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Vibrate   /vˈaɪbreɪt/   Listen
Vibrate

verb
(past & past part. vibrated; pres. part. vibrating)
1.
Shake, quiver, or throb; move back and forth rapidly, usually in an uncontrolled manner.
2.
Move or swing from side to side regularly.  Synonym: oscillate.
3.
Be undecided about something; waver between conflicting positions or courses of action.  Synonyms: hover, oscillate, vacillate.
4.
Sound with resonance.  Synonym: resonate.
5.
Feel sudden intense sensation or emotion.  Synonyms: thrill, tickle.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Vibrate" Quotes from Famous Books



... perfume of flowers. In the valley resounded the ceaseless whirr of the cicalas, answering one another from shore to shore; the mountains reechoed with innumerable sounds; the whole country seemed to vibrate like crystal. We passed among myriads of Japanese junks, gliding softly, wafted by imperceptible breezes on the smooth water; their motion could hardly be heard, and their white sails, stretched out on yards, fell languidly in a thousand horizontal folds like window-blinds, ...
— Madame Chrysantheme Complete • Pierre Loti

... Sarka the First, "the roof of the Gens area would begin to vibrate, to vibrate throughout all the area, and even into all surrounding Gens areas—and in time ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science July 1930 • Various

... waves that can vibrate matter in a straight line! One Jackson Gee vibrates it in two straight ...
— Astounding Stories, July, 1931 • Various

... with the Unknown, Hamar and his companions did not get back to their respective quarters till the sun was high in the heavens, and the streets of the city were beginning to vibrate with the rattle ...
— The Sorcery Club • Elliott O'Donnell

... pretty head back, as if for support, and I noticed that her slender hands, as they grasped either arm of the chair, trembled, in spite of the grip she took to steady herself. I felt her whole body vibrate, as a violin vibrates for a moment after the bow ...
— Told in a French Garden - August, 1914 • Mildred Aldrich

... these gentlemen has a long and honourable career in the theatre behind him, from which he should be allowed to reap what financial and honourary rewards he may be able. But I would not add one leaf to these wreathes, nor one crotchet to the songs of praise which vibrate around them. I turn aside from their plays in the theatre and in the library as I turn aside from the fictions of Pierre de ...
— The Merry-Go-Round • Carl Van Vechten

... mammoth punch- bowl once owned by Washington, and the guests of the house were all invited to partake. The tavern-desk was behind the bar, with rows of large bells hanging by circular springs on the wall, each with a bullet-shaped tongue, which continued to vibrate for some minutes after being pulled, thus showing to which room it belonged. The barkeeper prepared the "drinks" called for, saw that the bells were answered, received and delivered letters and cards, ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore

... respond to the influence of the mediumistic energy, and then the connection and identity of the different phenomena will be still more evident. You will see then that, if the medium is as strong as he was just now, Grossman will vibrate. ...
— Redemption and Two Other Plays • Leo Tolstoy et al

... fainted, nor became unduly excited. She had seen too many emergencies in the work of taking moving pictures to become "rattled," which is not used in a slangy sense at all, but merely to indicate that one's nerves vibrate too rapidly. Consequently, after her first scream, Alice was almost as calm and collected as could be expected of a ...
— The Moving Picture Girls at Sea - or, A Pictured Shipwreck That Became Real • Laura Lee Hope

... showing off his skill on a customer, to being able to play the guitar with such proficiency that, holding the neck in his left hand and pressing the cords with the fingers, he shall, by thumping the instrument on the big toe of his left foot, cause it to vibrate the air of the immortal Cachucha or the Bolero, while with his right hand he plays ...
— Tales from the Lands of Nuts and Grapes - Spanish and Portuguese Folklore • Charles Sellers and Others

... the news spread abroad over Jerusalem that the men of Simon and John had gone out against the Deliverer. No definite news of the outcome of the sortie had reached them and they were moving in a dense pack down toward the walls to hear the worst. The whole hurrying mass seemed to vibrate with suspense and ...
— The City of Delight - A Love Drama of the Siege and Fall of Jerusalem • Elizabeth Miller

... deadly still for a long minute's interval, and then out of the nowhere ahead, with a suddenness which each time caused his weakened nerves to vibrate like fiddle strings, would burst the bellow of the ...
— Galusha the Magnificent • Joseph C. Lincoln

... the dense fog was yet hanging heavily over the waters, one hundred and forty guns, many siege pieces, were opened upon the deserted city and the men along the water front. The roar from the cannon-crowned battlements shook the very earth. Above and below us seemed to vibrate as from the effects of a mighty upheaval, while the shot and shell came whizzing and shrieking overhead, looking like a shower of falling meteors. For more than an hour did this seething volcano vomit iron like hail upon the city and the men in the rifle pits, the shells and shot from the ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert

... memory of some verse of Victor Hugo, sounding the beat of one of his vast melancholies, would float through her mind and cause it to vibrate for an instant with a mournful sensation ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett

... through closed lips, as is the custom of English singers, but rolling out the notes with volcanic energy from the deep craters of their throats. When our admirable waiter—who is also our best friend—frees his soul in song as he is setting the table, the walls of the dining-room quiver and vibrate. By five o'clock in the morning every one except ourselves is on foot and out of doors. We might as well be, for it is custom, not sleep, which keeps us in our beds. The hay wagons are rolling over the bridge, the farmhands are going to work, the waiter, in an ...
— Americans and Others • Agnes Repplier

