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Compress   /kˈɑmprɛs/  /kəmprˈɛs/   Listen
Compress

verb
(past & past part. compressed; pres. part. compressing)
1.
Make more compact by or as if by pressing.  Synonyms: compact, pack together.
2.
Squeeze or press together.  Synonyms: compact, constrict, contract, press, squeeze.  "The spasm contracted the muscle"



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"Compress" Quotes from Famous Books



... how much thought will compress itself into a minute. It was so here, these ideas repeating themselves again and again before the young man's feet touched something soft and yielding, and upon his stretching his legs ...
— The Kopje Garrison - A Story of the Boer War • George Manville Fenn

... hope you do see them," murmured Tom, as he pulled the lever which would pump the gas from the inflated bag, and compress it into tanks, until it was needed again to make the ship rise. Slowly ...
— Tom Swift and his Electric Rifle • Victor Appleton

... has many merits and one great fault. He has fire and fancy and was the owner and master of a precise vocabulary well fitted to clothe and set forth a well-reasoned and lofty argument. He knew how to be both terse and diffuse, and can compress himself into a line or expand over a paragraph. He has touches of a grave irony as well as of a boisterous humour. He can tell an anecdote and elaborate a parable. Swift, we know, had not only Butler's Hudibras by heart, but was also (we may be sure) a close student of Marvell's prose. ...
— Andrew Marvell • Augustine Birrell

... myself again, Colonel Albright stanched the flowing of blood from my wound in the head by making a strong compress of my large bandana handkerchief. The other wound in my leg did not give me much trouble then. In that condition, accompanied by another wounded man, I made my way back into the city. We found it one vast hospital. Every house was literally crowded with wounded ...
— War from the Inside • Frederick L. (Frederick Lyman) Hitchcock

... in quantities wherever there is open ground, but it is not cultivated by the natives; and when attempts have been made to get them to collect it they do so, but bring it in very dirty, and the traders having no machinery to compress it like that used in America, it does not pay to ship. Indigo is common everywhere along the Coast and used by the natives for dyeing, as is also a teazle, which gives a very fine permanent maroon; and besides these there are many other dyes and drugs used by them—colocynth, ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley

... opened a vast number of artesian wells through the agency of skillful engineers, and thus created oases in which the fecund sands support abundant date-palm groves.[1113] The method pursued energetically by the Russians is to compress the tribes into ever narrowing limits of territory, taking away their area of plunder and then so restricting their pasture lands, that they are forced to the drudgery of irrigation and tillage. In this way the ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple

... and began to compress the mass of imaginary wrongs into the one little wrong which ...
— Agatha's Husband - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik (AKA: Dinah Maria Mulock)

... shut the window. 'No,' I said, 'I understand the the'ry well enough to know that I must have fresh air, so please leave the window open.' He did as I asked, and went away.[8] I lay quite still in my compress thinking no evil, when suddenly I heard a great humming and buzzing in my ears, and when I could look up, I saw a swarm of bees streaming in at my window, preceded by their queen. I knew her well, Charles, for as you know I am a bee-keeper. One spring the ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various

... exceedingly difficult to compress into a few pages a fair and intelligible statement of a Weltansicht which affects the whole conception of reality, and which has many ramifications. There is an additional difficulty in the fact that few of the Modernists are more than amateurs in philosophy. They are quick to see the strategic ...
— Outspoken Essays • William Ralph Inge

... resign, Can we exist on t'other nine?" The monarch asked them in reply: "Has it occurred to you to try The advantage of economy?" "It has," the spokesman said: "we sold All of our gray garrotes of gold; With plated-ware we now compress The necks of those whom we assess. Plain iron forceps we employ To mitigate the miser's joy Who hoards, with greed that never tires, That which your Majesty requires." Deep lines of thought were seen to plow Their ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce

... the sky. Her house not ancient, whatsoe'er pretence Her clergy heralds make in her defence. A second century not half-way run, Since the new honours of her blood begun. 350 A Lion[105] old, obscene, and furious made By lust, compress'd her mother in a shade; Then, by a left-hand marriage, weds the dame, Covering adultery with a specious name: So Schism begot; and Sacrilege and she, A well match'd pair, got graceless Heresy. God's and king's rebels have the same good cause, To trample down divine and human laws: Both would ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol I - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden

... may have come about partly from a literal interpretation of "lot" (Judges xviii. 1), an expression which properly applies to the farm of a family but is here used for the territory of a tribe. It was also favoured no doubt by the tendency to compress a long development into its first great act; and as this tendency is carried out with the greatest thoroughness in the Priestly Code, that document stands furthest from the origin of the tradition. /1/ The ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen

... the manure, has a tendency to exclude the air and thus retard fermentation. In the winter there is certainly no necessity for resorting to any means for checking fermentation. In the spring or summer it may be well to compress the heap a little, but not more, I think, than can be done by the trampling of the workman in spreading the manure ...
— Talks on Manures • Joseph Harris

... receptacle is not larger than a very small pea, and is so perfectly transparent, as to appear when filled, of the same color with its contents; it is properly the first stomach of the bee, and is surrounded by muscles which enable the bee to compress it, and empty its contents through her proboscis into the ...
— Langstroth on the Hive and the Honey-Bee - A Bee Keeper's Manual • L. L. Langstroth

... it is one of those of the lately built college at Edinburgh. I have not taken it as worse than many others (just as I have not taken the St. Mark's tower as better than many others); but it happens to compress our British system of tower building into small space. The Venetian tower rises 350 feet,[62] and has no buttresses, though built of brick; the British tower rises 121 feet, and is built of stone, but is supposed to be incapable of standing without two huge ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume I (of 3) • John Ruskin

... To compress the surface soil so that the harrow will do its work more efficiently, also to break clods or lumps that may have resisted the action of ...
— The First Book of Farming • Charles L. Goodrich

... thought had occurred to Rip on the Scorpius. His calculations had showed that the metal would do little more than compress, except where it melted from the terrific heat of the bomb. That would be only in and around the shaft. He was sure the men at Terra base had figured it out before they decided that A-bombs would ...
— Rip Foster Rides the Gray Planet • Blake Savage

... heart that they had been spared the return of Frederick Massingbird; but there was little doubt that the return of Frederick would have been regarded by her as a light calamity, in comparison with this. She made no secret of it. Ten times a day had Lionel to curb his outraged feelings, and compress his lips to stop the retort that would rise bubbling up within them. She would openly lament that it was not Frederick who had returned, in which case she might ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood

... the normal tissues of the body. They grow slowly, and are usually definitely circumscribed by a fibrous capsule, from which they are easily enucleated, and they do not tend to recur after removal. In their growth they merely push aside and compress adjacent parts, and they present no tendency to ulcerate and bleed unless the overlying skin or mucous membrane is injured. Although usually solitary, some are multiple from the outset—for example, fatty, fibrous, and bony tumours, warts, ...
— Manual of Surgery - Volume First: General Surgery. Sixth Edition. • Alexis Thomson and Alexander Miles

... of the prince in Israel who has left us? Can we compress the ocean into a dewdrop? No more is it possible to condense into one brief hour what is due to the memory of our beloved and illustrious friend. His moral courage was only equalled by his giant frame and physical strength. He was made of the very stuff that martyrs ...
— T. De Witt Talmage - As I Knew Him • T. De Witt Talmage

... to a smaller size of type than would have been compatible with the dignity of the several societies to be named, I could not compress my intended list within the limits of a single page, and thinking, moreover, that the act would carry with it an air of decorous modesty, I have chosen to take the reader aside, as it were, into my private ...
— The Biglow Papers • James Russell Lowell

... and, with whatever materials could be obtained upon the spot, made a sort of bandage and compress by the dim light, and applied it dexterously enough, while Caroline lay with her head upon her husband's bosom, and her hand clasped ...
— The King's Highway • G. P. R. James

... the lips of the wound together with her neat, strong fingers. "See what I do," she said to Vizard. "You will have to do it, while I— Ah, the stool! Now lay her head on that; the other side, man. Now, sir, compress the wound as I did, vigorously. Hold the cork, you, till I ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade

... For brevity I compress the events of the next few months; it is a pity, but it would print to three the length otherwise. Briefly I was obliged to get back once or twice to my aunt's to see Pender privately, though I did not want to have her. I was mostly in London. ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous

... notice is intended as an instructor to those engaged in power-loom weaving, and, judging by its compilation, the author is a thorough master of the craft. It is not overloaded with details, and he manages to compress in a book of some 150 pages all that one can possibly wish to know about the different parts of the machinery, whether of English or foreign make, and for whatever kind of cloth required. A comprehensive summary is also included ...
— The Dyeing of Cotton Fabrics - A Practical Handbook for the Dyer and Student • Franklin Beech

... liberal eye. Circumstance and conventions, the words under which men hide things, the oracles of common acceptance, the infinitely diversified properties of human character, the many complexities of our conduct and destiny—all these he watched playing freely around him, and he felt no haste to compress his experience into maxims and system. He was absolutely uncramped by any of the formal mannerisms of the spirit. He was wholly uncorrupted by the affectation of culture with which the great Goethe infected part of the world a generation later. His own life was never made the centre ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley

... and tucked down a little on both sides. The woollen cloth is thereupon fastened so as to keep the compresses in place, the arrangement being otherwise exactly as before. In such cases the back compress only needs to be changed every 2 to 3 hours, even in case of severe fever. The front towels may be changed several ...
— Valere Aude - Dare to Be Healthy, Or, The Light of Physical Regeneration • Louis Dechmann

... excellent, that I can only wish it perfect, which I can't help feeling it is not quite. Indulge me in a few conjectures. What I am going to propose would make it more compress'd and I think more energic, tho' I am sensible at the expence of many beautiful lines. Let it begin "Is this the land of song-ennobled line," and proceed to "Otway's famish'd form." Then "Thee Chatterton," to "blaze of Seraphim." Then "clad in nature's ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas

... highest blood pressure. Kilgore urges that these highest pressures should not be taken as the true systolic blood pressure, but the average of a series of these varying blood pressures. In irregularly acting hearts it is best to compress the arm at a point above which the systolic pressure is heard, then gradually reduce the pressure until the first systolic pressure is recorded, and then keep the pressure of the cuff at this point and record the number of beats of the heart which are ...
— DISTURBANCES OF THE HEART • OLIVER T. OSBORNE, A.M., M.D.

... There! Seize it, sir—and when you work the Stretts you must fix it clearly that time does not exist. You must work in millionths of microseconds instead of in minutes, for they have minds of tremendous power. Reality does not exist! Compress it more, sir. Tighter! Smaller! Rounder! There! Hold it! Reality does not exist—distance does not ...
— Masters of Space • Edward Elmer Smith

... boxes on its periphery m m, with movable bottoms which serve as moulds. The peat is carried into these boxes by the rolls c c. The iron projections n n of the large roll B, which work cog-like into the boxes, compress the peat gently and, at last, the eccentric p acting upon the pin z, forces up the movable bottom of the box and throws out the peat-block upon an endless band of cloth, which carries it ...
— Peat and its Uses as Fertilizer and Fuel • Samuel William Johnson

... as it relates to the circumnavigation of Africa, Dr. Vincent has given a dissertation, having procured a fac-simile copy from Venice, which is deposited in the British Museum; the substance of this dissertation we shall here compress. He divides his dissertation into three parts. First, whether this was the map noticed by Ramusio, and by him supposed to be drawn up to elucidate the travels of Marco Polo. On this point he concludes that it was the map referred to by Ramusio, but that his information respecting it is not ...
— Robert Kerr's General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 18 • William Stevenson

... his dose and then Mrs. Widdup's hand. She blushed. Oh, yes, it can be done. Just hold your breath and compress ...
— Whirligigs • O. Henry

... however, but stood irresolute, her eyes on the floor. After a moment of indecision, the detective saw her mouth compress firmly, and with a quick movement of the head, as if she were shaking herself free from some persistent and troublesome thought, she turned and walked deliberately towards the alcove at the ...
— The Ashiel mystery - A Detective Story • Mrs. Charles Bryce

... his mind as he grew older, or at least abandoned the idea that to crush out a wrong you should push it from all sides, and thus compress and intensify it at the heart, and come to the conclusion that the right way is to get inside and push out, thus separating and dissolving it. For before me lies the tenth annual prospectus of a now noted institution in one of the great cities of the continent, and on ...
— Danger Signals • John A. Hill and Jasper Ewing Brady

... are mainly among the well-behaved, and never doubt themselves a prize for any woman. They color their notion of themselves with their ideal, and then mistake the one for the other. The mass of weaknesses and conceits that compose their being they compress into their ideal mold of man, and then regard the shape as their own. What composes it they ...
— Home Again • George MacDonald

... small string around the cord, and having thus stopped the circulation, cuts through the cord, half an inch below the ligature, and removes the testicle. He, however, who has any feeling for the poor animal on which he is operating, considers that the only use of the ligature is to compress the blood-vessels and prevent after-hemorrhage, and, therefore, saves a great deal of unnecessary torture by including them alone in the ligature, and afterwards dividing the rest of the cord. The other testicle is proceeded with in the same way and the operation is complete. ...
— Cattle and Their Diseases • Robert Jennings

... foods, like potatoes, alcohol, tobacco, tea, coffee and overfat foods. The diet recommended for dyspepsia is good. Skim milk, buttermilk and whey should be used freely, as they exercise a very beneficial influence on the kidneys. A wet compress worn over night will help draw out ...
— The Royal Road to Health • Chas. A. Tyrrell

