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Concussion   /kənkˈəʃən/   Listen
Concussion

noun
1.
Injury to the brain caused by a blow; usually resulting in loss of consciousness.
2.
Any violent blow.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Concussion" Quotes from Famous Books



... as described by "Schaefer," will be taught instead of the "Sylvester Method," heretofore used. The Schaefer method of artificial respiration is also applicable in cases of electric shock, asphyxiation by gas, and of the failure of respiration following concussion of the brain. ...
— Manual for Noncommissioned Officers and Privates of Infantry • War Department

... me and what I should do. I simply noticed that something unfriendly was approaching and I met it with a defensive action in the form of an uppercut on the ear. What properly occurred I knew only when I heard the blow and felt the concussion of my hand. Something similar happened to me when I was a student. I had gone into the country hunting before dawn, when some one hundred paces from the house, right opposite me a great ball rolled down a narrow way. Without knowing what it was or ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden

... air was rent with acclamations; the crowd rose as if by a single impulse; trumpets sounded in the seven porches of the amphitheatre; again the plaudits shook the air like the concussion of enthusiasm, and the deputation in the arena prostrated themselves in the dust. Balsamo saw, at once, the reason of this rejoicing; he saw the tetrarch of Judea seated upon a throne of ivory. The crown of Agrippa glittered upon his forehead with an unnatural ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various

... the 24th, we saw a number of water spouts and whirlwinds, some of which came so very near that we fired a few guns, in hopes that the concussion of the air would have dispersed them; but our guns were too small to give a sufficient shock to the atmosphere; however, a good breeze of wind sprung up and carried us clear of them. We steered ...
— An Historical Journal of the Transactions at Port Jackson and Norfolk Island • John Hunter

... followed, and the fragments of ice, detached by the commotion of the air, fell suddenly into the sea. The simple concussion had ...
— The Voyages and Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne

... allusion to the earthquakes which have made it famous. In the Statistical Account of Scotland, published in the year 1794, the Rev. Mr M'Diarmid, minister of the parish, gives an account of the first recorded earthquake in the district. During the autumn of 1789 loud noises, unaccompanied by any concussion, were heard by the inhabitants of Glenlednock; but on the 5th of November of that year they were alarmed by a loud rumbling noise, accompanied with a severe shock of earthquake, which was felt over a tract of country of more than twenty miles in extent. The Rev. Mr Mackenzie, ...
— Chronicles of Strathearn • Various

... lower shaft whilst two fuses were fired in an upper. The anticipation of the shock was worse than the realisation. Each of us carried a candle, and the concussion blew them all out; but beyond that, the smell of gunpowder, and smoke, we experienced no harm, and as we had matches and the candles were soon relit, we had not to grope our ...
— A Lady's Life on a Farm in Manitoba • Mrs. Cecil Hall

... duration with that of the world: he showed, that its gradual diminution gave it such stability, as defeated all the common attacks of the elements, and could scarcely be overthrown by earthquakes themselves, the least resistible of natural violence. A concussion that should shatter the pyramid, would threaten the dissolution of ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson

... the brass buckle in his belt on the spine. The blow was so severe that the buckle was bent in two. It cut through his coat and shirt, and inflicted a slight wound two inches in length. But the blow on the spine had produced a concussion or disorganisation of the brain, which proved, after years of suffering, the cause of his death. At first he was quite senseless, but as he came to, and I asked him anxiously if he was hurt, he replied ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland

... test has proved that several of the most popular of recent rag-time tunes were originally scored by the brain of a patient who had met with a severe concussion while attempting to escape over the high wall of an Asylum for ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, February 25, 1914 • Various

... down in the arm-chair where the infant prodigy had been left by the careless nurse, had crushed under the ample and heavy developement of his various femoral muscles, the hope of French literature! The concussion would have despoiled us of a hundred volumes, and Heaven can witness what volumes! History in romances; morality in proverbs; and religion in comedies. This is what the world of letters would have lost,—society would have lost a ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 17, No. 478, Saturday, February 26, 1831 • Various

... skiff, to a narrow dark aperture upon the rocky coast, and which appears the darker from its contrast with the white surf that is dashing about it. He is told to lie down on his back in the boat, to protect his head from a concussion against ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various

... not long have lain unconscious. No bones were broken, no severe concussion sustained in the rapid drag over the sandy surface, and the awful sense of the calamity that had befallen him and the dread and doubt as to the fate of his beloved ones seemed to rally his stunned and bewildered faculties and bring him face to face with the horror of ...
— Foes in Ambush • Charles King

