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Automatical   Listen
adjective
Automatical, Automatic  adj.  
1.
Having an inherent power of action or motion. "Nothing can be said to be automatic."
2.
Pertaining to, or produced by, an automaton; of the nature of an automaton; self-acting or self-regulating under fixed conditions; operating with minimal human intervention; esp. applied to machinery or devices in which certain things formerly or usually done by hand are done by the machine or device itself; as, the automatic feed of a lathe; automatic gas lighting; an automatic engine or switch; an automatic mouse; an automatic transmission. The opposite of manual. Note: Narrower terms are: autoloading(prenominal), semiautomatic; automated, machine-controlled, machine-driven; self-acting, self-activating, self-moving, self-regulating; self-locking; self-winding. Also See: mechanical.
3.
(Physiol.) Not voluntary; not depending on the will; mechanical; controlled by the autonomic nervous system; without conscious control; as, automatic movements or functions. The opposite of voluntary.
Synonyms: reflex(prenominal), reflexive,involuntary "Unconscious or automatic reasoning."
4.
Like the unthinking functioning of a machine. "An automatic 'thank you'"
Synonyms: automaton-like, automatonlike, machinelike, machine-like, robotlike.
Automatic arts, such economic arts or manufacture as are carried on by self-acting machinery.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Automatical" Quotes from Famous Books



... a more leisurely rate toward their bunks. The school's organized activities were not much affected by the hour, but the big exercise quadrangle was almost deserted for once. Behind the railing of the firing range a young woman stood by herself, gun in hand, waiting for the automatic range monitor to select a new ...
— Legacy • James H Schmitz

... and his machine-gun jammed. In a minute they were all mixed up, at it tooth and claw as merry as a Galway election, the big Bosch officer, throwing off a hymn of hate, the life and soul of the party. He came for Patrick with an automatic, and Patrick thought all was up; and so it would have been but for Goldilocks, who materialized suddenly out of nowhere, deftly tripped up his officer from behind, and, dancing on his stomach with inspired hooves, trod ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, April 4, 1917 • Various

... themselves only to think of, are the most open to this devastating influence. If these machines are to be controlled, as they must be, by an exterior intelligence, they must obey automatically, and if in the past automatic obedience has not been implanted, there is nothing to take ...
— Life in a Tank • Richard Haigh

... and superintend its working for the first few days. At the same time she hired from one of the Sacramento dairies a man who was to be foreman of her own dairy industry, a capable fellow with an intimate practical knowledge of automatic milkers. He, with a couple of strippers paid overtime wages managed until the dairy crew could be builded up again. Her new foreman from the first took the greater part of this burden off ...
— Judith of Blue Lake Ranch • Jackson Gregory

... an "Automatic Delivery" pillar! Curious sight on a mountain. Put a penny in, and you get a small book—Guide to Snowdonia. Thanks! But what I want is a guide to top. Fog worse than ever. Believe I've missed ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, August 1, 1891 • Various

... assessment: NA domestic: good automatic telephone system international: country code - 1-268; 1 coaxial submarine cable; satellite earth station - 1 Intelsat (Atlantic Ocean); tropospheric scatter to Saba (Netherlands ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency

... only note contributing circumstances—an eye that took in the preacher from the crown of his head to the sole of his foot; an almost uncannie insight into character; the instinct to seize on every scrap of evidence; a memory that was simply an automatic register; an unfailing sense of fitness; and an ...
— Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush • Ian Maclaren

... according as the worshiper depends on the rapidity rather than on the monotony of his excitations. Here, again, the self- background drops, inasmuch as every rhythmical movement tends to become automatic, and then unconscious. Thus what we are wont to call the inspired madness of the Delphic priestesses was less the expression of ecstasy than the means of its excitation. Perpetual motion, as well as eternal rest, ...
— The Psychology of Beauty • Ethel D. Puffer

... moves from its position at the side, a fact gratefully appreciated by one's next neighbor. What is more awkward than the arm projected, holding the fork pointing backward at a right angle to the lips, the mouth opening wide like an automatic railway gate to an approaching locomotive—the labored and ostentatious way in which food is sometimes transported to its destination? Nor, once in the mouth, is it lost to sight forever. Other people, seated ...
— Etiquette • Agnes H. Morton

... which he kept shut up in a large oblong closet, he rose at the stroke with the mechanical precision of the figures which are made to move by springs in the German toys. He would then advance slowly towards the players, give them a glance like the automatic gaze of the Greeks and Turks exhibited on the Boulevard du Temple, and say sternly, "Go away!" There were days when he had lucid intervals and could give his wife excellent advice as to the sale of their wines; but at such times he became extremely annoying, ...
— Parisians in the Country - The Illustrious Gaudissart, and The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac

... been very much chagrined in seeing myself in a motion picture. I have wondered if I really was that kind of a 'guy.' The extraordinary rapidity with which I walked, for example, the instantaneous and apparently automatic nature of my motion, the way in which I produced uncommon grimaces, and altogether the extraordinary exhibition I made of myself sends me to bed very unhappy. And I often think to myself that, although all the world is a stage and men and women but actors upon it, after all, the ...
— Woodrow Wilson as I Know Him • Joseph P. Tumulty

... eyes. I understood. I had had the same sort of thing happen to me in moments of crisis. I remember once detaining a dentist with the drill at one of my lower bicuspids and holding him up for nearly ten minutes with a story about a Scotchman, an Irishman, and a Jew. Purely automatic. The more he tried to jab, the more I said "Hoots, mon," "Begorrah," and "Oy, oy". When one loses one's nerve, ...
— Right Ho, Jeeves • P. G. Wodehouse

... the most savage island in the Solomons—so savage that no traders or planters have yet gained a foothold on it; while, from the time of the earliest beche-de-mer fishers and sandalwood traders down to the latest labor recruiters equipped with automatic rifles and gasolene engines, scores of white adventurers have been passed out by tomahawks and soft-nosed Snider bullets. So Malaita remains today, in the twentieth century, the stamping ground of ...
— South Sea Tales • Jack London

... they are not doomed at all. But this chance counts for little as against the certainty that, whatever happens, the primitive and essential things will never, anywhere, wholly cease, while mankind lasts. And thus it is that Brown's Ode to the Steam Plough, Jones' Sonnet Sequence on the Automatic Reaping Machine, and Robinson's Epic of the Piscicidal Dynamo, leave unstirred the deeper depths of emotion in us. The subjects chosen by these three great poets do not much impress us when we regard them sub specie aeternitatis. Smith has painted nothing more masterly than his picture ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm

... was quite chummy— mighty fine chap. Young fellow, too— almost a kid. When I got up this morning—" Billy shrugged his shoulders again and pointed to his empty pistol holster. "Everything was gone— dogs, sledge, extra tent, even my rifle and automatic. He wasn't quite bad, though, for he left me my grub. He was a funny cuss, too. Look at that!" He pointed to the bakneesh wreath that still hung to the front of his tent. "'In honor of the living,' " he ...
— Isobel • James Oliver Curwood

