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Elasticity   /ˌilˌæstˈɪsəti/   Listen
Elasticity

noun
1.
The tendency of a body to return to its original shape after it has been stretched or compressed.  Synonym: snap.



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"Elasticity" Quotes from Famous Books



... comprises forms of the most subtle and tenuous Matter, the existence of which is not suspected by ordinary scientists. The Plane of Ethereal Substance comprises that which science speaks of as "The Ether", a substance of extreme tenuity and elasticity, pervading all Universal Space, and acting as a medium for the transmission of waves of energy, such as light, heat, electricity, etc. This Ethereal Substance forms a connecting link between Matter (so-called) ...
— The Kybalion - A Study of The Hermetic Philosophy of Ancient Egypt and Greece • Three Initiates

... to Naples, and, above all, his Prometheus Unbound, are some of the works inspired by a trust in the ideal democracy which was to be based on universal love and the brotherhood of man. This faith gives a bounding elasticity and buoyancy to Shelley's thought, but also tinges it with that disgust for the old, that defiance of restraint, and that boyish disregard for experience which mark ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck

... Bessie was small, her form inclining to fulness, her face childlike in dimpled smiles and innocent blushes,—betraying no lack of intellect, but most expressive of a quiet, almost indolent amiability. Zelma was large, but lithe, supple, and vigorous, with a pard-like freedom and elasticity of movement,—dark, with a subdued and changing color,—the fluttering signal of sudden emotion, not the stationary sign of robust health. She had hair of a glistening blackness, which she wore turned back from a strong, compact forehead, in the somewhat ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various

... is perhaps a fellow merchant of the defendant, or head of the firm to which the offender is consigned. The complainant is accommodated with a blundering interpreter, and the case is tried according to the foreigner's code, which, on such occasions, is endowed with more than wonted elasticity. If, contrary to all probability, the foreigner is convicted, the citizen has the satisfaction of seeing the foreign assailant placed in confinement on the consul's premises, or perhaps mulcted to a small ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 5, November, 1863 • Various

... one in the possession of his grandson, with a pendulum made of cast-steel. The manufacture of a pendulum of such a material at that early date is certainly curious; its still perfect spring and elasticity showing the scrupulous care with which it ...
— Industrial Biography - Iron Workers and Tool Makers • Samuel Smiles

... autumn grew longer and the days shorter, and with the waning daylight the water in the lake grew colder and colder. But Timar enjoyed bathing in it even more. His frame had regained its former elasticity, all traces of his illness had vanished, nerves and muscles were as steel; but his ...
— Timar's Two Worlds • Mr Jkai

... enable steam enough to be raised rapidly and continuously for the purpose of maintaining high rates of speed—the effect of high pressure engines being ascertained to depend mainly upon the quantity of steam which the boiler can generate, and upon its degree of elasticity when produced. The quantity of steam so generated, it will be obvious, must chiefly depend upon the quantity of fuel consumed in the furnace, and, by necessary consequence, upon the high rate of ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - Invention and Discovery • Various

... drop into a walk, and finally, to put elasticity back into their own stiffened limbs, ...
— The Texan Star - The Story of a Great Fight for Liberty • Joseph A. Altsheler

... built in 1870 she had a second deck, and this novel feature was adopted broadcast and eventually ushered in the many-deck liners now in use. The Servia, built in 1881, was the first steel ship and the advantage of its greater elasticity was instantly seen. Builders were wise enough to grasp the fact that with the increasing length of vessels steel ships would be able to stand a greater strain. Little by little the gain went on in every direction. Nevertheless, in spite of the intelligence ...
— Steve and the Steam Engine • Sara Ware Bassett

... fortitude shown by far inferior men under like disasters. But the moment the tremendous strain of his misfortunes was taken off, the vigour of his mind recovered itself. The buoyancy of his hopefulness, the elasticity of his energy, are as remarkable as his profound depression. When the end was approaching, his thoughts turned at once to other work to be done, ready in plan, ready to be taken up and finished. At the close of his last ...
— Bacon - English Men Of Letters, Edited By John Morley • Richard William Church

... Jack in a box). This genus is remarkable for the singular elasticity of the column stylis, which support the anthers, and which being irritable, will spring up if pricked with a pin, or other little substance, below the joint, before the pollen, a small powder, is shed, throwing ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris

... must ensue. Undue inflation, on the other hand, while it might give temporary relief, would only lead to inflation of prices, the impossibility of competing in our own markets for the products of home skill and labor, and repeated renewals of present experiences. Elasticity to our circulating medium, therefore, and just enough of it to transact the legitimate business of the country and to keep all industries employed, is what is most to be desired. The exact medium is specie, the recognized medium of exchange the world over. ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... Only here and there are women who see what a true Moloch fashion is; this tender-souled girl saw only a handsome habit which pleased the eye. Health bloomed in her cheeks, health shone from her eyes, her step had all the elasticity of youth. ...
— The Man on the Box • Harold MacGrath

