Diccionario ingles.comDiccionario ingles.com
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

  Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Reaction   Listen
noun
Reaction  n.  
1.
Any action in resisting other action or force; counter tendency; movement in a contrary direction; reverse action.
2.
(Chem.) The mutual or reciprocal action of chemical agents upon each other, or the action upon such chemical agents of some form of energy, as heat, light, or electricity, resulting in a chemical change in one or more of these agents, with the production of new compounds or the manifestation of distinctive characters. See Blowpipe reaction, Flame reaction, under Blowpipe, and Flame.
3.
(Med.) An action induced by vital resistance to some other action; depression or exhaustion of vital force consequent on overexertion or overstimulation; heightened activity and overaction succeeding depression or shock.
4.
(Mech.) The force which a body subjected to the action of a force from another body exerts upon the latter body in the opposite direction. "Reaction is always equal and opposite to action, that is to say, the actions of two bodies upon each other are always equal and in opposite directions."
5.
(Politics) Backward tendency or movement after revolution, reform, or great progress in any direction. "The new king had, at the very moment at which his fame and fortune reached the highest point, predicted the coming reaction."
6.
(Psycophysics) A regular or characteristic response to a stimulation of the nerves.
7.
An action by a person or people in response to an event. The reaction may be primarily mental (" a reaction of surprise") but is usually manifested by some activity.
Reaction time (Physiol.), in nerve physiology, the interval between the application of a stimulus to an end organ of sense and the reaction or resulting movement; called also physiological time.
Reaction wheel (Mech.), a water wheel driven by the reaction of water, usually one in which the water, entering it centrally, escapes at its periphery in a direction opposed to that of its motion by orifices at right angles, or inclined, to its radii.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |





"Reaction" Quotes from Famous Books



... the religious bully had stunned her—yet had tried in vain. She had returned to The Towers to find her soul again, only to realize that it was lost eternally. The cleaner state of mind lay then beyond recovery. In the reaction that followed the removal of his terrible "suggestion," she felt the crumbling of all that he had taught her, but searched in vain for the peace and beauty his teachings had destroyed. Nothing came to replace these. She was empty, desolate, hopeless; ...
— The Damned • Algernon Blackwood

... apparently transformed it into a new badge of social cleavage. It thus immediately took its place as a new gewgaw of the rich; that it had any other purpose to serve had occurred to few people. Yet the French and English machines created an entirely different reaction in the mind of an imaginative mechanic in Detroit. Probably American annals contain no finer story than that of this simple American workman. Yet from the beginning it seemed inevitable that Henry Ford ...
— The Age of Big Business - Volume 39 in The Chronicles of America Series • Burton J. Hendrick

... of the aesthetic pleasures which involve, in what Milton called their sober waking bliss, no wear and tear, no reaction of satiety, he will not care much for the more rapturous pleasures of passion and success, which always cost as much as they are worth. He will be unwilling to run into such debt with his own feelings, having learned from aesthetic pleasure that ...
— Laurus Nobilis - Chapters on Art and Life • Vernon Lee

... the Earl of Moray was deservedly surnamed) was unquestionably the most disgraceful of all the murders perpetrated in Scotland in the interests of faction during those years of confusion and strife.[221] It brought no permanent advantage to the party of reaction. It wrought much woe to the country, which under his firm yet kindly rule had begun to settle into order and to ...
— The Scottish Reformation - Its Epochs, Episodes, Leaders, and Distinctive Characteristics • Alexander F. Mitchell

... latest empty drinking-cup, fell to the ground, nothing remained to them but that sodden, drunken night of disgrace which shocks one so at the end of the dynastic history, and which inevitably led to the fall of the nation. Christian asceticism came as the natural reaction and Muhammedan strictness followed in due course; and it required the force of both these movements to put strength and health ...
— The Treasury of Ancient Egypt - Miscellaneous Chapters on Ancient Egyptian History and Archaeology • Arthur E. P. B. Weigall

... other. "By combining the hyper-sulphate of iridium with the fumes arising from oxide of copper heated to 1000 C. and combining with picric acid in the proportions described in formula x 18, a reaction, the nature of which I have not fully determined, follows. This must be performed with extreme care owing to the unstable nature of the ...
— The Mystery • Stewart Edward White and Samuel Hopkins Adams

... been "inexpressibly comforting" to him as he had said, and in the sudden reaction and surprise of the moment he had betrayed the secret of ...
— His Heart's Queen • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon

... friend, and finding him sufficiently intelligent, she might desire to offer some indirect explanation of the course she had followed. Harvey could not question her sincerity, but she seemed to him a trifle morbid. It might be natural reaction, in a temper such as hers, against the monstrous egotism by which her life had been subdued and shadowed. She inclined to mystical views; mentioned Christina Rossetti as one of her favourites; cared little or nothing for the louder interests of the time. Impossible to detect the ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing

... and swung herself astride a downward sweeping branch just above Roy's head. There she perched like a slim blue flower, dangling her tan-stockinged legs and shaking her hair at him like golden rain. She was in one of her impish moods; reaction, perhaps,—though she knew it not—from the high tragedy of that other Tara, her namesake, and the great greatest-possible grandmother of her adored 'Aunt Lila.' Suddenly a fresh impulse seized her. Clutching her bough, she leaned down ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver

... papacy remained vacant for a couple of years, but in 1271 Gregory X came in on a conservative reaction. Bacon passed most of the rest of his life in prison, perhaps through his own ungovernable temper, and ostensibly his writings seem to have had little or no effect on his contemporaries, yet it is certain that he was not an isolated specimen of a type of intelligence which suddenly bloomed ...
— The Emancipation of Massachusetts • Brooks Adams

... as we may suppose, had not been without influence in bringing about this sudden and astonishing reaction, although he was not present in person; and had scarcely learned the news of Savonarola's fall and arrest when he claimed him as subject to ecclesiastical jurisdiction. But in spite of the grant of indulgences wherewith this demand was accompanied, the Signoria insisted ...
— The Borgias - Celebrated Crimes • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... this reaction of feeling, a modicum of his doubts of Selwyn had revived. Not that he suspected him, as heretofore, but a phrase that had earlier struck his attention came back to him. Selwyn had written, he said, to the traveler to come and "investigate," and he had hesitated and chosen ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock

... about. I had no thoughts; within, all was silence; I had received such a violent blow, and yet one that was so prolonged in its effects, that I remained a purely passive being and there seemed to be no reaction. ...
— Child of a Century, Complete • Alfred de Musset

... destroying countless works of art, and slaughtering Buddhist priests;—and we find the Jesuit writers praising these crusades as evidence of holy zeal. At first the foreign faith had been only persuasive; afterwards, gathering power under Nobunaga's encouragement, it became coercive and ferocious. A reaction against it set in about a year after Nobunaga's death. In 1587 Hideyoshi destroyed the mission churches in Kyoto, Osaka, and Sakai, and drove the Jesuits from the capital; and in the following year he ordered them to assemble at the port of Hirado, and prepare to leave the country. They ...
— Japan: An Attempt at Interpretation • Lafcadio Hearn

... the inner office, and, the door being shut, Ruggles internally blessed Bax and breathed freely. Under the influence of reaction he even looked defiant. ...
— The Lifeboat • R.M. Ballantyne

... I replied laughingly; "there should always be a healthy reaction after a cold douche. Much depends on the intensity of the cold applied, and you know that if you touch extremely cold metal it burns ...
— To Mars via The Moon - An Astronomical Story • Mark Wicks

... In the reaction which followed that ten-seconds' suspense, men grumbled because it had ended so soon. But, upon second thoughts, its very brevity brought the duel just that much closer, and so they heaved great sighs of relaxation and began craning and looking ...
— The Gringos • B. M. Bower

... little nervously from the reaction of the excitement, described how it was that the wild-cat had landed on his leg instead of on his neck, and the ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Foresters • Francis Rolt-Wheeler

... position, be it neutral or belligerent—and no man can tell which now—we shall face a supreme test of our resource and our readiness. What can we do to meet this crisis, which will mean continued prosperity or costly reaction? ...
— The War After the War • Isaac Frederick Marcosson

... his own actions. Passing through thousands of births as also the infernal regions, our spirits wander about, secured by the fetters of their own karma. Animate beings become miserable in the next world on account of these actions done by themselves and from the reaction of those miseries, they assume lower births and then they accumulate a new series of actions, and they consequently suffer misery over again, like sickly men partaking of unwholesome food; and although they are thus afflicted, they consider themselves to be happy and at ease and consequently ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli

... As the weeks passed on, there was no Ursula Brangwen, free and jolly. There was only a girl of that name obsessed by the fact that she could not manage her class of children. At week-ends there came days of passionate reaction, when she went mad with the taste of liberty, when merely to be free in the morning, to sit down at her embroidery and stitch the coloured silks was a passion of delight. For the prison house was always awaiting ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence

... I had ever seen was Dabney. The little black man had lived so long under the shadow of father's moroseness that when the pressure was lifted from his bent black shoulders he rebounded to an amazing extent. His reaction took the form of gala attire in which Nickols encouraged him to the extent of silk hosiery of the most delicate shades from his own wardrobe, with ties to match, not to mention his own last year's Panama hat, pressed over into the extreme ...
— The Heart's Kingdom • Maria Thompson Daviess

... exterminate the sacred pictures of the Madonna, and the cruelties exercised on her unhappy votaries, produced a general destruction of the most curious and precious remains of antique art. In other respects, the immediate result was naturally enough a reaction, which not only reinstated pictures in the veneration of the people, but greatly increased their influence over the imagination; for it is at this time that we first hear of a miraculous picture. Among those who most strongly defended the use of sacred images ...
— Legends of the Madonna • Mrs. Jameson

... it is capable of producing contrary effects, according to the condition of the body at the time. Thus, if it be long applied, or applied when the vital action is low, it dangerously depresses the vascular system, to be followed by a more or less dangerous and obstinate reaction; but if the system be tolerably strong, without being very excitable, the use of cold in a moderate degree always safely increases vigor. It is therefore always safe so far to employ cold, as will ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various

... suffer, because you have not seen what would make your heart bleed. But some day you will see it! alas! some day you will hear it. When the light of day is thrown on their monstrous forms, you will see a frightful reaction. That great force, held back for centuries, that poison, distilled drop by drop, those sighs, so long repressed—all will come to light and will some day burst forth.... Who will then pay the accounts which the people will present and which History preserves ...
— Friars and Filipinos - An Abridged Translation of Dr. Jose Rizal's Tagalog Novel, - 'Noli Me Tangere.' • Jose Rizal

... At last Falloner managed gently but firmly to free himself, and turned a half-appealing, half-embarrassed look upon the young lady, whose own face, however, suddenly flushed pink. To add to the confusion, the boy, in some reaction of instinct, suddenly ran back to her, frantically clutched at her skirts, and tried to bury his ...
— Under the Redwoods • Bret Harte

... would have the power to carry her forward to a new, spring-like experience. To her foreign-bred eyes there was an abundance of novelty in this American home, but it was like the strangeness of heaven to the poor girl, who for months had been so sad and almost despairing. With the strong reaction natural to youth after long depression, her heart responded to the glad life about her, and again she repeated the words to herself, "I'm sure—oh, I am sure I ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe

... will not be the one who draws the black ball. And together with this psychological fact goes the other stubborn feature of the mind, which no sermon can remove, that the focussing of the attention on the sexual problems, even in their repelling form, starts too often a reaction of glands and with it sexual thoughts which ultimately lead to ...
— Psychology and Social Sanity • Hugo Muensterberg

... the organism, invaded by the contagious poison, will try to rid itself of its enemy. The reaction is necessarily in proportion to the violence of the miasma and to the quantity of organic power ...
— Hydriatic treatment of Scarlet Fever in its Different Forms • Charles Munde

... indeed, they had ever given them up, and many of the royal advisers grew weary of the rigid observances which it was sought to impose upon them; rites abhorrent to Jahveh found favour even among members of the king's own family, and on Hezekiah's death, about 686 B.C., a reaction promptly set in against both his religious views and the material reforms he ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 8 (of 12) • G. Maspero

... matter here? What did you want to get in the way of the car for, anyhow?" demanded the motorman. He was nervously excited, and the reaction at finding, after all, he had not killed a man, made him ...
— The Moving Picture Girls Snowbound - Or, The Proof on the Film • Laura Lee Hope

... leadership in the Bad Lands of this aspirant for a throne stood, by one of Fate's queerest whimsies, a man who also had his eye on one of the high places of this world. The Marquis de Mores was the leader, or if not the leader at least the protector, of the forces of reaction; Theodore Roosevelt was the leader of the forces of progress. They were both in the middle twenties, both aristocrats by birth, both fearless and adventurous; but one believed in privilege and the other ...
— Roosevelt in the Bad Lands • Hermann Hagedorn

... conversion had marked the turning-point of their luck, the partners now entered upon a period of almost uninterrupted success. In the reaction from their recent discouragement they took hold of their labors with fresh energy, and fortune aided them in unexpected ways. Boyd signed his charter, securing a tramp steamer then discharging at Tacoma. Balt closed his contracts for Chinese labor, and the ...
— The Silver Horde • Rex Beach

... the way of the world. There is just now a reaction from sentiment, and it is the less feminine variety. The softness will come when there is a call for it. Never mind when the foundation ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge

... remembered the reason for his journey and removed a bottle of brandy from the brown cup-board, found appropriate glasses and, in the ice-chest, club-soda and ginger ale. He poured himself a drink reminiscent of Paris—not that he felt he needed it for the reaction from bracing himself to die like a Pythias had left him elvishly grotesque in mind—gathered the bottles tenderly in his arms like small glass babies and ...
— Young People's Pride • Stephen Vincent Benet

... distress which these changes involved to be met? By retrenchment and reform, by the repeal of taxes, the reduction of salaries, by the landlords and farmers, who had profited by war prices, submitting to the inevitable reaction; or by sliding scales, by a return to an inflated currency, perhaps by a repudiation of a portion ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron

... energy which is expended in doing the work in the circuit. In this case, also, the current in the coils causes a retardation of the speed of change and extent of change of magnetism in the iron cores, which keeps down the intensity of the magnetic reaction. In fact, this retardation or lag and reduction of range of magnetic change may in some machines be made so great by closing the circuit of the armature coils themselves or short-circuiting them that the total heat developed in the cores is much ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 711, August 17, 1889 • Various

... the monasteries, coveted the colonies of Spain or greatly feared her power in Europe. But Elizabeth, seated on the throne by precarious tenure, confronted at home and abroad by the rising fanaticism of the Catholic reaction, found the ambition of Philip a menace to national independence. And she knew well that Spain must be met in the Netherlands and on the sea. Yet the task which confronted her was one for which the naval resources of the state were inadequate, and the politic and popular queen turned ...
— Beginnings of the American People • Carl Lotus Becker

... was copied in several other States. I think the petition helped a good deal the healthy reaction which, owing largely to the efforts of humane societies and Natural History Associations and especially of some very accomplished ladies, has arrested the destruction of these beautiful ornaments of our woods and fields and gardens, "our fellow pilgrims on the journey of ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar

... only a comparative drawback; it is in a sense a positive merit; and it is connected, in a very intimate way, with the general character of Smollett's novel-method. This is, to a great extent, a reaction or relapse towards the picaresque style. Smollett may have translated both Cervantes and Le Sage; he certainly translated the latter: and it was Le Sage who in any case had the greatest influence over him. Now the picaresque method ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury

... inscrutable air Wafted his pollen to her across a wide garden— Some power had crossed them. And here is the secret I think: (As we would say here is electricity) It is the vibration inhering in sex That produces devils or angels, And it is the sex reaction in men and women That brings forth devils or angels, And starts in them the germs of powers or passions, Becoming loves, ferocities, gifts and weaknesses, Till the stock dies out. So now for their hybrid children:— She gave birth ...
— Toward the Gulf • Edgar Lee Masters

... and down the blessed town like a madwoman, asking questions after! Oh, a pretty sort of a man! Ha ha ha ha! He's worth all that trouble and distress of mind, and much more. That's nothing, bless you! Ha ha ha ha! Cap'en Cuttle,' said Mrs MacStinger, with severe reaction in her voice and manner, 'I wish to know if you're ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens

... extremely gentle about it; but I marvelled somewhat at the trembling of her white fingers and the pallor of her face, for it was not a bad wound, De Noyan hesitating not to make light of it, although he acknowledged it was a strong wrist which drove the tuck in. Anyway, what with the reaction and the loss of blood, I lay back quite spent, telling over briefly those incidents that had occurred to ...
— Prisoners of Chance - The Story of What Befell Geoffrey Benteen, Borderman, - through His Love for a Lady of France • Randall Parrish

... with reaction should come to Lewis a desire to talk, to seek comfort and sympathy, and it was natural that he should turn to H lne. He walked slowly to her house. The doorman turned from him to pick up a note from the hall table. ...
— Through stained glass • George Agnew Chamberlain

... at once on the sound of the bell. And Jean-Christophe, who was consumed with love for all humanity, and would turn aside so as not to crush an insect, was entirely indifferent to his own family. By a strange reaction he was colder and more curt with them the more affectionate he was to all other creatures; he hardly gave thought to them; he spoke abruptly to them, and found no interest in seeing them. Both in Jean-Christophe and Minna their kindness was only a surfeit of tenderness which overflowed at intervals ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland

... were gone that Mrs. Craigie discovered what had happened. Her first reaction was one of furious indignation. This, however, was natural, for not only had her ambitious project gone astray, but she had been deceived by the very man she had trusted. It was more than enough ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham

... power which is operative in Nature and history as a rigidly creative or constitutive power, rather than a redemptive or formative one. Doubtless Mr. Lecky, if he should ever consider the subject, would be free to admit that the creative action implies a necessary reaction on the part of the creature. But he has manifestly no sympathy with the early or imaginative faiths of the world, which represent creation as a physical rather than a rational exhibition of the Divine power. His entire book is written in the service of the opposite conception. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various

... the future ascendency of political parties. Down to the Civil War the Democrats had things largely their own way; since then, the Republican party—lineal descendant of the Federals, through the Whigs—have borne sway until within very recent years, when there has developed a strong reaction against the centralizing tendency compacted by the rallying of the people about the government to resist disunion ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XI • John Lord

... Reaction, of course: the swing of the pendulum to its farthest extreme. It was now two years since she had been forced to separate from Victor, finding herself unable longer to countenance and suffer his many-sided beastliness; and a year since the hand of Death had penned an inexorable finis ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance

... for membership in the Idlers' Club was a good joke, but the actual application of Sharpe was too serious for jesting. Nevertheless, all this turmoil over the mere name of the man worked a strange reaction in Bobby Burnit. ...
— The Making of Bobby Burnit - Being a Record of the Adventures of a Live American Young Man • George Randolph Chester

... Misson is different from the Utopias of More, Bacon or Campanella in so far as there is no discovery of an ideal civilization. Libertalia is a Utopia which reflects a direct reaction to the abuses of the time—abuses of economic, political and religious freedom. Anticipating Beccaria's criticism of the death penalty by almost forty years, Carracioli argues that since man's right to life is inalienable, ...
— Of Captain Mission • Daniel Defoe

... been paraded before the eyes of the British people by the fiery eloquence of Mr. Gladstone as a deeply suffering people, wretched victims of Turkish atrocities. After the wide sympathy that followed his Bulgarian Atrocities campaign there came a strong reaction. It was maintained that the Bulgarians were by no means the blameless victims of the Turks; and could themselves initiate massacres as well as suffer from them. Some even charged that there was a good deal of party spirit to account for the heat of Mr. Gladstone's championship. ...
— Bulgaria • Frank Fox

... to the window angrily and, for Rhoda, there was that indescribably sweet and exciting reaction she always got from his nakedness. Like a Greek god standing there, she thought, and it thrilled her even though she knew she was being ...
— Ten From Infinity • Paul W. Fairman

... greater happiness in this World, then to pleas themselvs; bestow all the rest of their time and thoughts, as their natural inclinations lead them, which is commonly to nothing els but to self-love and Pride, which became a Provocation unto others, to discover mutually their corruptions, which by reaction make them all full of envie, of hatred, of evil surmises, and of malicious practices one against another: so that no where Satan doth dwel and rule more effectually, then in those Religious Houses, as ...
— The Reformed Librarie-Keeper (1650) • John Dury

... these, too, showed a decline about 1890. The abnormal war-time price of wool which was more than one dollar a pound in October, 1864, dropped precipitately with peace, rose a little just before the panic of 1873, and then declined with almost no reaction until it reached thirty-three cents for the ...
— The Agrarian Crusade - A Chronicle of the Farmer in Politics • Solon J. Buck

... after lunch; yet that lady's remarks had been sufficient just to ignite the train of thought. This train had smoldered in the afternoon, had been fanned ever so slightly by two breezes—the sense of Maggie's superiority and the faint rebellious reaction which had come upon him with regard to his personal religion. Certainly he had had Mass said for Amy this morning; but it had been by almost a superstitious rather than a religious instinct. He was, in fact, in that state of religious unreality which occasionally comes ...
— The Necromancers • Robert Hugh Benson

... nights of watching, and the wasting grief that had possessed her, combined with the profound depression that naturally came with the reaction of idleness, made Laura peculiarly susceptible at this time to romantic impressions. She was a heroine, now, with a mysterious father somewhere. She could not really tell whether she wanted to find ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... their ears, and there was an effect of going into action about the whole affair, and first they hit and wrecked the old sugar-mill, and then they smashed the abandoned store behind the jetty. And then Gerilleau experienced the inevitable reaction. ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells

... many embrace Christian Science solely because they are quite sick of heathen science; they are so tired of believing that everything is matter that they will even take refuge in the revolting fable that everything is mind. Man ought to march somewhere. But modern man (in his sick reaction) is ready to march nowhere—so long as it is ...
— Alarms and Discursions • G. K. Chesterton