... and the two exchanged silent glances before O'Malley cut in his transmitter. He must give name and number—this signal was a demand that could not be disregarded—but on the old freighter was no automatic sender that would flash the information across to the other ship; the pilot's voice ...
— The Finding of Haldgren • Charles Willard Diffin

... jockey seemed to explode after the fashion of an over-inflated ball. He squeaked like a rat, leaped to his feet, hurled the chair on which he had been sitting crash against the door from which Windy Bill et al had withdrawn hastily, and ended by producing a small wicked-looking automatic—then a new and strange weapon—and rushing out into the main saloon. There he announced that he was known to the cognoscenti as Art the Blood and was a city gunman in comparison with which these plain, so-called bad men were as ...
— The Killer • Stewart Edward White

... a glittering plastic wonder, and the sheer luxury of it eased Carrin's mind. He threw his clothes into the A. E. automatic Kleen-presser, and adjusted the shower spray to a notch above "brisk." The five-degrees-above-skin-temperature water beat against his thin white body. Delightful! And then a relaxing rub-dry ...
— Cost of Living • Robert Sheckley

... on its exterior, that in passing out of the case from which it is launched into the sea, the machinery is set in motion, and the first act of the torpedo is to set or regulate itself for the special purpose for which it is designed. Thus it may be styled an automatic torpedo. The celebrated Whitehead fish-torpedo, beautiful and cleverly contrived though it be, can only advance straight to its object at a certain depth below the surface; but mine, as you see, by this arrangement of the ...
— In the Track of the Troops • R.M. Ballantyne

... justly to be ascribed to the impressionist. His productions have many attractions and many merits—merits and attractions that the traditional painting has not. But they are really only by a kind of automatic inadvertence, pictures. They are not ...
— French Art - Classic and Contemporary Painting and Sculpture • W. C. Brownell

... "It's only automatic writing, dear," he replied. "You may not have been aware you were writing, but it probably reflects something in ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods

... watchfulness and admiration, as the evolutions of the most perfectly drilled troops in the world went forward. The infantry marched and countermarched; plumes of all colors waved in the sunlight and kept time to the music; uniforms and men seemed but part of one grand incomprehensible automatic movement; battle-flags scarred with the history of all the wars fluttered their tattered shreds in the wind, waking memories of irrepressible pathos and joy; the artillery rumbled and thundered; the evolutions of the cavalry were like systematic whirlwinds; and the scarlet Zouaves, ...
— In and Around Berlin • Minerva Brace Norton

... a sabre on an old regulation belt, a Sam Browne belt, a Colt .45 Army automatic in an officers' type holster, a Malacca swagger-stick, a black and gilt officer's hat cord, a steel ...
— A Catalogue of Early Pennsylvania and Other Firearms and Edged Weapons at "Restless Oaks" • Henry W. Shoemaker

... soon after an audience with General John J. Pershing, commander-in-chief of the American expeditionary forces . In one hand Chester carried a little hardwood box, to which were attached coils of wire. In the other hand the lad held a revolver. Hal, likewise, carried his automatic in his hand. Each was determined to give a good account of himself should his ...
— The Boy Allies with Haig in Flanders • Clair W. Hayes

... done any shooting recently. Stooping again, he picked up another stone and tossed it a foot short and to the left of the prawn. As soon as it was out of his fingers, his hand went for the butt of the long automatic. It was out and the safety off before the flint landed; as the prawn fled, he fired from the hip. The ...
— Little Fuzzy • Henry Beam Piper

... was worked closer to Earth until it came within range of giant scanners. For an instant, a large section of its interior was visible to the instruments of the watchers on Earth; then the picture blurred and vanished again. Presumably automatic anti-scanning devices ...
— Oneness • James H. Schmitz

... It won't interfere with your work, and it may be very useful at a pinch." He drew from his hip pocket a small automatic pistol. "Accept this," he went on, "and keep it somewhere handy as a sort of guardian. It's much ...
— The Penalty • Gouverneur Morris

... combination job Karpin was cleaning right now, and that had dimensions of four feet by three feet by three feet. The clutter of gear over to the left wasn't as much of a clutter as it looked. There was a Geiger counter, an automatic spectrograph, two atmosphere suits, a torsion densimeter, a core-cutting drill, a few small hammers and picks, two spare air tanks, boxes of food concentrate, a paint tube, a doorless jimmy-john and two small ...
— The Risk Profession • Donald Edwin Westlake

... taken his automatic from his belt and pointed it, and in that instant the girls saw a black and yellow skinned snake coiled, its head poised with ...
— The Merriweather Girls in Quest of Treasure • Lizette M. Edholm

... A: Mr. James Freeman Clarke has stated this better than I can. "We may state the law thus: 'Any habitual course of conduct changes voluntary actions into automatic or involuntary (i.e., reflex) actions.' By practice man forms habits, and habitual action is automatic action, requiring no exercise of will except at the beginning of the series of acts. The law of association does ...
— The Whence and the Whither of Man • John Mason Tyler

... in an emphatic voice, half-surprised remonstrance, half-automatic rebuke; "I am astonished!" She looked it. She pursed her lips more tightly, and gazed at the pair of culprits as though she had hoped better things of them and again had been disappointed. "You know quite well that this is out of bounds." It ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood

... Journal.... His idea embodied 'everything'—the wings forming an oblique sail, the empennage, the spindle forms to diminish resistance, the screw-propeller, the 'explosion' motor,... he even described a means of securing automatic stability. Is not all that marvellous, and does it not constitute a complete specification ...
— The Mastery of the Air • William J. Claxton

... with an automatic tread, her eyes fixed on vacancy, and her hands outstretched, as if feeling her way. It indeed seemed to her as if the floor swayed to and fro under her feet, as if the walls tottered, as if the ceiling were about to ...
— Baron Trigault's Vengeance - Volume 2 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau

... bag in charge of that chauffeur, McGroarty, and armed him with my automatic," he explained. He paused to wipe his eyes. The fumes from the film had distressed all of us. "Shirley and Marilyn Loring are both missing still," he added. "I've been asking everyone about them. No ...
— The Film Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve

... two, The street-lamp said, "Remark the cat which flattens itself in the gutter, Slips out its tongue And devours a morsel of rancid butter." So the hand of the child, automatic, Slipped out and pocketed a toy that was running along the quay. I could see nothing behind that child's eye. I have seen eyes in the street Trying to peer through lighted shutters, And a crab one afternoon in a pool, An old crab ...
— Poems • T. S. [Thomas Stearns] Eliot

... learn that the least thing may hinder his work in us. It became necessary for me recently to purchase a hayrake. I was told of two different kinds, one the old-fashioned kind where the prongs of the rake must be lifted by hand, the other an automatic arrangement where by simply touching the foot to a spring the movement of the wheels would lift the rake at the proper time so that raking hay was a delight. The first day the rake was in the field it was almost impossible to ...
— And Judas Iscariot - Together with other evangelistic addresses • J. Wilbur Chapman

