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Potential   /pətˈɛnʃəl/  /pətˈɛntʃəl/   Listen
Potential

adjective
1.
Existing in possibility.  Synonym: possible.  "Possible uses of nuclear power"
2.
Expected to become or be; in prospect.  Synonym: likely.



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"Potential" Quotes from Famous Books



... open to the Camp Commandant, when it became likely that H.Q. would move, to go sick, to retire from business, or else, locking, his front- door, shutting his shutters, disconnecting his telephone and confining to their billets all potential bearers of urgent messages, to isolate himself from the throbbing world around him. Being a soldier himself, however, he was undone by his own innate lust for overcoming difficulties. He was seen hovering about, as good as asking for the instructions he most ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, May 2, 1917 • Various

... my dear," remembering that he had a daughter of his own, nearly the builder's age, "we men have come to think of women primarily as potential mothers, and secondarily as people of affairs. And considering that motherhood is something that is denied to ...
— The Lord of Death and the Queen of Life • Homer Eon Flint

... auctorial virtues of distinction and clarity, beauty and symmetry, tenderness and truth and urbanity, precisely because his personal life is bereft of those virtues. Less than before, the accent is on the wastrel in Townsend; more than before, it is on the potential creator of beauty in him. The earlier readers will hardly count it as a fault that Mr. Cabell has contrived to make his novel, without detriment to any truth whatsoever, a far less unpleasant book. Sardonic it still is, by a necessary implication, but not ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al

... auxiliaries with these three modes form modal aspects of the verb. There are as many different aspects as there are auxiliaries. Aspects are sometimes spoken of as separate modes or called collectively the "potential mode." Tense expresses the time of the action or existence. The tenses are the present, the past, the future (employing the auxiliaries shall and will), the perfect (employing have), the past perfect (employing had), and the future perfect (employing shall have and will have). ...
— The Century Handbook of Writing • Garland Greever

... High Tension Alternating Currents.—Sparking distance of arc formed by a potential difference of 20,000 volts. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 810, July 11, 1891 • Various

... Cow computed a potential maximum stress-safety at the hub of something over two-tenths of a gee, and the two finally settled on one-tenth as well within ...
— Where I Wasn't Going • Walt Richmond

... taa-taa we scraped and slid over the faulted and tilted strata to which Whinney had referred until we reached the beach. High above us I could hear the anguished cry of the mother fatu-liva vainly seeking her ravished home and potential family. ...
— The Cruise of the Kawa • Walter E. Traprock

... foremost English writers live far from the town. Most of the more promising American poets of both sexes, however, have of late had little enough to do with the country. And the result is that the supreme songs of the twentieth century have remained unsung, to eat out the hearts of their potential singers. For fate has thrown most of our poets quite on their own resources, so that they have been obliged to live in the large cities, supporting life within the various kinds of hack-harness into which ...
— The Joyful Heart • Robert Haven Schauffler

... cheering the lives of the friends they leave on earth. Assured of this, as we are, all inactivity is unbearable to us. At the present moment we are, so to say, unemployed philanthropists; we are but a potential and passive blessing to our fellow-creatures, though we burn to be doing good to all! I appeal to my friend, Count Gambardella, here. Is this ...
— Stradella • F(rancis) Marion Crawford

... purposes. Or will fall short of it, it may be well to add, to the extent of its comparative disadvantage. For there may be many such marginal sites, some of which will fetch low rents, and others very high rents indeed; the same site being often of great potential utility for a large variety of occupations. Between any two occupations there will thus usually be a margin of transference, which we must conceive not as a point, but as an irregular line, upon or near to which there will be many ...
— Supply and Demand • Hubert D. Henderson

... with. With tribes just groping their way from barbarism towards civilization natural hygienic and moral laws have been trampled upon, and for this state of affairs the white man's rule is not wholly free from blame. It should be a crime to defile a potential mother and a woman should continue to be regarded as the cradle of the race and her person remain sacred and inviolate under the law, as was the ...
— Native Life in South Africa, Before and Since • Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje

... in India is not much, if any, less than that of the United States, and the average yield about the same—thirteen bushels per acre. The quality is excellent. America cannot afford to ignore this potential rival. The cheaper labor of India is quite an element in her favor, but cheap labor is not always cheap. One educated Minnesotan, with his machinery, must count for many spindle-shanked Hindoos with ...
— Round the World • Andrew Carnegie

... reliable reports, the Germans were slipping warships through the vaunted British net with the most astounding ease and frequency,)—and there was no one with the hardihood or desire to question his veracity; indeed, it was something of a joy to believe him, for was he not a living and potential document to prove that the merchant marine could outwit, outrace and outshoot the ...
— West Wind Drift • George Barr McCutcheon

... positively and the other one, which is insulated from it, will be charged negatively, as shown at B. On closing the switch the opposite charges rush together and form a current which flows to and fro between the metal plates. [Footnote: Strictly speaking it is the difference of potential that sets up ...
— The Radio Amateur's Hand Book • A. Frederick Collins

... under which he was heir apparent to a vast acreage of land whose title now rested in another man, his relative. He and Carington had worked the thing over conscientiously, and, there in New York, they had taken some pride in the thought that they had hacked out a good base for the operations of a potential Steering-Grierson Mining and Development Company. Here, in Missouri, in Madeira's office, before the on-roll of Madeira's manner, Steering was no longer sure that he and Carington had had anything to ...
— Sally of Missouri • R. E. Young

... brought in so little rental that it would be practical confiscation to compel them to make any improvements. Now, since the war boon struck the mills, and every place with four walls and a roof is full, they're saying they can't afford to make any change because of the frightful loss they'd suffer in potential profits. ...
— The Sturdy Oak - A Composite Novel of American Politics by Fourteen American Authors • Samuel Merwin, et al.