... was Sheldon becoming that the face and form of the other seemed to vibrate and oscillate before his eyes. Yet outwardly Sheldon was calm and apparently weary of ...
— Adventure • Jack London

... was air-borne before he answered. Then, almost immediately, he had to land again to take on gas. By the time he was in the air en route to Spindrift, Cap'n Mike was squirming so impatiently that the whole plane seemed to vibrate. ...
— The Electronic Mind Reader • John Blaine

... to surge and vibrate in my ears both day and night. A storm-cloud seemed to surround me. Not as though he thundered or commanded. No, it was his personality, and something in the voice itself. It was deep and restrained, ...
— Captain Mansana and Mother's Hands • Bjoernstjerne Bjoernson

... and looking about him in all directions, with a very puzzled expression. A delightfully cool breeze was fanning their faces: this breeze was laden with some strangely sweet perfume both soothing and stimulating to the senses. The air all about them seemed to vibrate with the distant melody of some angelic music, now sinking, now swelling in perfect harmony; so soft, so clear, so bright, so inspiring in its wealth ...
— Solaris Farm - A Story of the Twentieth Century • Milan C. Edson

... invisibility apparatus, and they were sending a beam of interfering radio energy at us. We are invisible only by reason of the vibration of the molecules in response to the radio impressed oscillations. The molecules vibrate in tune, at terrific frequency, and the light can pass perfectly. What will happen, however, if someone locates the source of the radio waves? It'll be simple for them to send out a radio beam and touch our invisible ship with it. The two radio ...
— The Black Star Passes • John W Campbell

... in the noise of a tremendous rapping at the street-door, and before it had ceased to vibrate, there drove up a handsome cabriolet, out of which leaped Sir Mulberry Hawk and his friend ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens

... mosquitoes, is the organ of hearing placed on the head. We say on, rather than in, the head, because it is formed by a modification of part of the antennae. A German naturalist, named Mayer, performed an experiment to prove that the hairs on these antennae can be made to vibrate by means of a tuning-fork. Only those hairs which have to do with the production of sound answered to the notes of the tuning-fork, and these vibrated at the rate of five hundred and twelve vibrations per second. Other hairs ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various

... Clayton behind, regardless of us, and as though all we there were nothing worth. We were outside the pull of life's spinning hub. Beyond and remote from us things would be happening; but no voice or pulse of life could vibrate us, merged as we were within the inelastic ...
— Old Junk • H. M. Tomlinson

... Full many a clime in, Tolling sublime in Cathedral shrine, While at a glib rate Brass tongues would vibrate— But all their music Spoke naught like thine; For memory, dwelling On each proud swelling Of the belfry knelling Its bold notes free, Made the bells of Shandon Sound far more grand on The pleasant waters Of ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy

... the mouldering remains of a folio will attract as much philosophical astonishment as the bones of the mammoth. For behold, the deluge of writers hath produced a new world of small octavo! and in the next generation, thanks to the popular libraries, we shall only vibrate between the duodecimo and the diamond edition. Nay, we foresee the time when a very handsome collection may be carried about in one's waistcoat-pocket, and a whole library of the British Classics be neatly ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... to the inner end of the slot in the arm, G, and is thus exactly in line with the rock-shaft, O. The suspension-rod, S, will, therefore, be at rest; but the pin, A, will have been drawn, by the bridle-rod, R, into line with the journal, J, and the bridle-rod itself will now vibrate with the lever, M, whose sole motion will be ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 415, December 15, 1883 • Various

... men like the locusts (I. iii. 151) he compares to shrill-voiced creatures. Instruments whose strings are thin and vibrate quickly, easily cut the air, and give an acute sound. Those with thick ones, through the slow movement, have a deep sound. Homer calls the pipe acute—acute because being thin it gives an acute sound. Homer ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch

... imagination glowed with a thousand fond presages. I answered in the affirmative; and we met by accident at the ball. I could nut behold him without emotion: when he accosted me, his well-known voice made my heart vibrate, like a musical chord, when its unison is struck. All the ideas of our past love, which the lapse of time and absence had enfeebled and lulled to sleep, now awoke, and were reinspired by his appearance; so that his artful excuses were easily admitted: I forgave him all that I had ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett

... song,—midst the zephyrs at play In bowers of beauty,—I bend to thy lay, And woo, while I worship in deep sylvan spot, The Muses' soft echoes to kindle the grot. Wake chords of my lyre, with musical kiss, To vibrate and tremble with ...
— Poems • Mary Baker Eddy

... the like of which was not given even to the blessed Saint Francis himself, so filled and exalted his soul with a radiantly joyful thankfulness that he was as one transformed. And his holy enthusiasm, that thus made every fibre of his being vibrate with a grateful gladness, gave him also so eloquent a command of beseeching language that it was a living wonder to perceive how his inspired words penetrated into the minds, darkened by superstitious doctrines, of those to whom he spoke, and so sunk ...
— The Aztec Treasure-House • Thomas Allibone Janvier

... most celebrated medical writers considers spectral illusion a disease, in which false perceptions take place in some of the senses; thus, when the excitement of motion is produced in a particular organ, that organ does not vibrate with the impression made upon it, but communicates it to another part on which a similar impression was formerly made. Nicolai states that he made his illusion a source of philosophical amusement. The spectres which haunted ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier

... the bluish gray sea which filled the valley. We were now enveloped in a dense fog, which added materially to the dangers of the journey. I had had so many thrills in the last few moments that my nerves were becoming dull and failed to vibrate on this occasion, so that descending the cliff in a fog by a diagonal fracture in the rock became only an incident of our journey; this trail, however, was wider than the one ...
— The Black Wolf Pack • Dan Beard

