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Disposable   Listen
adjective
Disposable  adj.  
1.
Subject to disposal; free to be used or employed as occasion may require; not assigned to any service or use. "The great of this kingdom... has easily afforded a disposable surplus."
2.
Designed to be disposed of after use; of articles of commerce. The term implies that it is less expensive to manufacture a new one than to clean and recycle the used item to make it fit for use again; as, disposable dishes; disposable diapers; disposable gloves. Opposite of reusable.
Synonyms: throwaway(predicate), non-reusable.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Disposable" Quotes from Famous Books



... decided to send the reserve force, now in England, of 5,000 men, to join Lord Raglan without delay. This will exhaust the whole disposable force of the country at this time, and renders it impossible to supply British troops for any undertaking in the Baltic. A communication was therefore made yesterday to the French Government to know whether they would be disposed to send 6,000 French troops, to be conveyed ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume III (of 3), 1854-1861 • Queen of Great Britain Victoria

... Tyrolese magnate, whose Wife was an Aunt of the Duke's, laid hold of the Tyrol, and transmitted it to daughters and their spouses,—the finish of which line we shall see by and by:—in short, there was much property in a disposable condition. The Hohenzollern Burggraf of Nurnberg, who had married a younger Sister of the Duke's two years before this accident, managed to get at least BAIREUTH and some adjacencies; big Orlamunde, who had not much better right, taking the ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol, II. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Of Brandenburg And The Hohenzollerns—928-1417 • Thomas Carlyle

... of the quota was one fourth of six-sevenths, which makes sixty twenty-eighths and not six twenty-fourths of the total time. Less toil than this would hardly have availed to deepen the sense of value in that large part of the time still remaining disposable. Had there been any resumption whatever of labor in the evening, though but for half an hour, that one encroachment upon the broad continuous area of the eighteen free hours would have killed the tranquillity of the whole day, by sowing it (so to speak) ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey

... were founded at Rome. The spiritual force of Protestantism was a mere local militia, which might be useful in case of an invasion, but could not be sent abroad, and could therefore make no conquests. Rome had such a local militia; but she had also a force disposable at a moment's notice for foreign service, however dangerous or disagreeable. If it was thought at headquarters that a Jesuit at Palermo was qualified by his talents and character to withstand the Reformers in Lithuania, the order was instantly given ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... with latter of these two opinions, because it is evident that the forts could be of use to us only if we overcame the Russian and Prussian armies, which was a reason for concentrating our disposable manpower rather ...
— The Memoirs of General the Baron de Marbot, Translated by - Oliver C. Colt • Baron de Marbot

... wouldn't call her life caged-up. The settlers have been moving in pretty steadily, and she has friends amongst all the families where there's women-folks. She has her own pony, and is gone more than suits me; and although there's no young man disposable, we ain't fretting about that, nor ...
— Lahoma • John Breckenridge Ellis

... nature, was thrown into the thick of the struggle for existence in the midst of a great manufacturing population. He seems to have had a hard fight, inasmuch as, by the time he was thirty years of age, his total disposable funds amounted to twenty pounds. Nevertheless, middle life found him giving proof of his comprehension of the practical problems he had been roughly called upon to solve, by a career ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various

... has completely mastered the art of keeping dry, use disposable diapers if you can possibly get them. If you cannot get them, then the next best bet is a supply of standard diaper linings—specially treated papers about the size of ordinary cleaning ...
— If Your Baby Must Travel in Wartime • United States Department of Labor, Children's Bureau

... his health at the waters of Spa. While at that place he received urgent orders from Philip to abandon for a while all his proceedings in the Netherlands, and to hasten into France with his whole disposable force, to assist the army of the League. The battle of Yvri (in which the son of the unfortunate Count Egmont met his death while fighting in the service of his father's royal murderer) had raised the prospects and ...
— Holland - The History of the Netherlands • Thomas Colley Grattan

... people of the house, excepting occasional conversations with the dust-colored old woman who cleaned the windows and swept the floors; while, with regard to a dozen or two of lodgers who succeeded each other from time to time in the other disposable rooms of the house, I never saw one of them, nor was acquainted with them otherwise than by footstep,—and that rather infelicitously at one time, in the case of something which went either upon crutches or wooden legs, and which occupied ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... Ireland, encouraged by renewed and unrestrained communication with France, and fomented by the fresh infusion of Jacobin principles, if we were at such a moment without a fleet to watch the ports of France, or to guard the coasts of Ireland, without a disposable army, or an embodied militia, capable of supplying a speedy and adequate reinforcement, and that he had suddenly the means of transporting thither a body of twenty or thirty thousand French troops: can we believe, ...
— Selected Speeches on British Foreign Policy 1738-1914 • Edgar Jones