... will be best to get one of the hand-power, compressed-air sprayers—either a knapsack pump or a compressed-air sprayer—types of which are illustrated. These are used for applying wet sprays, and should be supplied with one of the several forms of mist-making nozzles, the non- cloggable automatic type being the best. For more extensive work a barrel pump, mounted on wheels, will be desirable, but one of the above will do a great deal of work in little time. Extension rods for use in spraying trees and vines may be obtained for either. For operations on a very ...
— Home Vegetable Gardening • F. F. Rockwell

... split the wind if I could have jest drawed my automatic in time! As 'twas, I put up the best fight I could, with a woman screamin' and hangin' to me for pertection. I rastled the big feller around in the road there for some time, neither of us able to git a good holt. ...
— 'Me-Smith' • Caroline Lockhart

... regarding the history and mechanical construction of platen printing presses, from the original hand press to the modern job press, to which is added a chapter on automatic presses of small size. 51 pp.; illustrated; 49 review ...
— Capitals - A Primer of Information about Capitalization with some - Practical Typographic Hints as to the Use of Capitals • Frederick W. Hamilton

... becomes an automatic (habit) action in which man accomplishes the most work for a given expenditure ...
— Industrial Progress and Human Economics • James Hartness

... of pain last as long as children retain consciousness, a particular part of the head is not commonly pointed out, but asked about it the majority point to the forehead. With small children automatic movements are noticed that also seem to refer to headache, and which consist in rapidly placing the hand on the head ...
— Prof. Koch's Method to Cure Tuberculosis Popularly Treated • Max Birnbaum

... the men in the automatic room are shaping for trouble," he said, as soon as their greetings ...
— Mary Minds Her Business • George Weston

... habit of associating ideas, weighing values, and carrying points, unconsciously, before the subject is properly mastered. "Ninety-nine hundredths, or, possibly, nine hundred and ninety-nine thousandths of our activity is purely automatic and habitual," says Professor James, "from our rising in the morning to our lying down each night. Our dressing and undressing, our eating and drinking, our greetings and partings, our hat-raisings and giving way for ladies to precede, nay, even most of the ...
— How To Study and Teaching How To Study • F. M. McMurry

... has. Laughter is spontaneous, that is to say, the movements are not designed or directed by the conscious will. But in mankind, in proportion as individuals are trained in self-control, it is more or less completely under command, and in spite of the most urgent tendency of the automatic mechanism to enter upon the progressive series of movements which we distinguish as (1) smile, (2) broad smile or grin, (3) laugh, (4) loud laughter, (5) paroxysms of uncontrolled laughter, a man or woman can prevent all indication by muscular movement ...
— More Science From an Easy Chair • Sir E. Ray (Edwin Ray) Lankester

... Remington, but he knew the gun and, holding coarsely upon the swiftly moving blot, he began to shoot. The first bullet sent up a great splash of dust beneath the horse's nose, making him leap as if to hurdle a fence. The rifle was automatic; Gale needed only to pull the trigger. He saw now that the raiders behind were in line. Swiftly he worked the trigger. Suddenly the leading horse leaped convulsively, not up nor aside, but straight ahead, and then he crashed to the ground throwing his rider like a catapult, and then slid and ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey

... urban habit, he fails to oxidize his proteins and toxins. Failing to oxidize his proteins and toxins, he degenerates. Recognizing the degenerating influence of urban life, by means of his intelligence he has placed within his consciousness that automatic arrangement, as good as the automatic arrangement which turns water on to a boiler, which says to him, "go out and oxidize your proteins and toxins." That is what "back-to-the-land" means. You've got to begin from this fundamental point. Now then, if this represents a ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association, Report of the Proceedings at the Third Annual Meeting • Northern Nut Growers Association

... of these drills is to train pupils so that the sight of the phonogram will cause an immediate, correct, and automatic vocal response; while the word building will develop skill in uniting or "blending" readily and correctly the different phonic elements of which ...
— The Magic Speech Flower - or Little Luke and His Animal Friends • Melvin Hix

... are opened and thrown into the automatic feeder which carries up a layer of cotton on a spiked apron from which it is removed by a rapidly revolving "doffer" underneath which is a screen which catches some of the dirt. It is next fed between rolls in front of a rapidly ...
— Textiles and Clothing • Kate Heintz Watson

... means of nerves which control the tension of the muscle fibres. The circulation may be compared with an irrigation system in which the water supply of each particular field is regulated not by the engineer, but by an automatic device connected with the growing crop and responding ...
— Disease and Its Causes • William Thomas Councilman

... every narrow doorway, crying up the merits of Cosmoramas, views of Constantinople, marionettes, automatic chess-players, and performing dogs who would pick you out the prettiest woman in the company. The ventriloquist Fritz-James flourished here in the Cafe Borel before he went to fight and fall at Montmartre with the young lads from the Ecole polytechnique. Here, ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac

... tossed from hand to hand in self-defence until it burst and injured the plaintiff. Here even human agencies were a part of the chain between the defendant's act and the result, although they were treated as more or less nearly automatic, in order to ...
— The Common Law • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

... ten minutes is packed with self-control and selflessness; trained muscles and minds and souls responded to the emergency with an automatic efficiency well-nigh unbelievable. Miss Tufts sent the alarm to the president, and then went to the rooms of the faculty on the third floor and to the officers of the Domestic Department on the second floor. Miss Davis set a girl to ringing the fast-fire alarm. And down the ...
— The Story of Wellesley • Florence Converse

... his car again, shot his eyes up and down the street. He barely refrained from drawing the 9 mm automatic which nestled under his left shoulder and which he knew how ...
— Freedom • Dallas McCord Reynolds

... with a cheap, blue paper dotted with silver stars. The smoking kerosene footlights on one side of the stage cast a drab light upon a musician with a disheveled gray beard and grease-stained coat, who was pounding away at the keyboard of a wretched piano with an automatic motion of his ...
— The Comedienne • Wladyslaw Reymont

... in an automatic effort to defend himself against the conviction he felt closing down upon him that John lashed ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster

... a degree almost all animals are gregarious, but the units of organization are much smaller with them than with man, excepting possibly in the case of the ant and the bee, insects which seem specially adapted to live a highly automatic and cooperative life, such as human beings cannot possibly reach. But primitive men and their direct ancestors lived in small groups. They could not have preserved their life in any other way. They lived ...
— Crime: Its Cause and Treatment • Clarence Darrow

... provided to prevent the pressure in the envelope from exceeding a certain determined maximum and are fitted both to ballonets and the gaschamber. They are automatic in action, and, as we have said, the gas valve is set to blow off at a pressure in excess of that for the ...
— British Airships, Past, Present, and Future • George Whale

... talents and vigor of their exceptional negroes and mulattoes, on the other hand, they sought to foster by special training and rewards. But the prevalence of slavery which aided them in the one policy hampered them in the other, for it made the rewards arbitrary instead of automatic and it restricted the scope of the laborers' employments and of their ambitions as well. The device of hiring slaves to themselves, which had an invigorating effect here and there in the towns, could find little application in the country; and the paternalism of the planters could provide no ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips

... forward. The further inward folding of the hinge of this rod next appears to divide the wing into two, the second portion passing under the first, and thus bringing the wing down to half its original size. By this time the mechanical or automatic folding process stops, and the rest of the folding up has to be done by the aid of the pincers at the end of the body. Finally the packing up is complete, and the two hard outer cases, like a couple of ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various