... over, low above the cables, and the grinding concussion of a bomb lifted the ship, hurled it down with the stern end twisted to uselessness. ...
— A World is Born • Leigh Douglass Brackett

... violent concussion between a human hat and his office door, was apprised, by the usual means of communication, that somebody had come to call upon him, and giving that somebody admission, observed that it was ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens

... which had trembled from stem to stern under the tremendous concussion was floating now as quietly as a toy balloon, while the wind was rolling up and pushing before it a great cloud of smoke which obscured the sky. On all sides there was perfect stillness, broken only now and again by the last explosion of gas caught in the cylinders of the Taubes ...
— L. P. M. - The End of the Great War • J. Stewart Barney

... with the Philadelphia Friend, who said to his wife on the introduction of gun-cotton, "What comfort can thee take, even when sitting in thy easy chair, when thee knows not but the very cushion underneath thee is an enormous bomb-shell, ready upon the slightest concussion to blow thee to ...
— Lights and Shadows in Confederate Prisons - A Personal Experience, 1864-5 • Homer B. Sprague

... the door-jamb, Jan opened his jaws and—barked. But the novelty of the performance, superimposed upon the concussion and the exertion involved, was too much for his stability, and with one prolonged but unsuccessful effort to hold on to his dignity Jan rolled over on the side farthest from the door-jamb. It was not to be denied, however, that he had barked; and the strange sound—it ...
— Jan - A Dog and a Romance • A. J. Dawson

... effect, was the Reformation, which had just then taken place. This event gave a mighty impulse and increased activity to thought and inquiry, and agitated the inert mass of accumulated prejudices throughout Europe. The effect of the concussion was general; but the shock was greatest in this country. It toppled down the full-grown, intolerable abuses of centuries at a blow; heaved the ground from under the feet of bigotted faith and slavish obedience; and the roar and dashing of opinions, loosened ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin

... became silent, listening. There was heavy thud, a concussion that made their seat shiver. The passers-by stopped, shouted to one another. The old man was full of questions; he shouted to a man who passed near. Graham, emboldened by his example, got up and accosted others. None knew what ...
— When the Sleeper Wakes • Herbert George Wells

... after his little concussion Sir Barnes Newcome came home, not much hurt in body, but woefully afflicted in temper, and venting his wrath upon everybody round about him in that strong language which he employed when displeased; and under which his valet, his housekeeper, his butler, his farm-bailiff, his ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray

... a concussion shell blew in a part of the trench, filling it up to the parapet. That afternoon we cleared up the mess and put down a flooring of bricks in a newly opened corner. When night came we went back to the village in the rear. "The Town of the Last Woman" ...
— The Red Horizon • Patrick MacGill

... silently relieved. The rain fell at intervals in heavy showers, and we stood drenched through and blinded by the flashes, which broke the Egyptian darkness with a brightness which 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. ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana

... indissoluble union between body and soul. Indissoluble, one calls it, and yet nothing is more patent than the fact that it is a union which is invariably and inevitably dissolved in death; while on the other hand, one sees in certain physical catastrophes, such as paralysis, brain- concussion, senile decay, insanity, the soul apparently reduced to the condition of a sleeping partner, or so far deranged as to be unable to express anything but some one dominant emotion; or, more bewildering still, one sees the moral sense seemingly suspended by a physical ...
— Escape and Other Essays • Arthur Christopher Benson

... under the back of his head, and stared at the ceiling. The Count sat upon the edge of his board, crossing one knee over the other and looking at his nails, or trying to look at them in the insufficient light. In some distant part of the building a door was occasionally opened and shut, and the slight concussion sent long echoes down the stone passages. The Count ...
— A Cigarette-Maker's Romance • F. Marion Crawford

... solid line of blazing fire right from the muzzles of the Yankee guns being poured right into our very faces, singeing our hair and clothes, the hot blood of our dead and wounded spurting on us, the blinding smoke and stifling atmosphere filling our eyes and mouths, and the awful concussion causing the blood to gush out of our noses and ears, and above all, the roar of battle, made it a perfect pandemonium. Afterward I heard a soldier express himself by saying that he thought "Hell had broke loose in ...
— "Co. Aytch" - Maury Grays, First Tennessee Regiment - or, A Side Show of the Big Show • Sam R. Watkins