... Mary was, according to Constance Elliot, a complete fraud. Except for her hair, which had temporarily lost some of its elasticity, she had never looked so radiant. She was out of bed on the ninth day, and walking in the garden on the twelfth. The behavior of the baby—who was a stranger to artificial food—was exemplary; he never fretted, ...
— The Nest Builder • Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale

... very stupid and boyish; but we were excited, I suppose, with the motion of our horses and the elasticity of the morning air. Just then Bob rose in his stirrups in answer to a sign from Denham, clapped his fist to his mouth, and brought forth a capital imitation of a trumpet's blast, which made the horses stretch out and tear away close together ...
— Charge! - A Story of Briton and Boer • George Manville Fenn

... extreme lessening in size made one comprehend, better than anything else, the immense proportions of the landscape. As for myself, I was alone: I had not even taken a guide, this was too favorite a resort for tourists, for the precaution to be necessary. For a wonder, I felt rather gay, with an elasticity of body and mind which I had not felt ...
— Gerfaut, Complete • Charles de Bernard

... out of the Body, have Landed him somewhere hereabout; but that he form'd his System wholly upon the mistaken Notion of Wind, which Learned Hypothesis being directly contrary to the Nature of things in this Climate, where the Elasticity of the Air is quite different and where the pressure of the Atmosphere has for want of Vapour no Force, all his Notion dissolv'd in its Native Vapour call'd Wind, and flew upward in blew Strakes of a livid Flame call'd Blasphemy, which burnt up all the Wit and Fancy of the ...
— The Consolidator • Daniel Defoe

... almost incredible statement that twenty-five new detachments have been established during the past year without any increase in the strength of the Force. The corps seems to have had all through the years an extraordinary elasticity. It seemed to be able to stretch itself over constantly growing areas of settlement and to meet the situation created by the increasing tide of immigration that was flowing over the great new West. That could only be effected because of the superior quality of the individual ...
— Policing the Plains - Being the Real-Life Record of the Famous North-West Mounted Police • R.G. MacBeth

... all that I have heard be true, much has somebody to answer for, that so little has been yet published. The two executors of Burke were Dr. Lawrence, of Doctors' Commons, a well-known M. P. in forgotten days, and Windham, a man too like Burke in elasticity of mind ever to be spoken of in connection with forgotten things. Which of them was to blame, I know not. But Mr. R. Sharpe, M. P., twenty-five years ago, well known as River Sharpe, from the [Greek: aperantologia] ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey

... "raced"—that is, whirled round high above the sea-level. The mate said, "She's gone, sir;" the captain replied, "Give her time." Once more she came up and shook herself; but it seemed as though her elasticity was gone. In truth, her deck had an ugly slant. During all this time the wind was growing, and the sea was gaining speed and strength. It could not very well last, and nobody knew that better than the captain. A blinding ...
— The Romance of the Coast • James Runciman

... led her to the door of their room, and himself went out to the breakfast-table with a brisk elasticity of tread. He would not have been the man he was, if even the pang of parting could altogether quench his ardour to ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver

... The sun was pouring forth a blaze of light and heat, such as is rarely experienced out of tropical countries. And yet, when the heat was most intense, there was an elasticity about the air which prevented any ...
— Frank Oldfield - Lost and Found • T.P. Wilson

... to meet in superiority the combined forces of Brest and Ferrol," and for that reason, he explained, he had given up the game as lost. But to Napoleon's unpractised eye it was impossible to see what it was he had to deal with. Measuring the elasticity of the British naval distribution by the comparatively cumbrous and restricted mobility of armies, he saw it as a rash and unwarlike dispersal. Its looseness seemed to indicate so great a tenderness for the distant objectives that lay open to his ...
— Some Principles of Maritime Strategy • Julian Stafford Corbett

... forces that count, and which prevail to keep all but the least serious within bounds. German life as a whole is so disciplined, so fitted together, so impossible to break into except through the recognized channels, that few men have the optimistic elasticity of mind and spirits, the demonic confidence in themselves, that ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier

... purchaser," thought Pascal, "and it's probable that the marquis, desperately straitened as he is, has committed one of those frauds which lead their perpetrator to prison?" The surmise was by no means far-fetched, for in sporting matters, at least, there was cause to suspect Valorsay of great elasticity of conscience. Had he not already been accused of defrauding Domingo's champions ...
— Baron Trigault's Vengeance - Volume 2 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau

... it can by possibility be granted, and, above all, when no coarse language unworthy the lips of an officer and a gentleman is used, the result is very different. All the subordinate authorities, and indeed the crew at large, then become insensibly possessed of an elasticity of obedience which exerts a two-fold influence, by reacting on themselves even more than it operates upon the commanding-officer whose judicious deportment has called out the exertion. I may safely add, that in the strict discipline which ...
— The Lieutenant and Commander - Being Autobigraphical Sketches of His Own Career, from - Fragments of Voyages and Travels • Basil Hall