... game and fighting; three Westley-Richards double-barrel 12-gauge smooth-bores; two Smith hammerless 10-gauged ditto; two Remington U.M.C. 12-gauge six-shot repeating smooth-bores; and six Colt Government model seven-shot .45 calibre automatic pistols. But, as Earle explained, "when you go exploring and hunting, you need a variety of weapons for different purposes; and there is also the contingency of possible loss to be considered; moreover, in a fight, with tremendously heavy ...
— In Search of El Dorado • Harry Collingwood

... these choice blendings, which can be so easily produced, affords a constant succession of sweet surprises. The melophones which you hear, represent the highest achievement of art in the production of automatic musical instruments. This set is the most complete and the most expensive one in existence. In construction and final completion they cost the inventor and maker three years of constant thought and labor. The result is truly marvellous. The perfection of harmony and purity of tone are convincing ...
— Solaris Farm - A Story of the Twentieth Century • Milan C. Edson

... the concrete phenomenon, the animation at the same time disappears and ceases. Man, however, by means of the classifying faculty we have noticed, after repeatedly perceiving various plants similar or analogous to the first, is able by spontaneous reflection, and by the automatic exercise of his intelligence, to refer them to a single type, and in this way the specific idea of a tree is evolved in his mind and fixed in his memory. The same thing gradually takes place with respect to flowers, animals, springs, ...
— Myth and Science - An Essay • Tito Vignoli

... touch of each other's hands, they are so sure of each other now. Past people, dozens of people, getting fewer and fewer as Forty-sixth Street comes, Forty-seventh, Forty-eighth, always a little arrogantly because none of the automatic figures they pass have ever eaten friendly bread together or had fire that can burn over them like clear salt water or the knowledge that the only thing worth having in life is the hurt and gladness of that fire. Buses pass like big squares of ...
— Young People's Pride • Stephen Vincent Benet

... court's attention to this pistol. It is an eleven-mm automatic, manufactured by the Colt Firearms Company of New Texas, a licensed subsidiary of the Colt Firearms Company of Terra." He handed it to Longfellow. "Do you ...
— Lone Star Planet • Henry Beam Piper and John Joseph McGuire

... remembrance at Christmas, and from time to time some part of your wardrobe or cast-off clothing. They are just like children, and must be treated with the rigor and mild discipline which a schoolmaster uses toward his pupils. In all their movements they should be noiseless and as automatic as possible in ...
— The Complete Bachelor - Manners for Men • Walter Germain

... to keep it in your viewpoint. When you jump back, you set off a bunch of controls. That was the control room, too, not just the communications room. Well, those controls you lean back against take the ship out of automatic pilot and send it into some wild acrobatics and that's why Hafitz misses. Also it knocks him out of the wheelchair so he's helpless and you get his gun. Also you see that the plans are still there—right where you put them, stuck to ...
— Double Take • Richard Wilson

... or refusal. Of course, in these experiments all obvious sources of deception were excluded. But Gurney's most important contribution to our knowledge of hypnotism was his series of experiments on the automatic writing of subjects who had received post-hypnotic suggestions. For example, a subject during trance is told that he will poke the fire in six minutes after waking. On being waked he has no memory of the ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James

... heart, cowardly, abject, the unconscious outcome of this strange magnetism which emanated from him and had cast a spell over her, transforming her individuality and will power, and making of her an unconscious and automatic instrument ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy

... irritable, and less moral. And they drink as they never drank before. Drinking is one form of the many forms of degeneration that set in when white men are exposed too long to too much white light. The increase of alcoholic consumption is automatic. The tropics is no place for a long sojourn. They seem doomed to die anyway, and the heavy drinking expedites the process. They don't reason about it. They ...
— John Barleycorn • Jack London

... and arose gravely with an automatic courtesy, and lifted eyes with a wooden expression to stare at ...
— Quaint Courtships • Howells & Alden, Editors

... was a way which was a third way and anybody could refuse to exclaim. It was not prohibitive. It was concubining. It was sweetly beginning. It had a pretty reflection. It was angust. It held the rest. It was not particular. It was chased. It was pelucid. It was clearly automatic. ...
— Matisse Picasso and Gertrude Stein - With Two Shorter Stories • Gertrude Stein

... of the new Parisian plan of regulating Cab-fares by distance, which is to be shown by an automatic apparatus, venteth his feelings of dismay and disgust in anticipation of the application of the new-fangled ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., August 23, 1890. • Various

... with a benignly triumphant expression, and a complacent rustle of silken skirts. Harriet, beneath an automatic smile, hid a troubled heart. Royal was losing no time, Ward his innocent instrument, and this fatuous old lady of course playing his game for him! Madame Carter had always spoiled Nina in something a trifle more defined and malicious ...
— Harriet and the Piper - (Norris Volume XI) • Kathleen Norris

... things that had been merely said two thousand years ago, could be done now. And He would do what He could toward having them dropped forever, taken for granted and acted on as a part of the morally automatic and ...
— Crowds - A Moving-Picture of Democracy • Gerald Stanley Lee

... giving any thought to the matter. My reaction must have been both immediate and automatic. I don't think I even intended to bunt my husband in the short-ribs the way I did, for the impact of my body half twisted him about and sent him staggering back several steps. All I know is that holster and belt came tumbling down as I sprang and caught at the Colt handle. ...
— The Prairie Child • Arthur Stringer

... when you are simply wasting effort. As you remember, I tried to abduct Mrs. Seaton by picking her off with an attractor from a space-ship. I would have bet that nothing could have stopped me. Well, when they located me—probably with an automatic Osnomian ray-detector—and heated me red-hot while I was still better than two hundred miles up, I knew then and there that they had us stopped; that there was nothing we could do except go back to my plan, abandon the abduction idea, and ...
— Skylark Three • Edward Elmer Smith

... piano and tried to play despite his violent mockery. One afternoon, when the sun drove the town to its siesta, he wandered into the room where stood the instrument. Moved by an automatic impulse, the lad placed one finger on a treble key. He shuddered as it tinkled under the pressure; then he struck the major third and held both keys down, trembling, while drops of water formed under his eyes. He hated the sound he made, but could not ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker

... Here were automatic machines upon which empty boxes traveled along until they reached a device that filled each one with the exact number of pounds to be contained in it, the package afterward passed to women who sealed it tightly and gave it ...
— The Story of Sugar • Sara Ware Bassett

... Automatic action in the moral world; the reflex movement which seems to be self-determination, and has been hanged and howled at as such (metaphorically) for nobody knows how many centuries: until somebody shall study this as Marshall Hall has studied reflex ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various

... the other's secret; each realized that the success of his plans depended on the silence of the other; each resolved instantly to procure that silence at any cost. Von Staden reached for his hip pocket, but before he could draw his automatic pistol and cover the skipper, Michael J. Murphy had hurled ten pounds of code book into the geometric centre of the supercargo's face. It was the first weapon his hand closed over, and he did not disdain it. The instant it landed and von Staden reeled before the blow, ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne

... English—that we're certain of. He often seems to understand—half understand—a written phrase or word in English. And he is certainly a man of refinement. All his personal ways—all that is instinctive and automatic—the subliminal consciousness, so to speak—seems to be that of a gentleman. But it is impossible to get any response out of him, for anything connected with the war. And yet we doubt whether there is any actual brain lesion. So far it seems to be severe functional ...
— Missing • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... automatically restored, effective January 1, 1996, for certain foreign works placed into the public domain because of lack of proper notice or noncompliance with other legal requirements. Although restoration is automatic, if the copyright owner wishes to enforce rights against reliance parties (those who, relying on the public domain status of a work, were already using the work before the URAA was enacted), he/she must either file with the Copyright Office a Notice of Intent to Enforce the restored ...
— Supplementary Copyright Statutes • Library of Congress. Copyright Office.

