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Combustion   Listen
noun
Combustion  n.  
1.
The state of burning.
2.
(Chem.) The combination of a combustible with a supporter of combustion, producing heat, and sometimes both light and heat. "Combustion results in common cases from the mutual chemical action and reaction of the combustible and the oxygen of the atmosphere, whereby a new compound is formed."
Supporter of combustion (Chem.), a gas, as oxygen, the combination of which with a combustible, as coal, constitutes combustion.
3.
Violent agitation; confusion; tumult. (Obs.) "There (were) great combustions and divisions among the heads of the university." "But say from whence this new combustion springs."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Combustion" Quotes from Famous Books



... buzzing with the name of Champdivers; a day or two more and the mail will have carried it everywhere: so wonderful a machine is this of ours for disseminating intelligence! Think of it! When my father was born- -but that is another story. To return: we had here the elements of such a combustion as I dread to think of—your cousin and the journal. Let him but glance an eye upon that column of print, and where were we? It is easy to ask; not so easy to answer, my young friend. And let me tell you, this sheet is the ...
— St Ives • Robert Louis Stevenson

... truth, and submitting to the conscious triumph? Give her her part of vanity, of youth, of desire to rule and be admired. Meanwhile Mr. Clive's drawings have been crackling in the fireplace at her feet, and the last spark of that combustion is twinkling ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray

... been long known that the air which encircled us was a compound of oxygen and nitrogen gases, in the proportion of twenty-one measures of oxygen, and seventy-nine of nitrogen in every one hundred of the atmosphere. Oxygen, which was the principle of combustion, and the vehicle of heat, was absolutely necessary to the support of animal life, and was the most powerful and energetic agent in nature. Nitrogen, on the contrary, was incapable of supporting either animal life or flame. An unnatural ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... Him the Almighty power, Hurled headlong flaming from th' ethereal sky, With hideous ruin and combustion down To bottomless perdition, there to dwell In adamantine chains and penal power, Who durst defy th' Omnipotent ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee

... immediately after which the large, heavy one opened a way to a serrated incline leading downward. It was extremely dark, I should say. There was also an extreme smell, quite like that of the outer air, but enormously intensified; one would suspect that there was an incomplete combustion of, perhaps, wood or coal, as well as a certain quantity of general decay. At any rate, we reached the bottom of the incline, and my escort behaved quite badly. One of them said to the other four, in these words: "Them jumpers follow us sure. Yeah, there's much ...
— The Day of the Boomer Dukes • Frederik Pohl

... that water will absorb more heat than any other substance, hence will take from the boiler practically all the heat produced in the combustion of fuel. As the temperature of the water is automatically controlled, the atmosphere of the rooms may be kept at the desired degree, the presence of radiators in each room, all of the same temperature, giving an even heat over ...
— The Complete Home • Various

... laughed, amused at her ingenuousness. "But I don't think it's what the sentimental schoolgirl feels for the college football player. As for love at first sight, I consider that simply absurd. To my way of thinking, love isn't a spontaneous combustion. It's a slow, steady growth and the soil in ...
— Bought and Paid For - From the Play of George Broadhurst • Arthur Hornblow

... throat with one hand. The other, he clasped firmly around the combustion chamber. ...
— The Foreign Hand Tie • Gordon Randall Garrett

... the small army of the United States was placed under his command. It was generally understood to be the desire of the Administration that hostilities should begin without orders, by a species of spontaneous combustion; but the coolness and prudence of General Taylor made futile any such hopes, if they were entertained, and it required a positive order to induce him, in March, 1846, to advance towards the Rio Grande and to cross the disputed territory. He arrived at a point opposite Matamoras on the 28th ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay

... Leakage Heat of combustion Explosive limits Range of explosibility Solubility in liquids Toxicity Endothermic nature Polymerisation Heats of formation and combustion Colour of flame Radiant efficiency Chemical ...
— Acetylene, The Principles Of Its Generation And Use • F. H. Leeds and W. J. Atkinson Butterfield

... hearth when you kindle your piles of wood? It is the sunlight and sun-heat of a century ago. The beams were caught in the wilderness by the leaves of the trees; they were absorbed and stored in the trunks, and the light and heat day by day through many years was thus heaped up. When now combustion begins, it is simply a setting free of the radiance that was shed upon the forest many years ago. The noons of a time long past are making you comfortable in the wintry storm of the present. So when ...
— The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer

... to were dissolved in ether, and then allowed to evaporate, when long colorless needles were obtained, which, on being placed in a dry test tube and the tube placed in a water bath kept at 42 deg. C., were found to melt; and on making a careful combustion analysis of these crystals, the following ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 443, June 28, 1884 • Various

... forgotten, it was said, during the long conversation of the counsellor and the burgomaster, that the lighting of the town was to be achieved, not by the combustion of common carburetted hydrogen, produced by distilling coal, but by the use of a more modern and twenty-fold more brilliant gas, oxyhydric gas, produced ...
— A Winter Amid the Ice - and Other Thrilling Stories • Jules Verne

... sped by. An interesting discovery here results. Which is, that lightning, kept to itself, is quiescent; it is the assaulting contact of the thunderbolt that releases it from captivity, ignites its awful fires, and so produces an instantaneous combustion and explosion which spread disaster and desolation far ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... But what if it were not a swell of the abating kind? There are swells that come of upper tempest and wind-gust. But again there are swells that come of subterranean pent wind, some say; and even of inward decomposion, of decay that has become self-combustion:—as when, according to Neptuno-Plutonic Geology, the World is all decayed down into due attritus of this sort; and shall now be exploded, and new-made! These latter abate not by oil.—The fool says in his heart, How shall not ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle

... which takes place when moist vegetable substances are exposed to oxygen is that of slow combustion ('eremacausis'), the oxygen uniting with the wood and liberating a volume of carbonic acid equal to itself, and another portion combining with the hydrogen of the wood to form water. Decomposition takes place on contact with a body already undergoing the same change, ...
— Forty Centuries of Ink • David N. Carvalho

... to us a view of a poached egg apparently bursting into a Welsh rarebit. At least that is what it looks like to us—a golden buck, forty cents at any good restaurant—in the act of undergoing spontaneous combustion. But we are informed that this is an impressionistic interpretation of a sunset at sea, and we are expected to stand before it and ...
— Cobb's Bill-of-Fare • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb

... niton 5.6 days. These unquestioned facts, together with the enormous amount of heat evolved by the disintegration of these substances (that from radium being about 250,000 times the heat evolved by the combustion of carbon), have thrown a great deal of doubt upon the older estimates of the ...
— Q. E. D., or New Light on the Doctrine of Creation • George McCready Price

... "The combustion of the hydrogen and of the oxygen at the point of the cylinder produces solely the vapor or steam of water. I have, therefore, provided the lower part of the cylindrical iron box with a scape-pipe, with a valve operating by means of a pressure of two atmospheres; consequently, ...
— Five Weeks in a Balloon • Jules Verne

... thin air of high plateau is obstacle to efficient fuel combustion, as well as to physical activity by those unaccustomed to it from birth; flooding ...
— The 2000 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... t' prognostigate yo' attention fo' de monumental contraction of impossibilitiness in de circomlocution ob attaining de maximum nutrition ob internal combustion?" asked Washington White about an hour later, as he poked his head into the workshop, where the professor, the boys and Mr. Roumann, together with ...
— Through Space to Mars • Roy Rockwood

... The first of these items is the most important of the three. In most cases the greatest preventable waste of coal in a boiler plant is directly due to excess air. Excess air simply means the amount of air which gets into the furnace and boiler which is not needed for completing the combustion of the coal. Very often twice as much air is admitted to the boiler setting as is required. This extra or excess air is heated and carries heat out through the chimney instead of heating the water in the boiler to make steam. There are two ways ...
— Engineering Bulletin No 1: Boiler and Furnace Testing • Rufus T. Strohm

... is resorted to; they hoe deep, and draw it well to themselves: this exposes the other earth to the hoe. The soil is burned too: the grass and weeds are placed in flat heaps, and soil placed over them: the burning is slow, and most of the products of combustion are retained to fatten the field; in this way the people raise large crops. Men and women and children engage in field labour, but at present many of the men are engaged in spinning buaze[29] and cotton. The former ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume I (of 2), 1866-1868 • David Livingstone

... is to subject to the action of fire, or of intense heat so as to effect either partial change or complete combustion; as, to burn wood in the fire; to burn one's hand on a hot stove; the sun burns the face. One brands with a hot iron, but cauterizes with some corrosive substance, as silver nitrate. Cremate is now used ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald

... a miracle in Elias, when he intrenched the altar round with water: for that inflamable substance yields not easily unto water, but flames in the arms of its an- tagonist. And thus would he inveigle my belief to think the combustion of Sodom might be natural, and that there was an asphaltick and bituminous nature in that lake before the fire of Gomorrah. I know that manna is now plentifully gathered in Calabria; and Josephus tells me, in his days it was ...
— Religio Medici, Hydriotaphia, and the Letter to a Friend • Sir Thomas Browne

... which need not be described here, van Helmont studied with particular interest the various modifications in which carbon is capable of occurring in nature - among them carbon's combustion product, carbon dioxide. It was his observations of carbon dioxide which made him aware of a condition of matter whose properties caused him the greatest surprise. For he found it to be, at the same time, 'much finer than vapour and much denser than air'. It appeared to him as a complete 'paradox', ...
— Man or Matter • Ernst Lehrs

... Hollander goes naked with impunity, while the European shivers in his clothes. Is it impossible to combine the hardiness of these savages with the intellectualness of the civilized man? According to Liebig, man's body is a stove, and food the fuel which keeps up the internal combustion in the lungs. In cold weather we eat more, in warm less. The animal heat is the result of a slow combustion, and disease and death take place when this is too rapid; or for want of fuel, or from some defect in the draught, ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau

... if the house had been set on fire," Archie continued confidentially. "I'm going to have detectives look into it. It must have been either that or spontaneous combustion in the drawing-room." ...
— Clark's Field • Robert Herrick

... announcement of the fire, for that is no longer news, and the rewrite man must find a new beginning to attract the attention of his readers. Perhaps in looking over the morning story, he finds that the fire was the result of spontaneous combustion in the grain stored in the elevator. In the morning story this fact was rather insignificant in the face of the huge loss, and most readers passed over it hastily. The rewrite man, however, who has no later facts ...
— Newspaper Reporting and Correspondence - A Manual for Reporters, Correspondents, and Students of - Newspaper Writing • Grant Milnor Hyde

... constructed two very large ovens in the earth at Tiberias. Two years had elapsed at the time of our arrival since they had set fire to their granary; and it was considered as a miracle by the inhabitants that the combustion was not yet extinguished. We visited the place, and perceived, that whenever the ashes of the burnt corn were stirred, by thrusting a stick among them, sparks were even seen glowing throughout the heap; and a piece of wood left ...
— Palestine or the Holy Land - From the Earliest Period to the Present Time • Michael Russell

... life, yet behold the felicity of his work! How completely his mind must have been emancipated from the infirmities of his body! It is clearly not thus with me. My mind is like a flame that depends entirely upon the good combustion going on in the body. Hence, I can never write in the afternoon, because ...
— Our Friend John Burroughs • Clara Barrus

... implements of our race as perhaps nothing but discussions, in the result of which men thought their eternal, no less than their temporal, interests were at stake, could have done. When a logical blunder may ensure combustion, not only in the next world but in this, the construction of syllogisms acquires a peculiar interest. Moreover, the schools kept the thinking faculty alive and active, when the disturbed state of civil life, the mephitic atmosphere engendered by the dominant ecclesiasticism, and the almost ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley

... elevated line from the Flatbush Avenue Terminal to East New York Station, a distance of 5-1/4 miles. One of the requirements of this improvement was that the motive power should be changed to some form of power not involving combustion. This led to the adoption of electricity, and, in order to meet operating necessities, involved the electrification of connecting lines beyond the improvement proper, so that local service could be handled to the end of the runs without changing the motive power. The extent ...
— Transactions of the American Society of Civil Engineers, Vol. LXVIII, Sept. 1910 • Charles W. Raymond

... evangelical truth can have suffered a wound or mutilation, than we believe that the burning of a wood, or even of a forest, which happens in our vast American possessions, sometimes from natural causes (lightning, or spontaneous combustion), sometimes from an Indian's carelessness, can seriously have injured botany. But for him, who conceives an inviolable sanctity to have settled upon each word and particle of the original record, there should have been strictly required an inspiration (No. 5) to prevent ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey

... they were all in combustion, the strongest preparing once more to run away with the Pinnace; which with the hazzard of his life, with Sakre falcon and musket shot, Smith forced now the third time ...
— Great Epochs in American History, Vol. II - The Planting Of The First Colonies: 1562—1733 • Various

... of this technology revolution is in the information and information management areas- which, in the U.S., are heavily commercially oriented. Future military application may well be analogous to the impact of the internal combustion engine and wireless radio on land, sea, and air forces in the 1920s and 1930s. The size of this technological lead between ourselves and the rest of the world, especially in the base for new information products and services, should widen further in knowledge and ...
— Shock and Awe - Achieving Rapid Dominance • Harlan K. Ullman and James P. Wade

... reader. I should have told you that a heavy shower of rain had fallen but a few hours before the kindling of the death-pile, which, as needs must, had left the brush-wood in better condition for heavy smoking than for lively combustion. Had I mentioned this circumstance in its proper place, I should have spared your tender sensibilities somewhat by giving you something contingent to catch at as suggestive of ...
— Burl • Morrison Heady

... crucifix in bitter scorn, after seven and a half years spent in the prisons of the Inquisition. Sarpi exhaled his last breath amid sympathizing friends, in the service of a grateful country. Bruno panted his death-pangs of suffocation and combustion out, surrounded by menacing Dominicans, in the midst of hostile Rome celebrating her triumphant jubilee. Sarpi's last thoughts were given to the God of Christendom and the Republic. Bruno had no country; the God in ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds

... different occupations. The fire was kept up with great care. Particularly was the fuel heaped on for the night; and Tartlet, nevertheless, arose on many occasions to sweep the ashes together and provoke a more active combustion. Having done this, he would go to bed again, to get up as soon as the fire burnt low, and thus he occupied himself till the day broke. The night passed without incident, the cracklings of the fire and the crow of the cock awoke Godfrey and ...
— Godfrey Morgan - A Californian Mystery • Jules Verne

... Community legislation cannot undermine the derogations granted to Spain and Portugal until 31 December 1999 under the Council Directive of 24 November 1988 on the limitation of emissions of certain pollutants into the air from large combustion plants. DECLARATION ON THE EUROPEAN DEVELOPMENT FUND The Conference agrees that the European Development Fund will continue to be financed by national contributions in accordance with the current provisions. ...
— The Treaty of the European Union, Maastricht Treaty, 7th February, 1992 • European Union

... flowers of Paradise, which burst in flame and scorch the demons, who, rushing at their angelic adversaries with their hellish prongs and forks and launching vainly their missiles of hell-fire, are hurled back by an invisible power and gradually driven off the stage, plunging in hideous ruin and combustion down headlong into the ...
— The Faust-Legend and Goethe's 'Faust' • H. B. Cotterill

... phraseology, implies that "God only knows how she died," it was agreed to nemine contradicente, and gave universal satisfaction. But the extraordinary circumstance was spread everywhere, with all due amplifications, and thousands flocked to the wharfinger's yard to witness the effects of spontaneous combustion. The proprietor immediately perceived that he could avail himself of the public curiosity to my advantage. A plate, with some silver and gold, was placed at the foot of my poor mother's flock mattress, with, ...
— Jacob Faithful • Captain Frederick Marryat

... some with deep sighs lament the lost lines of Cicero; others with as many groans deplore the combustion of the library of Alexandria; for my own part, I think there be too many in the world, and could with patience behold the urn and ashes of the Vatican, could I, with a few others, recover the perished leaves of Solomon. Some men have written more than others have ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various

... every direction. All hands, so to speak, are strained to extra duty to discharge the noxious accumulation. The lungs labor to discharge the load thrown back upon them, with hastened respiration, increased combustion, and feverish heat. The pores of the mucous membrane in the nose, throat, alimentary canal, or bronchial passages, are forced by an aggravated discharge (or catarrh), and this congestive and inflammatory pressure is a fever also. There is nothing of "cold" about it except as an auxiliary ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XV., No. 388, June 9, 1883 • Various

... combination of a modified oxy-hydrogen blowpipe, with the reverberatory furnace, utterly and completely consume and decompose the body, in an incredibly short space of time. Even the large quantity of water it contains is decomposed by the extreme heat, and its elements, instead of retarding, aid combustion, as is the case in fierce conflagrations. The gaseous products of combustion are conveyed away by flues; and means being adopted to consume anything like smoke, all that is observed from the outside is occasionally a quivering transparent ether floating away from the high ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd

... censured a practice prevalent among the Romans, of decorating a corpse, previous to interment or combustion, with garlands and flowers. Their reprehension extended also to a periodical custom of placing the "first-fruits of Flora" on their graves and tombs. Thus Anchises, in Dryden's Virgil,Aeneid, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 334 Saturday, October 4, 1828 • Various

... rough waggishness suddenly stirred the fire with an oak branch, and sent a shower of sparks like rockets into the dark blue sky, but so near that it caused the women to recoil, screaming and hiding their faces on convenient shoulders, and lodged half-a-dozen instruments of ignition and combustion in Sam Winnington's hair, singeing it and scorching his ears. Had Sam not been the best-natured and most politic fellow in the world, he would have dragged the aggressor by the collar or the cuff over the smoking crackling wood, and made the ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler

... public spout, Spread phosphorus of zeal on scraps of fustian, And go like walking "Lucifers" about Mere living bundles of combustion. ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood

... itself, and is gradually becoming exhausted. On the other hand, within living memory, new sources of fuel, such as petroleum, have been made available, and old varieties of fuel have been used to better advantage, as witness the internal-combustion engine driven by smoke from sawdust. Moreover, in the ocean tides is a vast energy that one day may take the place ...
— Birth Control • Halliday G. Sutherland

... "pursuit of happiness." People do not hug for wages—that is, except on the stage. Nobody is obliged to hug. It is a sort of spontaneous combustion, as it were, of the feelings, and has to have proper conditions of the atmosphere to make it a success. Parties who object to hugging are old, usually, and have been satiated, and are like a lemon that has done duty in circus lemonade. If they had ...
— Peck's Sunshine - Being a Collection of Articles Written for Peck's Sun, - Milwaukee, Wis. - 1882 • George W. Peck