... successions of chords, adding solemnity to the sound, and crowning a climax. A favourite instrument with Wagner is the harp, and he uses it freely in Tristan. The effect is, as it were, to place the orchestra upon springs, adding lightness and elasticity to the tone, as may be noticed in the accompaniment to the duet at the end of the ...
— Wagner's Tristan und Isolde • George Ainslie Hight

... inconceivable rapidity, the character of a gigantic mantle of rare flame, extending from horizon to horizon. Yet a day, and men breathed with freedom. It was clear that we were already within the influence of the comet; yet we lived. We even felt an unusual elasticity of frame and vivacity of mind. The exceeding tenuity of the object of our dread was apparent; for all heavenly bodies were plainly visible through it. Meantime our vegetation had perceptibly altered; and we gained faith, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various

... but slightly, to 119,629. How our merchant service could have satisfied the above-mentioned immense demand on it in addition to making good its waste and then have even increased is a thing that baffles comprehension. No such example of elasticity is presented by any other institution. Admiral Byam Martin spoke so positively, and, indeed, with such justly admitted authority, that we should have to give up the problem as insoluble were it not for other passages in the admiral's own evidence. It may ...
— Sea-Power and Other Studies • Admiral Sir Cyprian Bridge

... little vivacity; at times, however, it lights up, and then all the Gypsy beams forth. Old as she is, her hair, which is very long, is as black as the plumage of a crow, and she walks sturdily, though with not much elasticity, on her short, thick legs, and, if requested, would take up the heaviest man in Wandsworth or Battersea and walk away with him. She is, upon the whole, the oddest Gypsy woman ever seen; see her once and you will never forget her. Who is she? you ask. Who is she? Why, Mrs. Cooper, the wife of Jack ...
— Romano Lavo-Lil - Title: Romany Dictionary - Title: Gypsy Dictionary • George Borrow

... localities garrisoned by infantry, who are responsible for holding their ground at all costs and for inflicting the greatest possible loss on the enemy. A commander will require a position which affords elasticity for increasing the resistance as the attackers penetrate the defences, and depth will thus be essential. He will require a position wide enough to prevent the whole of his front being masked by a retaining attack ...
— Lectures on Land Warfare; A tactical Manual for the Use of Infantry Officers • Anonymous

... to Cambridge has done me such wonderful good, and filled my limbs with such elasticity, that I must get a little work out of my body before another holiday." This holiday seems to have been thoroughly enjoyed; he ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin

... and has been a mountain trapper between 40 and 50 years. He lived among the Crow Indians, where he married his wife, between thirty and forty years. He is about six feet in height, raw-boned and spare in flesh, but muscular, and, notwithstanding his old age, walks with all the erectness and elasticity of youth. His dress was of tanned buckskin, and from its appearance one would suppose its antiquity to be nearly equal to the age of its wearer. It had probably never been off his body since he first put it on. "I am," said he, "an ...
— What I Saw in California • Edwin Bryant

... upon natural elasticity than strength. Some people seem to be born with the ability to play rapidly. It is always a matter of the fingers, but is more a matter of the brain. Some people have the ability to think very rapidly, and when these people have good supple hands they ...
— Great Pianists on Piano Playing • James Francis Cooke

... among the hills. He wanted to think out and elaborate the great scheme that had unfolded itself before his dazzled eyes while the landlord was talking to him. He had seen the whole compass of it at a glance; he wanted now to consider it in detail. There was an elation in his eye and an elasticity in his tread that made him seem ten years younger than on ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 6, June, 1891 • Various

... seemingly broken a malign influence, and sleep—that for weeks had almost forsaken me—had yielded its deep refreshment for fifteen hours. Besides, I had not sinned against my life so many years as to have destroyed the elasticity of early manhood. When I had lain down to rest I had felt myself to be a weary, broken, aged man. Had I, in my dreams, discovered the Fountain of Youth, and unconsciously bathed in it? In my rebound toward health of mind and body ...
— A Day Of Fate • E. P. Roe

... conditions, and not in presence of the same difficulties. Still the effect of colonial prosperity—a prosperity alike of admirable achievement and boundless promise—is irresistible. It imparts a freedom, an elasticity, an expansiveness, to English political notions, and gives our people a confidence in free institutions and popular government, which they would never have drawn from the most eloquent assumptions of speculative system-mongers, nor from any other source whatever, save practical experience ...
— Studies in Literature • John Morley

... had been put. He had never heard that a man's life was the life of his arteries, but well he knew the meaning of those big upstanding veins. His heart had pumped too much blood through them at top pressure. They no longer did the work. He had stretched the elasticity out of them, and with their distension had passed his endurance. He tired easily now. No longer could he do a fast twenty rounds, hammer and tongs, fight, fight, fight, from gong to gong, with fierce rally on top of fierce rally, beaten to the ropes and in turn beating ...
— When God Laughs and Other Stories • Jack London