... attracted; the circuit is closed and the operation is rapidly repeated. B should press gently against S I, which must be screwed back and forth, until the best results are obtained. While not in use A should be about 1/8 or 3/16 in. from the bolt-head. The armature, A, should vibrate back and forth very rapidly. If this coil gives too much shock with one cell of App. 3 or 4, put a regulator (App. 103) between Y and one of ...
— How Two Boys Made Their Own Electrical Apparatus • Thomas M. (Thomas Matthew) St. John

... away made me still worse—a regular metallic music, a fragment of Weber, to which a little girl is singing a mournful strain. The flute-like sorrowfulness of the organ thrills through my blood; my nerves vibrate in responsive echo. A moment later, and I fall back on the seat, whimpering and crooning in ...
— Hunger • Knut Hamsun

... afraid that it would tire you, were I to attempt to tell you exactly what electricity is, and must therefore satisfy your curiosity, for the present, by letting you know that it is caused by the coming in contact of different substances possessing peculiar properties, which cause them to vibrate, when they touch. ...
— The World's Fair • Anonymous

... anything he heard or saw, to identify the Raveloe religion with his old faith; if he could at any time in his previous life have done so, it must have been by the aid of a strong feeling ready to vibrate with sympathy, rather than by a comparison of phrases and ideas: and now for long years that feeling had been dormant. He had no distinct idea about the baptism and the church-going, except that Dolly had said it was for the good of the child; and in this way, as the weeks ...
— Silas Marner - The Weaver of Raveloe • George Eliot

... of the preceding day and evening had been tempering for this culminating hour. Yet, if I would have confessed it, there was something either in the sound of the voice, although it seemed sweetness itself, or else in this yielding which awaited no gradation of gentle approaches, that did not vibrate harmoniously with the beat of my inward music. And likewise, when, taking her hand in mine, I drew closer to her, looking for the beauty of her face, which, indeed, I found too plenteously, a cold shiver ran through me; but "it is the marble," I said to ...
— Phantastes - A Faerie Romance for Men and Women • George MacDonald

... like those of a humming-bird, which, as is well known, can, at times, vibrate its wings with such velocity that the most rapid camera lens cannot ...
— Tom Swift and his Sky Racer - or, The Quickest Flight on Record • Victor Appleton

... phantasies, Absorb'd, hath ceas'd to listen! Therefore oft I hymn thy name; and with a proud delight Oft will I tell thee, minstrel of the moon, Most musical, most melancholy bird! That all thy soft diversities of tone, Though sweeter far than the delicious airs That vibrate from a white-arm'd lady's harp, What time the languishment of lonely love Melts in her eye, and heaves her breast of snow, Are not so sweet, as is the voice of her, My Sara—best beloved of human kind! When ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge

... rapid work with a common flat shoe, seven or eight nail-heads protrude, and take the force of his blow on the ground. The foot has just been pared, and those nails, driven into the wall and pressing against the soft inside horn and sensitive laminae, vibrate to the quick, and often cause the newly-shod horse to shrink, and show soreness in traveling for a day or two. No matter how skillfully shod, the horse will be all the better ...
— Rational Horse-Shoeing • John E. Russell

... sudden nestling of her head against him, the light caress of her fragrant hair across his cheek, revived a sweet, almost-conquered, almost-forgotten emotion. He felt an inexplicable thrill vibrate through him. No untrodden, ambushed wild, no perilous trail, no dark and bloody encounter had ever made him feel fear as had the kiss of this maiden. He had sternly silenced faint, unfamiliar, yet tender, ...
— The Last Trail • Zane Grey

... harmonious lyre, with nine chords, each rendering various sounds. These three chords for the voice, and three for both gesture and speech, have their thousand resonances at the service of the life, the soul and the mind. As these chords vibrate beneath your fingers, they will give voice to the emotions of the life, to the jubilations of the heart and the raptures of the mind. This delightful concert will lend enchantment to your passing years, throwing around them ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various

... heard a voice that touched me more deeply. Somebody told her to go away, and she stopped like a nightingale suddenly shot." Hawthorne goes on to speak with wonder of the waste of such a voice, "making even an unsusceptible heart vibrate like a harp-string"; and it is pleasant to know that Mrs. Hawthorne had the woman called within, from the street. So that his soul was open to sound. But the unmusicalness of New England, less marked now than formerly, is only a symbol, perhaps,—grievous that it should be so!—of the superior ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop

... the brain that Sarthia's soul would naturally vibrate, had never become active, nor developed; they, as it were, were dormant, fast asleep, awaiting the pulsating vibrations of the spiritual influx to give them life and usefulness. While those that had been so fully developed ...
— Within the Temple of Isis • Belle M. Wagner

... or dance together, and those which are of a differing kind will be thrust or shov'd out from between them; for particles that are similar, will, like so many equal musical strings equally stretcht, vibrate together in a kind of Harmony or unison; whereas others that are dissimilar, upon what account soever, unless the disproportion be otherwise counter-ballanc'd, will, like so many strings out of tune to those unisons, though they have the same agitating pulse, ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke

... stretched between two given points, when struck will vibrate throughout its entire length in waves of a certain length and with a certain degree of rapidity, according to the tension of the string. This vibration of the entire length of cord gives forth the tone heard as the fundamental pitch or tone. ...
— Expressive Voice Culture - Including the Emerson System • Jessie Eldridge Southwick