... burning barn leaped suddenly upward, as if fed by some fresh combustion, and flung a brighter glare over the rough faces clustered about us. I saw Red Lowrie plainly enough now, as he peered eagerly forward to scan my face, a heavy-set, coarse-featured man, with prominent nose, and thick, ...
— My Lady of the North • Randall Parrish

... of the infernal factory, third turning to the right off the grand arcade in Kingdom-come, where the night-porter has to wear wet petticoats, like a Highland chief, to make short work of the sparks flying about, otherwise this world and many another would not have to wait long for combustion.' ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... fire, n. combustion, ignition, burning; phlogiston; conflagration, holocaust, deflagration; flame, blaze; bonfire, balefire, feu de joie, beacon. Associated Words: pyrology, pyrography, pyromania, pyrophobia, incendiary, incendiarism, arson, lurid, Moloch, fuel, combustible, pyroleter, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming

... the "spark" which sets off the explosive; it is the "hair-trigger" which liberates the enormous energy contained in the cartridge, etc. To apply the analogy: life utilizes and directs the energy obtained from food (by a species of chemical combustion) so that the bodily energy, as such, is, so to say, a "physical" energy, and subject to the law of conservation; while the power that guides, controls, and directs it is conscious life—the power of choice, ...
— The Problems of Psychical Research - Experiments and Theories in the Realm of the Supernormal • Hereward Carrington

... the air would be sufficient for about two hundred and fifty years. But as a matter of fact the supply is permanently maintained by the carbon cycle. Thus the carbon of coal that is burned in the stove returns to the air in carbon dioxid; and all combustion of coal and wood, grass and weeds, and all other vegetable matter returns carbon to the atmosphere. All decay of organic matter, as in the fermentation of manure in the pile and the rotting of vegetable matter in the soil, is a form of slow combustion ...
— The Story of the Soil • Cyril G. Hopkins

... employed in a country ruled by an inferior policy, neither feared nor esteemed by our Government. His secretary, Desaugiers the elder, is our real and confidential firebrand in the North, commissioned to keep burning those materials of combustion which Grouvelle and others of our incendiaries have lighted and illuminated in Holstein, Denmark, ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton

... envelop to his nose, he distinguished the faint fragrance of pressed flowers. It was perhaps a blessing in disguise that the duty of sorting the outgoing mail did not fall to his lot. One added bit of information would have resulted in spontaneous combustion. ...
— Sandy • Alice Hegan Rice

... Naphtha has been obtained from it and various commercial enterprises have been started at Kimmeridge in connexion with the local product but all seem to have failed miserably because of the unendurable smell that emanates when combustion takes place. ...
— Wanderings in Wessex - An Exploration of the Southern Realm from Itchen to Otter • Edric Holmes

... health is overuse of sugar in concentrated form, candy, etc., especially by the sedentary. One reason why sugar has a high food value is that it is readily utilized for combustion, and if taken between meals greatly increases the calories and may ...
— How to Live - Rules for Healthful Living Based on Modern Science • Irving Fisher and Eugene Fisk

... the central nucleus of volcanoes been heated in its primitive position, and raised up, in a softened state, by the force of the elastic vapours, before these fluids communicated, by means of a crater, with the external air? What is the substance, which, for thousands of years, keeps up this combustion, sometimes so slow, and at other times so active? Does this unknown cause act at an immense depth; or does this chemical action take place in secondary rocks ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt

... necessary as eating. If we cease to breathe, our bodies cease to live. If we only half breathe, as is often the case, we only half live. The human system requires a constant supply of oxygen to keep up the vital processes which closely resemble combustion, of which oxygen is the prime supporter. If the supply is insufficient, the fire of life wanes. The healthy condition of the lungs also requires that they be completely expanded by the air inhaled. ...
— How To Behave: A Pocket Manual Of Republican Etiquette, And Guide To Correct Personal Habits • Samuel R Wells

... cumulative from age to age, and imagination can hardly even impose a limit to the magnificence of the works they can accomplish. Our argument from heat is founded on a very simple matter. It is quite obvious that a heated body tends to grow cold. I am not now speaking of fires or of actual combustion whereby heat is produced; I am speaking merely of such heat as would be possessed by a red-hot poker after being taken from the fire, or by an iron casting after the metal has been run into the mould. In such cases as this the general law holds good, that the heated body tends ...
— Time and Tide - A Romance of the Moon • Robert S. (Robert Stawell) Ball

... operate upon it in their full power, and when the materials of the house were in ashes, the conflagration died. But the southern insurrection was the burning of a coalmine—a fire ravaging where human skill could scarcely gain access, kindled among stores of combustion scarcely to be calculated by human experience, growing fiercer the deeper it descended, and at every new burst undermining the land, and threatening to carry down into its gulfs all that was stately or venerable on the surface ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various

... night has been unruly: where we lay, Our chimneys were blown down: and, as they say, Lamentings heard i' the air; strange screams of death; And prophesying, with accents terrible, Of dire combustion, and confused events, New hatched to ...
— Jack Tier or The Florida Reef • James Fenimore Cooper

... master, and curses in the very dialect of his calling. His labour is meer blustering and fury, and his speech like that of sailors in a storm, a thousand businesses at once; yet, in all this tumult, he does not love combustion, but will be the first man that shall go and quench it. He is never a good christian till a hissing pot of ale has slacked him, like water cast on a firebrand, and for that time he is tame and dispossessed. ...
— Microcosmography - or, a Piece of the World Discovered; in Essays and Characters • John Earle

... by the combination of negative electricity, with water; and that by passing the hydrogen thus obtained through spirits of turpentine in its natural state, it becomes carbonized and will support combustion. The practical result claimed from the discovery is the ability to furnish light and heat indefinitely at a merely nominal expense. The importance of it, if it prove to be real, can not well be overrated. The possibility of the thing, however, ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various

... labour in General Oglethorpe's new colony of Georgia. He was then (1733-4) a young man, newly admitted to priest's orders, and undergoing what he took to be a crisis of the soul. Sensual natures, such as his, not uncommonly suffer in youth a combustion of religious sentiment. The fervour is short-lived, the flame is expelled by its own blast, and leaves a house swept ...
— Lady Good-for-Nothing • A. T. Quiller-Couch