... sorrow, due partly to the growing knowledge, not pleasing to our vanity, that Margaret could get on very well without us, that we were not necessary to her life. Miss Forsythe recovered promptly her cheerful serenity, but not the elasticity of hope; she was irretrievably hurt; it was as if life was now to be endured. That Margaret herself was apparently unconscious of this, and that it did not affect much her own enjoyment, made it ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... passed forbidding him to sell it; the law is valid. A youth in Nebraska buys tobacco and paper and rolls a cigarette. The State afterward passes a law forbidding smoking by minors. It is a crime if he light it. Sufficient has, perhaps, been said to show the extraordinary scope and elasticity of this, the widest, vaguest, and most dangerous domain of our modern legislation, though perhaps we should add one or two striking cases affecting personal liberty, as, for instance, a citizen ...
— Popular Law-making • Frederic Jesup Stimson

... there were, in 1873, 11,255 locomotives at work in the United Kingdom, consuming about four million tons of coal and coke, and flashing into the air every minute some forty tons of water in the form of steam in a high state of elasticity. There were also 24,644 passenger-carriages, 9128 vans and breaks attached to passenger-trains, and 329,163 trucks, waggons, and other vehicles appropriated to merchandise. Buckled together, buffer to buffer, the locomotives and tenders would extend from London to Peterborough; ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles

... slightly back as if to retreat, but the elasticity of the manzanito against which she was leaning threw her forward once more. He again inhaled the perfume of her hair; he saw even the tiny freckles that darkened her upper lip and brought out the moist, ...
— A Drift from Redwood Camp • Bret Harte

... astonishment. To illustrate Haeckel's "love of truth" let it suffice to observe that in the second chapter he asserts that man is not only a true vertebrate, a true mammal, etc.—which indeed is passable—but even a true ape (having "all the anatomical characteristics of true apes"). With a wonderful elasticity he passes over the differences. What, indeed, is to be said, when he states as a "fact" that "physiologically compared (!), the sound-speech of apes is the preparatory stage to articulate human speech." It is so simply monstrous, that even Garner's ...
— At the Deathbed of Darwinism - A Series of Papers • Eberhard Dennert

... officers were mounted, and the king's horse stood before his door. Frederick, coming forward, with something of his youthful elasticity, tried to raise himself in the saddle; but he stopped, and with an expression of great suffering withdrew ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach

... the Slave-trade. He denied the assertion; and maintained that they were the effect of the trade itself. There was a point of endurance, beyond which human nature could not go; at which the mind of man rose by its native elasticity with a spring and violence proportioned to the degree to which it had been depressed. The calamities in St. Domingo proceeded from the Slave-trade alone; and, if it were continued, similar evils were to be apprehended in our own islands. ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the Abolition of the African Slave Trade by the British Parliament (1808) • Thomas Clarkson

... was among them. She had by no means lost her vivacity. There would always be a certain crispness, drollery, and keenness about her, and she had too much of her mother's elasticity to be long depressed; but instead of looking on with impatient criticism at good works, she had learnt to be ardent in the cause, and she was a most effective helper. To Armine, it was as if Fordham had given him back the sister of his childhood ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge

... upon his will; for almost unlimited power was surrendered to him of dispensing with formalities, freeing from obligations, shortening or lengthening the periods of initiation, retarding or advancing a member in his career. Ideal fixity of type, qualified by the utmost elasticity in practice, formed the essence of the system. And we shall see that this principle pervaded the Jesuit treatment of morality. The General resided at Rome, consecrated solely to the government of the Society, holding the threads of all its complicated affairs in his hands, studying the ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds

... Greater elasticity was given to the currency supply through the issuance of federal reserve notes, at the discretion of the Federal Reserve Board, to the several regional Federal Reserve Banks. These notes were to be obligations of the government and were expected to replace the former national bank ...
— The United States Since The Civil War • Charles Ramsdell Lingley

... she walked rapidly, while the jester tractably and silently followed. His strength, he found, had come back to him; the joys of freedom imparted new elasticity to his limbs; that narrow, cheerless way looked brighter than a royal gallery, or Francis' Salle des Fetes. Before him floated the light figure of the jestress, moving faster and ever faster down the dark corridor, now veering to the ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham

... saltation, vault, jump; resilience, elasticity, springiness; fount, fountain, source; cause, origin, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming

... specially exerted when matter is decomposed into fine particles. They are those forces by which these particles repel one another, and which, by their conflict with attractions, bring forth that movement which is, as it were, the lasting life of nature. This force of repulsion is manifested in the elasticity of vapors, the effluences of strong-smelling bodies, and the diffusion of all spirituous matters. This force is an uncontestable phenomenon of matter. It is by it that the elements, which may be falling to the point attracting them, are turned sideways promiscuously ...
— A History of Science, Volume 3(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams

... impracticable, while such a revival would also have accentuated the centralisation, which might be useful to the politician but was deplored by the social reformer. The debilitated class might, however, recover its elasticity if placed in congenial surroundings and invited to the sites which had once attracted the enterprise of the Greek trader; and Caius Gracchus's settlements in the south of Italy were means to this end. We have no warrant for pronouncing the experiment an utter failure. Some of these colonies lived ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge

... dawned, bright, sunny, cloudless, as was usual in beautiful Spain—a joyous elasticity was in the atmosphere, a brilliance in the heavens, which thence reflected on the earth, so painfully contrasted with misery and death, that the bright sky seemed to strike a double chill on the hearts of those most ...
— The Vale of Cedars • Grace Aguilar

... the extreme elasticity of such provisions are sufficiently manifest; and it is difficult to see how they can give any real assistance in practical legislation; while they leave the door open to the largest and most lavish expenditure. I have endeavoured in a minority ...
— Historical and Political Essays • William Edward Hartpole Lecky

... the day of darkness would ever come for him, when neither woman nor man would delight him, when no roses would have fragrance for him, and no song any spell to rouse him. Genius gives immortality in another way than in the vulgar one of being praised by others after death; it gives elasticity, unwearied sympathy, and that sense of some essence stronger than death, of some spirit higher than the tomb, which nothing can destroy. It is in this sense that ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida

... retorts will, when too late) that there was no particular merit in being a "what," that men were not necessarily "'ists" or "'ites," that thoughts did not fit into pigeonholes, and that if there was any merit in the matter it consisted rather in preserving free play and elasticity of mind. Because certain men had put certain ideas into the world it did not follow that every other man had definitely to accept or reject each and all of them, and to become an "'ite" or an "anti-'ite" in so doing. Plague take great men! What right had they ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill

... knowledge of the organs concerned therein. But if the method were a hard-and-fast one, it would not be correct. For there are so many individual differences, physical and temperamental, between pupils, that there must be elasticity and adaptability in a method that claims to ...
— The Voice - Its Production, Care and Preservation • Frank E. Miller

... physical tonic, and bracing their weak bodies they started in the direction allotted to each. Robert forgot, for a little while, the terrible hunger that seemed to be preying upon his very fiber, and, as he started away, showed an elasticity and buoyancy of which he could not have dreamed himself capable ...
— The Masters of the Peaks - A Story of the Great North Woods • Joseph A. Altsheler

... and the glass wall. The males, who are a little smaller, have a better chance of success than the females. Flattening themselves, making themselves thin, slightly spoiling the shape of the cocoon, which, however, thanks to its elasticity, soon recovers its first condition, they slip through the narrow passage and reach the next cell. The females, when in a hurry to get out, do as much, if they find the tube at all amenable to the process. But no sooner is the first partition passed than a second presents itself. This ...
— Bramble-bees and Others • J. Henri Fabre

... the waste of time and by its incrustations; that all ideals gain by a certain amount of vagueness, which allows the beholder to fill in the details according to his own spiritual needs, and that no ideal can be truly universal and permanents unless it have an elasticity which will allow of this process in the minds of those who contemplate it; that it cannot become thus elastic unless by the loss of no inconsiderable amount of detail, and that thus the half, as Dr. Arnold used to say, "becomes greater ...
— The Fair Haven • Samuel Butler

... his hand towards a high magisterial arm-chair which was to be my future throne, I felt a degree of self-confidence that surprised and encouraged me. Every thing was so novel, so fresh, it imparted an elasticity to my spirits I had not felt in Mrs. Linwood's luxurious home. Then there was something self-sustaining, inspiring in the consciousness of intellectual exertion and moral courage, in the thought that I was doing some little good in the world, that I was securing the approbation ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz

... be no hard and fast barriers about its settlement, which might cramp its expansion or fetter its usefulness. On the contrary they desire—while adhering, of course, to certain main lines of intellectual activity—to imbue it with such elasticity of adaptation as will enable it to successfully grapple with the changing necessities of changing times. The chief wants of to-day may not necessarily be the most pressing requisites of a century hence. Therefore, one ...
— Witchcraft and Devil Lore in the Channel Islands • John Linwood Pitts

... like men who had already conquered. The civil authorities spread banquets for them, compliments rained from the honeyed lips of chosen orators, poets sang sweet strains on the theme of their glories. This appeared a spontaneous outburst to the troops, and they marched with the elasticity of enthusiasm to their task. The curious may read to-day what the army could not know—that by Napoleon's personal decree the ministry of war had prepared every detail of that triumph, that the prefects acted under stringent orders, that three sets ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane

... whose voice betrayed her sex, was of middle height, and young, as far as one could judge from the elasticity of her movements. As M. de Richelieu had already remarked, she had adopted the costume best calculated to hide either graces or defects. She was dressed as a bat—a costume much in vogue, and very convenient, from its perfect simplicity, being composed only of two black skirts. ...
— The Conspirators - The Chevalier d'Harmental • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)

... upon the expression of the firmness of his convictions; the eye of the sufferer penetrates into the innermost soul of his consciousness; if he believes that he can discover any hint or shade of doubt, his fate is sealed; depression sets in; the secret springs that maintain the elasticity of the spirit give way, and the disorder has it all its ...
— The Man-Wolf and Other Tales • Emile Erckmann and Alexandre Chatrian