... read the sentence with a very clear feeling of this definite movement; in fact, to do so rather obscures the meaning. But the potential rhythm is there, and the reader with a keen rhythmic sense will be to some extent aware ...
— The Principles of English Versification • Paull Franklin Baum

... of unnecessary moves means operating along lines of least resistance, and any plan or method that will help to do away with unnecessary moves and make the necessary moves more potential will be received ...
— Evening Round Up - More Good Stuff Like Pep • William Crosbie Hunter

... of time, and sees the partner of many joys and sorrows not as she has become, but as she was, ay, and is to him, and will be to him, he trusts, through all eternity? There is no feeling in these Elizabethan worshippers which we have not seen, potential and crude, again and again in the best and noblest of young men whom we have met, till it was crushed in them by the luxury, effeminacy, and unbelief in chivalry, which are the sure accompaniment of a long peace, which war may burn up ...
— Sir Walter Raleigh and his Time from - "Plays and Puritans and Other Historical Essays" • Charles Kingsley

... the exception of a brief agitation about the year 1850,—due to special causes, which, though suggestive, were not adequate, and summarized as to results in the paralyzing Clayton-Bulwer Treaty,—the importance of the Central American Isthmus has been merely potential and dormant. But, while thus temporarily obscured, its intrinsic conditions of position and conformation bestow upon it a consequence in relation to the rest of the world which is inalienable, and therefore, to become operative, only awaits those changes in ...
— The Interest of America in Sea Power, Present and Future • A. T. Mahan

... out, his eyes saw many things never seen before. He coveted them all, especially such as shone in steel or brass or bright new wood. He hardly knew their names; but what beautiful playthings they would make. All movable objects are potential playthings to him. He makes them also, like the Creator, out of nothing; if he wants a horse he has it on the instant by straddling a stick or tying a string to a companion. He has epic uses for his father's tools, ...
— Confessions of Boyhood • John Albee

... from the nervous system? Some say not. But we do not need to venture such a devastating belief to know, well, that a dyspeptic is usually disagreeable. In potential character he may be equal to the cheeriest man who ever ate a hearty dinner. ...
— Up the Hill and Over • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay

... on his features and the carriage of his person as he went by them; with a result in their minds that can be of no import to us, men's general speculations being directed by their individual aims and their moods, their timidities, prejudices, envies, rivalries; but none could contest that he was a potential figure. If to know him the rising demagogue of the time dressed him in such terrors as to make him appear an impending Attila of the voracious hordes which live from hand to mouth, without intervention ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... its subject; that is the whole objection to its loose, unstructural form. Criticism bases its conclusion upon nothing whatever but the injury done to the story, the loss of its full potential value. Is there so much that is good in War and Peace that its inadequate grasp of a great theme is easily forgotten? It is not only easily forgotten, it is scarcely noticed—on a first reading of the book; I speak at least ...
— The Craft of Fiction • Percy Lubbock

... was reserved for traitors, actual and potential. It must have been brought into use only after the cult had fallen upon evil days, and then only when the Chief himself was in danger. Beating to death, hanging, and poison were the usual means ...
— The Witch-cult in Western Europe - A Study in Anthropology • Margaret Alice Murray

... Bautista de Anza established a military post at the Presidio beside the Golden Gate. In this same month, July, 1776, the Liberty Bell was ringing in Philadelphia. But there was no thought then that the embattled farmers of the Atlantic coast should inherit before many years this potential Spanish ...
— Fascinating San Francisco • Fred Brandt and Andrew Y. Wood

... proportion to their nearness to him. That has sometimes been the result of the Stoic cosmopolitanism. Aurelius, however, determined to beautify by all means, great or little, a doctrine which had in it some potential sourness, had brought all the quickness of his intelligence, and long years of observation, to bear on the conditions of social intercourse. He had early determined "not to make business an excuse to decline the offices ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume One • Walter Horatio Pater

... have never known it. Liberty is a thing which contains an infinite number of degrees and shades; it is measured by our capacity for the inner life. Liberty is a thing which goes on in us unceasingly: our liberty is potential rather than actual. And lastly, it is a thing of duration, not of space and number, not the work of moments or decrees. The free act is the act which has been long in preparing, the act which is heavy with our whole history, and falls like a ripe ...
— A New Philosophy: Henri Bergson • Edouard le Roy

... Canada first, these were the motives that had guided his life both in public service and as a private citizen (loud applause). In this country there was a place for all, no matter from what country they came, a place for the Ruthenian (enumeration of the various European and Asiatic states from which potential citizens of Canada had come). Let us join hands and hearts in building up a great empire where our children, free from old-world entanglements, free to develop in our own way our own institutions ...
— The Major • Ralph Connor

... day, which is a curious circumstance, seeing that the deficiency was rather over five thousand pounds; but the important fact is that he did get it and that he paid up all that he owed. So that he was only a potential defaulter, so to speak; and, discreditable as the affair undoubtedly was, it does not seem to have any direct bearing on this ...
— The Vanishing Man • R. Austin Freeman

... fill complement, expletive *Plus, pluris more surplus, plural Plico, plicatum fold reply, implicate Pono, positum place opponent, deposit Porto carry report, porter Potens, potentis powerful impotent, potential Prendo, prehensum seize comprehend, apprise *Primus, primatis first primary, primate Probo, probatum prove improbable, reprobate *Pugno fight impugn, repugnant Puto think impute, disreputable *Quaero, quaesitum seek require, inquest, exquisite *Rapio, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor

... common substance with the rest of the empire; that she is not fully to be trusted; and that the road to a more effectual union lies, not through stricter coercion, but through a system of instant defence making itself apparent to the people as a means of provisional or potential coercion in the proper case arising. One traitor cannot exist as a public and demonstrative character without many minor traitors to back him. To Great Britain it ought to cost no visible effort, resolutely and instantly to trample out every overture of insubordination ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various

... melting into the outer darkness, haunted him, and compelled him in dreams to rise and follow him through the alleys and byways of the crowded city. Again, it was a part of his morbid suspicion that he now invested the absent man with a potential significance and ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte

... forebodings, which seem to make our lives stretch before and behind us, beyond where we can see or touch anything, or trace the lines of connexion. Following the soul, backwards and forwards, on these endless ways, his sense of man's dim, potential powers became a pledge to him, indeed, of a future life, [55] but carried him back also to that mysterious notion of an earlier state of existence—the fancy of the Platonists—the old heresy of Origen. It was in this mood that he conceived those oft-reiterated ...
— Appreciations, with an Essay on Style • Walter Horatio Pater

... infractions, or they've been put out through guilt by association, or because they were born into a family already in that condition. Nothing like that happened to me. From early childhood I was trained by parents and teachers to discipline the projective potential of my mind into the System. Like every other paraNormal, I received my education by tapping Central for contact with information centers and other minds. But I was a fluke." His dark blue eyes twinkled. "Biological units are never so standardized ...
— Cerebrum • Albert Teichner

