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Electricity   Listen
noun
Electricity  n.  (pl. electricities)  
1.
(Physics) A property of certain of the fundamental particles of which matter is composed, called also electric charge, and being of two types, designated positive and negative; the property of electric charge on a particle or physical body creates a force field which affects other particles or bodies possessing electric charge; positive charges create a repulsive force between them, and negative charges also create a repulsive force. A positively charged body and a negatively charged body will create an attractive force between them. The unit of electrical charge is the coulomb, and the intensity of the force field at any point is measured in volts.
2.
Any of several phenomena associated with the accumulation or movement of electrically charged particles within material bodies, classified as static electricity and electric current. Static electricity is often observed in everyday life, when it causes certain materials to cling together; when sufficient static charge is accumulated, an electric current may pass through the air between two charged bodies, and is observed as a visible spark; when the spark passes from a human body to another object it may be felt as a mild to strong painful sensation. Electricity in the form of electric current is put to many practical uses in electrical and electronic devices. Lightning is also known to be a form of electric current passing between clouds and the ground, or between two clouds. Electric currents may produce heat, light, concussion, and often chemical changes when passed between objects or through any imperfectly conducting substance or space. Accumulation of electrical charge or generation of a voltage differnce between two parts of a complex object may be caused by any of a variety of disturbances of molecular equilibrium, whether from a chemical, physical, or mechanical, cause. Electric current in metals and most other solid coductors is carried by the movement of electrons from one part of the metal to another. In ionic solutions and in semiconductors, other types of movement of charged particles may be responsible for the observed electrical current. Note: Electricity is manifested under following different forms: (a) Statical electricity, called also Frictional electricity or Common electricity, electricity in the condition of a stationary charge, in which the disturbance is produced by friction, as of glass, amber, etc., or by induction. (b) Dynamical electricity, called also Voltaic electricity, electricity in motion, or as a current produced by chemical decomposition, as by means of a voltaic battery, or by mechanical action, as by dynamo-electric machines. (c) Thermoelectricity, in which the disturbing cause is heat (attended possibly with some chemical action). It is developed by uniting two pieces of unlike metals in a bar, and then heating the bar unequally. (d) Atmospheric electricity, any condition of electrical disturbance in the atmosphere or clouds, due to some or all of the above mentioned causes. (e) Magnetic electricity, electricity developed by the action of magnets. (f) Positive electricity, the electricity that appears at the positive pole or anode of a battery, or that is produced by friction of glass; called also vitreous electricity. (g) Negative electricity, the electricity that appears at the negative pole or cathode, or is produced by the friction of resinous substance; called also resinous electricity. (h) Organic electricity, that which is developed in organic structures, either animal or vegetable, the phrase animal electricity being much more common.
3.
The science which studies the phenomena and laws of electricity; electrical science.
4.
Fig.: excitement, anticipation, or emotional tension, usually caused by the occurrence or expectation of something unusual or important.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Electricity" Quotes from Famous Books



... minerals into food for animals, so each man converts some raw material in nature to human use. The inventors of fire, electricity, magnetism, iron; lead, glass, linen, silk, cotton; the makers of tools; the inventor of decimal notation; the geometer; the engineer; musician,—severally make an easy way for all, through unknown and impossible confusions. Each man is, by secret ...
— Representative Men • Ralph Waldo Emerson

... universal was the thirst for happiness! Then, in spite of the many technical terms that were used he caught a little of what the others were saying. Small steam motors had been made at the works in former times; but they had not proved successes. In point of fact a new propelling force was needed. Electricity, though everyone foresaw its future triumph, was so far out of the question on account of the weight of the apparatus which its employment necessitated. So only petroleum remained, and the inconvenience attaching to its use was so great that victory and fortune would certainly ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola

... GDP, while industry generates about one-quarter of GDP and more than 80% of export earnings. The government retains considerable influence over key segments of each sector, with majority ownership of railway, electricity, aircraft, and telecommunication firms. It nevertheless has been slowly relaxing its control over these sectors since the early 1990s, most recently selling 23% of France Telecom. The government also plans to sell its stakes in Air France and in the insurance, banking, and defense ...
— The 1998 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... stood drenched through and blinded by the flashes, which broke the Egyptian darkness with a brightness that seemed almost malignant; while the thunder rolled in peals, the concussion of which appeared to shake the very ocean. A ship is not often injured by lightning, for the electricity is separated by the great number of points she presents, and the quantity of iron which she has scattered in various parts. The electric fluid ran over our anchors, topsail sheets and ties; yet no harm was done to us. We went below at four o'clock, leaving things in the same state. It is not ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana

... of joy, if mere human knowledge could be made the entering wedge to their minds for the knowledge which is divine. How marked the change! They now came in large numbers, drawn by the power of the truth of God alone, not to inquire about electricity, or galvanism, as before, but about the eternal destiny of the soul, and the way by which it might be saved. There had been, also, a favorable change in the general style of preaching at the capital; and among the people there was a growing disposition to compare ...
— History Of The Missions Of The American Board Of Commissioners For Foreign Missions To The Oriental Churches, Volume I. • Rufus Anderson

... stimulant into the veins of his comrades. And at their next outdoor rally, when various contests were undertaken to discover who showed the most skill, he found that the very atmosphere seemed to be surcharged with electricity; for the boys labored to excel as they had never done before; but it was because each one believed that upon his shoulders alone devolved the duty of bringing that ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts - Or, The Struggle for Leadership • George A. Warren