... was there, stuffed carefully into a rented dress suit and was being attentioned to the point of combustion by Polly, who was thus putting off a reckoning with young New England, promised for "after the election." Freckles, the devil, was having the lark of his life in removing hats and coats under the direction of an extremely ...
— Andrew the Glad • Maria Thompson Daviess

... wholesome one; for we all know that most of the elements forming common illuminating gas are worthless except to convey the very small amount of light-giving material, and that these elements in combustion vitiate the air and give off deleterious products which corrode, tarnish and destroy. Now though Buddhist doctrine may have been the light of India, yet to reach the Northern and Eastern nations of Asia it had, apparently, to be adulterated for conveyance, as ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis

... roughly, it was based on the principle of not only a muffler but also of producing less noise when the charges of gasoline exploded in the cylinders. It is, of course, the explosion of gasoline mixed with air that causes an internal combustion engine to operate. And it is the expulsion of the burned gases that causes the exhaust and makes the ...
— Tom Swift and his Air Scout - or, Uncle Sam's Mastery of the Sky • Victor Appleton

... a providence in this haste; for, ere I was half-way down the stair, the floor fell with a thud like thunder; and such a combustion of soot, stour, and sparks arose, as was never seen or heard tell of in the memory of man since the day that Samson pulled over the pillars in the house of dragon, and smoored all the mocking Philistines as flat as flounders. For the ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - tailor in Dalkeith • D. M. Moir

... the development of force, matter that can be metamorphosed is necessary. The engine may be perfect, the water may be in the boiler, but unless there be force in the form of heat there will be no steam; and there will be no heat unless there be fuel in a state of combustion. ...
— Fasting Girls - Their Physiology and Pathology • William Alexander Hammond

... itself is dead; it is a vast accumulation of the product of complete combustion, hydrogen burnt out. But just as dead worlds, which are the molecules of infinite space, shocking together, burst into spiral nebulae of flame which are the beginnings of live suns and planets and all luxuriant life thereon, so it seems as if the atoms of sea water, ever rushing ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard

... 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 for the dynamo in isolated plants. Since water-power is running to waste on tens of thousands of our farms throughout the country, several chapters ...
— Electricity for the farm - Light, heat and power by inexpensive methods from the water - wheel or farm engine • Frederick Irving Anderson

... a little hotly, "if Annette is a spitfire, Mrs. Larkins is a lot of combustion. I think of all the women I know, she has the greatest genius for aggravation. I used to board with her, but as I did not wish to be talked to death I ...
— Trial and Triumph • Frances Ellen Watkins Harper

... that the flame does not rise above the gauze. Hold a piece of paper above the gauze near the flame and note that it does not take fire. Note also that the gauze soon becomes hot. The brass wires conduct the heat of the flame rapidly away so that there is not heat enough above the gauze to cause combustion. Now roll the gauze into a hollow cylinder, pin the edges together, insert a cork at each end, and have a short candle fastened to the lower one. Try to light the candle with the lamp through the gauze. It is not ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Nature Study • Ontario Ministry of Education

... he announced, "the internal-combustion ile ingin' is the marine ingin' av the future. They're as simple as two an' two is four. Listen, avic! Does she not run like a twenty-four-jewel watch? An' this man that invinted thim was a Ger-r-man—more power to him! Faith, I'm thinkin' if the Ger-r-mans were as great in war as ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne

... the height of somewhat more than 13,000 feet, it faded away altogether. The Indians, who had held on thus far; intimidated by the strange subterraneous sounds of the volcano, even then in a state of combustion, now left them. The track opened on a black surface of glazed volcanic sand and of lava, the broken fragments of which, arrested in its boiling progress in a thousand fantastic forms, opposed continual impediments to their advance. Amidst these, one huge rock, ...
— Wonders of Creation • Anonymous

... themselves from the devouring element. The pirates had themselves set fire to the vessel. Most of them remained below, submitting to suffocation with sullen indifference. Some few, in the agony of combustion; were perceived, through the smoke, to leap overboard, and seek in preference a less painful death. The boats laid upon their oars, and witnessed the scene ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat

... used in knocking it off being sufficient to make the small particle of iron red-hot. This spark falling upon the tinder set fire to it. The next stage of the operation was to blow upon the tinder, in order, as I said, to nourish the flame; in other words, to promote combustion by an increased supply of oxygen, just as we use an ordinary pair of bellows for the purpose of fanning a fire which has nearly gone out ...
— The Story of a Tinder-box • Charles Meymott Tidy

... been able to nullify the action of the flames, as in the Bible case of the three young Hebrew captives, cast into the Babylonian furnace; 161:9 while an opposite mental state might produce spontaneous combustion. ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy

... of France. No one dared repeat these rumours, but nevertheless they ran up and down the land. The Jena and now the Liberte! True, the Board of Inquiry, which had investigated the destruction of the Jena, had decided that that catastrophe was due to the spontaneous combustion of the powder in her magazines. France had accepted the verdict; but now a second battleship was gone. It would be too much to ask any one to believe that this was spontaneous combustion, also! Such things ...
— The Destroyer - A Tale of International Intrigue • Burton Egbert Stevenson

... resupplied,—at least by any process which the great Master from whom I received them placed within reach of my knowledge. In this they resemble the diamond; when the chemist has found that the diamond affords no other substance by its combustion than pure carbonic-acid gas, and that the only chemical difference between the costliest diamond and a lump of pure charcoal is a proportion of hydrogen less than 1/100000 part of the weight of the substance, can the chemist make ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... porous after three or four years of service, so that the draft is defective, giving annoyance from smoke, which requires their renewal. But the heat, the fermentation and the absorption of products of combustion have together transformed the comparatively infertile subsoil into what they regard as a valuable fertilizer and these discarded brick are used in the preparation of compost fertilizers for the fields. On account of this value of the discarded brick the large amount ...
— Farmers of Forty Centuries - or, Permanent Agriculture in China, Korea and Japan • F. H. King

... cinders. It is a most hideous place, like a pit in Dante's Hell, disused for some unexplained reason, and left untenanted by fiends. The scenery of the moon, without atmosphere and without life, must be of this sort; and such, rolling round in space, may be some planet that has survived its own combustion. When the clouds, which almost always hang about the Val del Bove, are tumbling at their awful play around its precipices, veiling the sweet suggestion of distant sea and happier hills that should be visible, the horror of this view ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds

... a general idea of the working of motor cars and steam locomotives, marines, internal combustion and electric engines. He must also know the names of the principal parts and their functions; how to start, drive, feed, stop, and lubricate any one of them chosen ...
— Outdoor Sports and Games • Claude H. Miller

... fidem in rebus humanis retinere, to keep our wits in order, or rectify our manners. Numquid tibi demens videtur, si istis operam impenderit? Is not he mad that draws lines with Archimedes, whilst his house is ransacked, and his city besieged, when the whole world is in combustion, or we whilst our souls are in danger, (mors sequitur, vita fugit) to spend our time in toys, idle questions, and things ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior

... was called the mineral alkali, because it was originally dug up out of the ground in Africa and other countries: this state of carbonate of soda is called natron. But carbonate of soda is likewise procured from the combustion of marine plants, or such as grow on the sea-shore. Pure carbonate of soda is employed for making effervescing draughts, with lemon-juice, citric acid, or tartaric acid. The chief constituent of soda, the alkali, has been used in France ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton

... brings about combustion for the larger reed is heated to such a point that the tow ignites. Leaves and dry grasses are thrown on and the Elder ...
— My Friends the Savages - Notes and Observations of a Perak settler (Malay Peninsula) • Giovanni Battista Cerruti

... colorless, changing to dark yellow on contact with the air. Nicotianin or "camphor of tobacco" is another substance found in the leaves, crystalline, tasteless, with an odor resembling tobacco. Nicotinic acid is a product of the combustion of nicotine. ...
— The Medicinal Plants of the Philippines • T. H. Pardo de Tavera

... authority from the center to the outer edges of settlement. The explosive force of expansion was no longer limited by the strong hand of a royal Governor, and each increment of population in the colony and power in the hands of the local authorities added fuel to the combustion. ...
— Virginia Under Charles I And Cromwell, 1625-1660 • Wilcomb E. Washburn

... at New Scotland Yard, bending over a sheet of foolscap upon which were arranged some burned fragments from poor Cadby's grate, for so hurriedly had the girl done her work that combustion ...
— The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer

... be more ashamed of their blunder. I have, you see, now taken it for granted that these things are reformed. I confess, I wish that part of the Address to stand; but if W. is inexorable, e'en let it go. I have also new-cast the lines, and softened the hint of future combustion, and sent them off this morning. Will you have the goodness to add, or insert, the approved alterations as they arrive? They "come like shadows, so depart," [2] occupy me, and, I ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron

... with its writhing serpents of flame, was followed in a second or two by a thousand points of light as the town took fire, followed, almost instantaneously, by a burst of light of every color in the spectrum, as a thousand substances leaped into combustion, and then, ...
— Plotting in Pirate Seas • Francis Rolt-Wheeler

... with The Lives of the Poets, as published under Mr. Cibber's name. What became of that manuscript I know not. I should have liked much to examine it. I suppose it was thrown into the fire in that impetuous combustion of papers, which Johnson I think rashly executed, when moribundus.' BOSWELL. Mr. Croker, quoting a letter by Griffiths the publisher, says:—'The question is now decided by this letter in opposition to Dr. Johnson's assertion.' Croker's Boswell, ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell

... pass the limits of the terrestrial atmosphere. It would not even go eight leagues! Better still. Granted the velocity, and taking it as sufficient, the shot would not resist the pressure of the gas developed by the combustion of 1,600,000 pounds of powder, and even if it did resist that pressure, it at least would not support such a temperature; it would melt as it issued from the Columbiad, and would fall in red-hot rain on the heads of the ...
— The Moon-Voyage • Jules Verne

... expeditious. We can no longer take the risk of giving much support to the scoffers—to that breed of unimaginative souls who thought Robert Fulton was a fool for harnessing a paddlewheel to a boiler, who thought Henry Ford was a fool for putting an internal combustion engine on wheels, who thought Samuel Langley was a fool for designing a contraption to fly ...
— The Practical Values of Space Exploration • Committee on Science and Astronautics

... expended less of his vital energy in trying to brew forty storms in one tea pot he would live longer. "Easy does it" is a phrase plucked from the plebeian lexicon of life, which we recommend for his consideration. If he doesn't attend to it we shall have a case of spontaneous combustion to record; and we want to avoid that if possible. There is not a more sincere man, not a man more anxious to do good in Preston than Mr. Lee, only he piles Ossa upon Olympus too stiffly, and that was a job which ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus

... Day and night, the guardships circled overhead. Even if there had been some way of evading them, escape would still have been impossible. Omegan technology had progressed only as far as the internal combustion engine; the only starships were ...
— The Status Civilization • Robert Sheckley

... of an acid secretion. It breathes oxygen, and excretes carbonic acid and urea, through its whole body surface. Its mode of gaining the energy which it manifests is therefore apparently like our own, by combustion of food material. ...
— The Whence and the Whither of Man • John Mason Tyler

... great mathematician, electrician, astronomer, meteorologist, and as a chemist he was equally learned and original. He lived at a time when science was to a large extent but blank empiricism; even the philosophy of combustion was based on erroneous and absurd hypotheses, and the speculation of experimenters were wild and fantastic. He was the first to submit these speculations to crucial tests, to careful and accurate experiment; and the results which were given to the ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 3, January 19, 1884. - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various

... dressed in a full chocolate suit, and wore my most solemn countenance, I looked as you used to tell me, like the fifth act of a deep Tragedy. Lord K—— danced with Miss C——, by the fire of whose eyes, his melodious lordship's heart is at present in a state of combustion. Such is the declaration which he makes in loud whispers many a ...
— Boswell's Correspondence with the Honourable Andrew Erskine, and His Journal of a Tour to Corsica • James Boswell

... way? That was the course of the Templars, and their sad end. They began poorest of the poor, "two Knights to one Horse," as their Seal bore; and they at last took FIRE on very opposite accounts. "To carouse like a Templar:" that had become a proverb among men; that was the way to produce combustion, "spontaneous" or other! Whereas their fellow Hospitallers of St. John, chancing upon new work (Anti-Turk garrison-duty, so we may call it, successively in Cyprus, Rhodes, Malta, for a series of ages), and doing it well, managed to escape ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol, II. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Of Brandenburg And The Hohenzollerns—928-1417 • Thomas Carlyle