... into days of deep blue skies, splendid days full of the warmth of potential power; and nights filled with fragrance, nights of fierce beauty, and the glamour of golden moons, and the thrilling melody of that feathered Israfel, the mocking-bird. Through our open windows immense moths, spirits of the summer nights, drifted in on enameled and jeweled wings and ...
— A Woman Named Smith • Marie Conway Oemler

... communication. And then it stands nobly on a magnificent river, with high, overhanging rock, and a natural grandeur of position which has perhaps gone far in recommending it to those whose voice in the matter has been potential. Having the world of Canada from whence to choose the site of a new town, the choosers have certainly chosen well. It is another question whether or no a new town should have ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope

... drawing from your reader as much as he knows about the item he is seeking and the source of the citation. He must have some reason for believing the item exists, and we should be able to pass this information on to the potential lending library. ...
— The Long Island Library Resources Council (LILRC) Interlibrary Loan Manual: January, 1976 • Anonymous

... affords both force to procreate and to form the child, as well as matter for its generation; and in the menstruous blood there is both matter and force, for as the seed most helps the maternal principle, so also does the menstrual blood the potential seed, which is, says Galen, blood well concocted by the vessels which contain it. So that the blood is not only the matter of generating the child, but also seed, it being impossible that menstrual ...
— The Works of Aristotle the Famous Philosopher • Anonymous

... wondered. It was six years ago: if it had lived, it would have been as old as Carry. The arms which were folded loosely around the sleeping child began to tremble, and tighten their clasp. And then the deep potential impulse came, and with a half-sob, half-sigh, she threw her arms out, and drew the body of the sleeping child down, down, into her breast, down again and again as if she would hide it in the grave dug ...
— Tales of the Argonauts • Bret Harte

... miss-information [A] on all subjects from Mabinogion to Mustard is not to be entirely relied upon. Under these painful circumstances, and with the chance of still further abstractions from our common stock of potential learning, we have engaged a staff of consulting engineers, who contract, for certain considerations, to know every useless thing from A to Z, and every obsolete one from Omega to Alpha. In these gentlemen we repose unlimited ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various

... lawgiver—anything, so that he possesses the germ, the potential power to make others see, hear, or ...
— Sonnie-Boy's People • James B. Connolly

... one of the mysteries of history that for uncounted centuries man imagined that he only needed woman in her capacity as a wife and potential mother—that for long ages woman had no place in society except as wife or mother. Why it was so long before the spirit of God moved women to shatter that conception, I do not understand. But with its shattering there appeared for a time a tendency to imagine that men and women are in most things ...
— Men, Women, and God • A. Herbert Gray

... now free in the air has a certain initial velocity imparted by the winding-drum and line and also a potential energy corresponding to his height above the ground. If the flying or gliding machine is provided with a motor, he can utilize that in his further flight, and if it is a simple gliding machine without motor he can make a descending flight through the air to such distance as ...
— Flying Machines - Construction and Operation • W.J. Jackman and Thos. H. Russell

... form of Education is determined by the nature of the mind, that it really is nothing but what it makes itself to be. The mind is (1) immediate (or potential), but (2) it must estrange itself from itself as it were, so that it may place itself over against itself as a special object of attention; (3) this estrangement is finally removed through a further ...
— Pedagogics as a System • Karl Rosenkranz

... to certain matters which Hamilton is not discussing; but he hardly ever attempts to trace the history of Hamilton's own view, or the train of thought by which it suggested itself to his mind. And the result of this is, that Mr. Mill's interpretations are generally in the potential mood. He wastes a good deal of conjecture in discovering what Hamilton might have meant, when a little attention in the right quarter would have shown what ...
— The Philosophy of the Conditioned • H. L. Mansel

... eternal (compared with all other existent things), changes at the end of each Kalpa. He, however, who lies at the Root and who is endued with supreme might and puissance, lies in the waters when universal destruction comes (in the form of the potential Seed of all things). Kesava is that Creator of pure Soul who courseth through all the eternal worlds.[1386] Infinite and Eternal as He is, He fills all space (with emanations from Himself) and courseth through the universe ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown

... has been ratified on both sides of the ocean; it has received the sign manual of the sovereign of France, through His Imperial Majesty's principal Minister of State; it has been ratified by the Senate of this Republic; it has been sanctioned by Almighty God; and still we are told, in a voice potential, in the other wing of this capitol, that the arrogance of France,—nay, sir, not of France, but of her Chamber of Deputies—the insolence of the French Chambers, must be submitted to, and we must come down to the lower degradation of re-opening negotiations to attain that ...
— Life and Public Services of John Quincy Adams - Sixth President of the Unied States • William H. Seward

... majority in this Parliament. Such measures, though legal, would be unconstitutional; but, both by law and custom, and in actual daily practice, Parliament passes and enforces certain Acts affecting the self-governing Colonies, and wields potential and actual authority of all-embracing extent over the Empire and over the local ...
— The Framework of Home Rule • Erskine Childers

... an antiquated and mistaken idea of biography led the excellent as learned Bishop of Lincoln to abridge and mutilate so very many—the places not always marked. On this and the principle and motif which approve and vindicate the publication of the Letters of every really potential intellect such as WORDSWORTH'S, the accomplished daughter of SARA COLERIDGE has remarked: 'A book composed of epistolary extracts can never be a wholly satisfactory one, because its contents are not only relative and fragmentary, but unauthorised and unrevised. To arrest the ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth

... Army is astir again, simultaneously wending forward; spread over wide areas, like a vast cloud (potential thunder in it) steadily advancing on the winds. Length of the Army, artistically portioned out, may be ten or fifteen miles, breadth already more, and growing more; Schwerin always on the right or western wing, close by the Bober River as yet, through Naumburg ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... his position didn't appall him. Somehow, it had just the opposite effect. Perhaps it was because his strength had come back, and had brought with it the buoyancy that is natural to health. He could sense the vitality that surrounded him, poised, potential, waiting only the proper attitude on his part to become an active force. Something tremendous had happened to him, to make him feel like that. He was ...
— The Blind Spot • Austin Hall and Homer Eon Flint

... week about, cooking scant meals of the Commissariat beef, moistened with gravy made from them patent packets of Consecrated Soup, can you wonder that her burden of bitterness against W. Keyse, author of all her wrongs, instrument most actively potential in the jogging of her young man, bulked larger every day? She was not one to 'ave the world's 'eel upon 'er without turning like a worm. No Fear, and Chance it! Her bosom heaved under the soiled two-and-elevenpenny peek-a-boo "blowse" as she registered her vow. That there ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves

... for equal treatment and opportunity. Although some black papers objected to the movement's militancy, the major civil rights organization showed no such hesitancy. Roy Wilkins, a leader of the NAACP, later claimed that Randolph could supply only about 9,000 potential demonstrators and that the NAACP had provided the bulk of the ...
— Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 • Morris J. MacGregor Jr.

