of solidity or of figure: an excess of heat produces smarting, of cold another kind of pain; it is probable by this sense of heat the pain produced by caustic bodies is perceived, and of electricity, as all these are fluids, that permeate, distend, or decompose the ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. I - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin

... "soft-ware" and the "hard-ware," are very important. The former includes all vegetable and animal matters—everything that will decompose. These are selected and bagged at once, and carried off as soon as possible, to be sold as manure for plowed land, wheat, barley, &c. Under this head, also, the dead cats are comprised. They are generally the perquisites of the women searchers. Dealers come to ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Volume I. No. 8 - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 19, 1850 • Various

... narrator had the Genesis account as it now stands, and did not have to combine two separate statements. For surely if he had the separate Priestly and Jehovistic narratives we should now be able to decompose the Babylonian narrative just as easily as we do the one in Genesis. The Babylonian adapter of the Genesis story must have either been less astute than ourselves, and did not perceive that he had really two distinct (and "contradictory") narratives to deal ...
— The Astronomy of the Bible - An Elementary Commentary on the Astronomical References - of Holy Scripture • E. Walter Maunder

... a particular state rather, of a fungus or mould. There are many moulds which under certain conditions give rise to this torula condition, to a substance which is not distinguishable from yeast, and which has the same properties as yeast—that is to say, which is able to decompose sugar in the curious way that we shall consider by-and-by. So that the yeast plant is a plant belonging to a group of the Fungi, multiplying and growing and living in this very remarkable manner in the sugary fluid which is, so to speak, ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley

... action. Freshly ignited charcoal or two grains of a one per cent. alkaline solution of permanganate of potash may then be administered, in order, in the case of the former substance, to absorb the poison, or, in the case of the latter, to decompose it. This should be followed by oils or oleaginous purgatives, and the intestines should be cleaned and washed out with an enema of warm water ...
— Studies of American Fungi. Mushrooms, Edible, Poisonous, etc. • George Francis Atkinson

... been made plastic enough beforehand to adapt itself to all the known facts; and if we object that sodium cannot subsist in water because it instantaneously decomposes the latter, the answer is simply that the sodium ion does not decompose ...
— The New Physics and Its Evolution • Lucien Poincare

... Burgundy may be worth a bottle of Bordeaux; but the mark, being significant, leads to an exact knowledge of the price, since it gives the analysis. To calculate the price of an article of merchandise is to decompose it into its constituent parts; now, that is exactly what the trade-mark must do, if designed to signify anything. Therefore we are on the road, as I have said, to a general scheduling ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon

... also, that she believed in a God, and that she hoped for compensation from him for the miseries she had endured. She had now begun to decompose, and to become, in turn, a plant. She who had blossomed in the sun was now to be eaten up by the cattle, carried away in herbs, and in the flesh of beasts, again to become human flesh. But that which is called ...
— Selected Writings of Guy de Maupassant • Guy de Maupassant

... grew stifling, for the expended energy of the enemies' rays must needs be absorbed. It could not disintegrate them nor decompose their bodies, but the contacts were many and the liberation of heat enormous. They were suffocating! But Karl would not desist. They drove on, now beneath, now above an enemy ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, December 1930 • Various

... means death. They are vital by virtue of their tendency to resist the repose of inert matter; chemical activity disintegrates a stone or other metal, but the decay of organized matter is different in kind; living organisms decompose it and resolve it into its ...
— The Breath of Life • John Burroughs

... altered, remodelled, and finally made his own. Elated with success and piqued by the growing interest of the problem, they have left no bookstall unsearched, no chest in a garret unopened, no file of old yellow accounts to decompose in damp and worms, so keen was the hope to discover whether the boy Shakspeare poached or not, whether he held horses at the theatre door, whether he kept school, and why he left in his will only his second-best bed ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord

... his whole strength is given to a struggle with Nature. Besides, in our science results are perceivable; we can measure effects and predict them; whereas all things are uncertain and vacillating in the struggles of men and their selfish interests. We decompose the diamond in our crucibles, and we shall make diamonds, we shall make gold! We shall impel vessels (as they have at Barcelona) with fire and a little water! We test the wind, and we shall make wind; we shall make light; we shall renew the face of empires with new ...
— Catherine de' Medici • Honore de Balzac

... no fact; it only yields probabilities. Its end and result is to decompose documents into statements, each labelled with an estimate of its value—worthless statement, statement open to suspicion (strong or weak), statement probably (or, very probably) true, statement of ...
— Introduction to the Study of History • Charles V. Langlois

... cave, whither Ellen followed him. There was a fire, and some apparatus belonging to Paulett, which he had used in experiments upon the decreasing water of the basin. He knocked the stone out of its setting, and applied himself to decompose it over the fire. He put forth all his skill and all his power, and was successful; the diamond disappeared, and there remained a few drops of water. He looked at his wife and smiled; she raised her eyes to his, astonished and pleased, took ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 348 • Various

... material must be got rid of. It is easily accomplished by rotting. The fresh sponges are allowed to stand in the warm sun and very rapidly decay. Bacteria make their way into the sponge and thoroughly decompose the soft tissues. After a short putrefaction of this sort the softened organic matter can be easily washed out of the skeleton and leave the ...
— The Story Of Germ Life • H. W. Conn

... omitted in any case of dysuria during childhood. You will not infrequently discover a phimosis which interferes more or less with the discharge of urine and retains portions of the latter behind the foreskin, where it may decompose and give rise to an inflammatory condition of the prepuce, with painful dysuria.... This is also true of the occasional adhesion of the labia minora in little girls, like the similar adhesion of the foreskin in boys. It is almost constant in the first period of life, but sometimes ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino

... dense growth of tropical vegetation and multitudinous animal life in the Northwest, the waters necessarily became heavily charged with the naturally resulting carbonic acid gas, and this, acting on the limestone rocks, would decompose them, leaving a residual clay and taking the chief portions of the mineral components in solution, to be afterwards deposited according to circumstances and conditions; and these are indicated by the various ...
— Cave Regions of the Ozarks and Black Hills • Luella Agnes Owen

... Nature. Human life would on an average last 144 years. The aurora borealis, which now rarely appears in northern regions, would become permanently visible and be fixed at the Pole. It would give out, not only light, as at present, but also heat. It would decompose the sea water by the creation of citric boreal acid and convert it into a kind of lemonade which would dispense with the necessity of provisioning ships with fresh water. Oranges would grow in Siberia and tame whales would pull becalmed sailing-ships. The full indulgence of human ...
— British Socialism - An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical Proposals • J. Ellis Barker

... may connect an insulated line to a source of such currents, we may pass an inappreciable current over the line, and on any point of the same we are able to obtain a heavy current, capable of fusing a thick copper wire. Or we may, by the help of some artifice, decompose a solution in any electrolytic cell by connecting only one pole of the cell to the line or source of energy. Or we may, by attaching to the line, or only bringing into its vicinity, light up an incandescent lamp, an exhausted tube, or a ...
— Experiments with Alternate Currents of High Potential and High - Frequency • Nikola Tesla

... Recupero, a priest, that in sinking a pit near Iaci in the region of Mount Etna, they pierced through seven distinct formations of lava, with parallel beds of earth interposed between each stratum. He estimates that two thousand years were required to decompose the lava and form it into soil, and consequently that fourteen thousand years were needed for the whole series of formations. A little further on, he however furnishes data, showing to every candid mind on what very vague estimates he had before relied. He says the fertile district of Hybla ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft

... added little by little to rectified oil of lavender, placed on a glass paint-grinding plate, and the salt and oil are ground together with a muller. Care is required to prevent any appreciable rise of temperature which would decompose the compound aimed at, and it is for this reason that the salt is to be added gradually. Of course the absorption of water from the air must be prevented from taking place as far as possible. Finally, the compound is diluted by adding oil ...
— On Laboratory Arts • Richard Threlfall