... though a gigantic scythe had swept across them. The storm was now at its height. The lightning filled the defile, and the thunderclaps had become one continued peal. The ground, struck by the concussion, trembled as though the whole Ural chain ...
— Michael Strogoff - or, The Courier of the Czar • Jules Verne

... for her to use, to manifest more fortitude. Under such circumstances Spike did not deem it expedient to utter that which was uppermost in his mind, but, turning short upon Tier, he directed a tremendous blow directly between his eyes. Jack saw the danger and dodged, falling backward to avoid a concussion which he knew would otherwise be fearful, coming as it would from one of the best forecastle boxers of his time. The full force of the blow was avoided, though Jack got enough of it to knock him down, and to give him a pair of black eyes. Spike ...
— Jack Tier or The Florida Reef • James Fenimore Cooper

... measures already taken; Uncle Geoffrey himself feeling convinced that his approval was genuine, and not merely assumed for courtesy's sake. He gave them, too, more confident hope of the patient than Philip, in his diffidence, had ventured to do, saying that though there certainly was concussion of the brain, he thought there was great probability that the patient would do well, provided that they could combat the feverish symptoms which had begun to appear. He consulted with Philip Carey, the future treatment was agreed upon, and he left them with cheered and renewed spirits ...
— Henrietta's Wish • Charlotte M. Yonge

... the Doctor said. "Abel will tell me about it. Slight concussion of the brain. Can't remember very well for an hour or two,—will ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various

... pounded granite, Then the miner lighted the fuse and hastened away, giving the usual signal, "Fire!" The others followed him to a safe distance, and awaited the result. In a few minutes there was a loud report, a bright blinding flash, and a concussion of the air which extinguished two of the candles. Immediately a crash followed, as the heavy mass of rock was torn from its bed and hurled to ...
— Deep Down, a Tale of the Cornish Mines • R.M. Ballantyne

... a pointed rock; High o'er the billows flew the massy load, And near the ship came thundering on the flood. It almost brush'd the helm, and fell before: The whole sea shook, and refluent beat the shore, The strong concussion on the heaving tide Roll'd back the vessel to the island's side: Again I shoved her off: our fate to fly, Each nerve we stretch, and every oar we ply. Just 'scaped impending death, when now again We twice as far had ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer, translated by Alexander Pope

... Peggy Doharty. She has fallen from her horse and has concussion of the brain. I must go to her at once. Oh, alannah, alannah! ...
— The Rebel of the School • Mrs. L. T. Meade

... attendants turn away Brennan's suggestion with hard-headed medical opinion. Brennan could hardly argue with the fact that an accident victim would be better off in a hospital under close observation. Shock demanded it, and there was the hidden possibility of internal injury or concussion to consider. ...
— The Fourth R • George Oliver Smith

... poor, and when the third girl was born he was discharged from the road because of his disability, yet he was still able to put children into the world. When the oldest child was twelve years old the father died of concussion of the brain while the youngest child was born ...
— Woman and the New Race • Margaret Sanger

... of one of these affrays, which has brought us still better acquainted with these singular people. A quarrel originating in jealousy had produced results of the most serious nature. A blow on the head with a tent-pole had evidently produced concussion of the brain if not fracture, and the victim was lying on his straw bed in a state of profound coma. The tent was tripartite, being formed of three main tops meeting in a centre: one was sacred to the women—the gynekeion of the Greeks, the anderoon of ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 572, October 20, 1832 • Various

... up, up, up through a deep warm ocean, nearer and nearer to full light and stirring air. Or like the return to consciousness after concussion of the brain. I was once thrown from a horse while on a visit to a wild mountainous country quite new to me, and I can clearly remember the mental experience of coming back to life, through lifting veils of dream. When I first dimly heard the voices ...
— Herland • Charlotte Perkins Stetson Gilman

... to which the bandages are attached has a projection from every point, on which the child, in case of accident, can possibly fall, and he is thus effectually protected; for, as the projection allows of his falling only slightly out of the perpendicular, the concussion is but slight, and the young one is only pressed gently ...
— Another World - Fragments from the Star City of Montalluyah • Benjamin Lumley (AKA Hermes)

... at the door jamb and swung herself toward the ceiling. At the same time the armed man fired. The discharge missed her and washed against the transmission machinery. Blue fire exploded from the room. The three men screamed in agony. Concussion threw Mryna helplessly toward ...
— The Guardians • Irving Cox