... the idea of power, dependent upon circumstances internal to the agent—can. May is simply permissive; can is potential. In respect to the idea of power residing in the agent being the cause which determines a contingent action, can is in the same relation to may as will ...
— A Handbook of the English Language • Robert Gordon Latham

... and those who have not; and I therefore contend that I am perfectly justified in wreaking my vengeance upon any of them who chance to fall into my power. And, in any case, if I should blow out your brains I shall at least have rid myself of one potential ...
— A Middy of the Slave Squadron - A West African Story • Harry Collingwood

... be placed after pigrum in order to throw it into an emphatic position. So gradus quin etiam, 13, where see note.—Possis. You, i.e., any one can. Z. 524. Cf. note II. 1, 10: laudares. So persuaseris in the preceding sentence. The subj. gives a contingent or potential turncan procure, sc. if you will would persuade, sc. if you should try. An indefinite person is always addressed in the subj. in Latin, even when the ind. would be used if a definite person ...
— Germania and Agricola • Caius Cornelius Tacitus

... daisy and the buttercup and clover bloom, and where corn will grow, is her proper domain. The agriculture of no country can long thrive without her. Not only a large part of the real, but much of the potential wealth of the land is ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various

... how the money from the accumulated dues was piling up in the Labor Union's war chest in the valley. He had proved what a trade solidarity in an industrial district could do for the men without strikes by its potential strength. Black powder, which killed like the pestilence that stalketh in darkness, was gone. Electric lights had superseded torches in the runways of the mines. Bathhouses were found in all the shafts. In the smelters the long, killing hours were abandoned and a score of safety ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White

... Kao Tsu and his supporters, as farmers from eastern China, looked down upon the trading population to which farmers always regard themselves as superior. The merchants were ignored as potential officials although they had often enough held official appointments under the former dynasty. The second group from which officials had been drawn under the Ch'in was that of the army officers, but their military functions had now, of course, ...
— A history of China., [3d ed. rev. and enl.] • Wolfram Eberhard

... been ten times a Dutchman; and if he heard of her intended emigration to America, as he possibly might have done, it most likely excited no particular emotion in his phlegmatic bosom. He could not have imagined that the exportation of a little singing-girl to New York should interfere with a potential venture of his own in fair linen. The gods kindly hid the future from his eyes, so that he might enjoy the comic vexation her lively sallies caused to Doctor Bartolo in the play, unknowing that she would be the innocent cause of a more serious provocation to himself, in downright earnest. He thought ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various

... knew his pots and pans, and how to make them fill his days if need be. With savory suppers and his care-free, Casey Ryan grin, he presently lulled them into accepting him as a handy man around camp, and into forgetting that he was at least a potential enemy. Afoot and alone in that unfriendly land, with his left hand smashed and carried in a sling, and on his tongue an Irish joke that implied content with his captivity, Casey Ryan would not have looked dangerous to more intelligent men than ...
— The Trail of the White Mule • B. M. Bower

... doctrine of evolution. It supposes the ether to be a uniform substance, and that the 'elementary' units are, broadly speaking, permanent whirlpools, or vortices, of this ether, the properties of which depend on their actual and potential modes of motion. It is curious and highly interesting to remark that this hypothesis reminds us not only of the speculations of Descartes, but of those of Aristotle. The resemblance of the 'vortex-rings' to the 'tourbillons' of Descartes is little more than nominal; but the correspondence between ...
— The Advance of Science in the Last Half-Century • T.H. (Thomas Henry) Huxley

... look back on it now, the period seems to me to be one of merely potential trouble. The men had not taken the pains to crystallise their ideas. I really think their compelling emotion was that of curiosity. They wanted to see. It needed a definite impulse to change that desire ...
— The Mystery • Stewart Edward White and Samuel Hopkins Adams

... not the same loveliness. Aunt Jane's repeated threat of school brooded over his sensitive spirit, like the thundercloud in the wood that was the colour of spilled ink. And the Boy-of-ten—a potential ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver

... mentally as a whole before committing any part of it to paper, balancing and reshaping until it fully satisfied his sense of unity and rhythm. Something of formality and ponderousness quickly becomes evident in his style, together with a rather mannered use of potential instead of direct indicative verb forms; how his style compares with Johnson's and how far it should be called pseudo-classical, are interesting questions to consider. One appreciative description of it may be quoted: ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher

... so-called potentiometer circuit, ABCDGEF. The section DGE of this circuit is a slide wire, uniform in resistance throughout its length. The scale is fixed on this slide wire. The current from the cell Ba as it flows through DGE, undergoes a fall in potential, setting up a difference in voltage, that is, an electromotive force, between D and E. There will also be electromotive force between D and all other points on the slide wire. The polarity of this is in opposition to ...
— The Working of Steel - Annealing, Heat Treating and Hardening of Carbon and Alloy Steel • Fred H. Colvin

... individual, human, subjective reality of it, dependent upon the temperament of the observer. There is the universal potential reality of it, existing in the objective mystery. And finally there is the ideal reality of it, objective and absolute as far as we are concerned, in the vision that I have called "the vision of the immortals." If it be asked why, in all ...
— The Complex Vision • John Cowper Powys

... him and his innate optimism was over-clouded. This seemed no longer the Raymond Ironsyde he had known from childhood. It was not even the Raymond of a month ago. He perceived how potential qualities of mind had awakened in the new conditions. He was philosophically interested. So deeply indeed did the psychological features of the change occupy his reflections, that for a time he overlooked their immediate and crushing ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts

... wouldn't be a real true woman if you weren't!" she accused. A reluctant dimple tugged at Nina's pouting mouth. She did not dislike the idea of potential despotism, of the travelled, experienced woman of the world, confident ...
— Harriet and the Piper - (Norris Volume XI) • Kathleen Norris