... had done to Hakeem Mehnde, who, by degrees, sent off all his disposable wealth to Shabjehanpoor and Futtehghur, in British territory. In April 1818, the Governor-General the Marquess of Hastings passed through the Khyrabad and Bahraetch districts, attended by Hakeem Mehndee, on a sporting excursion, after the Mahratta war; and the satisfaction which he expressed ...
— A Journey through the Kingdom of Oude, Volumes I & II • William Sleeman

... is a mere scramble or lottery. The professed encourager of virtu and letters, being disappointed of the great names, sends out into the highways for the halt, the lame, and the blind, for all who pretend to distinction, defects, and obliquities, for all the disposable vanity or affectation floating on the town, in hopes that, among so many oddities, chance may bring some jewel or treasure to his door, which he may have the good fortune to appropriate in some way to his own use, or the credit of displaying to others. The art is to encourage rising genius—to ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt

... event proved that they knew their men. Scarcely had the American declaration of war gone forth, when numbers of these people, availing themselves of their near contiguity, abandoned their homes, and embarking in boats all their disposable property, easily succeeded, under cover of the night, in gaining the opposite coast. Not satisfied however with their double treason, they, in the true spirit of the dog in the manger, seemed resolved others should not enjoy that which ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson

... babies should keep on hand a two-week stock of infant supplies such as canned milk or baby formula, disposable diapers, bottles and nipples, rubber sheeting, blankets and baby clothing. Because water for washing might be limited, baby clothing and bedding should be ...
— In Time Of Emergency - A Citizen's Handbook On Nuclear Attack, Natural Disasters (1968) • Department of Defense

... captains of the City Guard, he was the person to whom the magistrates confided the command of the soldiers appointed to keep the peace at the time of Wilson's execution. He was ordered to guard the gallows and scaffold, with about eighty men, all the disposable force that could be spared for ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... went to the Academy, and I went with them, one of the uncles—generally Eben, the universally disposable—following to the village with a loaded ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett

... work of releasing, although always the same and always smaller than any given quantity, will be the more effective the heavier the weight it makes fall and the greater the height—or, in other words, the greater the sum of potential energy accumulated and disposable. As a matter of fact, the principal source of energy usable on the surface of our planet is the sun. So the problem was this: to obtain from the sun that it should partially and provisionally suspend, here and there, on the surface of the earth, ...
— Creative Evolution • Henri Bergson

... habits made the lad abominable in the eyes of his mother, the Duke and Duchess of Dovedale admired the young Hercules with a fond and envious admiration. The Duke would have given coal-pits and tin-mine, all the disposable property he held, and deemed it but a small price for such a son. The Duchess thought of her feeble boy-babies who had been whooping-coughed or scarlet-fevered out of the world, and sighed, and loved her nephew better than ever his mother had ...
— Vixen, Volume I. • M. E. Braddon

... high a price for its conquest. Whatever Malta may or may not be respecting Egypt, its high importance to the independence of Sicily cannot be doubted, or its advantages as a central station, for any portion of our disposable force. Neither is the influence which it will enable us to exert on the Barbary powers to be wholly neglected. I shall only add, that during the plague at Gibraltar, Lord Nelson himself acknowledged that he began to see the possession of Malta ...
— Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit etc. • by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... all the disposable force of the Army of the Potomac, after providing safely for the defence of Washington, be formed into an expedition for the immediate object of seizing and occupying a point upon the railroad southwestward ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln

... is complicated by the necessity of not saying ditto to the invaluable labourers who have reintroduced him and others like him to readers. I am myself full of the most unfeigned gratitude to my friend Dr. Grosart, to Professor Arber, and to others, for sparing students, whose time is the least disposable thing they have, visits to public libraries or begging at rich men's doors for the sight of books. I should be very sorry both as a student and as a lover of literature not to possess Davies, Breton, ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury

... of energy, so much the less, moreover, in proportion as the voltameters cost less; and as the saving is to be effected in the current, rather than in the apparatus, we may admit the use of three volts as a good proportion—that is to say, a loss of about half the disposable energy. Under such conditions, a voltameter having an internal resistance of 1 ohm produces 0.65 liter of hydrogen per hour, while it will disengage 6.500 liters if its resistance be but 0.0001 of an ohm. It is true that, in this ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 819 - Volume XXXII, Number 819. Issue Date September 12, 1891 • Various