... and she retired. The physician ordered that I should be kept quiet, and seemed to think I was in danger. I asked what was the matter with me? and the surgeon, with a very grave face, informed me that I had an ugly contusion on my head. I had heard of a concussion of the brain; but I did not know distinctly what it was, and my fears were increased by my ignorance. The life which, but a few hours before, I had been on the point of voluntarily destroying, because it was insupportably burdensome, I was now, the moment it was in danger, ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth

... affair it was—when they were startled by someone blaspheming in a way that made their flesh creep. Even Tim blanched; for in the voice he recognized the timbre of insanity. He had seen this happen in the trenches, when men driven mad by concussion or gas or horrors ran amuck among their fellows. The one who now swam toward them was evidently a stoker—a powerful creature. His face was grimed with coal dirt, his eyes were red, and his blasphemies were interspersed with hilarity at the prospect of cutting ...
— Where the Souls of Men are Calling • Credo Harris

... felt the plane quiver, as if released from the power of the force that had held it. It nosed down and crashed, rolled over amid the wreckage of a shattered wing. The concussion shot Dick from the cockpit ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, October, 1930 • Various

... aside to see whether he could not light the remaining lamp of the car, which did not appear to have been broken, and had possibly only gone out through the sudden concussion, ...
— The Boys of Columbia High on the Gridiron • Graham B. Forbes

... 2623. CONCUSSION OF BRAIN—STUNNING.—This may be caused by a blow or a fall.—Symptoms. Cold skin; weak pulse; almost total insensibility; slow, weak breathing; pupil of eye sometimes bigger, sometimes smaller, than natural; inability to move; unwillingness to answer when spoken to. These symptoms come on directly ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton

... elephants, gall them with missiles, cut their girths, and so precipitate their riders to the ground. Relieved from this danger, the Arab horse succeeded in repulsing the Persians, who as evening approached retired in good order to their camp. The chief loss on this, the "day of concussion," was suffered by the Arabs, who admit that they had 500 killed, and must have had a ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 7. (of 7): The Sassanian or New Persian Empire • George Rawlinson

... an immense concussion, the chateau literally threw itself into the air, bursting into flaming fragments as it rose, and then tumbling back upon itself in a smoking pile that lay projecting half into the water of the lake. There was no fire—what smoke there was drifted off mingling with the sunshine, and ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald

... rarefied and broken the air, that birds flying over have fallen down, the air not being able to support them; and it is believed by some that great ringing of bells in populous cities hath chased away thunder, and also dissipated pestilent air. All which may be also from the concussion of the air, and not from ...
— Notes and Queries, No. 179. Saturday, April 2, 1853. • Various

... must have amounted to concussion of the brain, for though he was able to return to the Dragon in a couple of days, and the cut over his eye was healing fast, he was weak and shaken, and did not for several weeks recover ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte M. Yonge

... the guests were by this time fixed on Gibbie. What could be the matter with the curious creature? they wondered. His gentle merriment and quiet delight in waiting upon them, had given a pleasant concussion to the spirits of the party, which had at first threatened to be rather a stiff and dull one; and there now was the boy all at once looking as if he had received a blow, or some cutting insult which he did not ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald

... philosophical minds to oppose, is shown by the fact that both Descartes and Francis Bacon speak of it with respect, admitting the fact, and suggesting very mildly that the bells may accomplish this purpose by the concussion of the air.(246) ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White

... rise in full view, within sixty yards of the cannon-mouths, the batteries fire, with a concussion that shakes the hill itself. Their shot punch holes through the front ranks of the cuirassiers, and horse and riders fall in heaps. But they are not stopped, hardly checked, galloping up to the mouths of the guns, passing between the pieces, and plunging among the Allied infantry behind ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy

... early forenoon, and again, less distinctly, about noontime. Thereafter, for a while, there had been a lull in the firing; but now it was constant—a steady, sustained boom- boom-boom, so far away that it fell on the eardrums as a gentle concussion; as a throb of air, rather than as a real sound. For three days now we had been following that distant voice of the cannon, trying to catch up with it as it advanced, always southward, toward the French frontier. Therefore we flogged the belly of our tired ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb

... undiscovered hearts of men and women young and old. The half-clad lovely were protected from the satyrs in the audience by an impalpable screen made of light and of ascending music in which strings, brass, and concussion exemplified the naive sensuality of lyrical niggers. The guffaw which, occasionally leaping sharply out of the dim, mysterious auditorium, surged round the silhouetted conductor and drove like a cyclone between ...
— The Pretty Lady • Arnold E. Bennett