... cessation of the drums and cries. The wailing of the women behind the temple died. The tense air pulsed with electricity. A cock crowed feebly in the village. Then at a rippling splash of the drums and the sudden screaming of the wizards, they began to push the idol. The base had already been loosened in the earth by the slaves. The idol began to totter. Louder ...
— Witch-Doctors • Charles Beadle

... deep in his studies of Radiant Matter, Sir William Crookes touched a little table which stood between our two chairs, and said to me, "We shall announce to the world in a year or two, perhaps sooner, that the atoms of which this table is composed are made up of tiny charges of electricity, and we shall prove that each one of those tiny electrons, relative to its size, is farther away from its nearest neighbour than our earth from the ...
— Painted Windows - Studies in Religious Personality • Harold Begbie

... of the lock system and the pumps are operated by electricity, the control of which energy is well understood by us. In fact, we are centuries ahead of your Earth people in the knowledge of the use of Electro-magnetic energy. (More will be given on the subject of Electricity in a ...
— The Planet Mars and its Inhabitants - A Psychic Revelation • Eros Urides and J. L. Kennon

... The sole writing of Milton which was affected by English politics, his prose, belongs to literature only in so far as it throws light on the author of Paradise Lost. Dante's Divine Comedy, charged though it be with the political electricity of his times, was but little affected by the state of government. In other countries the government of the people was as much itself an effect of the native endowment of the soul as its literature; and government and literature flowed therefore side by side, ...
— Lectures on Russian Literature - Pushkin, Gogol, Turgenef, Tolstoy • Ivan Panin

... although the courage of the British sailor will of course enable him to face anything, it has been thought advisable not to put it to too severe a test, hence this automatic boat has been invented. It is steered, and all its other operations are performed, by means of electricity, applied not on board the boat but on ...
— In the Track of the Troops • R.M. Ballantyne

... which they are exposed. It is an axiom that matter is indestructible; we may alter its form as often as we please, but we cannot destroy a particle of it. It is the same with force: we may convert one kind of it into another—heat into light, or magnetism into electricity—but our power ends there; we can only cause force, or motion, to pass from one of its conditions to another, but its quantity can never be diminished by ...
— The Stock-Feeder's Manual - the chemistry of food in relation to the breeding and - feeding of live stock • Charles Alexander Cameron

... what they called an electronic drive. She had to run with an evacuated engine room. The leaking electricity would have broken any stray air down to ozone, which eats metal and rots lungs. So the engine room had the air pumped out of her, and the stokers who tended the dials and set the cathode attitudes had to wear suits, smelling themselves for twelve hours at ...
— The Stoker and the Stars • Algirdas Jonas Budrys (AKA John A. Sentry)

... I stood in the bath-tub, the water coming nearly to my knees, and reached up to turn on the electric light. The moment I touched the brass key I received a shock that simply paralyzed me. I think liquor has something to do with the awful effect the electricity had upon me, because I had taken too much the night before, and was feeling very shaky indeed; but the result was that I simply fell full length in the bath-tub just as you found me. I was unable to move ...
— In a Steamer Chair And Other Stories • Robert Barr

... The stroke of electricity has not a more instantaneous effect than these words produced on me. Leaping behind Mademoiselle de G——, I trembled with joy, and when it became necessary to clasp her in order to hold myself on, my heart beat so violently that she perceived ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau

... these window-seats," he explained, with a dignified wave of the hand. "Here's books an' maps in this set o' shelves. Here's a small pianner that plays itself when you turn on the electricity——" ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye

... passionate descriptions of his own affection, his hopes and his despairs, chimed in with her mood exactly. Already his fine person and manners had made a great impression on her; she had been very near loving him; nothing, indeed, had been needed but that touch of electricity conveyed in the ...
— Winter Evening Tales • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr

... made in mechanics, I have been told by experts, were very important for the times and deserved greater success. Among them was a coach moved by electricity. ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... taken around the ship, and all expressed a polite interest and appreciation of what was shown them, although there was far less enthusiasm than when the more volatile Tagalog or Visayan had seen the wonders of electricity for the first time. To be sure, the datto himself had been to Spain, but we were told his wife had never been away from Mindanao, nor had many of his followers travelled more extensively than to Manila and ...
— A Woman's Journey through the Philippines - On a Cable Ship that Linked Together the Strange Lands Seen En Route • Florence Kimball Russel

... height. Then the entrance through the combined bridge and conning tower was hermetically sealed. A moment more and the tanks were opened, telling the lads that the submarine was about to submerge. The gasoline motors stopped their endless song. From now on electricity would ...
— The Boy Allies Under Two Flags • Ensign Robert L. Drake

... storm I saw a man and his horse killed by lightning. I was awed, and electricity became my god. I worshiped it like a little heathen. I even bought penny suckers and stuck them up in the ground where the ...
— Claire - The Blind Love of a Blind Hero, By a Blind Author • Leslie Burton Blades

... strainer extensively used in Jerez. The press shown to me was one of Messrs. Johnson and Co., which passes the liquor through eighteen thick cottons supported by iron plates. It might be worth while to apply electricity in the form used to destroy fusel-oil. Lastly, the wine made for the market is a brand or a blend, not a 'vintage-wine.' At any of the armazems, or stores, you can taste the wines of '70, '75, '76, and so forth, of A 1 quality; and you can ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton

... obedience to law. A bridge can be built to stand, only in obedience to the laws of mechanics. Electricity can be made a useful power only in exact obedience to the laws that govern it, otherwise it is most destructive. Has man the privilege of disobeying natural laws, only in the use of his own individual powers? Clearly not. And why is it ...
— Power Through Repose • Annie Payson Call

... the man, but somehow couldn't. To hate him would be hating an overpowering force, like heat, or electricity. ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson

... shouting, encouraging, coaxing, appealing, and refreshing the boatmen and swimmers; but as the gangs came ashore, they sank exhausted on the beach, refusing to stir. Rum, which hitherto roused them like electricity, was now powerless. Powder they did not want, nor muskets, nor ordinary trade stuff, for they never engaged in kidnapping ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer

... ammonia, that is to say, nitrogen, hydrogen and oxygen (no, nitrogen and hydrogen alone), and which sucking up into itself the humus from the ground, mixing together all those different emanations, unites them into a stack, so to say, and combining with the electricity diffused through the atmosphere, when there is any, might in the long run, as in tropical countries, engender insalubrious miasmata—this heat, I say, finds itself perfectly tempered on the side whence ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert

... nature of electricity seemed to envelop her, that made her pulses bound, her lips quick to smile, and her eyes shine like twin dreamstars. She seemed to be moving to some rapturous music unheard save only by herself. At night, alone with her heart, ...
— Other Things Being Equal • Emma Wolf

... the characters and conversation of such visitors. And let it not be overlooked that this was the time of Poland's intellectual renascence—a time when the influence of man over man is greater than at other times, he being, as it were, charged with a kind of vivifying electricity. The misfortunes that had passed over Poland had purified and fortified the nation—breathed into it a new and healthier life. The change which the country underwent from the middle of the eighteenth to the earlier part of the nineteenth century was indeed immense. Then Poland, to use Carlyle's ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks

... an excuse in those days, Uncle Joe, for using a hand-power grindstone, but there certainly is none in these days, with water power, electricity and gasoline," he added, between breaths, as he began tugging away ...
— Hidden Treasure • John Thomas Simpson

... been joined in like manner,[1] and the great cities of every civilized land are practically one in their knowledge of all important events. So many improvements have also been made in the use of electricity, not only for the transmission of intelligence, but as an illuminator, and more recently still as a motive power, that it now seems probable that "the age of steam" will be superseded by the higher ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery

... any chemical one. He had left his laboratory to the care of an assistant, cleared his fine countenance from the furnace-smoke, washed the stain of acids from his fingers, and persuaded a beautiful woman to become his wife. In those days, when the comparatively recent discovery of electricity and other kindred mysteries of Nature seemed to open paths into the region of miracle, it was not unusual for the love of science to rival the love of woman in its depth and absorbing energy. The higher intellect, the imagination, the ...
— Little Classics, Volume 8 (of 18) - Mystery • Various

... certain philosophers makes a much larger demand on human credulity than that of almost any section of the Christian Church. For, according to that theory, the origin of the FLORA is first accounted for by the action of some element—probably electricity—on a certain mucus, which is supposed to be generated at those points where the ocean comes into contact with the earth and air; that is, on the shore of the sea at low water mark. MAILLET had broached the idea of the marine origin of all our present "herbs, ...
— Modern Atheism under its forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural Laws • James Buchanan

... individuals grow old and retire. Others grow up and take over the tasks of organizing the communities in which they live. Profound social changes result from discoveries and inventions: the wheel, the arch, steam and gas engines, electricity, atomic power. Cyclic changes occur in the economy. Social changes follow alterations in the weather. Nations, empires, civilizations are produced ...
— Civilization and Beyond - Learning From History • Scott Nearing

... spoke to her she jerked a shoulder testily, but did not condescend to the civility of a reply. Charlotte, absolutely unoccupied, sprawled in a chair, and there were signs of sniffles about her, even at that early hour. It was but a trifling matter that had caused all this electricity in the atmosphere, and the girls' manner of taking it seemed to me most unreasonable. Within the last few days the time had come round for the despatch of a hamper to Edward at school. Only one hamper a term was ...
— Dream Days • Kenneth Grahame

... on, and the work grew more absorbing, the atmosphere more charged with an electricity which foretold tempest. The president knew that the personality of the young superintendent almost alone held the electricity in solution that for months he and his little musical club and his large popularity had kept off the strike. Till at last a ...
— The Courage of the Commonplace • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews

... Fifth Avenue, though she preferred the comforts of her present mode of life. Still one advantage of a stable home would be that Mr. Parsons could be constantly with them, instead of an occasional and intermittent visitor communicated with more frequently by electricity than by word of mouth. While Mr. Parsons was selecting the land, she and Lucretia had abandoned themselves to an orgy of shopping, and with an eye to the new house, their rooms at the hotel were already littered with gorgeous ...
— Unleavened Bread • Robert Grant

... playfully at all this show and splendour. His good humour was of the elephantine order, and belied the drawn anxiety of his eyes. Luxurious and peaceful as the scene was, there seemed to Chris to be a touch of electricity in the air, the suggestion of something about to happen. Littimer glanced at her admiringly. She was dressed in white satin, and she had in her hair a single diamond ...
— The Crimson Blind • Fred M. White