... sorry. I compress you!' He glanced round in perplexity, seeking some escape or remedy. Finding none, he turned to her again, after having squeezed hard against his lady to free ...
— The Trespasser • D.H. Lawrence

... and gentleness, Dr. Earl cut down through the cast, and took it off. The fracture was perfectly knit, but there was a slight swelling about the knee, and as Earl examined it Silvia saw him compress his lips in a hard, straight line. Without looking up, or changing his tone, he asked the child if she had had a fall since the cast had been changed. She answered readily that about a week before her crutch had slipped as she was coming indoors, and she had fallen, striking the injured ...
— An American Suffragette • Isaac N. Stevens

... observation. It follows that, as the day of the examination came round, the student, in his lucid intervals, began to feel anxious for the result. He had known his work fairly well, however, at one time, and with luck he might pull through. He made an energetic attempt to compress a month's reading into a week, and when the day for the written examination came round he had recovered some of his lost ground. The papers suited him fairly well, and he felt as he left the hall ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle

... the narrative, and endeavor to compress, in a few comprehensive pages, the facts which are more diffusely described in the print from ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray

... diagonally the other way and finally straight across in both directions. A similar network of strands had been laid upon the table before spreading the cotton. Next a flat bottomed, circular, shallow basket-like form two feet in diameter was used to gently compress the material from twelve to six inches in thickness. The woven threads were now turned over the edge of the mattress on all sides and sewed down, after which, by means of two heavy solid wooden ...
— Farmers of Forty Centuries - or, Permanent Agriculture in China, Korea and Japan • F. H. King

... deep breathing is found in the restrictions of the clothing. I do not say of the corsets, because tight bands or waists can also compress the body and make full breathing impossible. Of course you say your dresses are loose, and you run your hand up under your waist to prove it to me. I will not argue the question with you, but I will ask you to argue it ...
— What a Young Woman Ought to Know • Mary Wood-Allen

... aptest and clearest mode of expressing much in little. No other form of speech will convey so much thought in so few words. They often compress into a few words what would else require as many sentences. But even such condensations of meaning did not—so it appears—always answer Shakespeare's purpose: he sometimes does hardly more than suggest metaphors, throwing off ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson

... Pentateuch from the moment when it began its study of science at the Court of Almamoun (813-833). But, as the conquests of the Caliphs disclosed districts in the east far beyond Ptolemy's limits, it was necessary, in case of keeping his data for the whole, to compress the part which alone was to be found fully described in his chart: "On the west, unhappily, there were no countries newly discovered to compensate for this abridgment." By Massoudy's time,—by the tenth century,—fact and theory were thus ...
— Prince Henry the Navigator, the Hero of Portugal and of Modern Discovery, 1394-1460 A.D. • C. Raymond Beazley

... lady's blood rose in her cheek, but she besought him that he would not speak to her in such wise. When she had made a compress of the napkins in the basket wherein I was carrying Dame Gobble's butter, and had stanched the blood, she unwound the ribbon from her silver hunting-horn, and cast it about his neck for a rest to his wounded arm. Then he did bend down his head and kissed the ...
— A Brother To Dragons and Other Old-time Tales • Amelie Rives

... rain-clouds low down on the horizon, pale golden masses were rising and scattering with ominous swiftness from west to east, and drawing a shadowy veil across the sky. The wind was still, save in the upper regions of the air, so that the weight of the atmosphere seemed to compress the steamy heat of the earth into the forest glades. The tall forest trees shut out every breath of air so completely that the little valley across which the sportsman was making his way was as hot as a furnace; the ...
— Farewell • Honore de Balzac

... 1737 the curtain was finally rung down on all the 'noise and hurry,' the achievements and audacities of Fielding's "little stage"; a few months later, and the country retirement at Stour had also become but a memory of that short life into which he managed to compress "more variety of Scenes than many People who live to ...
— Henry Fielding: A Memoir • G. M. Godden

... him! our poor friend!... Monsieur Mouche, be kind enough to open a window! It seems to me that a compress of arnica would ...
— The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard • Anatole France

... sometimes in hot weather mats badly. The difference between a Persian and an Angora can usually be told by an amateur, by drawing the tail between the thumb and first finger. The Angora's tail comes out thin, silky, and narrow, although it immediately "fluffs" up. The Persian's tail does not compress itself readily into a small space. The Persian cat's head is larger, its ears are less pointed, although it should have the tuft at the end and the long hair inside. It is usually larger in body and apparently stronger made, although slender ...
— Concerning Cats - My Own and Some Others • Helen M. Winslow