... variance with conditions. She was a most lovable young woman—there could be no question about that—and Ab had, as he looked upon her for the first time, felt the fact from head to heel. He thought of her as like the leopard tree-cat, most graceful creature of the wood, so trim was she and full of elasticity, and thought of her, too, as he looked in her intelligent face, as higher in another way. He was somewhat awed, but he was courageous. He had, so far in life, but sought to get what he wanted whenever it was in ...
— The Story of Ab - A Tale of the Time of the Cave Man • Stanley Waterloo

... has come in and announced that a patient has arrived; I must go.... I have grown to detest writing, and I don't know what to do. I would gladly take up medicine and would accept any sort of post, but I no longer have the physical elasticity for it. When I write now or think I ought to write I feel as much disgust as though I were eating soup from which I had just removed a beetle—forgive the comparison. What I hate is not the writing itself, but the literary entourage from which one cannot escape, and which one takes everywhere ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov

... the outward mark of an inward depravity. What Swift's notion of the refinement of women was may be judged by his anecdotes of Stella. I will not say that Dryden's prose did not gain by the conversational elasticity which his frequenting men and women of the world enabled him to give it. It is the best specimen of every-day style that we have. But the habitual dwelling of his mind in a commonplace atmosphere, and among those easy levels of sentiment which befitted Will's Coffee-house ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell

... the subsequent shrinkage which is likely to take place at the ends of the boards before it does at the middle. The pressure of the clamps may be depended upon to close up the middle, and, especially if dowels are inserted, as in No. 75, the joint will be strong enough to resist the elasticity of the boards. ...
— Handwork in Wood • William Noyes

... its effect upon the ice became very extraordinary and alarming. The sledges, instead of gliding along smoothly upon an even surface, sometimes ran with violence after the dogs, and shortly after seemed with difficulty to ascend the rising hill; for the elasticity of so vast a body of ice, of many leagues square, supported by a troubled sea, though in some places three or four yards in thickness, would, in some degree, occasion an undulatory motion not unlike that ...
— MacMillan's Reading Books - Book V • Anonymous

... the railway company. We must consider, for instance, that those men whom the company naturally selects as models are men who have had twenty to thirty years of service without accidents, but consequently they are rather old men, who no longer have the elasticity of youth and are naturally less able to think themselves into an artificial situation like that of such an experiment, and who have been for a long time removed from contact with book work. It is therefore not surprising, but only to be expected, that such ...
— Psychology and Industrial Efficiency • Hugo Muensterberg

... consumed to the ultimate drop and crumb while the Dunkerque train meandered serenely through a sunny, smiling Flemish countryside, somewhat revived their jaded spirits. After all, they were young, enviably dowered with youth's exuberant elasticity of mood; the world was bright in the dawning, the night had fled leaving naught but an evil memory; best of all things, they were together: tacitly they were agreed that somehow the future would take care of itself and all ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance

... The metacarpal and metatarsal bones form a considerable angle with the surface of the sole, while the digits, when supporting the weight of the body, are nearly horizontal" (M. and G.). This formation would naturally give elasticity to the foot, and, with the soft cushion spoken of by Professor Dawkins, would account for the noiselessness of the elephant's tread. On one occasion a friend and myself marched our elephant up to a sleeping tiger without disturbing the ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale

... time after time, God's government is an immutable thing; it changes not. The perfect idea of a human government is this—I do not say it is realised—to have certain fixed principles that are to abide, and then in the application of those principles to find an elasticity which shall meet every conceivable alteration of circumstances about us. That is the idea of a perfect human government; but human governments do not attain to it. The government of God, however, is perfect. The great principle is love—"God is love;" ...
— The Wesleyan Methodist Pulpit in Malvern • Knowles King

... made of either ordinary or Mafulu network, and are never coloured. When these, or any other bags, are made of Mafulu network, their elasticity is very great. No. 3 is always made of Mafulu network, and coloured. No. 4 is made of Mafulu network, and is sometimes coloured, and sometimes not. No. 5 is made of Mafulu network, and is sometimes coloured. The string used in making this bag is different from that ...
— The Mafulu - Mountain People of British New Guinea • Robert W. Williamson

... observe that Chaucer's best poetry, as well as that of the poets who followed him in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, was distinguished by its truthfulness to nature, by its expression in hearty and harmonious words of the finer emotions of the soul, and by the freedom and elasticity of its versification. We should learn that in the seventeenth century this style of poetry—sometimes called the romantic—was succeeded by another and very different fashion in poetic composition, introduced ...
— Six Centuries of English Poetry - Tennyson to Chaucer • James Baldwin

... Pierre had twisted these hairs together, as a man twists a mustache, and had trained them to grow obliquely across his cheek bone. He was a big fellow, for a Frenchman, and, as he walked towards Cleggett with a mincing elasticity of gait, he smirked and caressed this whimsical adornment. Cleggett, fascinated, stared at it as the fellow paused before him. Pierre, evidently gratified at the sensation he was creating, continued to smirk and twist, and then, seeing that he held his ...
— The Cruise of the Jasper B. • Don Marquis