... the door and went into the dining-room, where the stove was ostentatiously roaring over its small logs and its lozenges of peat, But even here the fire had been so recently lighted that the warmth was potential rather than actual. By stooping down before the stove, and pressing his shoulder against its brass doors, Colville managed to lull his enemy, while he studied the figures of the woman-headed, woman-breasted hounds developing into vines and ...
— Indian Summer • William D. Howells

... soil moisture content; stored water capabilities; increasing domestic, municipal and industrial water economies; while the meteorology men would venture even farther into left field via data, formula and Ouija board, to increase the potential ...
— The Thirst Quenchers • Rick Raphael

... caterpillar; those only, who feel in their own spirits the same instinct, which impels the chrysalis of the horned fly to leave room in its involucrum for antenna, yet to come. They know and feel, that the potential works in them, even as the actual works on them! In short, all the organs of sense are framed for a corresponding world of sense; and we have it. All the organs of spirit are framed for a correspondent world of spirit: though ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... commercial nature or is for non-profit educational purposes; (2) the nature of the copyrighted work; (3) the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and (4) the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the ...
— Reproduction of Copyrighted Works By Educators and Librarians • Library of Congress. Copyright Office.

... Energy.*—As already indicated, the energy of the body is supplied through the food and the oxygen. These contain energy in the potential form, which becomes kinetic (active) through their uniting with each other in the body. Somewhat as the power of the steam engine is derived from the combustion of fuel in the furnaces, the energy of the body is supplied through the oxidations ...
— Physiology and Hygiene for Secondary Schools • Francis M. Walters, A.M.

... basis on which American watch making grew to such a point that by the 1870's watches of domestic manufacture had captured nearly all the home market and were reaching out and capturing foreign markets as well. In spite of this great achievement there remained a large untapped potential market for a watch which would combine the virtues of close time keeping and a lower selling price. Only a radical departure in design could achieve this. Rivalry between the several existing companies had already ...
— The Auburndale Watch Company - First American Attempt Toward the Dollar Watch • Edwin A. Battison

... the loyal determination to approach any proposed solution not merely in its own interest or with a view to asserting its own power, but as a single member among many coordinate and coequal States. So far as the influence of this Government may be potential, it will be exerted in the direction of conciliating whatever conflicting interests of blood or government or historical tradition may necessarily come together in response to a call embracing such ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 8: Chester A. Arthur • James D. Richardson

... because business men have not yet learned the great value of having the right kind of person to receive visitors. To the strangers who come—and among the idlers and swindlers and beggars who assail every successful business house are potential good friends and customers—this person represents the firm,—is, for the time being, ...
— The Book of Business Etiquette • Nella Henney

... medium which handed her on. Her consciousness was fixed on young Mr Murchison, quite occupied with him: she could not imagine why they had not asked him long ago; he wasn't exactly "swell," but you could see he was somebody. So already she figured the potential distinction in the set of his shoulders and the carriage of his head. It might have been translated in simple terms of integrity and force by anyone who looked for those things. Miss Milburn was incapable of such detail, but she saw ...
— The Imperialist • (a.k.a. Mrs. Everard Cotes) Sara Jeannette Duncan

... And of potential drama, of the raw material of it, as the days passed, she found increasingly generous store at Brockhurst. It invaded and held her imagination, as the initial conception of his poem will that of the poet, or of his picture that of the painter. She brooded over it, increasingly convinced ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet

... spoke such scurvy and provoking terms Against your honor, That, with the little godliness I have, I did full hard forbear him. But, I pray you, sir, Are you fast married? Be assured of this, That the magnifico is much beloved; And hath, in his effect, a voice potential As double as the duke's: he will divorce you; Or put upon you what restraint and grievance The law,—with all his might to enforce it on,— Will give ...
— Othello, the Moor of Venice • William Shakespeare

... and Lancaster best under his conditions. Mr. Becker's choice is McDermid but he thinks Crath No. 1 a potential commercial variety. Mr. Oakes likes Crath No. 1 and Ill. No. 3. Mr. Etter lists Burtner and Alleman as his best varieties. Mr. Fateley especially favors one tree because of nut and bearing qualities. Other growers have not ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 41st Annual Meeting • Various

... were not willing to go to war without first trying mediation between the two kingdoms in southeastern Europe, and even Russia, which was known to be a potential ally of Serbia, showed a disposition to use diplomacy before force. When the demands made by Austria-Hungary in her note of July 25, 1914, became known in the Russian capital, the following note was immediately telegraphed ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume I (of 8) - Introductions; Special Articles; Causes of War; Diplomatic and State Papers • Various

... manifested at least through chemical and physical forces. And the elements of the fuel for our engines we receive through plants from the inorganic world. For the plant, as we have seen, stores up as potential energy in its compounds the actual energy of the sun's rays. And thus man lives and thinks by energy, obtained originally from the sun. But man not only consumes food and fuel. The complicated protoplasm is continually ...
— The Whence and the Whither of Man • John Mason Tyler

... The Potential implies possibility, liberty, power, will; as, Tahgemewan kahnahbuge, it may rain; Kegahwesenemin kiya kahmenequamin, we ...
— Sketch of Grammar of the Chippeway Languages - To Which is Added a Vocabulary of some of the Most Common Words • John Summerfield

... no battery connected to the grid it has no possibility of influencing the electron stream which the plate is attracting to itself. We say, then, that the grid is uncharged or is at "zero potential," meaning that it is zero or nothing in possibility. But when the grid is charged, no matter how little, it makes a change in the plate current. When the grid says "Come on," even though very softly, ...
— Letters of a Radio-Engineer to His Son • John Mills

... that dark, chill, central realm where, transformed as a gnome, she clutches her votaries, plunges into the primeval abyss-the matrix of time—and sets them the Egyptian task of weighing, analyzing the Titanic "potential" energy, the infinitesimal atomic engines, the "kinetic" force, the chemical motors, the subtle intangible magnetic currents, whereby in the thundering, hissing, whirling laboratory of Nature, nebulae grow into ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson

... herself examining the family album inquisitively, but beyond a big-browed and quite undistorted baby nursing a kitten, there did not seem anything remotely potential, and she smiled at herself as she thought of the difficulty of evolving bibs into briar pipes and developing ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill

... this letter three days ago, was interrupted to talk to a potential philanthropist (fifty tickets to the circus), and have not had time to pick up my pen since. Betsy has been in Philadelphia for three days, being a bridesmaid for a miserable cousin. I hope that no more of her family are thinking of getting married, for it's most upsetting ...
— Dear Enemy • Jean Webster