... then, my lyre shall reply to the blast; 'Tis hush'd; and my feeble endeavours are o'er; And those who have heard it will pardon the past, When they know that its murmurs shall vibrate no more. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XX. No. 556., Saturday, July 7, 1832 • Various

... caught up the threads of certain other peculiar Boston interests, and by careful reading of the Transcript was enabled to vibrate in full harmony with the local hymn of gratitude. New York became a mere emporium, a town without a library, a city without a first class orchestra, the home of a few commercial painters and several journalistic poets! Chicago ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland

... and softness with the magnificent and the sublime: a deep sonorous music in the thundering of the mighty floods, as if the spirits of earth and air united in one solemn choral chant of praise to the Creator; the rocks vibrate to the living harmony, and the shores around seem hurrying forward, as if impelled by the force of the descending torrent of sound. Yet, within a few yards of all this whirlpool of conflicting elements, the river glides onward as peacefully and gently as if it had ...
— Life in the Clearings versus the Bush • Susanna Moodie

... crisis in a series of tremendous, shattering crashes, so heavy and so prolonged that all the world seemed to rock and vibrate, echoing the uproar like a ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance

... tuning-fork or diapason kept in vibration by electricity. In general principle the ends of the fork act as armatures for an electro-magnet, and in their motion by a mercury cup or other form of contact they make and break the circuit as they vibrate. Thus the magnet alternately attracts and releases the leg, in exact harmony with its ...
— The Standard Electrical Dictionary - A Popular Dictionary of Words and Terms Used in the Practice - of Electrical Engineering • T. O'Conor Slone

... show him how tone can be made. Sometimes a purely physiological reason makes it almost impossible for the pupil to produce a good natural tone. If the finger-tips are not adequately equipped with 'cushions,' and a pupil wishes to use the vibrato there is nothing with which he can vibrate. There is real meaning, speaking of the violinist's tone, in the phrase 'he has it at his fingers' tips.' Then there is the matter of slow practice. It rests with the pupil to carry out the teacher's injunctions in this ...
— Violin Mastery - Talks with Master Violinists and Teachers • Frederick H. Martens

... March were chilly, with alternations of snow and sunshine. When the air was pure, we heard it vibrate with the life of aeroplanes and echo to their contests. The dry throb of machine-guns, the incessant scream of shrapnel formed a kind of crackling dome over our heads. The German aeroplanes overwhelmed the environs with bombs ...
— The New Book Of Martyrs • Georges Duhamel

... hour later when suddenly the needle of the annunciator began to vibrate rapidly. All leaped to their feet and ran down the stairs to ...
— The Master Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve and John W. Grey

... further from nor nearer to the truth if we answered that physicist as follows: "You give the preponderance to your eye; I myself give it to my ear. This tuning-fork appears to you to vibrate. Wrong! This is how the thing occurs. This tuning-fork produces a sound which, by exciting our retina, gives us a sense of movement. This visual sensation of vibration is a purely subjective one, the external cause of the phenomenon is the sound. The outer world is a concert of sounds ...
— The Mind and the Brain - Being the Authorised Translation of L'me et le Corps • Alfred Binet

... not keep back. Peggy's illness, though not of an alarming character, showed that even her iron constitution was not exempt from the ills which flesh is heir to,—that the strong pillar on which we leaned so trustingly could vibrate and shake, and what would become of us if it were prostrated to the earth; the lonely column of fidelity and truth, to which we clung so adhesively; the sheet anchor which had kept us from sinking beneath the waves of adversity? I had scarcely realized Peggy's mortality before, she ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz

... nervous energy, taken in conjunction with extreme nervous excitement, plus some delusion, plus some illusion, plus some imposition, plus some chance and accidental coincidence, might determine the direction in which the scepticism should vibrate. Nine years has the subject of Zoo-magnetism been before me. I have traced it historically, collected a mass of documents in French, German, Italian, and the Latinists of the sixteenth century, have never neglected an opportunity of questioning eye-witnesses, ex. gr. Tieck, ...
— Specimens of the Table Talk of S.T.Coleridge • Coleridge

... touch the harp again; No chords will vibrate on the string; Like broken flowers upon the plain, My heart e'en withers while I sing. Aeolian harps have witching tones, On morning or the evening gale; No melody their music owns As sings ...
— Life and Remains of John Clare - "The Northamptonshire Peasant Poet" • J. L. Cherry

... of Edward Forster was suddenly disturbed by the report of a gun, swept to leeward by the impetuosity of the gale, which hurled it with violence against the door and front windows of his cottage, for some moments causing them to vibrate with the concussion. Forster started up, dropping his book upon the hearth, and jerking the table with his elbow, so as to dash out the larger proportion of the contents of his tumbler. The sooty coronal of the wick also fell with the shock, and the candle, relieved from its ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat

... could hear the ground vibrate under the steady tread of a column of infantry passing, but she could not see them—could distinguish no motion against the ...
— Ailsa Paige • Robert W. Chambers

... is done by means of the telephone, which transmits simultaneously several different tones through one wire by means of steel forks made to vibrate at one end of the line, the pulsations passing through the wire independently of each other, and reappearing at the distant ...
— Music and Some Highly Musical People • James M. Trotter

... flies, That first excites desire, and then supplies; 216 Unknown to them, when sensual pleasures cloy, To fill the languid pause with finer joy; Unknown those powers that raise the soul to flame, Catch every nerve, and vibrate through the frame. Their level life is but a smould'ring fire, 221 Unquench'd by want, unfann'd by strong desire; Unfit for raptures, or, if raptures cheer On some high festival of once a year, In wild excess the vulgar breast takes fire, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith

... dramatic poem after the manner of Faust. Maitre Albertus is the old doctor conversing with Mephistocles. He has a ward, named Helene, and a lyre. A spirit lives in this lyre. It is all in vain that the painter, the maestro, the poet, the critic endeavour to make the cords vibrate. The lyre remains dumb. Helene, even without putting her hands on it, can draw from it magnificent harmony; Helene is mad. All this may seem very incomprehensible to you, and I must confess that it is so to me. Albertus himself declares: "This has a poetical ...
— George Sand, Some Aspects of Her Life and Writings • Rene Doumic

... room—which she was never more to occupy. Her books, her music, were scattered on every side. The sound of her rich voice seemed still to vibrate through the room. And she was gone—for ever! Well, she was a base and guilty creature, and it was better so— infinitely better that her polluting presence should no longer dishonour those ancient chambers, within which generations of proud and pure women ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon

... come surrounded by an innumerable host whose hallelujahs shall so vibrate that the very heavens will roll apart at ...
— Why I Preach the Second Coming • Isaac Massey Haldeman

... first, that when left to the entire, responsibility of the baby, after the departure of the nurse, she may be able to undertake her new duties with more confidence than if left to her own resources and mother's instinct, without a clue to guide her through the mysteries of those calls that vibrate through every nerve of her nature; and, secondly, that she may be able to guard her child from the nefarious practices of unprincipled nurses, who, while calming the mother's mind with false statements as to the character of the baby's cries, rather than ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton

... you would perhaps think that they served to drive the ball through the water, but this is done by a special apparatus. The cross ridges which we noticed on the bands are really flat comb-like plates (p, Fig. 9), of which there are about twenty or thirty on each band; and these vibrate very rapidly, so that two hundred or more paddles drive the tiny ball through the water. This is the cause of the prismatic colors; for iridescent tints are produced by the play of light upon the glittering plates, as they incessantly change their angle. Sometimes they move ...
— Young Folks' Library, Volume XI (of 20) - Wonders of Earth, Sea and Sky • Various

... exclaimed as he paused in the work. "It's got to be insulated, or it will vibrate against the metal of the machine and short circuit. I have it! My handkerchief! I s'pose Mrs. Baggert will kick at tearing up a good one, but ...
— Tom Swift and his Motor-cycle • Victor Appleton

... more harm is frequently done by over than by under culture in the moral training of youth. Judicious letting alone is a precious element in real education, and there are certain chords which, often touched and made to vibrate too early, are apt to lose instead of gaining power; to grow first weakly and morbidly sensitive, and then hard and dull; and finally, when the full harmony of the character depends upon their truth and depth of tone, to have lost some measure of ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble

... the experiment repeated here on the same scale as it has recently been shown at the Pantheon at Paris. A brass sphere, weighing about five pounds, was suspended from the lofty ceiling by a piece of music wire, and made to vibrate in one plane over a table graduated into degrees. After a few vibrations, the direction of the pendulum appeared to be changed, as though the table had moved round ...
— Young Americans Abroad - Vacation in Europe: Travels in England, France, Holland, - Belgium, Prussia and Switzerland • Various

... the field of Big Business knows that score and has played it many times. We will play it on a monstrous pipe organ, with the world's lungs for bellows and the world's breath to vibrate our reeds—and all paying tribute, night and day, year after year, all over the world, Wally, ...
— The Air Trust • George Allan England

... upon the mass of mind in this day of railroads and telegraphs, with a thousandfold more celerity than in the days of pillions and slow coaches. Scarce have the lips that uttered great thoughts ceased to move, or the pen which wrote them dropped from the weary hand, ere they vibrate through the inmost recesses of a thousand hearts, and awaken deep and true responses in a thousand living, truthful souls. Thence they grow, expand, fructify, and the result ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... and we should miss those secondary effects with which we are exclusively concerned in aesthetics. For it is precisely from the waste, from the radiation of the sexual passion, that I beauty borrows warmth. As a harp, made to vibrate to the fingers, gives some music to every wind, so the nature of man, necessarily susceptible to woman, becomes simultaneously sensitive to other influences, and capable of tenderness toward every ...
— The Sense of Beauty - Being the Outlines of Aesthetic Theory • George Santayana

... music. As he leads his camel past in the heat of the day, a sound like the first low tones of an Aeolian harp stirs the hot breezeless air. It swells louder and louder in progressive undulations, till at length the dry baked earth seems to vibrate under foot, and the startled animal snorts and rears, and struggles to break away. According to the Arabian account of the phenomenon, says Sir David Brewster, in his "Letters on Natural Magic," there ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller

... the poet singer was a favourite, and all knew with what touching expression he gave his compositions; but now the mellow tones of his voice seemed to vibrate with a feeling in more than common unison with the words, and his dark earnest eyes beamed with a devotion of which she who was the object might ...
— Handy Andy, Volume One - A Tale of Irish Life, in Two Volumes • Samuel Lover

... dew and mist: thou ghost-gray, gossamer winger Of dusk's dim glimmer, How chill thy note sounds; how thy wings of shimmer Vibrate, soft-sighing, Meseems, for Summer that is dead or dying. I stand and listen, And at thy song the garden-beds, that glisten With rose and lily, Seem touched with sadness; and the tuberose chilly, Breathing around its cold and colorless breath, Fills the pale evening ...
— Poems • Madison Cawein