... malady could have been prescribed than he found in this ceaseless mental occupation. It shook him out of his useless moonings, and brought his mind back to its old healthy elasticity, and when at last the decisive night came, and the play went with a roar from start to finish, he went to bed to sleep the clock round, and awoke ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray

... unfortunate elasticity of interpretation also for the time worked well. People who had fought it saw how their cherished views could after all be based upon it. All parties soon began, therefore, to swear by the Constitution as their political Bible. The fathers of the ...
— History of the United States, Volume 2 (of 6) • E. Benjamin Andrews

... Islands, and which Sails described to me as being so tough that a shipmate of his, who was once trying to gnaw through the drumstick of one when in Stanley Harbour, had his eye knocked out by the bone "fetching back" sharply through the elasticity of the tendon which his teeth missed hold of—a tough morsel to chew away at, if the yarn be ...
— On Board the Esmeralda - Martin Leigh's Log - A Sea Story • John Conroy Hutcheson

... upwards an inner rod. To this inner rod were jointed the stretchers, which in this construction were placed above the ribs instead of below, as in the ordinary form, beside which they were much shorter, so as to admit of their being concealed by the covering. By the elasticity of the spiral spring contained in the hollow stem, the inner rod was pressed outwards and lifted the stretchers, and by their means raised the ribs also, so that in its ordinary or natural state the umbrella was always open, and would ...
— Umbrellas and their History • William Sangster

... February 28, 1807, and, consequently, is in his sixty-third year, although he has lost little of the elasticity of his step or ...
— Cleveland Past and Present - Its Representative Men, etc. • Maurice Joblin

... pushed up the handkerchief between her face and her elbow and moved it about, with a vague idea of equalising her colour in one general tint, then blew her nose, and then sprang to her feet at once, with that wonderful elasticity which was always so surprising in her sudden movements. Moreover, she got up turning her face away from Margaret, and made ...
— Fair Margaret - A Portrait • Francis Marion Crawford

... however, that the feeling and principle of fear should exert an excessive influence upon youth. There is an elasticity, in the earlier periods of human life, that prevents long-continued depression. How rare it is to see a young person smitten with insanity. It is not until the pressure of anxiety has been long continued, and the impulsive spring of the soul has been destroyed, that reason ...
— Sermons to the Natural Man • William G.T. Shedd

... discussed it, else the ablest critique would command no general attention, and perhaps be, by the greater number, unread. That the writer should wait the flow of inspiration, or at least the recurrence of elasticity of spirits and relative health of body, will not seem unreasonable to the general reader; but to the inveterate hack-horse of the daily press, accustomed to write at any time, on any subject, and with a rapidity limited only by ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. II • Margaret Fuller Ossoli

... been the husband of a lovely woman nearly eight months. That you are happier now than the day you married her I well know, for without you could not be living. But I have your word for it too, and the returning elasticity of spirits which is manifested in your letters. But I want to ask a close question. 'Are you now in feeling as well as judgment glad that you are married as you are?' From anybody but me this would be an impudent question not to be tolerated, but I know you will pardon ...
— A Short Life of Abraham Lincoln - Condensed from Nicolay & Hay's Abraham Lincoln: A History • John G. Nicolay

... are taken out of their combinations it is impossible to say from which of her works they have been borrowed, their universal property being that of ever-varying curvature in the most subtle and subdued transitions, with peculiar expressions of motion, elasticity, or dependence, which I have already insisted upon at some length in the chapters on typical beauty in "Modern Painters." But, that the reader may here be able to compare them for himself as deduced from different sources, I have drawn, as accurately as I can, on the opposite plate, some ten or ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume I (of 3) • John Ruskin

... would be just as foolish to underrate the progressive forces which show now as ever in the history of Hinduism, that it is also capable of combining with a singular rigidity of structure and with many forms repugnant to all our own beliefs a breadth and elasticity of thought by no means inferior to ...
— India, Old and New • Sir Valentine Chirol

... touch the bill, orbits, feet, and former oil-gland at the root of the tail with the solution, and then you have given to the hawk everything necessary, except attitude and a proper degree of elasticity—two qualities ...
— Practical Taxidermy • Montagu Browne

... refrain from turning into the tempting openings that present themselves. Enter which you please, you cannot be wrong. These winding tracks, just wide enough for a couple of people on horseback or in a pony phaeton, carpeted with a mossy turf which springs under your feet with a delicious elasticity, and closed in with shadowy trunks and flowery thickets—are ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 29. August, 1873. • Various

... gospel that I seek to press upon you now is not merely a thing to die by, but it is the thing to live by; and it is the only power by which we shall be sure of overcoming the armies of the aliens. This confidence in Christ will take away from you no shred of your natural, youthful, buoyant elasticity, but it will save you from much ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... and distress does not seem to have imbittered his feelings or weakened the force and elasticity of his mind. He turned his calamities into commodities. If indigence threw him into the society of the ignorant, the wretched, and the depraved, he made the knowledge of low life lie thus obtained serve his purpose as dramatist or pamphleteer. Whatever may have been the effect ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various