... with Brian. Those festive nights given over to the feast of reason and the flow of soul—not to riot or drunkenness, but to the half-unconscious consumption of much brandy and soda—nights in which the atmosphere seemed charged with wit and wisdom as with mental electricity—nights in which a young man, able to talk smartly upon any given topic, was carried away by the consciousness of his power, and ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon

... man's power over material things that add to his comfort and happiness, up to the development of higher ethical standards of personal conduct. To one the civilized man is he who has brought to his service the hidden forces of nature, and by steam and electricity has girdled the earth, vastly increased the production of wealth, and by superior methods of transportation has brought all regions of the globe into close contact. To another the mark of civilization is the ...
— The Art of Stage Dancing - The Story of a Beautiful and Profitable Profession • Ned Wayburn

... I am apt to doubt whether draughts of water for six weeks are capable of restoring health, though some are strongly impregnated with mineral and other particles. Yet you have staggered me: the Bath water by your account is, like electricity, compounded of contradictory qualities; the one attracts and repels; the other turns a shilling yellow, and whitens your jaundice. I shall hope to see you (when is that to be?) ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole

... rebuilt in 1894 by Hill and Son at a cost, including the case, of L4,400, and at the expense of the late Mr. W.H. Foster of Witley, Surrey, though his name, at his own wish, remained undisclosed during his lifetime. The action is now controlled by electricity. ...
— The Cathedral Church of Peterborough - A Description Of Its Fabric And A Brief History Of The Episcopal See • W.D. Sweeting

... wife's arm and took one stride toward the object. It was a very long crape veil. He lifted it, and it floated out from his arm as if imbued with electricity. ...
— The Wind in the Rose-bush and Other Stories of the Supernatural • Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman

... Martina's fire could be harnessed and made to draw a hundred wagons at once upon the old-time steel-railed highways; how a child's hand on the crank of a machine-gun might hurl invisible death among a regiment of men and put even an army to flight. Steam and gunpowder and electricity, what wonderful ideas were connoted in the words! The very names thrilled him with a sense of ...
— The Doomsman • Van Tassel Sutphen

... attraction would satisfy itself in a direct primitive way. But each of them is carrying a perfectly enormous superstructure of ideas and inhibitions, emotional refinements and capacities, and the sex attraction is so disguised that they don't recognize it. Do you know what a short circuit is in electricity?" ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster

... value of milk, and are consequently more effective, if of any value whatever. A number of methods have been tried more or less thoroughly in an experimental way that have not yet been reduced to a practical basis, as electricity, use of a vacuum, and increased pressure.[129] Condensation has long been used with great success, but in this process the nature of the milk is materially changed. The keeping quality in condensed ...
— Outlines of Dairy Bacteriology, 8th edition - A Concise Manual for the Use of Students in Dairying • H. L. Russell

... about them like St. Elmo's fire, witch lights—condensations of atmospheric electricity," Ventnor's voice was calm; now that it was plain we were nearing the heart of this mystery in which we were enmeshed he had clearly taken fresh grip, was again his ...
— The Metal Monster • A. Merritt

... straining sea-water, a web of greenish cloth of gold, illuminated by their play of self-generated electric light, has been collected. Humboldt and Ehrenberg speak of their voracity, their power of discharging electricity at will, and their sporting about, exhibiting an intelligent enjoyment of the life God has given to them. Man and his works perish, but the monuments of the infusoriae are the flinty ribs of the sea, the giant bones of huge continents, heaped into mountain-ranges over which the granite and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 28. July, 1873. • Various

... only one way of working, set and fixed, is not susceptible of habit. Such powers are the forces of inanimate nature, as gravitation and electricity. A thing does not gravitate better for gravitating often. The moon does not obey the earth more readily to-day than she did in the days of Ptolemy, or of the Chaldean sages. Some specious claim to habit might be set up on behalf of electricity and magnetism. A glass rod rubbed at ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.

... were invited by the Toque Bleue Snow-shoe Club to join in one of their weekly excursions across Mt. Royal. They could not go, and the reasons given by Mark Twain are not without interest. The letter is to Mr. George Iles, author of Flame, Electricity, and the Camera, and many ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... development in the case before us. Then, I think we have here a really unique opportunity of effecting a reform that will unite and not divide all the legitimate interests concerned. What could appear to have less in common than electricity and sanctuaries? Yet electricity in Labrador requires water-power, which requires a steady flow, which requires a head-water forest, which, in its turn, is admirably fit to shelter wild life. Except ...
— Animal Sanctuaries in Labrador • William Wood

... Xochimilco, as the present amount per capita of 137 litres is not sufficient. The new works will ensure a per capita supply of 400 litres, for a population of 550,000 inhabitants. The lighting of the city and suburbs is by electricity, and is efficiently performed, giving the capital the reputation of being an excellently illumined community. A Canadian Company, the Mexican Light and Power Company, holds the contract for this work. The drainage and sewerage of the capital form a fine modern sanitation ...
— Mexico • Charles Reginald Enock

... plane had made before we saw it. It must have been using its jets then. "And do you suppose," Pop asked, "that it was something from the antigravity that made electricity flare out of the top of the cracking plant? Like to have scared the pants off me!" No ...
— The Night of the Long Knives • Fritz Reuter Leiber

... as something more than a surprise: a revelation of wilful gaiety. We have normally nothing in England to compare with it. Nor can we have even our Earl's Court exhibition imitations of it so long as coal is so rare and costly. But though we had the driving power for the electricity we could never get such brilliance, for the clear American atmosphere is an essential ally. In our humid airs all the diamond glints would ...
— Roving East and Roving West • E.V. Lucas