... expression of his feeling. What nature does for us in times of great excitement Delsarte will do for us at all times by means of his exercises, practiced until the conscious mechanical motion becomes unconscious, automatic, and the body grows responsive to all ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke

... and breathed a prayer to herself. She was nearer the door than Craig by about half-a-dozen paces. Her hand groped in the little bag she was carrying and gripped something hard. She clenched her teeth for a moment. Then the automatic pistol flashed out through ...
— The Black Box • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... introduced into mines for pumping purposes. Whether its action was originally automatic or whether dependent upon the hand operation of the valves is a question of doubt. The story commonly believed is that a boy, Humphrey Potter, in 1713, whose duty it was to open and shut such valves of an engine he attended, by suitable cords and ...
— Steam, Its Generation and Use • Babcock & Wilcox Co.

... the whole of the shuttle race free and unencumbered. The act of starting the loom brings the guard again to the working position without any extra act having to be performed by the weaver. The action is entirely automatic, and the weaver has not anything to do that she has not to do with the present unguarded looms. The arrangement appeared to ourselves to be a very efficient one, and it has the merit that the length of the guard can be made greater than ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 492, June 6, 1885 • Various

... hereafter as the problem of Myers; and willy-nilly, inquiry must follow on the path which it has opened up. But Myers has not only propounded the Problem definitely, he has also invented definite methods for its solution. Posthypnotic suggestion, crystal-gazing, automatic writing and trance-speech, the willing-game, etc., are now, thanks to him, instruments of research, reagents like litmus paper or the galvanometer, for revealing what would otherwise be hidden. These are so many ways of putting the Subliminal on tap. Of course without the simultaneous work on ...
— Memories and Studies • William James

... Egyptienne, pp. 106, 107; English edition, pp. 105, 106. This notion of actuated statues seemed so strange and so unworthy of the wisdom of the Egyptians that Egyptologists of the rank of M. de Rouge have taken in an abstract and metaphorical sense expressions referring to the automatic ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 1 (of 12) • G. Maspero

... Josephine. He steeled himself to a composure that drew a questioning tenseness into her face. Gently he stroked her soft hair, explaining that Shan Tung had returned and that he was going to see him. In his bedroom he strapped his Service automatic ...
— The River's End • James Oliver Curwood

... (formerly Automatic Voice Network or Autovon); basic general-purpose, switched voice network of the Defense Communications System ...
— The 1999 CIA Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... of composition, and is effected by simply reversing the motion of the shaft. By duplicating certain parts of the machine, both operations are performed at the same time. The process of distributing, and also that of resetting the same matter, may be made automatic by means of the Register. This device, although an original invention with Mr. Felt, is an application of the principle of the Jacquard loom. It consists of a narrow strip of card or paper, in which holes are punched as the types are taken, forming a substitute for the troublesome ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 79, May, 1864 • Various

... warily enough. For as the door was banged upon his entrance he faced around only in time to find himself looking down the barrel of a Colt automatic. ...
— The Quest of the Sacred Slipper • Sax Rohmer

... body, but this so-called mind is both the service and message of this telegraphy. Nerves are un- able to talk, and matter can return no an- 399:15 swer to immortal Mind. If Mind is the only actor, how can mechanism be automatic? Mortal mind perpetuates its own thought. It constructs a machine, manages it, 399:18 and then calls it material. A mill at work or the action of a water-wheel is but a derivative from, and continua- tion of, the primitive mortal mind. Without this force 399:21 the body is devoid ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy

... to tomorrow. But suddenly that last unrealized fact—at once immaterial and the most leaden reality of all—lost its weight. The greater freedom she had lately grown into became an absolute indifference, a half willful and half automatic shutting of her eyes to everything but the present, the actuality of Gerrit Ammidon walking by her side. She wanted him to speak, so that she could discover his thoughts, feelings; yet she was reluctant to have their companionship ...
— Java Head • Joseph Hergesheimer

... psychological investigation carried on in America by Miss Gertrude Stein among the ordinary male and female students of Harvard University and Radcliffe College. The object of the investigation was to study, with the aid of a planchette, the varying liability to automatic movements among normal individuals. Nearly one hundred students were submitted to experiment. It was found that automatic responses could be obtained in two sittings from all but a small proportion ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... nasal because Hank was wearing a nose respirator that was just long enough to suggest an elephant's trunk. In his right hand was a large blue-black automatic pistol. ...
— The Moon is Green • Fritz Reuter Leiber

... character; who can wait an hour for his dinner without walking all over the nerves of his wife, or crawl out of bed in the middle of his first nap and rustle till the cold, gray dawn with a brace of colicky kids, without broadly insinuating that he was a copper-riveted, nickel-plated, automatic, double-cylinder idiot to ever get married, is a greater hero than he ...
— Volume 12 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann

... movable type must think or retire defeated. So, the performance I witnessed did most thoroughly amaze me. Here was a machine that was really setting type, and doing it with swiftness and accuracy, too. Moreover, it was distributing its case at the same time. The distribution was automatic; the machine fed itself from a galley of dead matter and without human help or suggestion, for it began its work of its own accord when the type channels needed filling, and stopped of its own accord when they were full enough. The machine was almost a complete compositor; ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine

... that was not learnt on board ship, such as rapidity of fire under their present altered conditions and mobility, they have improved twofold since they first landed. Their rapidity of fire was wonderful when it is remembered that their carriages are fitted with none of the automatic appliances for returning the gun to the firing position, but have to be dragged back every time by hand, and then carefully adjusted with the wheels at exactly the same level. As regards mobility, they have on at least one occasion—namely Zwartz Kop—taken their guns up a place ...
— With the Naval Brigade in Natal (1899-1900) - Journal of Active Service • Charles Richard Newdigate Burne

... in gentle, gentle reproach. Mr. Deacon punned, organically. In talk he often fell silent and then asked some question, schemed to permit his vice to flourish. Mrs. Deacon's return was always automatic: "Herbert!" ...
— Miss Lulu Bett • Zona Gale

... Win was beginning desperately, when Earl Usher came hurrying up from the other end of the department, where he had been selling automatic toy pistols. ...
— Winnie Childs - The Shop Girl • C. N. Williamson

... upright suddenly against a tramway standard by Mr Bloom's window. Couldn't they invent something automatic so that the wheel itself much handier? Well but that fellow would lose his job then? Well but then another fellow would get a job making the ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce

... simply because normal living is rare; the artificiality of modern life forbids it. The high pressure under which most people live induces mental tension together with the consequent nervous and muscular tension. We are, without being conscious of it, so habituated to unnatural tension that automatic breathing is shallow and irregular instead of being deep ...
— Resonance in Singing and Speaking • Thomas Fillebrown

... could produce an article almost from raw material to finished product: now he has learned to stand at an automatic and labour at a single part. In short, he is becoming a specialist which makes him a cog in the machine ...
— The War After the War • Isaac Frederick Marcosson

... looked toward him, she was sure had not moved away. Such a drama takes no long while to play out: development and catastrophe can often be measured by nothing clumsier than the moment-hand. "Faites votre jeu, mesdames et messieurs," said the automatic voice of destiny from between the mustache and imperial of the croupier: and Gwendolen's arm was stretched to deposit her last poor heap of napoleons. "Le jeu ne va plus," said destiny. And in five seconds Gwendolen turned from the table, but turned resolutely with her face ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot

... House. Beatrice paid the cabman his shilling, thanked him, and entered, only once more to find herself confused with a vision of white statues, marble floors, high arching roofs, and hurrying people. An automatic policeman asked her what she wanted. Beatrice answered that she wished to get into ...
— Beatrice • H. Rider Haggard

... a kingdom, governed by Emperor Soul on the throne of the cranium, with subsidiary regents in the six spinal centers or spheres of consciousness. This theocracy extends over a throng of obedient subjects: twenty-seven thousand billion cells-endowed with a sure if automatic intelligence by which they perform all duties of bodily growths, transformations, and dissolutions-and fifty million substratal thoughts, emotions, and variations of alternating phases in man's consciousness in an average life of sixty years. Any apparent insurrection of ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda

... itself, loses more and more {210} any sense of legality it had at the outset. Its procedure still carries a semblance of legal method, but it is really an automatic machine for affixing a legal label on political murders. And the Tribunal, as it progresses in its career, becomes more and more insane in its hatred of the party it seeks to destroy, of the anti-revolutionist, of the aristocrat. ...
— The French Revolution - A Short History • R. M. Johnston

... obedient to the command, light shot out from darkness, so in man the microcosm, the brooding spirit and commanding purpose mark the first step from chaos toward cosmos. The mechanical intellect becomes dynamical, and the automatic man becomes autonomic. It may be with a lower or a higher motion. The mind gropes round restlessly by a yearning instinct; it may be driven by the strong impulse of native genius; or, it may rise to the condition of being the facile servant of the forceful ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith

... try to keep certain people out when one is not sure who is coming—and it is rather dull not to see any one," with a little quiver of the lip which Sir William did not perceive. Then speaking more lightly, "It is a pity we can't have some kind of automatic arrangement at our front doors, like the thing for testing sovereigns at the Mint, by which the heavy, tiresome people would be shot back into the street, and the light, amusing ones ...
— The Arbiter - A Novel • Lady F. E. E. Bell

... keeping the coat on my arm unostentatiously over my hip pocket. It wasn't a revolver; it was an automatic. ...
— Tramping Through Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras - Being the Random Notes of an Incurable Vagabond • Harry A. Franck

... important point for you to remember, Max, that although the signal cannot be seen from the box, if the mechanism had gone wrong, or anyone tampered with the arm, the automatic indicator would at once have told Mead that the green light was showing. Oh, I have gone very thoroughly into the technical points, ...
— Four Max Carrados Detective Stories • Ernest Bramah

... time seemed to encourage him. He was dismissed from his post on account of grave negligence caused by Flore, who distracted his attention in order that he might allow the Havre express to dash into a train loaded with ballast. The accident was only averted by a new automatic signalling apparatus. La ...
— A Zola Dictionary • J. G. Patterson

... no Bowery kid can double-cross me!" Collins screamed, paying no attention to the automatic in Ned's ...
— Boy Scouts in an Airship • G. Harvey Ralphson

... probably consider absurdly minute. A single class of insects, a single family of plants, the habits of one race of fishes, suffice for the exclusive study of half a lifetime. Minds of a more active or more practical bent will spend an equal time over the construction of a new machine more absolutely automatic than any that has preceded it. Physical labour is thrown as much as possible on the young; and even they are now so helped by machinery and by trained animals, that the eight hours' work which forms their day's labour hardly tires their muscles. Our tastes ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg

... Hughes programme prevented the Premier from taking stock of the nation. He permitted Hughes to treat Quebec as an automatic part of Canada at war—which it was not; and he failed to use even the Machiavellian energies of Bob Rogers in getting a line on the psychology of the West, supposed to be useful only in elections. Sir Robert had long known of the menace of Germany, ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino

... ill accords with my luxurious surroundings of the moment. It is that I am accustomed to press my trousers myself by the homely and ignoble expedient of sleeping on them. My only excuse is that I am a heavy sleeper. So automatic is the process, that I was wrapped in sheets and darkness before it occurred to me that I had placed the trousers I had just doffed under the mattress on which I now lay. I could not help thinking how the masterful Perkins would take it when he came to look for them in the morning. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, April 29, 1914 • Various

... governmental division of the country, the shire, was the sphere of much activity; but it was not automatic, and acted wholly or almost wholly in response to pressure from above. The ultimate unit of local government, the parish, township, or manor, had many and interesting functions, but they were for the most part either declining survivals of earlier powers, or new forms of activity imposed upon ...
— European Background Of American History - (Vol. I of The American Nation: A History) • Edward Potts Cheyney

... soul and its organs of sense, are the following sentences. "These (the human faculties) I would arrange under the different senses and powers: as the eye, the ear, the touch, etc.; the imitative power, voluntary and automatic; the imagination, or shaping and modifying power; the fancy, or the aggregative and associative power; the understanding, or the regulative, substantiating and realizing power; the speculative reason, vis theoretica et scientifica, or the power by which we produce or aim to ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... the way for the automatic feed conveyors were rapidly moving across our section. First we heard a diminution of sound from one direction, then a hasty scuffling and a happy grunting beneath us and, as the conveyors moved swiftly on, the squealing ...
— City of Endless Night • Milo Hastings

... who happened to be in a business which was much too good to leave. He was continually, as they say there, "up to something" that caused changes in daily habits. Moreover, the Universal Thrift Club (Limited) was so automatic and self-winding that Denry ran no risks in leaving it often to the care of his highly drilled staff. Still, he did usually come home to his tea about six o'clock of an evening, like the rest, and like the rest, he brought ...
— The Card, A Story Of Adventure In The Five Towns • Arnold Bennett

... Carse snap on the automatic control and go to an electelscope which had been equipped with an infra-red device. He directed it rearward on Satellite III, back along the course the Sandra had described, and peered through its eyepiece for several minutes. ...
— The Passing of Ku Sui • Anthony Gilmore

... also forgetting the hot exchange of a few minutes before. He stood up. "I'll take the Polaris, Commander. She's the fastest ship available with automatic controls for a ...
— The Revolt on Venus • Carey Rockwell