... thrusting his head from the window of his own cab as that vehicle drew up with a jolt that made his stomach vibrate, "George! I am here!" ...
— Iole • Robert W. Chambers

... the parts of a telephone receiver—core, helix, disk, handle, etc.—vibrate simultaneously (Boudet, Laborde, Breguet, Ader, Du Moncel, and others). But there is no doubt that by far the most energetic effects are those of the disk. It has been possible to put the vibrations of ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 530, February 27, 1886 • Various

... scarlet and orange lances that already bristled along the eastern sky-line, the advance guard of the conqueror, who would ere many moments smite all that weird icy realm with consuming flames. The very air seemed frozen, and refused to vibrate in trills and roulades through the throaty organs of matutinal birds, that hopped and blinked, plumed their diamonded breasts, and scattered brilliants enough to set a tiara; and profound silence brooded over the scene, until rudely broken by a cry of dismay ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson

... bells chiming full many a clime in, Tolling sublime in cathedral shrine; While at a glib rate brass tongues would vibrate, But all their music spoke nought to thine; For memory dwelling on each proud swelling Of thy belfry knelling its bold notes free, Made the bells of Shandon Sound far more grand on The pleasant waters of the ...
— The Sunny Side of Ireland - How to see it by the Great Southern and Western Railway • John O'Mahony and R. Lloyd Praeger

... long the ebony forms of crows vibrate back and forth across the cold sky. If we watch them when very high up, we sometimes see them sail a short distance, and without fail, a second later, the clear "Caw! caw!" comes down to us, the sound-waves unable ...
— The Log of the Sun - A Chronicle of Nature's Year • William Beebe

... pipe, the music and the saluting, one ship and the next, and never the welcome of one died out before the tumult of the next began. It was like the ceaseless roar of the ever-rolling ocean, with never an instant when the ear-drum did not vibrate to the salute of cannon, the blood tingle to the call of the nation's hymn. One felt faith in ships and crews after it; and later, when in the cabin of the Mayflower the admirals and captains gathered, to meet them and to listen was to feel anew the assurance that this ...
— The U-boat hunters • James B. Connolly

... women. Slaves, toys, idols, companions, they rise with every ascending grade of culture until they have won the natural place so long denied them. The feminine string rings a true octave with the masculine, and makes a perfect concord, when left to vibrate in its entire length. But the lower forms of social humanity are constantly shortening it, and so producing occasional harmonies at the expense ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various

... friends!" shouted Jacob Farnum, making a trumpet of his hands. "We all thank you! Now, Captain Benson, make as handsome a flying start as you can." Jack already stood by the wheel, where he could reach all the controls. Down below the gasoline motor throbbed, making the hull vibrate. Power had been ready for the ...
— The Submarine Boys on Duty - Life of a Diving Torpedo Boat • Victor G. Durham

... Science frame of mind, saying, "My, how good that fly tasted!" each time the dipteron passed? The fly was just as inexplicable, braving danger and darkness time after time, to leave the sunshine and vibrate in the dusk to the enormously magnified song ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe

... expended in vain; for, although distinguished in her nation as a proficient in the art of abuse, she was permitted to work herself into such a fury as actually to foam at the mouth, without causing a muscle to vibrate in the motionless figure of the stranger. The effect of his indifference began to extend itself to the other spectators; and a youngster, who was just quitting the condition of a boy to enter the state of manhood, attempted to ...
— The Last of the Mohicans • James Fenimore Cooper

... broke from his comrades, and I at once felt convinced that he was the patriarch of the herd, and followed him accordingly. Cantering alongside, I was about to fire, when he instantly turned, and, uttering a trumpet so strong and shrill that the earth seemed to vibrate beneath my feet, he charged furiously after me for several hundred yards in a direct line, not altering his course in the slightest degree for the trees of the forest, which he snapped and overthrew like reeds in ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various

... Mr. Lawrence Boythorn, really making the whole house vibrate. "What, you have not forgotten it yet! Ha, ha, ha! And that was another most consummate vagabond! By my soul, the countenance of that fellow when he was a boy was the blackest image of perfidy, cowardice, ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens

... wand'ring late on Albion's shore That chains the rude tempestuous deep, I heard the hollow surges roar And vainly beat her guardian steep; I heard the rising sounds of woe Loud on the storm's wild pinion flow; And still they vibrate on the mournful lyre, That tunes to grief its ...
— Poems (1786), Volume I. • Helen Maria Williams

... the heat, And murmur in mine ears unceasingly The surging tides of that vast human sea— The billows of life that break with muffled beat And vibrate through this high and lone retreat; While over all, serene, and fair, and free, Thy dome is reared in naked majesty Grey, old St Paul's ... In thee the Ages meet, Slumbering amidst the trophies of their strife. And in their dreams thou hearest, while the cries Of triumph and despair ...
— Elves and Heroes • Donald A. MacKenzie

... during childhood and youth, we find the cultivation of the mind still depending upon the same principle. It is not enough that numerous objects be presented to the senses of the pupil; or that numerous words or sounds be made to vibrate in his ears; or even that he himself be made mechanically to utter them. This may be done, and yet the mind may remain perfectly inactive with respect to them all:—Nay, experience shews, that during such mechanical exercises, his mind may all the time ...
— A Practical Enquiry into the Philosophy of Education • James Gall

... said the vampyre. "I never thought that aught human could thus have moved me. Young man, you have touched the chords of memory; they vibrate throughout my heart, producing cadences and sounds of years long ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest

... closed in, and shock after shock made the ship vibrate as she struck the smaller pieces full and fair, followed by a crunching and grinding as they scraped past the sides. The dense pack had come, and hardly a square foot of space showed amongst the blocks; smaller ones packing in between the larger, until the sea was covered with a ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson

... hope to shun the path I tread. Expect the first to-morrow night, when the bell tolls One. Expect the second on the next night at the same hour. The third, upon the next night, when the last stroke of Twelve has ceased to vibrate. Look to see me no more; and look that, for your own sake, you remember what has passed ...
— Short Stories Old and New • Selected and Edited by C. Alphonso Smith

... tests of smell and colour—making wood, almost green wood, of probably not more than four years old, appear to the ignorant one hundred—there is another which I often use, and that is, as I do now, I make the plate rigid, but free to vibrate, so as to allow those mysterious motions play, and I place my ear at one extremity whilst I scratch or scrape, or move the rosined ...
— Violin Making - 'The Strad' Library, No. IX. • Walter H. Mayson

... of the human ear is capable of responding to a certain very small range of comparatively slow vibrations—slow enough to affect the air which surrounds us; and so the only sounds which we can hear are those made by objects which are able to vibrate at some rate ...
— Clairvoyance • Charles Webster Leadbeater

... working with his musical telephone an accident drove him into a new path, which ultimately brought him to the invention of a speaking telephone. He began his researches in 1874 with a musical telephone, in which he employed the interrupted current to vibrate the receiver, which consisted of an electro-magnet causing an iron reed or tongue to vibrate; but, while trying it one day with his assistant, Mr. Thomas A. Watson, it was found that a reed failed to ...
— Heroes of the Telegraph • J. Munro

... had never sung for his royal patron a roundelay more pleasing than his prose of the moment. It caused to vibrate the very heart chords of the susceptible prince. There were subtle appeals to spite ungratified, to wounded pride, to ambition, to ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle

... rising when the still, hot air of the room began to vibrate with the tremulous thunder of the sound for which Hunnicott had been so long straining his ears. He was the first of the three to hear it, and he hurried out ahead of the others. At the foot of the stair he ran blindly against ...
— The Grafters • Francis Lynde

... the cannonade," or floating softly up under the silent stars, "the thrilling, solemn, proud, pathetic voice" ceases not to cry unto us day and night; its echoes linger tenderly and tearfully around every hearth-stone, and vibrate with a royal resonance from mountain to sea-shore. The mother bends to it in her silent watches. The soldier, tempest-tost, hears it through the creaking cordage, and every true heart knows its brother, and takes up the magnificent ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton

... Eristalis courting a female; they hovered above her, and flew from side to side, making a high humming noise at the same time. Gnats and mosquitoes (Culicidae) also seem to attract each other by humming; and Prof. Mayer has recently ascertained that the hairs on the antennae of the male vibrate in unison with the notes of a tuning-fork, within the range of the sounds emitted by the female. The longer hairs vibrate sympathetically with the graver notes, and the shorter hairs with the higher ones. Landois also asserts that he has repeatedly ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin

... richer, more ideal, though it be a humbler home for us, with all the tenderer love and finer genius, now that man's enterprise is wrecked abroad? Shall we have no Music? Has the universal "panic" griped the singers' throats, that they can no longer vibrate with the passionate and perfect freedom indispensable to melody? It must not be. The soul is too rich in resources to let all its interests fail because one fails. If business and material speculation have been overdone, if we are ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various

... watch the fantastic shadows of the clustered arches shorten in the moonlight on the chequered floor; or he may close the casements fitted to their unshaken shafts against such wintry winds as would have made an English house vibrate to its foundation, and, in either case, compare their influence on his daily home feeling with that of the square openings in ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume II (of 3) • John Ruskin

... taken but a few steps when he was startled by the vicious rush of a swift object that whizzed up through the air and tore through a fold of his loose riding breeches, then swung back before his eyes to vibrate into stillness. It was a bamboo dagger, sharpened to a keen edge and point, hardened by charring in a slow fire. Fastened to a young sapling, it had been bent down over the trail and secured by a trigger his foot had released in passing. ...
— Terry - A Tale of the Hill People • Charles Goff Thomson

... at length, with many apologies, to resume his interrupted labours, her sense of humour ceased to vibrate. Never before had she desired her husband's presence as ...
— The Rocks of Valpre • Ethel May Dell

... ceased, I felt the whole room vibrate sensibly; and at the far end there rose, as from the floor, sparks or globules like bubbles of light, many-coloured—green, yellow, fire-red, azure. Up and down, to and fro, hither, thither, as tiny Will-o'-the-Wisps, the sparks moved, slow or swift, each at its own caprice. A chair ...
— Pausanias, the Spartan - The Haunted and the Haunters, An Unfinished Historical Romance • Lord Lytton

... would try to remember this, and it seemed easy to remember what the young doctor said, for the voice of Arthur Hazleton was very sweet and clear, and seemed to vibrate on the ear like ...
— Helen and Arthur - or, Miss Thusa's Spinning Wheel • Caroline Lee Hentz

... love the man with a feeling soul. Whose passions are deep and strong; Whose cords, when touched with a kindred power, Will vibrate loud ...
— Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Henry Bibb, an American Slave, Written by Himself • Henry Bibb

... powers that raise the soul to flame, Catch every nerve, and vibrate through the frame; Their level life is but a smouldering fire, Unquench'd by want, ...
— A Voyage Round the World, Vol. I (of ?) • James Holman