... Nosebleed; remedy sent us by a Public School Teacher.—"Make a compress of paper soaked in cold water; put it under the upper lip and have the patient press the lip with the fingers. Remarks.—Tried with success in many cases by a school teacher." By putting under the lip ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter

... discarded in favor of a large-sized bicycle-pump, and eventually I had constructed one of my own, of a pattern which enabled me to inhale an entire ghost at a single stroke. With this powerful instrument I was able to compress even an adult life-sized ghost into a two-quart bottle, in the neck of which a sensitive valve (patented) prevented the ...
— Humorous Ghost Stories • Dorothy Scarborough

... aldermanic man would risk the chance of seeing himself in the mirror? What judge, peruked by day, could so contain his learned locks? What male with waxed moustachios, or with limpest beard, or chin new-reaped would put his ears in such a compress? You will recall how Mr. Pickwick snatched his off when he found the lady in the curl papers in his room. His round face showed red with shame against the dusky bed-curtains, like the sun peering ...
— Journeys to Bagdad • Charles S. Brooks

... into houses between it and our quarters, so that I could see them on my way to and from meals. Among them was the blind man, who still craved to hear me speak and feel my hand, and I kept his face in a wet compress until a surgeon was dressing it and found the inflammation so gone that he drew the lid of one back, and the man cried out in delight: "I can see! I can see! now let me see mother." I stood in his range of vision, until the surgeon closed the lids, when he said: "Now, mother, I shall always ...
— Half a Century • Jane Grey Cannon Swisshelm

... the historical romance was an independent and arbitrary personage, who could compress time, resuscitate the dead, give mighty deeds to imaginary heroes, exchange substitutes for popular martyrs on the scaffold, and make the most stubborn facts subservient to her purpose. Indeed, her most ...
— Stray Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge

... up, and he worked on, though his face was purple and his head throbbing. After the bag of fleeces is half full, the packer stands in it, jumping with his full weight on the wool, as he throws in the fleeces, to compress them as much as possible. When Felipe began to do this, he found that he had indeed overrated his strength. As the first cloud of the sickening dust came up, enveloping his head, choking his breath, he turned suddenly dizzy, and calling faintly, "Juan, ...
— Ramona • Helen Hunt Jackson

... hither from the House of Seti sat on the left side of the maiden on a little carpet. From time to time one or the other laid his hand over the heart of the sufferer, or listened to her breathing, or opened his case of medicaments, and moistened the compress on her wounded ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... England tended to compress population into small areas and to force the energies of the people into trade. Ship-building was an early industry, and New England ships vied with the ships of Holland and England in visiting distant countries for commerce.[9] Manufacturing found early ...
— England in America, 1580-1652 • Lyon Gardiner Tyler

... Gloriani. "You 'll find it rather hard, I 'm afraid, to compress such subjects into ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James

... hands in mock amazement. "Is it possible you know Miss Phebe so long and need ask who Gerald is? I will tell you. Gerald is perfection individualized. Gerald has all the qualities, mental, physical, and spiritual, that it is possible to compress into the limited compass of even an overgrown human frame. Gerald, you must know, is intellectual to a degree, beautiful as an archangel, adorable as—as you, Soeur ...
— Only an Incident • Grace Denio Litchfield

... pen, his History of the Modern Taste in Gardening. He observes, that "a pen guided by so masterly a hand, must ever be productive of information and entertainment, when employed upon a subject so truly interesting. Desirous of conveying to our readers all the information which we can compress, with propriety, within the limits of our plan, we wished to have given the substance of this valuable paper; but finding it already in the language of simplicity, and being aware of the mischiefs which generally ensue in meddling ...
— On the Portraits of English Authors on Gardening, • Samuel Felton

... political jargon, forming a bewildering diagonal of forces crossing and recrossing in thousands the tangled threads. Bismarck's presence runs throughout, but it is a long and complex story, hard to comprehend and difficult to compress without sacrificing ...
— Blood and Iron - Origin of German Empire As Revealed by Character of Its - Founder, Bismarck • John Hubert Greusel

... color) increases storage capacity to 4,000-12,000 images per gigabyte; 60 percent of that gives one the size of a CD-ROM, which in turn creates a major problem. One cannot have full-screen, full-color images with lossless compression; one must compress them or use a lower resolution. For megabyte-size images, anything slower than a T-1 speed is impractical. For example, on a fifty-six-kilobaud line, it takes three minutes to transfer a one-megabyte file, if it is not compressed; ...
— LOC WORKSHOP ON ELECTRONIC TEXTS • James Daly