... would sell were ascertained. That Doctor Ford should have advanced the money is not less improbable; for the share of which, contrary to his first intention, he ultimately became proprietor, absorbed, there is every reason to think, the whole of his disposable means. He was afterwards a sufferer by the concern to such an extent, as to be obliged, in consequence of his embarrassments, to absent himself for a considerable time from England; and there are among the papers of Mr. ...
— Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan V1 • Thomas Moore

... England would be the weakest power in the whole system. Fortunately, however, the great riches of this kingdom, arising from a variety of causes, and the disposition of the people, which is as great to spend as to accumulate, has easily afforded a disposable surplus that gives a mighty momentum to the state. This difficulty, with these advantages to overcome it, has called forth the talents of the English financiers, who, by the surplus of industry poured out by prodigality, have outdone everything which has been accomplished in other nations. ...
— Political Pamphlets • George Saintsbury

... were superfluous to say: but I may be allowed to express my conviction, that on our recurring to the same ends and objects, (the restoration of a national and circulating property in counterpoise of individual possession, disposable and heritable) though in other forms and by other means perhaps, the decline or progress of this country depends. In the second sense of the words I can sincerely profess, that I love and honour ...
— Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... for anxiety. They were expecting to hear, from outcoming ships, of the outbreak of war between France and England; and as the French were strong in Southern India, it required much moral courage to weaken the force disposable for ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang

... time that this change took place, without the intervention of force, the art of war changed in favour of wealthy nations, but the changes took place by slow degrees, and the power of nations now may almost be estimated by their disposable incomes. ...
— An Inquiry into the Permanent Causes of the Decline and Fall of Powerful and Wealthy Nations. • William Playfair

... balance (plus his cash in hand) exceeds his monetary needs.[12] Thus demand deposits are often spoken of (somewhat inaccurately) as "deposit currency," being funds at the command of depositors which are as disposable and as active and current for the monetary function as so much actual money would be. It is estimated that the rate of turnover of deposits in the United States is about 50 times a year. We may view the demand deposits subject to check as either a substitute ...
— Modern Economic Problems - Economics Vol. II • Frank Albert Fetter

... woman meant in the article in the 'Times' from Ireland about the pension to which Lord Anglesey would not agree. The story is very true. There was L700 disposable on the Pension Fund, and the Duke of Wellington desired L400 might be given to Lady Westmeath, which Lord Anglesey and the Secretary both protested against, and were resolved to resign rather than agree to ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville

... Britain had not called continental auxiliaries to her aid in 1776, her disposable force for colonial service would have been less than half of the army ...
— Bay State Monthly, Vol. I, No. 3, March, 1884 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various

... notes: So much in railways, so much averaged yearly from iron-works in Belwick, so much in foreign securities, so much disposable at home. Total— ...
— Demos • George Gissing

... enterprises. It was in this way a most potent means for exaggerating the chief peril of the private enterprise system of industry by enabling particular industries to absorb disproportionate amounts of the disposable capital of the country, and thus prepare disaster. Business enterprises were always vastly in debt for advances of credit, both to one another and to the banks and capitalists, and the prompt withdrawal of this credit at ...
— Looking Backward - 2000-1887 • Edward Bellamy

... Prime Minister itself, and the effort of his long life be realised. Unhappy only that it took such talent and industry to gain the place; that to qualify for it hardly any talent or industry was left disposable! Looking now into his inner man, what qualification he may have, Lomenie beholds, not without astonishment, next to nothing but vacuity and possibility. Principles or methods, acquirement outward or inward (for his very ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle

... national resources, and this can often be done by keeping alive free competition. Where the rivalry of producers is active, a law of survival guarantees that the more economical method of producing an article shall displace the inferior one. When the choice lies between using a quantity of free and disposable labor in making goods in a certain market and using it in making them elsewhere and carrying them to the market, the alternative which gives society the most that it can get by any use of its productive resources is the one that ...
— Essentials of Economic Theory - As Applied to Modern Problems of Industry and Public Policy • John Bates Clark

... eleven volunteers were to be received from the Zealand, a strong instance was given of the spirit of enterprise prevalent amongst British seamen. About three hundred disposable men were called up, and placed on one part of the deck; and after the nature of the voyage, with the number of men wanted, had been explained to them, those who volunteered were desired to go over to the opposite side. ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott

... labor of the capitalists themselves. If a hundred producers with small capitals carry on separately the same business, the superintendence of each concern will probably require the whole attention of the person conducting it, sufficiently, at least, to hinder his time or thoughts from being disposable for anything else; while a single manufacturer possessing a capital equal to the sum of theirs, with ten or a dozen clerks, could conduct the whole of their amount of business, and have ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • John Stuart Mill

... the way, I am giving my disposable hours to the completion of a monograph on the Calycophoridae and Physophoridae observed during my voyage. The book ought to have been published eight years ago. But for three years I could get no money from the Government, and in the meanwhile you and Kolliker, Gegenbaur and Vogt, went ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley

... argument, popularly enforced, seemed to imply the impossibility of supporting a large force when there were no public funds but such as ran towards the support of the Levites and the majestic service of the altar. But the confusion arises from the double sense of the word 'army,' as a machine ordinarily disposable for all foreign objects indifferently, and one which in Judaea exclusively could be applied only to such a service as must in its own nature be sudden, brief, and always ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey

... arms on the Rhine and in Bavaria, and he saw the futility of carrying on a war of posts and sieges in Flanders, while death-blows to the empire were being dealt on the Danube. He resolved, therefore, to let the war in Flanders languish for a year, while he moved with all the disposable forces that he could collect to the central scenes of decisive operations. Such a march was in itself difficult; but Marlborough had, in the first instance, to overcome the still greater difficulty of obtaining the consent and cheerful cooperation of the allies, especially of ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson

... coming to them: a green bough in his hand is a token of peace; for him they will spread the best blankets the wigwam can afford, they will studiously attend to his wants, smoke with him the calumet of peace, and when he goes away, whatever he may desire from among the disposable wealth of the tribe, if he asks ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat

... thought in this respect: a large room with sunlight and air, low clear windows, a door leading to a garden and playground, low cupboards full of toys, low-hung pictures, light chairs and tables that can be pushed into a corner, stretcher beds equally disposable, a dresser with pretty utensils for food; these are the chief requirements for satisfying physical needs, apparent in the actual room. Physical habits will be ...
— The Child Under Eight • E.R. Murray and Henrietta Brown Smith

... the old major. And the truth is that after the occurrences of the previous evening, Morgan had gone out to his own Club at the Wheel of Fortune, and there finding Frosch, a courier and valet just returned from a foreign tour with young Lord Cubley, and for the present disposable, had represented to Mr. Frosch, that he, Morgan, had "a devil of a blow hup with his own Gov'ner and was goin' to retire from the business haltogether, and that if Frosch wanted a tempory job, he might probbly have it ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray

... my own hand. I have perused with attention your private letter of the 14th instant, and should have been glad had it been in my power to have met your wishes in regard to an appointment; but from the few commissioned gentlemen disposable this season, it was quite impossible to consult wishes. You were, therefore, long before receipt of your letter, appointed to McKenzie's River. That is now one of the finest fields we have for extension of trade, and I count much on ...
— Notes of a Twenty-Five Years' Service in the Hudson's Bay Territory - Volume II. (of 2) • John M'lean

... feeling connected with his own reputation as a skilful and fearless horseman. But, though the chases were in those days longer than they are at present, small was the amount of time really abstracted from that which he had disposable for general purposes; amongst which purposes ranked foremost his literary pursuits. And, however much he transcended the prevailing conception of his order, as sketched by satiric and often ignorant novelists, he might be regarded, in all that concerned the liberalization of his views, as pretty ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey

... proximity to the shipping; the probability of a pitched battle with the flames; the awful loss of property, and perhaps of life, if the fire should gain the mastery, and the urgent need there is for hurrying all the disposable force in London to the spot without delay, if the victory is to be gained—all these circumstances and considerations act as an unusually sharp spur to men, who, however, being already willing at all times to do their utmost, can only force themselves ...
— Life in the Red Brigade - London Fire Brigade • R.M. Ballantyne

... evils of the mason's strike—having shewn that the fitness of things calls upon the Commons, in the present dilemma, to build their own house—we should feel it unjust to the government not to acknowledge the good taste which, as we learn, has directed that an estimate be taken of the disposable space on the walls of the new buildings, to be devoted to the exalted work of the historical painter. Records of the greatness of England are to endure in undying hues on the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various