... cannot be actually infinite: because it is of that which nature requires; and nature ever tends to something finite and fixed. Hence man never desires infinite meat, or infinite drink. But just as in nature there is potential successive infinity, so can this kind of concupiscence be infinite successively; so that, for instance, after getting food, a man may desire food yet again; and so of anything else that nature requires: because these bodily goods, when obtained, do not last for ever, but fail. Hence ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas

... agitate the question inhered in the principle of majority rule—the white population of the free States being almost double that of the slave States, "and the voice of this overwhelming majority should be potential." He repelled in strong language the wrongfulness of allowing the South to multiply the votes of those freemen by the master's right to count three for every five slaves, "because it is absurd and anti-republican to suffer property to be represented as men, and vice versa, because it gives the ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke

... verb in this mood is generally attended by another verb in some other mood. You observe, that each of the first three of the preceding examples, contains a verb in the indicative mood, and the fourth, a verb in the potential. ...
— English Grammar in Familiar Lectures • Samuel Kirkham

... about its placard and banner. What is true at such minor and momentary elections must be much more true in a great and constant election of rulers. The House of Commons lives in a state of perpetual potential choice; at any moment it can choose a ruler and dismiss a ruler. And therefore party is inherent in it, is bone of its bone, ...
— The English Constitution • Walter Bagehot

... in regarding the Chinese, as they now are, as a warlike power? In numbers, capacity for physical endurance, calm courage when well officered, and powers unequalled by any other race of mankind of doing the greatest amount of labour on the smallest allowance of food, their potential strength is stupendous. But they are not advancing, they are stationary; they look backwards, not forwards; they live in the past. Weapons with which their ancestors subdued the greater part of Asia they are loath to believe are unfitted for conducting the warfare ...
— An Australian in China - Being the Narrative of a Quiet Journey Across China to Burma • George Ernest Morrison

... which, at her age, is ever liable to fantastic caprices. She hears Margrave's song, which you say has a wildness of charm that affects and thrills even you. Who does not know the power of music? and of all music, there is none so potential as that of the human voice. Thus, in some languages, charm and song are identical expressions; and even when a critic, in our own sober newspapers, extols a Malibran or a Grisi, you may be sure that he will call her ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... disappointments, the slow and staggering steps, by which the discoverer reaches to his prize; then the smile of those men would not have been one of pity, but rather of filial love. For they would have seen in those outwardly paltry armaments the potential germ of that mightier one which now loads the Black Sea waves; they would have been aware, that to produce it, with such materials and knowledge as then existed, demanded an intellect, an energy, a spirit of progress and invention, equal, if not superior, to those of ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley

... value or intensity, varies freely with attention or the selective interest of the mind, also, needless to say, with the mind's general development. From the point of view of language, thought may be defined as the highest latent or potential content of speech, the content that is obtained by interpreting each of the elements in the flow of language as possessed of its very fullest conceptual value. From this it follows at once that language and thought are not strictly coterminous. At best language can ...
— Language - An Introduction to the Study of Speech • Edward Sapir

... bestowal tells us is that God does not call us into servitude, but to that service which is perfect freedom; He might have made us His playthings, as Plato suggested,[3] but by endowing us with the power to choose for ourselves He has made us His potential fellow-workers. May we not ask—Who, after all, would prefer the safety of automatism to the glory of this ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer

... exchange between Orient and Occident. Some years hence I shall send you a disciple whom you can train for yoga dissemination in the West. The vibrations there of many spiritually seeking souls come floodlike to me. I perceive potential saints in America and ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda

... to face with the Chinese at home, one is overwhelmed by an impression of power,—actual power, potential power, power of the individual, power of the group, power well used, power misspent. The impression is almost stunning. You seem to be watching a community of ants, persistent, untiring, organized, only the ant-hill is a town, and the ants are men physically ...
— A Wayfarer in China - Impressions of a trip across West China and Mongolia • Elizabeth Kendall

... Landwehr, who were everywhere about, treated the inhabitants civilly enough, and the inhabitants showed no outward resentment against the Germans. But beneath the lid a whole potful of potential trouble was brewing, if one might believe what the Germans told us. We talked with a young lieutenant of infantry who in more peaceful times had been a staff cartoonist for a Berlin comic paper. He received us beneath ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb

... opponents into being, the potential antagonism of which was so strong that millions willingly suffered their utmost for the ...
— Europe and the Faith - "Sine auctoritate nulla vita" • Hilaire Belloc

... leaned his arms on the table and hid his face. Once, twice she heard the sound of a man's hard-drawn sob, and the dry agony of it wrung her heart. All that was sweet and compassionate in her—the potential mother that lies in every woman—responded to his need. She ran to him and, kneeling at his side, laid a kind little hand ...
— The Lamp of Fate • Margaret Pedler

... degree: they are not easily put into flurry, into fear. In all Welf Sovereigns, and generally in Teuton Populations, on that side of the Channel or on this, there is the requisite unconscious substratum of taciturn inexpugnability, with depths of potential rage almost unquenchable, to be found when you apply for it. Which quality will much stead them on the present occasion: and, indeed, it is perhaps strengthened by their 'stupidity' itself, what neighbors call their 'stupidity;'—want of idle imagining, idle flurrying, nay ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIV. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... make us realise that the past is irrevocable—that we are passing on, and that that which has been can never be again. And at the same time we learn something else: namely, that the past is not by any means unchangeable. So potential is To-day that it not only holds To-morrow in the hollow of its hand, but it ...
— The Slave Of The Lamp • Henry Seton Merriman

... broad and open beauty of the nave, and, sitting down, he covered his eyes with one hand and strove to rouse himself from the odd, half-fainting sensation which possessed him. How glorious now was the music that poured like a torrent from the hidden organ-loft! How full of searching and potential proclamation!—the proclamation of an eternal, unguessed mystery, for which no merely human speech might ever find fit utterance! Some divine declaration of God's absolute omnipresence,— or of Heaven's sure nearness,—touched the heart of Felix ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli

... that wisdom which tells us that man learns to know himself last of all. He did not realize that your true-born libertine never knows it. Whatever Folly's life may have been, and he thought he had no illusions on that score, he seized upon her question as proving that she still held the potential bloom of youth and a measure ...
— Through stained glass • George Agnew Chamberlain