... to me that her dress brushed my overcoat, and for an instant her eyes met mine. There was a look in them that startled me—terror and helplessness, as though she had suffered some benumbing shock which made her actions more automatic ...
— Jacqueline of Golden River • H. M. Egbert

... so far from her previous specifications of his guilt, was purely automatic and conventional; Florence often interjected it during the course of any cousinly discussion, whatever the subject in dispute, and she had not even glanced at Herbert's hands to assure herself that the accusation was warranted. But, as usual, the facts supported her; and they also supported Herbert ...
— Gentle Julia • Booth Tarkington

... shoulder, the big Venusian led him across the floor of the deserted gym, and as they disappeared through the automatic sliding doors, a tall figure in the uniform of the Solar Guard stepped out of the shadows on the balcony above. ...
— Stand by for Mars! • Carey Rockwell

... work produced in it, and is only justified in our case by the possession of such an artist as Ponting. He was eager to show me the results of his summer work, and meanwhile my eye took in the neat shelves with their array of cameras, &c., the porcelain sink and automatic water tap, the two acetylene gas burners with their shading screens, and the general obviousness of all conveniences of the photographic art. Here, indeed, was encouragement for the best results, and to the photographer be all praise, for it is mainly his hand which ...
— Scott's Last Expedition Volume I • Captain R. F. Scott

... the afternoon. Rain ever since the morning, a gray sky, so low that one can touch it with one's umbrella, dirty weather, puddles, mud, nothing but mud, in thick pools, in gleaming streaks along the edge of the sidewalks, driven back in vain by automatic sweepers, sweepers with handkerchiefs tied over their heads, and carted away on enormous tumbrils which carry it slowly and in triumph through the streets toward Montreuil; removed and ever reappearing, oozing ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet

... of the double-acting engine, in which the impulsion of the steam is felt both in driving the piston forward and in forcing it backward, both upward and downward, the application of its force through crank and fly wheel, the creation of an automatic system of governing its speed, and the discovery of the economy due to its complete expansion, were all improvements of the first magnitude, and of the greatest practical importance; and all these were ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 803, May 23, 1891 • Various

... the means of the average farmer, the generation of electricity, with its unique conveniences, becomes automatic, provided some dependable source of power is to be had—such as a water wheel, gasoline (or other form of internal combustion) engine, or the ordinary windmill. The water wheel is the ideal prime mover ...
— Electricity for the farm - Light, heat and power by inexpensive methods from the water - wheel or farm engine • Frederick Irving Anderson

... to this country seems an ordinary and almost automatic proceeding—a part of one's regular routine, as natural as going to the barber or to church. Why seek for reasons? They are so hard to find. One tracks them to their lair and lo! there is another one lurking in the background, a reason for a ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas

... moment. You see the European war has called for the use of a large number of aeroplanes, and as the pilots of them frequently have to fight, and so can not give their whole attention to the machines, some form of automatic stabilizer is needed to prevent them turning turtle, or going off at ...
— Tom Swift in the Land of Wonders - or, The Underground Search for the Idol of Gold • Victor Appleton

... their friends and the friends of their friends, whose names form a sort of tabulated index. People 'in society' know this index by heart, they are gifted in such matters with an erudition from which they have extracted a sort of taste, of tact, so automatic in its operation that Swann, for example, without needing to draw upon his knowledge of the world, if he read in a newspaper the names of the people who had been guests at a dinner, could tell at once how fashionable the dinner had been, just ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust

... imaginary whey. He said it was an impressive thing to observe two men, who had been cured by the two processes, engaged in conversation—said their pauses and accompanying movements were so continuous and regular that a stranger would think himself in the presence of a couple of automatic machines. One finds out a great many wonderful things, by traveling, if he stumbles ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... fog-whistle is the same instrument ordinarily used on steamboats and locomotives. It is from 6 to 18 inches in diameter, and is operated by steam under a pressure of from 50 to 100 pounds. An engine takes its steam from the same boiler, and by an automatic arrangement shuts off and turns on the steam by opening and closing its valves at determined times. The machinery is simple, the piston-pressure is light, and the engine requires no more skilled attention than does an ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XIX, No. 470, Jan. 3, 1885 • Various

... will ask the Congress to adopt specific measures to control the growth of the so-called uncontrollable spending programs. These are the automatic spending programs, such as food stamps, that cannot be simply frozen and that have grown by over 400 percent since 1970. They are the largest single cause of the built-in or structural deficit problem. Our ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Ronald Reagan • Ronald Reagan

... his hand, spread out on the blanket, would have covered the area of a small ham. His shoulders and neck, and the one bare arm visible, were indicative of vast muscular strength. There was the enormous head mentioned by Poe; and there was the completely bald scalp, exposed, as by a semi-automatic movement of respect he raised his hand to his head and removed a section of woolly sheepskin; and there, too, was the indenture in the crown; there the enormous mouth, spreading from ear to ear, with the lips which, as he gave a chuckle, and the wrinkles about his eyes evinced a passing ...
— A Strange Discovery • Charles Romyn Dake

... of a psychic revelation, dear," she said to William's mother. "In hopes! I've heard of wonderful experiences, but so far none—alas!—have befallen me. Automatic writing I have tried, but any communication the spirits may have sent me ...
— More William • Richmal Crompton

... the fighting of animals is not an intellectual but a reflex process. There are no rules which govern the conduct of a fight between animals. The events follow each other with such kaleidoscopic rapidity that the process is but a series of automatic stimulations and physiologic reactions. Whatever their significance, therefore, it is certain that man did not come either accidentally or without purpose into possession of the deep ticklish regions of his chest and abdomen. ...
— The Origin and Nature of Emotions • George W. Crile

... brain. Like the other organisms which possess a proper nervous system, man carries on the common organic processes of life with a regularity and unfailing accuracy which seem to verge on the mechanical forces, or to be, at least, automatic. All habitual voluntary acts by repetition become almost automatic, or require no perceptibly distinct impulse of the will. When we emerge from this necessary field of labor, we come to those functions peculiar to the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various

... with renewed animation, patting his shoulder in a brisk, automatic way, to point the beginnings of her confidences: "I'll tell you something. It's about myself. I've got a religion of my own, and it's got just one plank in it, and that is that the time to separate the sheep from the goats is on Judgment Day, and that it can't ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic

... frauds and crimes—Peter Goelet and his sons, Peter P. and Robert, for instance, and Jacob Lorillard, who, for many years, was president of the Mechanics' Bank. No stigma attached to these wealth-graspers. Their success as possessors of riches at once, by the automatic processes of a society which enthroned wealth, elevated them to be commanding personages in trade, politics, orthodoxy and the highest social spheres. The cropped convict, released from prison, was followed everywhere by the jeers and branding of a society which gloated over his downfall and ...
— History of the Great American Fortunes, Vol. I - Conditions in Settlement and Colonial Times • Myers Gustavus

... him how to control his throat by direct effort. The controlling power of a right idea is still much underestimated. The scientific plan of controlling the voice by means of mechanical directions leaves untouched the one thing which prevents its normal, automatic action, namely tension. ...
— The Head Voice and Other Problems - Practical Talks on Singing • D. A. Clippinger