... former, however, being called away, the command devolved on Gen. Hill. As the masses advanced upon the Federal batteries of heavy guns, they were received with such a destructive fire of artillery and musketry as threw them into disorder. Gen. Lee sent all his disposable troops to the rescue, but the Federal fire was so terrible as to disconsert the coolest veterans. Whole ranks of the Confederate troops were hurled to the ground. Says an actor in the conflict: 'The thunder of cannon, the cracking of musketry from thousands of combatants, mingled with the screams ...
— Personal Recollections of the War of 1861 • Charles Augustus Fuller

... of opinion that the War with China should be conducted on an enlarged scale, and the Indian Government will be directed to have all their disposable military and naval force at Singapore in April, so that the operations may commence at the earliest period which the ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume 1 (of 3), 1837-1843) • Queen Victoria

... centralization of government. But I am of opinion that a central administration enervates the nations in which it exists by incessantly diminishing their public spirit. If such an administration succeeds in condensing at a given moment, on a given point, all the disposable resources of a people, it impairs at least the renewal of those resources. It may ensure a victory in the hour of strife, but it gradually relaxes the sinews of strength. It may contribute admirably to the transient greatness of a man, but it cannot ensure the durable ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville

... reconvertible into like notes within six months, or afterward exchanged for thirty years six per cent. bonds. Treasury notes fundable in four per cent. bonds were convertible in like manner at four per cent. All disposable means in the Treasury were to be applied to the purchase of Treasury notes, bearing no interest, until the amount in circulation did not exceed one hundred and seventy-five millions. The issue of five million dollars, in notes of two dollars, ...
— The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government • Jefferson Davis

... has been paid to the details of the dairy farm; all the disposable milk is made into Dutch cheese. The cows are those of Brittany and Ayrshire; the pigs from England. The whole demesne comprises about 1300 acres, and the benevolent Princess resides entirely on the scene of her labours, ...
— Brittany & Its Byways • Fanny Bury Palliser

... settlements upon our borders, and determined that the murderers of the Menomenies should be surrendered or taken, the department ordered General Atkinson, on the 7th of March last, to ascend the Mississippi with the disposable regular troops at Jefferson barracks, and to carry into effect the instructions issued by your direction. Still further to strengthen the frontiers, orders were given ...
— Great Indian Chief of the West - Or, Life and Adventures of Black Hawk • Benjamin Drake

... English notions of "high farming" will not do in Hungary; what is called the "extensive system" pays best. For instance, if I were already farming, and had some disposable capital at hand, I should find it pay me better to invest in buying more land than in trying to increase the produce of what I had already in hand. After some practical experience in the country, I have no hesitation in saying that Hungary offers a good field ...
— Round About the Carpathians • Andrew F. Crosse

... idling, you will be inclined to set it all down to that. But you will not be doing me justice. Indeed, I have had a summer so troubled that I have had little leisure and still less inclination to write letters. I was keeping the devil at bay with all my disposable activities; and more than once I thought he had me by the throat. The odd conditions of our acquaintance enable me to say more to you than I would to a person who lived at my elbow. And besides, I am too much pleased and flattered at our correspondence not to go as far ...
— The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 1 • Robert Louis Stevenson

... Cumberland was concerned in organising mobs to go down to Windsor to frighten Lady Conyngham and the King, and the Horse Guards, who would naturally have been called out to suppress any tumult, would not have been disposable without the Duke of Cumberland's concurrence, so much so that on one particular occasion, when the Kentish men were to have gone to Windsor 20,000 strong, the Duke of Wellington detained a regiment of light cavalry who were marching elsewhere, that he might not be destitute of military ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville

... their children should be confined to a producing group. The equalizing process may take place even though men do not actually abandon one occupation and enter another; for there exists, in the generation of young men not yet committed to any occupation, a disposable fund of labor which will gravitate naturally to the occupations that pay the largest wages. It is not necessary that blacksmiths should ever become shoemakers, or vice versa, but only that the children of both classes of ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park

... the officer commanding his Majesty's land forces, and co-operate with him on all necessary occasions for carrying the evacuation into effect; and you will furnish to him, and to other officers of rank and their families, the best accommodation of which the disposable room in the ships will admit. In such case it will be incumbent on you to obtain, without a moment's loss of time, an exact estimate of the tonnage that will be required as well for the embarkation of the troops ...
— Memoirs and Correspondence of Admiral Lord de Saumarez. Vol II • Sir John Ross



Words linked to "Disposable" :   usable, nondisposable, fluid, expendable, disposable income, available, spendable, liquid, useable



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