... is given by his own intense interest in himself. The best way of learning to enjoy Pope is to get by heart the epistle to Arbuthnot. That epistle is, as I have said, his Apologia. In its some 400 lines, he has managed to compress more of his feelings and thoughts than would fill an ordinary autobiography. It is true that the epistle requires a commentator. It wants some familiarity with the events of Pope's life, and many lines convey only a part of their meaning unless we are familiar not only with ...
— Alexander Pope - English Men of Letters Series • Leslie Stephen

... of duties which comprehend everything dear and valuable to you, it is proper you should understand what I deem the essential principles of our Government, and consequently those which ought to shape its Administration. I will compress them within the narrowest compass they will bear, stating the general principle, but not all its limitations. Equal and exact justice to all men, of whatever state or persuasion, religious or political; peace, commerce, and honest friendship ...
— U.S. Presidential Inaugural Addresses • Various

... especially in N. and S. America, in order to exaggerate some natural and admired peculiarity. Many American Indians are known to admire a head so extremely flattened as to appear to us idiotic. The natives on the north-western coast compress the head into a pointed cone; and it is their constant practice to gather the hair into a knot on the top of the head, for the sake, as Dr. Wilson remarks, "of increasing the apparent elevation of the favourite conoid form." The ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin

... from him dated at London. "When I succeed," he said, "I will come back to you. I have given up politics and taken to literature. Literature is the only career in which my brain can reach its full development: all others compress and constrain me. I shall seek in the Old World for the recognition which the New did not yield me." All this was Greek to his mother and her sons, but they knew that it ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various

... forty-eight, of an ample though still beautiful figure. Her flowing dress of white brocade made no attempt to compress, to sustain or to attenuate. No one could say that a woman who stood as she did, with the port of a goddess—the small head majestically poised over such shoulders and such a breast—was getting fat; yet no one could deny that there was redundancy. She was not ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick

... accompanying condition of the horn is bad enough to indicate it, a leather sole should be used, beneath which has been packed a compress of tow and grease, rendered more or less antiseptic by ...
— Diseases of the Horse's Foot • Harry Caulton Reeks

... fine work and embroidery. When school-time was over and the rain was still coming down, they would run away to their dolls, who, poor things, were always ill, so that Florence might have the pleasure of curing them. And though before Cap's accident she had never heard of a compress, she could make nice food for them at the nursery fire, and bandage their broken arms and legs while Parthy held ...
— The Red Book of Heroes • Leonora Blanche Lang

... as possible. The brush should be laid but-end up stream, as it obstructs the water less in this way. Fill up with soil a foot above the surface, and tread it in as hard as possible. The weight of earth will compress the brush, and the surface will settle very much. We have tried placing boards at the sides, and upon the top of the brash, to prevent the caving in, but with no great success. Although our drains thus laid, have ...
— Farm drainage • Henry Flagg French

... have compressed the long and complex story of her personal relationships, so we must compress the intimately related history of her works and her ideas. When under the inspiration of Rousseau, the emancipated George Sand began to write, her purposes were but vaguely defined. She conceived of life as primarily ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert

... feller by the name o' Tom Collins is lookin' for you an' anxious to see you about something important, just skin your eye at 'im, tell 'im right out that you don't give a dang about Tom Collins. La me, what a fool—what a fool I was! A feller workin' at the cotton- compress told me that a man by the name o' Tom Collins wanted to see me right off, an' that he was up at the wholesale grocery. Fool that I was, I hitched my hosses an' struck out lickity-split for the grocery. I axed ...
— The Desired Woman • Will N. Harben

... government as exemplified in England, and try Mechi's razor-strops." For France he prescribes a reduction of army and navy, and an increased demand for Manchester prints. America he warns against military despotism, advises a tonic of English iron, and a compress of British cotton, as sovereign against internal rupture. What a weight for the shoulders of our poor Johannes Factotum! He is the commissionnaire of mankind, their guide, philosopher, and friend, ready with a disinterested opinion in matters of art or virtu, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various

... and hands with ice-cold water, and then laid a snow compress on the sick man's head, speaking to him in quiet, gentle tones, till he was ...
— The Man From Glengarry - A Tale Of The Ottawa • Ralph Connor

... toward Dwight Herbert all the facets of her responsibility. And Ina's sense of responsibility toward Di was enormous, oppressive, primitive, amounting, in fact, toward this daughter of Dwight Herbert's late wife, to an ability to compress the offices of stepmotherhood into the functions of the lecture platform. Ina was a fountain of admonition. Her idea of a daughter, step or not, was that of a manufactured product, strictly, which you constantly ...
— Miss Lulu Bett • Zona Gale