... the collective mail, I mean), did our utmost to exalt the idea of our privileges by the insolence with which we wielded them. Whether this insolence rested upon law that gave it a sanction, or upon conscious power that haughtily dispensed with that sanction, equally it spoke from a potential station; and the agent, in each particular insolence of the moment, was viewed reverentially, as one ...
— The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc • Thomas de Quincey

... United States is thus a moral arbiter in the greatest war of history, its judgment is now, and may hereafter increasingly become, a potential factor of great significance. ...
— The Evidence in the Case • James M. Beck

... was the victim of a vendetta, and detested the idea of having himself and his affairs discussed by the press, we were careful not to gainsay the popular belief that Griscelli was neither more nor less than a dangerous and resolute burglar, and, as his possession of lethal weapons proved, a potential murderer. As for the cause of death I said, as I then fully believed (though I have since had occasion to modify this opinion somewhat), that the battery was not strong enough to kill a healthy man, and that Griscelli had died of nervous shock and fear acting on a weak heart. In this view the jury ...
— Mr. Fortescue • William Westall

... something possible; some plan of action other than that of standing mildly, with crossed arms, till he and we—sink? Complex as his situation is, he, of all Governors now extant among these distracted Nations, has, as I compute, by far the greatest possibilities. The Captains, actual or potential, are there, and the million Captainless: and such resources for bringing them together as no other has. To these outcast soldiers of his, unregimented roving banditti for the present, or unworking workhouse prisoners who are almost uglier than banditti; to these floods of Irish ...
— Latter-Day Pamphlets • Thomas Carlyle

... him to do it, no doubt he would. Those who, as we are almost forced to believe, are even now contemplating a serious attempt to dethrone England from her supreme place among the nations of Europe, will do well to take this latest potential factor in the warfare of the immediate future ...
— A Honeymoon in Space • George Griffith

... in every state has had not only continuous existence always, but continuous, potential readiness, if not continuous employment; and the greatest changes in the mutual relations of nations have been brought about by the victory of the armed force of one state over the armed force of another state. This does not mean that the fundamental causes of ...
— The Navy as a Fighting Machine • Bradley A. Fiske

... of annoyance swept over the girl; she knew that to her old nurse every young man who ever came to the Trellis House was a potential lover. But even Anna might have left Jervis Blake out of the category. There was nothing silly or—or sentimental, in the real, deep friendship they two felt ...
— Good Old Anna • Marie Belloc Lowndes

... Western world. In another Eastern empire there are vast resources—especially coal and iron in juxtaposition—awaiting only industrial leadership to utilise a practically limitless labour supply for their development. These are facts worthy of consideration for their potential bearing upon the industrial and commercial standing of the ...
— The Rural Life Problem of the United States - Notes of an Irish Observer • Horace Curzon Plunkett

... powder in a loaded gun is such another stock of substance capable of yielding energy in consequence of a change of state in the mechanism of the lock, which intervenes between the finger of the man who pulls the trigger and the cartridge. If that change is brought about, the potential energy of the powder passes suddenly into actual energy, and does the work of propelling the bullet. The powder, therefore, may be appropriately called work-stuff, not only because it is stuff which is easily made to yield work in the ...
— Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays • Thomas H. Huxley

... above her with forbidding brow. The threat to bar the Harley doors to Richard had set him agog with angry apprehensions. What! should his best agent of politics, one who was at once the correspondent of that powerful influence the Daily Tory and the authorized mouthpiece of the potential Mr. Gwynn who owned the Anaconda, nay, was the Anaconda, be insulted, and arrayed against him? And for what? Because of the baby heart of a girl scarce grown! Was a White House to be lost by such tawdry argument? Forbidding Richard the door might of itself appear ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis

... evenly on. "We have Mr. Rand's word for it that the prisoner had no thought of the watchman, and no intention of using, even in case of need, the weapons with which it has been proved he was provided. Mr. Rand must know. As a rule, gentlemen bearing arms about their persons may be considered the potential users of said arms, whether the antiquated rapier or the modern pistol—but then, I bethink me, we are not speaking of men of honour. We are speaking of a small criminal in a small way, and Mr. Rand assures us that his thoughts matched his estate—they were humble, ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston

... friendships made me more tolerant of the gun than some others were. Goodwin and a gun sent me searching mentally over the West from Colorado to the Coast, and through all occupations from bandit to fighting parson; and then my potential gallery, quite apart from any conscious effort of my own, divided itself into two kinds of gunpackers: the authorized and the others. I concluded that there would be less trouble, less "lost motion"—that was a phrase learned, and an idea applied in the ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: In Mizzoura • Augustus Thomas

... race-thought is beginning to realize interiorly. This is manifest in the daily press; in music and drama; and in all the avenues of the senses. That intangible, elusive but potential thing called "character" forms the gist of editorial advice. Everywhere we note a tendency to look below the appearance of things, and to fathom the depths of psychological analysis. For the first time in centuries the race-thought seeks the underlying cause for specific effects, instead ...
— Sex=The Unknown Quantity - The Spiritual Function of Sex • Ali Nomad

... possibility, liberty, necessity, will or duty. It is formed by means of the auxiliaries may, can, ought and must, but in all cases it can be resolved into the indicative or subjunctive. Thus, in "I may write if I choose," "may write" is by some classified as in the potential mood, but in reality the phrase I may write is an indicative one while the second clause, if I choose, is the expression of a condition upon which, not my liberty to write, depends, but my ...
— How to Speak and Write Correctly • Joseph Devlin

... knowledge. Objects, real objects, as we know, grow in reality towards us in proportion as we define their various qualities. And yet, from another point of view, definition, qualification, is a negative process: it is as if each added quality took from the object we are defining one or more potential qualities. The more definite things become as objects of sensible or other empirical apprehension, the more, it might be said from the logician's point of view, have we denied about them. It might seem that their increasing reality as objects of sense was in direct proportion to the increase ...
— Plato and Platonism • Walter Horatio Pater

... the Teutonic forces in northern Dobrudja. It was in this latter section that the Teutons now centered their activities. The Russo-Rumanians still remained in Dobrudja, on the south side of the Danube. So long as they had a footing here they remained a potential threat to the Teutons, which might awaken into active danger at the first favorable opportunity. To be ousted from this northern tip of Dobrudja would be even more serious to the Russo-Rumanians than the loss of Wallachia. From this point ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume VI (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various