... further, we fired off our muskets, which awoke echoes in that silent place the like of which had never been heard before. Had we exploded a barrel of gunpowder, the sound of it would not have been louder nor the concussion greater, than was caused by the discharge of our firearms. Huge masses of stalactites fell from the roof, while the air space around us became filled with bats, and flying creatures with heads like foxes, disturbed from their slumbers by the ...
— Adventures in Southern Seas - A Tale of the Sixteenth Century • George Forbes

... know. Such a blow might easily fracture the skull, possibly bring about a concussion of the brain. Regard, likewise, his laborious breathing. I most assuredly advise ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph

... deeply read in this kind of judicial combats, can imagine the encounter of the graceless nephew and the stranger knight. He sees their concussion, man to man, and horse to horse, in mid career, and Sir Graceless hurled to the ground and slain. He will not wonder that the assailants of the brawny uncles were less successful in their rude encounter; but he will picture to himself the stout stranger spurring to their rescue, in the very ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving

... throat and turned to the captain. "Yes, my report is good on the whole," he said. "None of the men are seriously injured, thanks to your prompt rescue measures. Captain Larpent is still unconscious; he is suffering from concussion. But I believe he will recover. And—and—" he hesitated, looking again at Saltash—"the—the ...
— Charles Rex • Ethel M. Dell

... under her bottom, comparatively slight damage was done her. The articles in her store-room, directly over the spot where the machine struck her, were thrown about in every direction, showing the force of the concussion. Admiral Dundas and several officers with him had, however, a narrow escape, one of the machines exploding while they stood around it examining ...
— Our Sailors - Gallant Deeds of the British Navy during Victoria's Reign • W.H.G. Kingston

... again, insomuch as if it were to last long, (ver. 22.) "no flesh could be saved; but for the elects sake those days shall be shortened" (made fewer). But that tribulation is not yet come; for it is to be followed immediately (ver. 29.) by a darkening of the Sun and Moon, a falling of the Stars, a concussion of the Heavens, and the glorious coming again of our Saviour, in the cloudes. And therefore The Antichrist is not yet come; whereas, many Popes are both come and gone. It is true, the Pope in taking upon him to give Laws ...
— Leviathan • Thomas Hobbes

... has been reduced by the wearing of helmets to about one half per cent. While the helmet does not afford complete protection against rifle and shrapnel fire, it has been found that hits result only in severe concussion, where before fatal wound resulted. These ...
— Manual of Military Training - Second, Revised Edition • James A. Moss

... every one was energetic in the discharge of his duty. Mr. Ambleton was fully alive to the peril of the moment, and he was careful to make his aim sure with the great gun. It had been loaded before with a solid shot, and presently the steamer was shaken to her keel by the concussion ...
— Stand By The Union - SERIES: The Blue and the Gray—Afloat • Oliver Optic

... would have thought he had no reason to die, but alas! fate had its eye on him. . . . The poor fellow fell a victim to his habits of observation. On one occasion, when he was listening at a keyhole, he got such a bang on the head from the door that he sustained concussion of the brain (he had a brain), and died. And here, under this tombstone, lies a man who from his cradle detested verses and epigrams. . . . As though to mock him his whole tombstone is adorned with verses. . . . ...
— The Schoolmaster and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov

... embroidered nightshirt, and his bare feet projected from his trousers. His head was horribly injured, and the whole room bore witness to the savage ferocity of the blow which had struck him down. Beside him lay the heavy poker, bent into a curve by the concussion. Holmes examined both it and the indescribable wreck which it ...
— Victorian Short Stories of Troubled Marriages • Rudyard Kipling, Ella D'Arcy, Arthur Morrison, Arthur Conan Doyle,

... undergone this operation, having been seized by a wounded elephant but rescued from its fury, described to me his sufferings as he was thus flung back and forward between the hind and fore feet of the animal, which ineffectually attempted to trample him at each concussion, and abandoned him ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent

... of the mysterious explosion. Their prisoner, helpless as he had seemed, had proved too much for them. Slipping and stumbling along in the darkness, the masked lads had but one thought—to get away before they saw more of that blue fire, and the force of the concussion. ...
— Tom Swift and his Electric Runabout - or, The Speediest Car on the Road • Victor Appleton