... He who knows little of those who preceded is very likely to care little for those coming after. "Life would be to him a chain of sand, while it ought to be a kind of electric chain that makes our hearts tremble and vibrate with the most ancient thoughts of the Past, as well as with the most distant hopes ...
— India: What can it teach us? - A Course of Lectures Delivered before the University Of Cambridge • F. Max Mueller

... certain diet, etc. The wise nurse will displace as many of these as she can by casual suggestions on her own part. She will demand of herself that her very presence be quieting, calming, happy; that her conversation with her patient shall vibrate with a certain something that gives him courage and strengthens the desire and the will to health; that her care of him shall prove confidence-breeding. The patient's attitude, when he is at all suggestible, is largely in the nurse's hands, ...
— Applied Psychology for Nurses • Mary F. Porter

... while in rhythmic resonance the loud strong hale reverberations of his formidable heart thundered rumblingly causing the ground, the summit of the lofty tower and the still loftier walls of the cave to vibrate ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce

... in vain attempts to escape. Some climbed the palisades, only to present a sure target for innumerable bullets; others plunged into the eddying flames which were fiercely devouring their dwellings. For a moment their dark bodies seemed to tremble and vibrate in the glowing furnace, and then they fell as ...
— King Philip - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott

... flounder, flicker, flitter, flit, flutter, shift, shuffle, shake, totter, tremble, vacillate, wamble[obs3], turn and turn about, ring the changes; sway to and fro, shift to and fro; change and change about; waffle, blow with the wind (irresolute) 605; oscillate &c. 314; vibrate between, two extremes, oscillate between, two extremes; alternate; have as many phases as the moon. Adj. changeable, changeful; changing &c. 140; mutable, variable, checkered, ever changing; protean, proteiform|; versatile. unstaid[obs3], inconstant; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget

... on and on, Zerbino and Dulcie went round and round, but the women in the doorways did not even look over at us. It was discouraging. But I was determined not to be discouraged. I played with all my might, making the cords of my harp vibrate, almost to breaking them. Suddenly a little child, taking its first steps, trotted from his home and came towards us. No doubt the mother would follow him, and after the mother a friend would come, and we should have an audience, and then a ...
— Nobody's Boy - Sans Famille • Hector Malot

... earliest and dearest objects in my remembrance. "Surely," I exclaimed, "they are Chiswick bells!—the very bells under the sound of which I received part of my early education, and, as a school-boy, passed the happiest days of my life!—Well may their tones vibrate to my inmost soul—and kindle uncommon sympathies!" I now recollected that the winding of the river must have brought me nearer to that simple and primitive village than the profusion of wood had permitted me ...
— A Morning's Walk from London to Kew • Richard Phillips

... XI. on "Cutting"), there is nothing to deflect the light beams back and forth from facet to facet, as in a diamond, so that the light, acting directly on these radiations or masses of globular cavities and on the streak, causes the former to glow like living fire, and the streak appears to vibrate, palpitate, expand, and contract, exactly like the slit in the ...
— The Chemistry, Properties and Tests of Precious Stones • John Mastin

... snapping of a twig. We stood shivering and straining our ears and were about to go back to bed when we heard faintly a long-drawn wail as if all the suffering and sorrow on earth were bound up in that one sound. We couldn't tell which way it came from; it seemed to vibrate through the air and chill our hearts. I had heard that panthers cried that way, but Gavotte said it was not a panther. He said the engine and saws had been moved from where we were to another spring across the ...
— Letters of a Woman Homesteader • Elinore Pruitt Stewart

... meant. Now, once more; carry it up and then down, AH—AH." He put his hand back to her throat and sat with his head bent, his one eye closed. He loved to hear a big voice throb in a relaxed, natural throat, and he was thinking that no one had ever felt this voice vibrate before. It was like a wild bird that had flown into his studio on Middleton Street from goodness knew how far! No one knew that it had come, or even that it existed; least of all the strange, crude girl in whose throat it beat its passionate wings. What a simple thing it was, he reflected; ...
— Song of the Lark • Willa Cather

... opening and closing with jerking movements, each time opening wider. These jerking movements were in unison with the recurrent spasms that attacked the throat, each spasm severer and more intense than the preceding one. And in accord with jerks and spasms the larynx began to vibrate, at first silently, accompanied by the rush of air expelled from the lungs, then sounding a low, deep note, the lowest in the register of the human ear. All this was the nervous and ...
— Brown Wolf and Other Jack London Stories - Chosen and Edited By Franklin K. Mathiews • Jack London

... her other than sensual ones. In any case, mistrust would poison all the sweetness of abandon, all soulful rapture. To deceive a confiding and faithful heart, dominate a soul by artifice, possess it wholly and make it vibrate like an instrument—habere non haberi—all this, doubtless, gives intense pleasure; but to deceive, and know that one is being deceived in return, is a stupid and fruitless labour, ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio

... of man works in just the same mysterious fashion as outside Nature—so it struck me yesterday. A wondrous alchemy is being wrought in artery, vein, and nerve, in brain and marrow. The blood-stream rushes on, the nerve—strings vibrate, the heart-muscle rises and falls, and the seasons in man's being change from one to another. What kind of breezes will blow next, when and from what quarter—of ...
— Glimpses of Bengal • Sir Rabindranath Tagore



Words linked to "Vibrate" :   vibrant, hover, swing, waver, go, vibrator, judder, vibration, sound, wobble, sway, vibratory, shimmy, hesitate, vibrancy, resonate, shillyshally, waffle, shake, move, purr, excite, librate, make vibrant sounds, shake up, hunt, stir, stimulate



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