... the sake of companionship. There were several large tables, and these were all occupied by eager players. Nearby was a bar, where drinks of various kinds were being served. The room was brilliantly lighted by electricity, and the whole atmosphere of the place ...
— Glen of the High North • H. A. Cody

... the age, which scientists are intently engaged in solving, is the correlation of the leading forces already adverted to. Thus far light, heat, electricity, magnetism, chemical action, vital action, cohesion, etc., have been proved to be parts of one great whole. Now, since the especial characteristic of the great earth-core is heat, it comes directly into relationship with the forces mentioned. How then are its forces expended? Through what ...
— New and Original Theories of the Great Physical Forces • Henry Raymond Rogers

... electricity; electric signs popped magically with many-coloured lights on the front of a music hall where an audience was already gathering for the first performance, on public-houses, on the big red warehouses on the quay. ...
— THE MISSES MALLETT • E. H. YOUNG

... that the atmosphere, surcharged all day with the electricity of a fierce storm, found relief in a dancing flash of brilliant lightning simultaneously with a crash of loudest thunder. For five seconds every article in the room was visible to me with amazing distinctness, and through ...
— The Empty House And Other Ghost Stories • Algernon Blackwood

... he has found. The analysis of thought is a luxury of the upper-classes. The souls of the people demand synthesis, ideas ready-made, well or ill, or rather ill-made than well, but all tending to action, and composed of the gross realities of life, and charged with electricity. Of all the literature open to Emmanuel that which most nearly touched him was the epic pathos of certain passages in Hugo and the fuliginous rhetoric of the revolutionary orators, whom he did not rightly understand, characters who no more understood ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland

... of the Seven Wise Men of Greece. He taught the spherical form of the earth and the true causes of lunar eclipses; discovered the electricity of amber. The Seven Sages, or Wise Men, are commonly made up of Thales, Solon, Bias, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various

... the circumstances—the wisest thing," he said slowly at last, "would be for you to go into hospital as an ordinary patient. I could get you a bed in one of my own wards, where I could look after you myself, in consultation with the first men in town. You could have massage, electricity, radium, heat baths, every appliance that could possibly be of use, and you could stay on long enough to give them a chance. It would be an ordinary ward, remember, an ordinary bed in an ordinary ward, and your neighbours ...
— The Independence of Claire • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... months getting ill; it will require six months for a cure." There is a correct sound about such a phrase, and it is sure to satisfy. Two sittings a week, at two dollars a sitting, will pay. In many cases the patient gets well while you are electrifying him. Whether or not the electricity cured him is a thing I shall never know. If, however, he began to show signs of impatience, I advised him that he would require a year's treatment, and suggested that it would be economical for him to buy a battery and use it at home. Thus advised, he pays you twenty ...
— The Autobiography of a Quack And The Case Of George Dedlow • S. Weir Mitchell

... therefore do not let us be so sure that it cannot be manipulated and flavoured into any form of sin. All sin is one at bottom, and this is the definition of it—living to myself instead of living to God. So it may easily pass from one form of evil into another, just as light and heat, motion and electricity, are all—they tell us—various forms and phases of one force. Just as doctors will tell you that there are types of disease which slip from one form of sickness into another, so if we have got the infection about us it is a matter very much of accidental circumstances what shape ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren

... the power by which the machine was driven, was neither steam nor gasoline, nor any of those similar liquids so well known by their odor, which are usually employed for automobiles and submarines. No doubt the power here used was electricity, generated on board, at some high power. Naturally I asked myself whence comes this electricity, from piles, or from accumulators? But how were these piles or accumulators charged? Unless, indeed, the electricity ...
— The Master of the World • Jules Verne

... away from it; perhaps for ever. Towards night, black clouds gathered in the sky, and distant thunder heralded the coming of one of those great storms for which the prairie is so famous. The air was so charged with electricity that the train had to be stopped several times, and the wheels of the cars drenched with water to prevent their taking fire. As night closed in, incessant flashes of white sheet lightning almost blinded us. Each white flash was riven by red forks of flame, until, with the horizon one constant ...
— A Trip to Manitoba • Mary FitzGibbon

... of society are observed, and people are kept asunder a room's distance, so that only the mind acts, and the senses are in repose, reserve may keep up its barrier. Words lose their electricity in passing through a cool tract of air, and Reason shows all things in her own clear white light. But establish a magnetic circle by contact, let hand rest in quivering hand, while eye looks into melting eye, and Reason may as well resign her sway. ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 3, No. 16, February, 1859 • Various

... these dry Parliamentary returns on a painful subject, by meeting with such a passage as the following, written by Dr. Thomas Carey Osborne in his report of the Cork Asylum. Speaking of the symptoms of a young maniac, cured by electricity, he says, "When in the yard, he would look intently on the sun if permitted, until the albuginea became scarlet, and the tears flowed down the cheeks, unconscious of inconvenience." His report is very pedantic, full of ...
— Chapters in the History of the Insane in the British Isles • Daniel Hack Tuke