... her where he thought he might be most needed. One of his patients in the after-cabin was muttering uneasily, for there was some feverishness; the other man had come down with a crash on the icy deck, and the shock had apparently caused concussion of the spine, for he could not move, and he was fed as if he were a child. Lewis bent over the helpless seaman, and spoke kindly. The man sighed, "Thank God I am where I am, sir. That long plaister begins to burn a bit, but I a'most like it. There's little ...
— A Dream of the North Sea • James Runciman

... sudden upheaval of timbers and roof. A colossal burst of smoke. A long time later the concussion of a vast explosion. There was nothing left where the warehouse ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, August 1930 • Various

... a tremendous concussion, the stone giving him a violent blow, and as the sky above seemed to blaze there was a roar like thunder, then a perceptible pause, another roar, again a pause, ...
— The Kopje Garrison - A Story of the Boer War • George Manville Fenn

... might of his giant strength. Seth and the Agent, and Nevil and the minister were his chief supporters. And there was a light in the cleric's eyes, such as had never been seen there before by any of his flock, and a devilish joy in his heart as he felt the concussion of his blows upon heads that ...
— The Watchers of the Plains - A Tale of the Western Prairies • Ridgewell Cullum

... There were constant bursts of fiery projectiles, shooting to an immense height into the black column of smoke, and tinging it with a lurid red colour. The fearful roaring and thundering never ceased for one moment, and the house shook with the concussion of the air. One stream of lava flowed towards Torre del Greco, but luckily stopped before it reached the cultivated fields; others, and the most dangerous ones, since some of them came from the new craters, ...
— Personal Recollections, from Early Life to Old Age, of Mary Somerville • Mary Somerville

... — N. impulse, impulsion, impetus; momentum; push, pulsion^, thrust, shove, jog, jolt, brunt, booming, boost [U.S.], throw; explosion &c (violence) 173; propulsion &c 284. percussion, concussion, collision, occursion^, clash, encounter, cannon, carambole^, appulse^, shock, crash, bump; impact; elan; charge &c (attack) 716; beating &c (punishment) 972. blow, dint, stroke, knock, tap, rap, slap, smack, pat, dab; fillip; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... physicians said there was concussion of the brain, and that the man would die. All the medical skill that the officer could procure was employed in the hope of saving the life of the man. His conscience smote him for having, as he believed, taken the life of a fellow-creature, and he ...
— Lincoln's Yarns and Stories • Alexander K. McClure

... entrapped brute put into that spring that it carried the log attached to the chain along with him, and his sharp, glittering fang-like teeth snapped together within a few inches of Oowikapun's throat, and such was the force of the concussion that he was hurled backward, and ere he could assume the aggressive, the sharp teeth of the wolf had seized his left arm, which he threw up for defence, and seemed to cut down to the very bone, causing intense ...
— Oowikapun - How the Gospel Reached the Nelson River Indians • Egerton Ryerson Young

... her own impression the next morning, had no sleep during that night. The striking of the hall clock could not be heard in the bedroom with the door closed, but it could be felt as a faint, distinct concussion; and she had thus noted every hour, except four o'clock, when daylight had come and the street lamp had been put out. She had deliberately feigned sleep as Louis entered the room, and had maintained the soft, regular breathing ...
— The Price of Love • Arnold Bennett

... hundred mortars and the simultaneous booming of an enormous cannon—that far-famed gun whose wayward tricks had cost the lives of hundreds of its loaders in the days of the Good Duke—might have passed for an earthquake of the first magnitude, so far as noise and concussion were concerned. The island rocked to its foundations. It was the signal for the festival of the ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas

... behind it, and sank back into a gray encompassing cloud. The dust thrown up by a column of passing horse poured over the wall in one long wave, and whitened the garden with its ashes. Throughout the dim empty house one no longer heard the sound of cannon, only a dull intermittent concussion was felt, silently bringing flakes of plaster from the walls, or sliding fragments of glass from the shattered windows. A shell, lifted from the ominous distance, hung uncertain in the air and then descended swiftly through the roof; the whole house dilated ...
— Colonel Starbottle's Client and Other Stories • Bret Harte

... brazen tongue, Its wide vibrations, wafted by the gale, To each far listener tell a different tale. The sexton, stooping to the quivering floor Till the great caldron spills its brassy roar, Whirls the hot axle, counting, one by one, Each dull concussion, till his task is done. Toil's patient daughter, when the welcome note Clangs through the silence from the steeple's throat, Streams, a white unit, to the checkered street, Demure, but guessing whom she soon shall meet; The bell, responsive to her secret flame, With every note repeats ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... of others. When I went with my father to America, my mother remained in England, and my aunt came with us, to take care of me. She died in consequence of the overturning of a carriage (in which we were travelling), from which she received a concussion of the spine; and her last words to me, after a night of angelic endurance of restless fever and suffering, were, "Open the window; let in the blessed light"—almost the same as Goethe's, with a characteristic difference. It was with the hope of giving her the proceeds of its publication, ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble

... say that if a gun is fired with the muzzle held just through the ice of a frozen pool, the concussion will so stun the fish beneath that they will float up to the under side of the ice. Willis was afraid that this would burst his gun, but the trout looked so alluring that at last he ventured the experiment. John cut a small hole with the axe, and then Willis, lying down, thrust the ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten

... my love," Nan said, calmly. "I don't want concussion of the brain, from being hit by a ...
— Patty's Social Season • Carolyn Wells

... out, receiving some of the concussion of the exploding rocket. When his eyes snapped open he was floating like a feather in open, airless space. His rubberoid space suit, living up to its rigid tests, had inflated to its elastic limit. But it held and within its automatic units began ...
— Shipwreck in the Sky • Eando Binder

... in a remote part of the enclosure, screaming with terror. At the boy's feet lay, face downwards, the dead body of a man, with his head horribly beaten in. His watch was under him, hanging out of his pocket by the chain. It had stopped—evidently in consequence of the concussion of its owner's fall on it—at half-past eight. The body was still warm. All the other valuables, like the watch, were left on it. The farm-bailiff instantly recognized the man as the carpenter ...
— Poor Miss Finch • Wilkie Collins

... then the closing of the inner door; and finally the outer one closed with a concussion which shook ...
— Can Such Things Be? • Ambrose Bierce

... bed, and the nurses were always telling me not to talk. I was in a hospital. I knew that; but I didn't know why I was there. One day I thought I should like to know why, and so I asked. I was feeling much better now. They told me by degrees that I had had concussion of the brain. I had been brought there unconscious, and had remained unconscious for forty-eight hours. I had been in an accident—a railway-accident. This seemed to me odd. I had arrived quite safely at ...
— A. V. Laider • Max Beerbohm

... spectacles, who had cut off eighty-seven legs and arms to his own share, after the battle of Eylau, having retired with his sword and his saw, his laurels and his sticking-plaster to this, his native town, was called in, and rather thought the gallant Colonel's skull was fractured; at all events, there was concussion of the seat of thought, and quite enough work for his remarkable self-healing powers to occupy ...
— The Room in the Dragon Volant • J. Sheridan Le Fanu

... had been much interested in his case. He had expected to find some signs of his having received accidentally or otherwise a blow upon the head, but on examination he found no scar or wound. The condition he was in was frequently the result of concussion of the brain, sometimes of prolonged nervous strain or harrowing mental shock. Such cases occurred not infrequently. Quiet and entire freedom from excitement would do more for such a condition than anything else. If he was afraid of strangers, by all ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... retorted, and persisted in their superior pretensions. Then there was such shopping in the county town! It was so boundless that the credit of the Hall was finally exhausted, and the old Squire was driven to remark that "Och, and to be sure it was a dreadful and tirrabell concussion, to be put upon the equipment of seven daughters all at the same moment, as if the young gentleman could marry them all! Och, then, poor dear shoul, he would be after finding that one was sufficient, if not one too many. ...
— The Great English Short-Story Writers, Vol. 1 • Various

... King George in consideration of his provocation; for was he not, like Wat Tyler, the girl's father? She remembered what she accounted that man's only weakness—his dwelling with joy on the sound of the hammer-stroke of his swift, retributive justice—the concussion of the remorseless wrought iron on the split skull of a human beast. She remembered his words with a shudder:—"Ay, mistress, I can shut my eyes and listen for it now. And many was the time it gave ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan

... arms about her, that the sculptor was enabled to save her from a severe blow. The vase fell crashing to the floor, breaking into heavy shards, rattling the windows and the casts upon the wall by the concussion. ...
— The Pagans • Arlo Bates

... Shanghai, that trip when the second officer brought from home had delayed the ship three hours in port by contriving (in some manner Captain MacWhirr could never understand) to fall overboard into an empty coal-lighter lying alongside, and had to be sent ashore to the hospital with concussion of the brain and ...
— Typhoon • Joseph Conrad