... She laughed at the elasticity of my character. "Well, in the first place, I don't think my ideal would speak like that," said she. "He would be a harder, sterner man, not so ready to adapt himself to a silly girl's whim. But, above all, he must be ...
— The Lost World • Arthur Conan Doyle

... frontier town who would have graced any society, and with the elasticity of true culture adapted themselves to all circumstances. At my residence, which adjoined the Democrat office, I held fortnightly receptions, at which dancing was the amusement, and coffee and sandwiches the refreshments. At one of these, I had the honor to entertain Gov. Ramsey, Lieut.-Gov. ...
— Half a Century • Jane Grey Cannon Swisshelm

... dear granny is happy. You know she is all elasticity, and things are pleasanter here to her than to me, but I do not think she enjoys life as she did at home. It is hard to have her whole mission reduced to airing those four horses. We have tormented ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. II) • Charlotte M. Yonge

... pressure the vagina and womb may be compressed into one-third their natural length or crowded into an unnatural position. We can readily see, then, the effect of lacing or tight clothing. Under these circumstances the ligaments lose their elasticity, and as a result we have prolapsus or falling of ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis

... rent and settling with the broker from whom he had hired his poor furniture, did not exceed, by more than a few halfpence, the sum of twenty shillings. And yet he hailed the morning on which he had resolved to quit London, with a light heart, and sprang from his bed with an elasticity of spirit which is happily the lot of young persons, or the world would never be stocked with ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens

... the point of explosion it would not be one ten-thousandth of an inch. The condensation is only momentary; it may last the hundredth or the thousandth of a second, according to the suddenness and violence of the explosion; then elasticity restores the air to its original condition and everything is just as it was before the explosion. A thousand detonations can produce no more effect upon the air, or upon the watery vapor in it, than a thousand rebounds of a small boy's rubber ball would produce upon a stonewall. So ...
— Side-lights on Astronomy and Kindred Fields of Popular Science • Simon Newcomb

... These minute, supple, white hands, three of which I could hold in mine, have an iron power of finger, in the proportion, like that of Liszt. The keys, not the fingers, bend; she can compass ten keys by the span and elasticity of her fingers; this phenomenon must be seen to be believed. Music, her mother, and her husband: these three words sum up her character. She is the Fenella of the fireside; the will-o'-wisp of our souls; our gaiety; the life of the house. When she ...
— Women in the Life of Balzac • Juanita Helm Floyd

... me to," offered George and turned to leave the room. The door had scarcely closed behind him when a change came over the peddler. His old head rose from its drooping position, his bowed figure started up with youthful elasticity. ...
— The Case of the Golden Bullet • Grace Isabel Colbron, and Augusta Groner

... which locks behind me the prisonhouse of life, and opens before me the habitations of eternal night—tell me—oh, tell me—whither—whither wilt thou lead me? Strange, unexplored land! Humanity is unnerved at the fearful thought, the elasticity of our finite nature is paralyzed, and fancy, that wanton ape of the senses, juggles our credulity with appalling phantoms. No! no! a man must be firm. Be what thou wilt, thou undefined futurity, so I remain but true to myself. Be what thou wilt, so I but take this ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller

... was the enthusiasm of the men that they cheered him, cheered lustily! He touched his old forage cap, went stiffly by upon Little Sorrel. From the rear, far down the road, could be heard the voices of Bee, Bartow, and Elzey. Ardour, elasticity, strength returned to the Army of the Shenandoah. With a triumphant cry the First Brigade wheeled into the road that led eastward through the Blue ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston

... variety of needs and conditions it has organized itself into forms as different as Latin Catholicism and the Society of the Friends, so losing catholicity of organization, it has secured instead a catholicity of spirit and a vast elasticity of appeal which are the secret of its power and the assurance of its ...
— Modern Religious Cults and Movements • Gaius Glenn Atkins

... these motions are embodied, and showing the position of the positive take-up affected by those motions, a position which is preferred for very high speeds in this machine, especially for threads possessing little elasticity. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 598, June 18, 1887 • Various

... worthy to tie the shoe-latchets of Diana. The manners of the hunter are those of an elastic savage; but these lads shear sheep, raise hogs for the slaughter-pen, and seldom perform a nobler feat than felling a bullock. They have none of the elasticity which, coupled with strength, makes the grace of the man; and they walk as if perpetually in the faith that their corn-rows and potatoe-hills were ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms

... He who gives way to violent gestures will increase his rage; he who does not control the signs of fear will experience fear in a greater degree; and he who remains passive when overwhelmed with grief loses his best chance of recovering elasticity of mind. These results follow partly from the intimate relation which exists between almost all the emotions and their outward manifestations; and partly from the direct influence of exertion on the heart, and consequently ...
— The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals • Charles Darwin



Words linked to "Elasticity" :   temper, give, stretchiness, spring, resilience, stretchability, stretch, elastic, toughness, resiliency, bounce, physical property, bounciness, inelasticity, springiness



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