... because it translates delivered, instead of, as the Revised Version correctly does, delivereth. It is a continuous deliverance, running all through the life of the Christian man, and not merely to be realised away yonder at the far end; because by the mighty providence of God, and by the automatic working of the consequences of every transgression and disobedience, that 'wrath' is ever coming, coming, coming towards men, and lighting on them, and a continual Deliverer, who delivers us by His death, is what the human heart needs. This witness is distinct that the death of Christ is a sacrifice, ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... sensitive and have such an energetic will, this conception will be clear without any farther explanation. But we cannot refuse to allow that plant-cells as well as animal-cells have psychic functions, since we know that the phenomena of irritability, and of "automatic motion," are the universal attributes of all protoplasm. No doubt the specific mechanism, the cause of motion, in the irritable Mimosa and other "sensitive" plants, is quite different from the muscular motions of animals; but these, ...
— Freedom in Science and Teaching. - from the German of Ernst Haeckel • Ernst Haeckel

... fired with close, sure aim, and cut his man through with the blow of the Spitzer bullet of the Springfield piece. But even as he did so Waldhorn himself had fired with the heavy automatic pistol which he carried. The bullet caught Sim Gage high in the chest, and passed through, missing the spine by but little. He ...
— The Sagebrusher - A Story of the West • Emerson Hough

... won't you?" There was genuine concern in the big man's voice as he went on with specious flippancy. "Miss Copley left a dagger kicking around; let's hope she hasn't dropped an automatic or a machine-gun here and there. If Mr. Monk got the idea that you ...
— The Monk of Hambleton • Armstrong Livingston

... containing the column of air. The larynx is the mouth-piece containing the reed. But the reed is double, consisting of two very thin membranous edges, which are made tense or relaxed, and have the interval between them through which the air rushes narrowed or widened by the instinctive, automatic action of a set of little muscles. The vibration of these membranous edges (chordae vocales) produces a musical sound, just as the vibration of the edge of a finger-bowl produces one when a wet finger is passed round it. The cavities of the nostrils, and their side-chambers, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 73, November, 1863 • Various

... have a weapon?" inquired the officer; and when Jimmie answered no, he pressed a button, and spoke quick words to an orderly, who came running with an automatic revolver and a belt, which Jimmie proceeded to strap upon him with thrills, half of delighted pride and half of anguished terror. "You will say to the men of the botteree that the Americans come soon to the rescue. You will find them, my brave American?" The officer spoke as if ...
— Jimmie Higgins • Upton Sinclair

... great deal and thought a great deal, and my ideas are still in a state of transition,' she told Lesbia; and Lesbia, who was somewhat automatic in her piety, had no desire ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon

... find for the most part people who are unwilling to give themselves up to life, who will not follow out their moods, or have none. When I am no longer capable of abandoning myself, why continue? Most people seem to me to be dried up. They look as if they never felt anything, so expressionless, so automatic are they, as if they had been wound up to walk and talk, and eat and sleep in precisely the same way for a certain number of years. This seems to be the American type. I suppose you have read of the Caruso affair—how he kissed a woman in Central Park, or wanted ...
— An Anarchist Woman • Hutchins Hapgood

... plate, gives the exact discharge per hour. In addition, in order to secure great regularity in the flow, there is placed between the voltameters and the reservoir that supplies them a second and constant level reservoir regulated by an automatic cock. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 415, December 15, 1883 • Various

... exclaimed Alan, "what do you think of this?" And with a smile he handed him an automatic pistol he ...
— The Air Ship Boys • H.L. Sayler

... "Level of Social Motion" claims that present tendencies are leading to a level of $2000 a year and a family of two children as an average. Mr. Wells claims as a tendency in living conditions the practically automatic and servantless household. In connection with the Mary Lowell Stone Home Economics Exhibit a design of an approach to this kind of a dwelling was asked for in sketch. The accompanying plans were made by a firm who have had not only experience in this kind of domestic building, but who ...
— The Cost of Shelter • Ellen H. Richards

... printed on small square sheets of paper, and delivered by an army of boys at brief intervals while the Stock Exchange is open at the offices of the bankers, brokers, insurance companies, and hotels; or the same matter is disseminated by means of an automatic printing machine called a news-ticker. For this service the offices pay the bureaus from $1 to $2 a day. News bureaus form an important cog in the machinery for making stock-markets, as it is through the news they furnish to the Stock Exchange and to the offices where investors and speculators ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson

... of Captain Baskelett's art would seem to be to show the automatic human creature at loggerheads with a necessity that winks at remarkable pretensions, while condemning it perpetually to doll-like action. You look on men from your own elevation as upon a quantity of our little wooden images, unto whom you affix puny characteristics, under restrictions ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... ere long, that a lesser riddle would have been to stand in the manufactory of the Faubourg St. Marcel, and abolishing the pattern of the designers, the directing touch of Lebrun, the restraint of the heddle, demand that the blind, insensate automatic warp and woof should originate, design and trace as well as mechanically execute the weaving of ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson

... than the first worm that wriggled in its primeval slime. He had dipped into Herbert Spencer, and talked largely of God as the Unknowable; and how could the Unknowable be supposed to take pleasure in the automatic prayers of a handful of bumpkins and clodhoppers met together in a mouldy old church, time out of mind the temple of superstitions and ceremonies. The vast temple of the universe was Brian Walford's idea of a church; and a very fine church it is, if a man will only worship faithfully therein; ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon

... until we get to you, or you are a dead man," shouted Kennedy, pulling an automatic as he ran. ...
— The Dream Doctor • Arthur B. Reeve

... than understood the bond that had been growing so rapidly between them. His was the temperament that immediately translates feeling into action. He reached into his breast pocket. There was the blue-black glint of a cold steel automatic. A moment he balanced it in his hand. Then with a rapid and decisive motion of the arm he flung it far from him. As it struck the water with a sound horribly suggestive of the death gurgle of a lost man, he turned ...
— Constance Dunlap • Arthur B. Reeve

... across the partitions and against the walls under the windows provided seating accommodation for the customers. A large automatic musical instrument—a 'penny in the slot' polyphone—resembling a grandfather's clock in shape—stood against one of the partitions and close up to the counter, so that those behind the bar could reach to wind it up. Hanging on the partition near the polyphone was a board about fifteen ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell

... malt passes, on its way [v.04 p.0509] from the bins to the mill, through a cleaning and grading apparatus, and then through an automatic measuring machine. The mills, which exist in a variety of designs, are of the smooth roller type, and are so arranged that the malt is crushed rather than ground. If the malt is ground too fine, difficulties arise in regard to efficient drainage in the mash-tun and subsequent ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various

... in a very rapid manner. It is stated that this method of treatment is applicable to all ores, the most refractory being readily reducible by its means. The advantages claimed for this process are: simplicity of the apparatus, it being practically automatic; that every particle of the ore is separately acted upon in a rapid and efficient manner; that the apparatus is adaptable to existing milling plants; and that there is an absence of elaborate and expensive ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 819 - Volume XXXII, Number 819. Issue Date September 12, 1891 • Various



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