... History Pathology Changes in the Bursa Changes in the Cartilage Changes in the Tendon Changes in the Bone Causes Heredity Compression Concussion A Weak Navicular Bone An Irregular Blood-supply to the Bone Senile Decay Symptoms and Diagnosis Differential ...
— Diseases of the Horse's Foot • Harry Caulton Reeks

... individual halted before a solitary tree, and regarded it as intently as he could, with the result that he saw two trees. His attempt to pass between these resulted in a near-concussion of the brain. He reeled back, but presently sighted carefully, and tried again, with the like result. When this had happened a half-dozen times, the unhappy man lifted up his voice ...
— Jokes For All Occasions - Selected and Edited by One of America's Foremost Public Speakers • Anonymous

... any luck," said Quimbleton, "we would have blown him into a concussion. But anyway, that's a bonny scheme. We'll grant him a truce. Bleak, you're a newspaper man, just get hold of the United Press and let them ...
— In the Sweet Dry and Dry • Christopher Morley

... Syrene. Capt. Davis, of the Rose, having witnessed the firing of the Turkish vessel, went in one of his boats to assist that of the Dartmouth; and the crew of these two boats were in the act of climbing up the sides of the fireship, when she instantly exploded with a tremendous concussion, blowing the men into the water, and killing and disabling several in the boats close alongside. Just about this time, and before the men had descended from the yards, an Egyptian double-banked frigate poured a broadside into our ship. The captain gave instant orders to fire away; and the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 13, No. 356, Saturday, February 14, 1829 • Various

... long train left New Brunswick, there was another attack, this one on the town they had just left. The last two cars of the train were blown from the track by the initial concussion, and the remainder of the train brought to a grinding, jerking stop that threw the ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science July 1930 • Various

... a strong arm and dashed the point with my utmost force against the solid granite: my arm was numbed to the shoulder from the violence of the concussion, and continued so for nearly a week, but the sword appeared not to be at all blunted, or to have suffered in ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow

... excellence in comparison with the rest of human kind, swoln with self-sufficiency, float like empty bubbles on the water's surface, and who seem as if they would break and be dissolved by contact with a vulgar touch. They contrive to swim by means of their air-blown vanity until they come into concussion with some material object, and are at once reduced to their proper level, and for ever annihilated. Their country is London; their domicile Regent-street; thence they would never travel, had they their wills,—not but they would like to see ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 335 - Vol. 12, No. 335, October 11, 1828 • Various

... white hand to the heavy braids which it was then the fashion to pile high on the head and have hanging down in two rows to the nape of the neck behind, as if she expected them to be disarranged by the concussion. ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand

... passengers had been a good deal mixed up, in the concussion, but soon began to emerge seriatim from the side door which in the fall came uppermost—only one of them much hurt, and he by a bruise or gash on the head nowise dangerous. Each, as his or her head protruded ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley

... Ship was injured, was filling, would quickly sink. Wild consternation prevailed. There was but one boat, and that small. Fitzstephen, sobered by the concussion, hastily lowered it, crowded into it the prince and a few nobles, and bade them hastily to push off and row ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 4 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris

... may change, "Each time she moves, those passages of air; "These caverns close, and others open throw. "Or whether wind, confin'd in those deep caves, "Hurls rocks on rocks, and what the seeds of fire "Contain; and flames from the concussion burst; "The winds appeas'd, cold will the caves be left. "Or if the flame be by bitumen caught, "Or by pale sulphur, fiercely will it burn "To the last particle; but when the earth "Fuel and oily nutriment no more "The flame shall give; a tedious length of years "Its force exhausting, ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid

... swooped out of the blackness above and against which there was no defence. They fled only to witness another and greater light behind them by which they saw themselves running, falling, grovelling. This time they were hurled from their balance by a concussion which dwarfed the two preceding ones. Some few stood still, staring at the rolling smoke-bank as it was revealed by the explosion, their eyes gleaming white, while others buried their faces in their hollowed arms as if to shut out the hellish glare, or to shield ...
— The Spoilers • Rex Beach

... purple finch. The little tragedy was easily read. The blackbird had pursued the finch with such murderous violence that the latter, in its desperate efforts to escape, had sought refuge in the Treasury. The force of the concussion against the heavy plateglass of the window had killed the poor thing instantly. The pursuer, no doubt astonished at the sudden and novel termination of the career of its victim, hovered for a moment, as if to be sure of what had ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs



Words linked to "Concussion" :   injury, bump, concuss, accidental injury, blow



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