... flash, and other circumstances, it may be conjectured that there is something of electricity in this phenomenon. Notes to Poems, 1796. ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... is impossible to restore the wasted muscle and at the same time remove the cause of the interruption of the nervous supply. Before roaring becomes permanent the condition may be benefited by a course of iodid of potassium, if caused by disease of the lymphatic glands. Electricity has been used with indifferent success. Blistering or firing over the larynx is, of course, not worthy of trial if the disease is due to interference of the nerve supply. The administration of strychnia (nux vomica) on the ground that it is a nerve tonic with the view of stimulating ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture

... his father. "Don't you remember the elevated train has no engine, either? Both kinds of trains are run by electricity. If Mother doesn't mind, we'll go up in the first car and watch ...
— Sunny Boy in the Big City • Ramy Allison White

... B.C., studied physical science, and, as Livy relates, was struck by lightning and killed as the result of his experiments, and it has therefore been inferred that these experiments related to the investigation of electricity. It is surprising to find in the Twelve Tables of Numa references to dental operations. In early times, it is certain that the Romans were more prone to learn the superstitions of other peoples than to acquire much useful knowledge. ...
— Outlines of Greek and Roman Medicine • James Sands Elliott

... is gold we can afford to have the tunnel and cave wired with electricity at once," laughed the ...
— Polly of Pebbly Pit • Lillian Elizabeth Roy

... Malcolmson's looked as if it must break out in some way. While I was watching, the machine suddenly stopped ticking and Malcolmson turned round. His face was nearly as purple as his neck. His moustache, always bristly, looked as if it was composed of fine wires charged with electricity. His ...
— Gossamer - 1915 • George A. Birmingham

... caused by the friction of vapor, which is at a suitable temperature. Thus two or more currents of air coming together will cause lightning, as the friction concentrates the electricity, and as there is no conductor the heavy voltage flies usually toward the nearest conductor. This voltage is so great that it explodes the air. The air coming together again produces a great ...
— ABC's of Science • Charles Oliver

... has ever been able to say what electricity is, for instance. It isn't anything, as positively distinguished from heat or magnetism or life. Metaphysicians and theologians and biologists have tried to define life. They have failed, because, in a positive sense, there is nothing to define: ...
— The Book of the Damned • Charles Fort

... the deck to the dance music, tossed her head, and declared nonchalantly that it was all very well as a British effort at illumination, but she begged the young man to remember that America was the home of electricity. ...
— A Rock in the Baltic • Robert Barr

... hero's career may seem to dim the lustre of the later porterhouse steak, but with all the glory of the halcyon days of yore it is to be noted that he rides in an automobile and not in an ox-cart, and prefers electricity to ...
— Reveries of a Schoolmaster • Francis B. Pearson

... has been transformed into a mighty flooded area to make way for the world's largest project of its kind. At first much was said back and forth about the Tennessee Valley Authority. Some viewed it with a dubious eye, called it names—a New Deal experiment, a merchant of electricity, a threat to private ownership of business, or again merely a new series of letters in alphabetical government, the TVA. To isolated mountain folk who came to look as time went on, it was the plum biggest public works they had ever ...
— Blue Ridge Country • Jean Thomas

... noon about the fact that he and Shakespeare's father were in wool, and he had annoyed a few modest Americans by comparing the petty amount of the elder Shakespeare's trade with the vast total pouring from his own innumerable looms driven with the electricity that the ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... interest in experimental science had been already excited in him at Sion House by the exhibition of an orrery; and this interest grew into a passion at Eton. Experiments in chemistry and electricity, of the simpler and more striking kind, gave him intense pleasure—the more so perhaps because they were forbidden. On one occasion he set the trunk of an old tree on fire with a burning-glass: on another, while he was amusing himself with a blue flame, his tutor came into the ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds

... laws designed to govern man in his social and economic relationships, and when those laws have been discovered the impossibilities of to-day will become the common practice of to-morrow, just as steam and electricity have made the impossibilities of yesterday the common practice of to-day. The first need is to find the law, and to what more worthy purpose could a man devote himself? When I landed here yesterday—when I walked ...
— Dennison Grant - A Novel of To-day • Robert Stead

... the Atlantic Ocean—and ranges from a lofty tolerance in good times to unreserved bickering in bad. Why? Because they are geographically too far apart. But with the shrinkage of the earth's surface produced by the effects of electricity and steam, that geographical abyss yawns much less widely than it did. So let us get together, whether in couples or in millions. The thing has to be done. No rearrangement of the world's affairs after the War can be either just or equitable or permanent which does not find Great Britain ...
— Getting Together • Ian Hay

... of transition, and the vigor which emanated from the young President passed like electricity through all lines and hastened the change. He caused the White House to be remodeled and fitted on the one hand for social purposes which required much more spacious accommodation, and on the other for offices ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer

... Sturgeon, celebrated for his scientific learning, his voluminous productions on electricity, and various branches of natural science. He had been originally a shoemaker, afterwards a soldier, subsequently scientific lecturer at Addiscombe College, and in his old age suffered much from poverty. Lord John Russell obtained him a grant ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... was imagined, yet for him this sorcery is a simple and natural thing. He would be greatly surprised if one were to come and tell him that a certain god might, if he chose, stop the machines and extinguish the lights when the electricity had been turned on; he would reply that this anarchistic god would be simply a misplaced gearing or a broken wire, and that it would be easy for him to seek and find this disturbing god. The practice of the modern factory teaches scientific determinism ...
— Communism and Christianism - Analyzed and Contrasted from the Marxian and Darwinian Points of View • William Montgomery Brown