... above the furnaces hold all the liquid fuel. Pipes convey it automatically, much or little, as easily as regulating a water-tap, to the fire-boxes. Jets of steam scatter it broadcast throughout the box in the form of spray, and insures its spontaneous combustion into flame. A peep in these furnaces displays a mass of flame filling an iron box in which no fuel is to be seen. A slight twist of a brass cock increases or diminishes this flame at once. A couple of men in clean linen uniforms manage the whole business. We both concluded that it was ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens

... says Plutarch, in his life of Lysander,* are, according to the opinion of some physicists, not eruptions of the ethereal fire extinguished in the air immediately after its ignition, nor yet an inflammatory combustion of the air, which is dissolved in large quantities in the upper regions of space, but these meteors are rather a fall of celestial bodies, which, in consequence of a certain intermission in the rotatory force, and by the impulse of some irregular movements, ...
— COSMOS: A Sketch of the Physical Description of the Universe, Vol. 1 • Alexander von Humboldt

... generations, and shows us how much we of the present day owe to our predecessors. From the earliest times, as among the native smiths of Africa to-day, the blast of a bellows has been used in working iron to increase the heat of the combustion by a more plentiful supply of oxygen. The blast-furnace is supposed to have been first used in Belgium, and to have been introduced into England in 1558. Next came the use of bituminous coal, urged with a blast of cold air. But it was not until 1829 that ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 11, - No. 22, January, 1873 • Various

... fuel shot through the tubes, it exerted force on the gas cloud that was far above the actual speed of the explosion. The heat of combustion was reduced, and the ship operated without effect from the blasts. The tubes were small, yet the power expended was beyond anything ever accomplished ...
— Wanted—7 Fearless Engineers! • Warner Van Lorne

... Herman Loeb, of St. Louis, committed an act of spontaneous combustion. When came the turn of the black satin and the bobbing curls to bend over the rail directly above him, he flung wide his arms, overturning a ...
— Humoresque - A Laugh On Life With A Tear Behind It • Fannie Hurst

... over him and put down in the middle of the table a structure in white sugar. It expressed Frescobaldi's conception of a derrick, and a touch of nature had been added in the flame of brandy, which burned luridly up from a small pit in the centre of the base, and represented the gas in combustion as it issued from the ground. Fulkerson burst into a roar of laughter with the words that recognized Frescobaldi's personal tribute to Dryfoos. Everybody rose and peered over at the thing, while he explained the work of sinking a gas-well, as ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... an elderly gentleman of fortune. "If we had such impure gas as is found in many of the villages and small cities not so very far West, I'd never light a burner in my library again. As it is, I do so very rarely. The products of gas combustion act on the bindings until firm calf drops in pieces, and even law-sheep loses its coherency, as the argument of the opposing counsel does when your own ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XXVI., December, 1880. • Various

... that in the face of such a wind all the pigmy appliances that the populace could bring to act upon such a mass of combustion would be unavailing. As much as could burn that night was burnt, while some of that which would not burn crumbled and fell as a formless heap, whence new flames towered up, and inclined to the north-east so far as to singe the trees of the park. ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy

... has been unruly: where we lay, Our chimneys were blown down: and, as they say, Lamentings heard i' the air, strange screams of death; And prophesying, with accents terrible, Of dire combustion and confus'd events, New hatch'd to the woeful time: the obscure bird Clamour'd the live-long night; some say the earth Was feverous, ...
— Macbeth • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]

... firing-chamber in which the unfired bricks are placed, and in the walls of which are contrived a number of fire-mouths where wood or coal is burned. In the older forms known as up-draught kilns, the products of combustion pass from the fire-mouth, through flues, into the bottom of the firing-chamber, and thence directly upwards and out at the top. The modern plan is to introduce the products of combustion near the top, or crown, of the kiln, and to draw them downwards through holes ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various

... about 1 ft. in length by 6 in. in height. By means of these openings any clinker that may form and the ashes of the spent fuel can readily be withdrawn. They also allow of the admission of air to maintain the combustion in the lower portion of the mass of fuel; and at each opening there is a malleable iron tube for delivering a jet of steam direct from a steam boiler. We shall subsequently explain the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 401, September 8, 1883 • Various

... gasalier may fall upon it. The odyle, as has been already stated, rapidly responds to surrounding magnetic conditions, and to the vibrations of surrounding Bodies, and to none more powerfully than the etheric perturbation caused by combustion—indeed, to light ...
— How to Read the Crystal - or, Crystal and Seer • Sepharial

... depending upon the walls of the room for support. On account of the careful and economical use of fuel by these people the light and inflammable material of which the chimney is constructed does not involve the danger of combustion that would be expected. The perfect feasibility of such use of wood is well illustrated in some of the old log-cabin chimneys in the Southern States, where, however, the arrangement of the pieces is horizontal, ...
— Eighth Annual Report • Various

... exhibited as heat or mechanical force, in the products and forces of chemical or of vital action, in movement or in altered conditions of motion,—whether changed by the growth of plants into fuel or into food, and converted again to heat by combustion or by vital processes, and brought out as mechanical power in the steam-engine or in the horse,—it is still the same power, and is measured in each of its forms by an invariable standard. It first appears as the heat of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various

... ears I should never hear the last of it. After all the trouble that has been taken with you! After the lectures you have attended, and the experiments you have seen! After I have heard you myself, when the whole of my right side has been benumbed, going on with your master about combustion, and calcination, and calorification, and I may say every kind of ation that could drive a poor invalid distracted, to hear you talking in this absurd way about sparks and ashes! I wish,' whimpered Mrs. Gradgrind, taking a chair, and discharging ...
— Hard Times • Charles Dickens*

... sufficiently uncommon to attract unusual attention. A similar phenomenon occurred in the year 1604, when the new star—in this case appearing in the constellation of Serpentarius—was explained by Kepler as probably proceeding from a vast combustion. This explanation—in which Kepler is said to have followed. Tycho—is fully in accord with the most recent theories on the subject, as we shall see in due course. It is surprising to hear Tycho credited with so startling a theory, but, on the other hand, such an explanation is precisely what should ...
— A History of Science, Volume 2(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams

... the foul condition into which such draggletailed dresses must soon get is positively sickening. If a dozen of them were thrown into a closet and left there for a few hours, I have no doubt they would burn of spontaneous combustion." ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various