... were a joyous whistling in the foliage, which is agitated at his right, and sees Marimonda leaping from tree to tree, using for this movement her feet, her tail, and one hand; for she holds the other to her side. It is a compress on her wound. ...
— The Solitary of Juan Fernandez, or The Real Robinson Crusoe • Joseph Xavier Saintine

... earth, the minerals in the earth and the streams that water the earth. The only reason they have not monopolized the daylight and the air is that it is not possible to do it. If it were possible to construct huge gasometers and to draw together and compress within them the whole of the atmosphere, it would have been done long ago, and we should have been compelled to work for them in order to get money to buy air to breathe. And if that seemingly impossible thing were accomplished tomorrow, you would see thousands of people dying for want ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell

... of error as to the procedure of the press-gang has been a deficient knowledge of etymology. The word has, properly, no relation to the use of force, and has no etymological connection with 'press' and its compounds, 'compress,' 'depress,' 'express,' 'oppress,' &c. 'Prest money is so-called from the French word prest—that is, readie money, for that it bindeth all those that have received it to be ready at all times appointed.' Professor Laughton tells us that 'A prest or imprest was an earnest or advance ...
— Sea-Power and Other Studies • Admiral Sir Cyprian Bridge

... the others. These are they who serve a state in times of chaos—in times when a nation is by no means ripe for revolution, but only stung by desperate revolt. These are they who are quick enough and firm enough to bind all the good forces of the state into one cosmic force, therewith to compress or crush all chaotic forces; these are they who throttle treason and stab rebellion; who fear not, when defeat must send down misery through ages, to insure victory by using weapons of the hottest and sharpest. Theirs, then, is a statesmanship which it may be well for the leading men of this ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various

... COMPRESSION; which he reckoned to be the real sovereign method,—unlucky that he was! I may at least explain what GLOBE DE COMPRESSION is; for it becomes famous on this occasion, and no name could be less descriptive of the thing. Not a GLOBE at all, for that matter, nor intended to "compress," but to EXpress, and shatter to pieces in a transcendent degree: it is, in fact, a huge cubical mine-chamber, filled by a wooden box (till Friedrich, in his hurry, taught Lefebvre that a sack would do as well), loaded with, say, five thousand-weight of powder. Sufficient to blow any horn-work, bastion, ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... why her mother's eyes rested on her at times with that unfathomable look and the lips would move, then suddenly compress. ...
— The Girls at Mount Morris • Amanda Minnie Douglas

... you would let me try a remedy," said Lady Hartledon, wistfully. "A compress of cold water round the throat with oilsilk over it. I have seen it do so much good in ...
— Elster's Folly • Mrs. Henry Wood

... which these studies form a part, Professor Boyesen made his chief mark, as was natural, on the literature and legends of his native land. The best commentary on Ibsen yet published in English is his introduction to Ibsen's works; he manages to compress within the space of a very few pages the pith of the great anarch's social ideas and the character of his dramatic work. His 'Goethe and ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various

... pressure of the acetylene is reduced, then the mixture may be subjected to a higher pressure than that of two atmospheres without acquiring explosiveness, as is fully shown in Chapter XI. Thus it becomes possible safely to compress mixtures of acetylene and oil-gas or coal-gas, whereas unadmixed acetylene cannot be safely kept under a pressure of two atmospheres absolute or more. In a series of experiments carried out by Dupre on behalf of the British Home Office, and described ...
— Acetylene, The Principles Of Its Generation And Use • F. H. Leeds and W. J. Atkinson Butterfield

... may I wager that I know what she had to say to you?' I saw him flush, and his lips compress themselves as if to hold back some hasty speech, but I went lightly on: 'That is the young person who claimed the bag belonging to your acquaintance—you remember the circumstance—and if she is still as angry at me as ...
— Against Odds - A Detective Story • Lawrence L. Lynch

... all heated. Without the bowing out and subsequent filling in of the roof of the cavity, if I understand you, there would be no subsidence. Of course the crumpling up of the strata would thicken them, and I see with you that this might compress the underlying fluidified rock, which in its turn might escape by a volcano or raise a weaker part of the earth's crust; but I am too ignorant to have any opinion whether force would be easily propagated through a viscid mass like molten ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin

... They compress into it the desires of a lifetime. After years of proud individualism they have learned that they are atoms, cogs, helpless, the sport of iron and steel and powder and the ambitions and stupidities of men whose lives are never ...
— The Sisters-In-Law • Gertrude Atherton