... Philosophers have tried to teach it, But all their learning cannot reach it; 'Tis matter still, "that's what's the matter" With all their philosophic chatter, And Latin, Greek, and Hebrew clatter, Crucibles, retorts, and receivers, Wedges, inclined planes, and levers, Screws, blow pipes, electricity and light, And fifty other notions, quite Too much to either read or write. Just ask the wisest, What is matter? And notice how he will bespatter The subject, in his vain endeavor, With deep philosophy so clever, To prove you what you knew before, That matter's matter, ...
— The Poets and Poetry of Cecil County, Maryland • Various

... rest. The Materialist talks about Infinite and Eternal Matter, although the latest scientific investigations have shown us Matter fading into Nothingness—the Eternal Atom being split into countless particles called Corpuscles or Electrons, which at the last seem to be nothing but a unit of Electricity, tied up in a "knot in the Ether"—although just what the Ether is, Science does not dare to guess. And Energy, also seems to be unthinkable except as operating through matter, and always seems to be acting under the operation of Laws—and Laws without a Law ...
— A Series of Lessons in Gnani Yoga • Yogi Ramacharaka

... to nature. The same principle is to be noticed in regard to all truth. Take, for instance, any scientific discovery of a physical force, like that which we call the force of electricity. There is nothing new about this wonderful power. It has always been about us, playing through the sky, and inviting the mind of man. Then, some day, a few men open their minds to the significance of this force, ...
— Mornings in the College Chapel - Short Addresses to Young Men on Personal Religion • Francis Greenwood Peabody

... smoked paper is fixed upon the shutter, then a tuning-fork provided with a small stylet resting against the paper is made to vibrate. Better yet, a chronograph which vibrates synchronously with a tuning-fork, whose motion is kept up by electricity, is put in the same place. Fig. 3 shows the arrangement to be employed. We then let the shutter fall, when the little stylet will inscribe a certain number of vibrations. Knowing the number of vibrations of the tuning-fork, and counting the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 430, March 29, 1884 • Various

... was standing close to Mozart," says Kelly, "who, sotto voce, was repeating: 'Bravo, bravo, Benucci!' and when Benucci came to the fine passage, 'Cherubino, alla vittoria, alla gloria militar,' which he gave out with stentorian lungs, the effect was electricity itself, for the whole of the performers on the stage, and those in the orchestra, as if actuated by one feeling of delight, vociferated: 'Bravo, bravo, maestro! Viva, viva, grande Mozart!' Those in the orchestra I thought would never have ceased applauding by beating ...
— A Book of Operas - Their Histories, Their Plots, and Their Music • Henry Edward Krehbiel

... could not have been what the French doctor had said it was. Constance shrugged her shoulders. She was not surprised. For her there was necessarily something of the charlatan about a French doctor. She said she only knew what Sophia had told her. After a time Dr. Stirling determined to try electricity, and Dick Povey drove him up to the surgery to fetch his apparatus. The women were left alone again. Constance was very deeply impressed by Lily Holl's sensible, sympathetic attitude. "Whatever I should have done without Miss Lily I don't know!" she used to exclaim afterwards. Even Maud ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett

... the activity of Doctor Nesbit in those days, but the truth is also that Doctor Nesbit did what he did—won the county seat for Harvey, secured the railroad, promoted the bond election, which gave Daniel Sands the franchises for the distribution of water, gas and electricity—not because the Doctor had any particular regard for Daniel Sands but because, first of all, the good of the town, as the Doctor saw it, seemed to require him to act as he acted; and second, because his triumph ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White

... man, supporting himself on his two elbows, drew close to Aramis' face, with such an expression of dignity, of self-command, and of defiance even, that the bishop felt the electricity of enthusiasm strike in devouring flashes from that seared heart of his, into ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas

... spectacle of that lovely young girl asphyxiated in a fire, whom I succeeded in reviving by placing burning coals under the clavicles, but who could only call her mother, and died almost immediately, in spite of the administration of internal stimulants and electricity for inducing contractions of ...
— The Man With The Broken Ear • Edmond About

... fundamentally a pure science; that is, it must seek most of all to know and understand. Practical scientific knowledge was usually first obtained without any inkling of how it might be used. The science of electricity is the most striking example of this. It began as an attempt to understand certain curious phenomena, which seemed to be nothing but curiosities; yet when the knowledge of these phenomena had progressed to a certain point, abundant ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth

... Pacific Railroad. Labor and capital shake hands today. The lion and the lamb sleep together. Here in the West are the representatives of labor and in the East are those of capital. The two united make the era of progress. Steam, Gas, and Electricity are the liberty, fraternity, and equality of the people. The world is on the rampage. Events are ...
— The Story of the First Trans-Continental Railroad - Its Projectors, Construction and History • W. F. Bailey

... for eight days previous to the fifteenth of January, 1846, had been heavy and tempestuous, with constantly recurring storms of thunder and lightning. The atmosphere was charged with electricity. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various

... the estimation of his fellow-townsmen, and enabled him to take a forward part in all the affairs of his province. In England, and indeed all Europe, he became celebrated by his experiments and discoveries in electricity. These may deserve the greater credit when we recollect both their practical utility and their unassisted progress,—how much the pointed rods which he introduced have tended to avert the dangers of lightning, and how far removed ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various