... himself a goling, or fireplace of mud and stone, some three feet high and four or five long, by one and a half wide, with two, three, or more side ventilators and draught-holes. By this ingenious contrivance he manages to increase the combustion of the dried dung, the most trying fuel from which to get a flame. On the top of this stove a suitable place is made to fit the several raksangs, or large brass pots and bowls, in which the brick tea, having been ...
— In the Forbidden Land • Arnold Henry Savage Landor

... probably, soon engender war. Nor could it either theoretically or practically have been otherwise, for the relations between the two countries had reached a point where they generated a friction which caused incandescence automatically. And, moreover, the inflammable material fit for combustion was, especially in Germany, present in quantity. From the time of Fichte and Scharnhorst downward to the end of the century, the whole nation had learned, as a sort of gospel, that the German education produced a most ...
— The Emancipation of Massachusetts • Brooks Adams

... MACQUART, born in 1789; a soldier in 1809; married in 1829 to a market dealer, Josephine Gavaudan, a vigorous, industrious, but intemperate woman; has three children by her; loses her in 1851; dies himself in 1873 from spontaneous combustion, brought about by alcoholism. A fusion of characteristics. Moral prepotency of and physical likeness to his father. A soldier, then a basket-maker, afterwards lives ...
— A Zola Dictionary • J. G. Patterson

... and Figure 317 is an end view of the boiler and setting at the furnace end. The boiler is supported on each side by channel iron columns, these being riveted to the boiler shell angle pieces which rest upon the columns. The heat and products of combustion pass from the furnace along the bottom of the boiler, and at the end pass into and through the tubes and thence over the top of the boiler to the chimney flue. There is shown in the bridge wall an opening, and its service is to admit air to the gases after they have passed the bridge ...
— Mechanical Drawing Self-Taught • Joshua Rose

... Decomposition of Aeriform Fluids,—of the Combustion of Simple Bodies, and the Formation of ...
— Elements of Chemistry, - In a New Systematic Order, Containing all the Modern Discoveries • Antoine Lavoisier

... a common thing to call such men wrecks; if the comparison be used here it is the specific one of a derelict come to grief through fire. Even yet some flickering combustion illuminated the drifting hulk. His face and hands had been recently washed—a rite insisted upon by Phillips as a memorial to the slaughtered conventions. In the candle-light he stood, a flaw in the decorous fittings of the apartment. His face ...
— The Trimmed Lamp and Others • O Henry

... separation of a chemical compound into its elements by a sufficiently high degree of heat. All compounds are susceptible of dissociation, so that it follows that combustion is impossible at ...
— The Standard Electrical Dictionary - A Popular Dictionary of Words and Terms Used in the Practice - of Electrical Engineering • T. O'Conor Slone

... To prevent death from combustion, the speechless captain here intimated by signs that the culprit should stand up. And the brindle of Rodney Stone strain stood, whilst the men's eyes glistened as they fidgeted upon their feet from very joy in ...
— The Hawk of Egypt • Joan Conquest

... excess by another—a weakness by a rage, which is weakness at its worst. I fear Dorothea may be injured in the opinion of many by the truth—which, nevertheless, has to be told—that her recovery was helped not a little by sentiment. What? Is a poor lady's heart to be in combustion for a while and then—pf!—the flame expelled at a blast, with all that fed it? That is the heroic cure, no doubt: but either it kills or leaves a room swept and garnished, inviting devils. In short it is the way of tragedy, and for tragedy Dorothea ...
— The Westcotes • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... will burn; oxygen will support combustion; yet carbon dioxid (CO2), which is made of both these elements, will neither ...
— Common Science • Carleton W. Washburne

... of chlorine and some other substance. Chlorine is a simple substance, formerly called oxymuriatic acid. In its pure state, it is a gas, of green color, (hence its name, from a Greek word, signifying green.) Like oxygen, it supports the combustion of some inflammable substances. Chloride of lime is a compound of chlorine ...
— A Treatise on Domestic Economy - For the Use of Young Ladies at Home and at School • Catherine Esther Beecher

... about man's moral nature and destiny. He knew, as the ancient prophets did, that evil is potential wreck; and he taxed the power of metaphor to the utmost to indicate, how wrong gradually takes root, and ripens into putrescence and self-combustion, in obedience to a necessity which is absolute. That morality is the essence of things, that wrong must prove its weakness, that right is the only might, is reiterated and illustrated on all his pages; ...
— Browning as a Philosophical and Religious Teacher • Henry Jones

... her, these years? What had they meant? By the internal combustion which had so suddenly lighted up the dark corners of his being, he saw with almost clairvoyant distinctness how it must have been. He saw her growing older, as he had grown older, but in the dull apathy of monotony. She had none of this great ...
— Blazed Trail Stories - and Stories of the Wild Life • Stewart Edward White

... Syndicate; the outfit that was trying to get your Proto-Aryan Sector fissionables franchise away from you. They operate on this sector already; have the petroleum franchise for the Chuldun country, east of the Caspian Sea. They export to some of these internal-combustion-engine sectors, like Europo-American. You know, most of the wars they've been fighting, lately, on the Europo-American Sector have been, at least in part, motivated by rivalry for oil fields. But now that the Europo-Americans ...
— Temple Trouble • Henry Beam Piper

... hands of a clock continue in their course because of the energy locked up in a compressed spring or elevated weight. The gun projects the bullet because of the sudden chemical union of carbon with saltpeter and sulphur. The steam engine takes its energy from the steam secured by combustion ...
— Increasing Efficiency In Business • Walter Dill Scott

... Leach and Neal, Limited, of Derby, and designed by Mr. B. H. Thwaite, C.E., can be advantageously employed in this furnace, which is fired with gaseous fuel. The sensible heat of the waste gases is utilised to heat the air employed for combustion; and by a controllable arrangement of combustion, a flame of over 100 feet in length is obtained, with the result that the furnace from end to end is maintained at a uniform temperature. By this system, and with ...
— Getting Gold • J. C. F. Johnson



Words linked to "Combustion" :   fire, internal-combustion engine, inflammation, oxidation, combust, burning, arson, flame, four-stroke internal-combustion engine, deflagration, tumult, flaming, external-combustion engine, ignition, fire-raising, incendiarism, tumultuousness, garboil, lighting, spontaneous combustion, oxidization, change of integrity, incineration



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