... when they know and reflect that the body cannot remain any long time in the grave which it is placed in; I am sadly afraid that they will think twice before they will spend from thirty to several hundred pounds in merely putting a corpse into the ground to decompose. ...
— International Weekly Miscellany Vol. I. No. 3, July 15, 1850 • Various

... interesting in this connection to note that the organic matter in soil gradually disappears, just as a body buried in a grave will finally decompose. Experiments show that such organic matter as wheat straw or cloth in small pieces rots and decays in about three years. But this depends very largely on an excess of air. If the soil is open and the organic matter loose, oxidation ...
— Rural Hygiene • Henry N. Ogden

... Rovol to suspect the existence of the fourth order. Successive generations of the Rovol proved their existence, determined the conditions of their liberation, and found that this metal of power was the only catalyst able to decompose matter and thus liberate the rays. This metal, which was called Rovolon after the Rovol, was first described upon theoretical grounds and later was found, by spectroscopy, in certain stars, notably in one star only ...
— Skylark Three • Edward Elmer Smith

... has been made by our eminent English biologist, Mr. Alfred Russel Wallace. He says: "If individuals did not die they would soon multiply inordinately and would interfere with each other's healthy existence. Food would become scarce, and hence the larger individuals would probably decompose or diminish in size. The deficiency of nourishment would lead to parts of the organism not being renewed; they would become fixed, and liable to more or less slow decomposition as dead parts within a living body. The ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer

... condition in the ocean. Organic matter, he argues, dissolved from the surface of the earth, or from rocks percolating the strata, assumes a state in which it powerfully attracts oxygen; and waters holding this matter in solution readily decompose sulphates of lime and soda even when ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various

... alcohol lamp and some asbestos into the pulpit and told his audience that God would turn their souls into a substance resembling asbestos. He showed them that though the asbestos were heated red hot it did not decompose into ashes. Fortunately the day of the hell preacher has gone by, and if we believe the Bible which says that "in God we live and move and have our being," we can readily understand that a lost soul would be an impossibility, for were one ...
— The Rosicrucian Mysteries • Max Heindel

... I, now an L, and so on, till the poet observed that they completed the whole text of Scripture, which says, Diligite justitiam, qui judicatis terram—(Love righteousness, ye that be judges of the earth). The last letter, M, they did not decompose like the rest, but kept it entire for a while, and glowed so deeply within it, that the silvery orb thereabout seemed burning with gold. Other lights, with a song of rapture, then descended like a crown of lilies, on the top, of the letter; and then, from the body ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Volume 1 • Leigh Hunt

... that there will be no danger of air entering. 3. It is necessary to have a system of compression which does not require the constant introduction of grease or of foreign materials into the machine. 4. The liquid must be stable, it must not decompose by the frequent changes of condition, and it must not exert chemical action on the metals of which the apparatus is constructed. 5. Lastly, it is necessary, as far as possible, to remove all danger of explosion and of fire, ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various

... from Johnny's Selected Seeds (see Chapter 5 for their address). Poppy seed used for cooking will often sprout. Sown densely in October, it forms a thick carpet of frilly spring greens underlaid with countless massive taproots that decompose very rapidly if the plants are tilled in in April before flower stalks begin to appear. Beware if using poppies as a green manure crop: be sure to till them in early to avoid trouble with the ...
— Gardening Without Irrigation: or without much, anyway • Steve Solomon

... is a weak oxidiser, and therefore, although (p. 035) strong enough to destroy the colouring matter of the fibre is not strong enough to decompose the fibre itself. Hydrogen peroxide is sold as a water-white liquid, without any odour or taste. Its strength is measured by the quantity of oxygen which is evolved when one volume of the liquid is treated with potassium permanganate; the most common strength is 10 volume peroxide, but 30 and ...
— The Dyeing of Woollen Fabrics • Franklin Beech



Words linked to "Decompose" :   decomposition, dissociate, chemical science, separate, digest, biodegrade, chemistry, crack, natural philosophy, rot, physics, change integrity, hang



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