... with his head full of wheels, who's at home with electricity and wires," the old woman went on. "We've had them before, but never allowed them to dominate us. My own husband was such a man, but he was only allowed to make token gestures, such as having the power lines put in. He never understood how they worked." She lowered her voice to a whisper, ...
— The Putnam Tradition • Sonya Hess Dorman

... (1680), and Robert Boyle (1627-1691) perfected, the air-pump. Boyle was active in founding the Royal Society (1660). Volta, by the invention of the pile called by his name, and Franklin, signally advanced the study of electricity. In the history of zooelogy, Buffon is a great name, as is that of Lavoisier in chemistry. Linnaeus, a Swede, born in the same year with Buffon (1707), attained to the highest distinction by reducing botany to a system. The lives of the eminent astronomers Lagrange ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher

... suggested reasons for looking upon physical life as a mode of frequency, akin to Light, Electricity, Magnetism, Chemical Action, the Vibration of a Tuning Fork, or the Swing of a Pendulum, and therefore a transient phenomenon having to do only with the Race; Life can under these conditions only be looked upon as a reality in the same sense in which all other forms of energy ...
— Science and the Infinite - or Through a Window in the Blank Wall • Sydney T. Klein

... domestication of beasts of draft and burden alleviated the status of slaves; we shall see below that serfs got freedom when wind, falling water, and steam were loaded with the heavy tasks. Just now the heavy burdens are borne by steam; electricity is just coming into use to help bear them. Steam and electricity at last mean coal, and the amount of coal in the globe is an arithmetical fact. When the coal is used up will slavery once more begin? One thing only can be affirmed with confidence; that is, that as no philosophical ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner

... morning Caw, who had risen at five, had Grey House in a fair state of comfort for the reception of its new master, if not its new owner. The producers of warmth and electricity were at work again; the elderly housekeeper, who in Christopher's time had never been upstairs, was recalled from a near village just when she was beginning to wonder whether, after all, perfect happiness was included in retirement with an ample annuity, in the garden a man was already reducing ...
— Till the Clock Stops • John Joy Bell

... him going down to his office at about nine in the morning, working until noon as though driven by steam and electricity; then lunching with a party of Native Sons, all filled with jocund japeful joshing Native Son humor which brims over in showers of Native Son wit. I imagine him returning to an afternoon of brief but ...
— The Native Son • Inez Haynes Irwin

... walk proceeded to her lodging in Bloomsbury. She would have felt the confinement of a cab to be intolerable, but it was a relief to set her personality against the friction of a million of encompassing wills. And in a short time she succumbed to that condition of electricity which they evolve, and permitted herself to be moved by ...
— A Singer from the Sea • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr

... M'Clise started; for he immediately comprehended what was meant. The whole plan came like electricity through his brain. Yes; then there was a promise of happiness. The bell was worth ten thousand guilders; that sum had been offered, and would now be given by Isaacs the Jew. He would be happy with his Katerina; and he blessed her ingenuity for devising the means. For a minute ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)

... Now, if this should turn out to be the case, it would be a fact of considerable importance, medico-legal and otherwise; for it would be possible to determine approximately the age of any object of known composition by testing its reactions to electricity, heat, light and other molecular vibrations. I thought of seeking Doctor Norbury's assistance because he can furnish me with materials for experiment of such great age that the reactions, if any, should be extremely easy to demonstrate. But to return to our case. I learned from him ...
— The Vanishing Man • R. Austin Freeman

... cruel day is over in the East!" You still have many things to learn, base worshippers of gold; When you were wild barbarians, our Governments were old! Your self-conceit and arrogance we therefore laugh to scorn; We had our laws millenniums before your courts were born. You talk by electricity, you ride on wings of steam, You thunder with machinery,—and these you proudly deem The grandest triumphs of the race, forgetting that mere speed In transference of men and things is less than one ...
— Poems • John L. Stoddard

... deals with should be of grave import. Attempting to find a new verb is quite an undertaking—to BURY. How would "bury" do? "We buried him;" meaning, "we electrified him." "We went along Bury well;" meaning, "the progress caused by electricity was satisfactory." "We 'Buried along' at a great rate," ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, 19 April 1890 • Various

... mind of what I heard Dr. Chinston say yesterday," she said. "This is the age of unrest, as electricity and steam have turned ...
— The Mystery of a Hansom Cab • Fergus Hume

... that the flag has its nourishment in marshy ground, whereas the fern loves a deep dryish soil. The attributes of the divining-rod were fully credited; the discovery of the philosopher's stone was daily hoped for; and electricity, magnetism, and other remarkable and misconceived phenomena were appealed to as proof of the reasonableness of their expectations. Until such phenomena were traced to their sources, imaginary and often mystical causes were assigned to them, for the same reason that, ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott

... Harry; and in my opinion England is very wrong in exchanging her fuel for the gold of other nations! I know well," added the engineer, "that neither hydraulics nor electricity has yet shown all they can do, and that some day these two forces will be more completely utilized. But no matter! Coal is of a very practical use, and lends itself easily to the various wants of industry. Unfortunately man cannot produce it at will. Though our external forests grow incessantly ...
— The Underground City • Jules Verne



Words linked to "Electricity" :   piezoelectric effect, stir, inductive, hot, electric, low-voltage, earth, ac, alternating, transposition, direct, outlet box, signal, free energy, multiphase, amplification, electrify, conservation of electricity, galvanism, direct current, live, piezo effect, direct electric current, electrical energy, physical phenomenon, atmospheric electricity



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