... attempting to smash through the German lines without an adequate supply of high-explosive shells with which to destroy the heavy wire entanglements. Moreover, in maintaining a curtain of fire between the German lines and potential reenforcements, it was necessary to increase the artillery arm of the service. At this time the Germans could fire four shells to one by the British. Another very essential equipment in which the British were lacking was machine guns. The German army had ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume V (of 12) - Neuve Chapelle, Battle of Ypres, Przemysl, Mazurian Lakes • Francis J. Reynolds, Allen L. Churchill, and Francis Trevelyan

... their friends and his, the men and women of Port Agnew might entertain on the subject. His apprehensions centered almost entirely upon his father. His affection for his father he had always taken for granted. It was not an emotion to exclaim over. Now that he realized, for the first time, his potential power to hurt his father, to bow that gray head in grief and shame and humiliation, he was vouchsafed a clearer, all-comprehending vision of that father's love, of his goodness, his manliness, his honor, his gentleness, and his fierce, high pride; ...
— Kindred of the Dust • Peter B. Kyne

... "my advice is to shoot first and enquire after. Remember that every Pole and Russian and Hungarian there carries a knife or a slug—he has to in self-protection—and uses it as we do slang. Every foreign workman on a railway construction gang is a potential murderer. . . . I'd rather give evidence for you on a murder charge than ...
— The Return of Blue Pete • Luke Allan

... Movement in Western Canada now had attained potential proportions. In Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Alberta the Provincial Associations with their many Locals were in a flourishing condition. Each province was headquarters for a powerful farmers' trading organization to market grain and provide co-operative supplies. Unlike ...
— Deep Furrows • Hopkins Moorhouse

... wide of mouth, did indeed suggest the clown countenance; yet there was in it, and in the whole personality, something of the Eastern idol, the journeyman attempt of crude humanity to represent power. And the potential cruelty of the type slept in his placid countenance as surely as ever in the dreaming face of Shiva, ...
— The Power and the Glory • Grace MacGowan Cooke

... threatened and overshadowed by potential enemies, France has been forced to a policy of militarism, with a large subordination of the individual to the state. The subordination, however, is voluntary. That is touchingly evident in the beautiful fraternization of French officers ...
— The Soul of Democracy - The Philosophy Of The World War In Relation To Human Liberty • Edward Howard Griggs

... Self-existence means simply an existence without a beginning, and it is not possible to conceive of this. The conception of infinite past time is an impossibility. (2.) Self-creation is Pantheism. We can conceive, somewhat, of self-evolution, but not of a potential universe passing into an actual one. (3.) The theistic hypothesis is equally inconceivable. For this is to suppose the world made as a workman makes a piece of furniture. We can conceive of this last, because the workman has the material given; he only adds form to the substance. ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke

... battles, there must be what is called "food for powder;" and if one be too solicitous about this worthless pabulum, nothing great can be accomplished. So Camors passed as one of the most scrupulous of this goodly company; and his word was as potential in the region of "the rings," as it was in the more elevated sphere of the clubs and of ...
— Monsieur de Camors, Complete • Octave Feuillet

... at Joan. The child was irritating to her as she had always been. She had never, in any case, cared for her own sex, and now, as so frequently with women who are about to plunge into some passionate situation, she regarded every one she saw as a potential interferer. She despised women as most women in their secret hearts do, and especially ...
— The Cathedral • Hugh Walpole

... are well aware of how much freer and abler our lives would be, were such important forms of energizing not sealed up by the critical atmosphere in which we have been reared. There are in everyone potential forms of activity that actually are shunted out from use. Part of the imperfect vitality under which we labor can thus ...
— How to Add Ten Years to your Life and to Double Its Satisfactions • S. S. Curry

... outfit aboard our fire-detection craft. It's called the SCR-Seventy-three. The equipment obtains its power from a self-excited inductor type alternator. This is propelled by a fixed wooden-blade air fan. In the steam-line casing of the alternator the rotary spark gap, alternator, potential transformer, condenser and oscillation transformer are self-contained. Usually the alternator is mounted on the underside of the fuselage where the propeller spends its force in the form of an air stream. The telegraph sending keys, field and battery switch, dry battery, variometer and antenna ...
— The Radio Boys Trailing a Voice - or, Solving a Wireless Mystery • Allen Chapman

... present it produces one-third of the coal supply of the world, one-sixth of the wheat supply, and very nearly two-thirds of the gold supply. But while these figures may be taken as in themselves satisfactory, it is far more important to remember that as yet the potential resources of the new lands opened to enterprise have been barely conceived, and their wealth has been little more than scratched. Population as yet has been only very sparsely sprinkled over the surface of many of the areas most suitable for white settlement. In the wheat ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various

... EBONITE bracket, separate from the rest of the instrument, and INSULATED from it; that is to say, electricity cannot escape from them to the instrument. The ink may, therefore, be electrified to an exalted state, or high POTENTIAL as it is called, while the body of the instrument, including the paper and metal writing-tablet, are in connection with the earth, and at low potential, or none at all, for the potential of the earth is in ...
— Heroes of the Telegraph • J. Munro

... every way, both in assembling the engines and masts and subsequently in operating the wireless station, had the wireless plant been erected on the beach adjacent to the living-hut. On the other hand, a position on top of the hill had the advantage of a free outlook and of increased electrical potential, allowing of a shorter length of mast. In addition the ground in this situation proved to be peaty and sodden, and therefore a good conductor, thus presenting an excellent "earth" from the wireless standpoint. In short, the advantages of the hill-site outweighed its disadvantages. Of the latter ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson

... to frustrate what at the time of her first interference was the merest flirtation between a Romeo who was tied to a desk all day, and a Juliet who was constantly coming into contact with other potential Romeos—plenty of them. Our own private opinion is that if the Montagus and Capulets had tried to bury the hatchet at a public betrothal of the two young people, the latter would have quarrelled on the spot. Setting ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan

... with marvellous accuracy the exact amount of force which each combatant would be able to put on to the field, and summed up the appalling mass of potential destruction that was ready to burst upon the world at a moment's notice. He showed the position of Italy, and proved to demonstration that if the loan were not immediately granted, it would be necessary ...
— The Angel of the Revolution - A Tale of the Coming Terror • George Griffith



Words linked to "Potential" :   possibility, latency, prospect, prospective, electrical phenomenon, chance, possibleness, latent, actual



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