... I am your wet nurse, and you ought to dedicate it to me; take time, but not too much; avoid all attempts to write fine; just dash down the first genuine uppouring idea and thoughts in the plainest language and that which comes first, and then fine it and compress it. Let us have a glossary; for people cry out for a Dragoman, and half your ...
— George Borrow and His Circle - Wherein May Be Found Many Hitherto Unpublished Letters Of - Borrow And His Friends • Clement King Shorter

... never so much as look into Himself? The good Doctor was a Ghost, as actual and authentic as heart could wish; well-nigh a million of Ghosts were travelling the streets by his side. Once more I say, sweep away the illusion of Time; compress the threescore years into three minutes: what else was he, what else are we? Are we not Spirits, that are shaped into a body, into an Appearance; and that fade-away again into air and Invisibility? This is no ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle

... observe the form of the waist (evidently innocent of corsets and tight dresses) of this model woman, and also that of the Greek Slave in the accompanying outlines. These forms are such as unperverted nature and the highest art alike require. To compress the waist, and thereby change its form, pushing the ribs inward, displacing the vital organs, and preventing the due expansion of the lungs, is as destructive to beauty as it is ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis

... which is that in it both prose and verse are mingled. It was not in my power, however, to reproduce at once closely and clearly the metrical schemes and the rich musical quality of the Irish and at the same time compress within the compass of the Irish measure such an analytic language as English, which has to express by means of auxiliaries what is accomplished in Early Irish by inflection. But I hope to have accomplished ...
— The Ancient Irish Epic Tale Tain Bo Cualnge • Unknown

... supernatural fountains! In night and dew to lie upon the mountains; All Heaven and Earth in rapture penetrating; Thyself to Godhood haughtily inflating; To grub with yearning force through Earth's dark marrow, Compress the six days' work within thy bosom narrow,— To taste, I know not what, in haughty power, Thine own ecstatic life on all things shower, Thine earthly self behind thee cast, And then the ...
— Faust • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

... the despoiled home, red of eyes, hurrying from her sink with a cold compress in her trembling hands, viewed Farr from her ...
— The Landloper - The Romance Of A Man On Foot • Holman Day

... abroad. It was a capital Balance, but inferior to Mr. Goren's. The latter gentleman guaranteed a Balance with motion: whereas one step not only upset the Honourable Melville's, but shattered the limbs of Europe. Let us admit, that it is easier to fit a man's legs than to compress expansive empires. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... Warm bath, cold bath, bandage of emplastrum de minio put on tight, so as to compress the part. Cover the part with flannel. With oiled silk. Rub it with common oil frequently. With ether. A blister. A warmer climate. Venesection. A grain of calomel and a grain of opium for ten successive nights. ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin

... labour to master them. The multiplication of proofs, necessary and interesting when the new truths had to be established, are however less needful now when these truths have become household words in science. I have therefore tried in the following pages to compress the body, without injury to the spirit, of these imperishable investigations, and to present them in a form which should be convenient and useful to the student of ...
— Faraday As A Discoverer • John Tyndall

... was able to pack into a short book—he never wrote a long one—such an effect of crowds and events, above all such an effect of time. Nobody knows how to compress so much experience into two or three hundred pages as Balzac did unfailingly. I cannot think that this is due in the least to the laborious interweaving of his books into a single scheme; I could believe that in general a book of Balzac's suffers, rather ...
— The Craft of Fiction • Percy Lubbock

... lucid webs are roll'd, And, as they burst, the living flame unfold. 385 The pulpy acorn, ere it swells, contains The Oak's vast branches in its milky veins; Each ravel'd bud, fine film, and fibre-line Traced with nice pencil on the small design. The young Narcissus, in it's bulb compress'd, 390 Cradles a second nestling on its breast; In whose fine arms a younger embryon lies, Folds its thin leaves, and shuts its floret-eyes; Grain within grain successive harvests dwell, And boundless ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin

... both rhyming and thinking. In this go-ahead age and country, that were a palpable waste of time. Take any 'matter-ful' author, cut out a juicy slice of his thought, and make that your material. Trim it, compress it, turn it and twist it upside down and inside out, vary it any way but the author's own, and you will be likely to effect a speedy and wholesome operation. What a saving of time is here! Who will be silly enough to manufacture his own thinkings into verse when the world ...
— Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, March 1844 - Volume 23, Number 3 • Various



Words linked to "Compress" :   prim, wedge, tamp, scrag, gag, dressing, convulse, force, medical dressing, bear down, fret, tamp down, fomentation, astringe, tighten, pack, strangle, choke, decompress, strangulate, overbear



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