... ephemeral and those which are permanent. What we must do is to try to make things better and to save from the past the things which are good. It is often true that a movement that is excessive and destructive in one way, ends by being the basis of great progress after reaction from its excesses has left what is valuable ...
— Ethics in Service • William Howard Taft

... a noticeable thing how much fear increases love. I mean—for the aphorism requires explanation—how much we love in proportion to our fear of losing (or even to our fear of injury done to) the beloved object. 'Tis an instance of the reaction of the feelings: the love produces the fear, and the fear reproduces the love. This is one reason, among many, why women love so much more tenderly and anxiously than we do; and it is also one reason among ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... Superintendent of the Unitarian Church in Transylvania. In 1571 religious liberty was proclaimed, and Unitarians, Catholics, Lutherans, and Calvinists were tolerated equally. Before long, however, a reaction set in. The Catholic Stephan Bathory, who succeeded to the throne, removed the Unitarians from his court and surrounded himself with Jesuits. On March 29, 1579, Davidis delivered a sermon against the adoration of Christ, declaring it to be the same idolatry as the invocation of ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente

... turn comes a feeling of reaction. The joys of life have been a thousand times felt before they come to us. We are but following part of a cut-and-dried program, "performing actions and reciting speeches made up for us centuries before we were born." The new power of manhood and womanhood which seemed so wonderful ...
— The Philosophy of Despair • David Starr Jordan

... man to whom he could talk. And, locked in the Chief's office, he told all that he knew about the case, detailing conversations, explaining the situation as he understood it, reserving his suspicions and watching keenly for the reaction on the stolid mind ...
— Midnight • Octavus Roy Cohen

... daily. The twins threw themselves into it with their whole heart, for their self-love was engaged. Their popularity, so general at first, had suffered afterward; mainly because they had been TOO popular, and so a natural reaction had followed. Besides, it had been diligently whispered around that it was curious—indeed, VERY curious—that that wonderful knife of theirs did not turn up—IF it was so valuable, or IF it had ever existed. And with the ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... profusion. It was strange too see the difference made by the loss of the child who would give up anything rather than meet a look of vexation, and would coax the others into immediate good humour. There was reaction, too, after the excitement, for which the inexperienced Aurelia did not allow. At the twentieth bickering as to which doll should ride on the spotted hobby-horse, the face of Letty's painted wooden baby received a scar, and Fay's ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge

... Keyts again, to whose shop Miss Caroline next progressed, it was as with Chester Pierce, a phenomenon of instinctive muscular reaction,—that of his hat coming off as he greeted the stately little lady at his threshold and apologized for the sawdust on his floor which was compelling her to raise a froth of skirts above the tops of those ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson

... though beneficent discipline, it soon becomes extremely careful not to transgress. These general truths hold throughout adult life as well as throughout infantile life. If further proof be needed that the natural reaction is not only the most efficient penalty, but that no humanly devised penalty can replace it, we have such further proof in the notorious ill-success of our various penal systems. Out of the many methods of criminal discipline that have been proposed and legally enforced, none have answered ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various

... in opposition to the general dictum of the press, that (a) there had been a reaction against woman's suffrage, that there had really been a gain of one vote in ...
— How to Write Clearly - Rules and Exercises on English Composition • Edwin A. Abbott

... tramways, and the sporting prints, Oxford still remains the most beautiful thing in England, and nowhere else are life and art so exquisitely blended, so perfectly made one. Indeed, in most other towns art has often to present herself in the form of a reaction against the sordid ugliness of ignoble lives, but at Oxford she comes to us as an exquisite flower born of the beauty of life and expressive of life's joy. She finds her home by the Isis as once she did by the Ilissus; the Magdalen ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde

... presence, but subconsciously she had leaned on his strength with a profound relief. It was hard to have Dan withdraw into his shell just as she was beginning to long for his presence; but he had withdrawn, and like most naturally shy and reticent people, withdrawn farther than ever, as if in reaction from ...
— A College Girl • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... fact, as an example of English humour—exaggerated, no doubt, by the reaction from Puritanism—that The Ten Pleasures of Marriage should be viewed, in the main. It is true, however, that it is of uncertain parentage and must own to foreign kin. A well-known but (by a strange coincidence) almost equally rare ...
— The Ten Pleasures of Marriage and The Confession of the New-married Couple (1682) • A. Marsh

... not a matter of any moment to the owner of a productive soil whether or not his soil would give an acid or an alkaline reaction under test. Returns from his labor are satisfactory. Some land in this class is not strictly alkaline. The man most interested in the effects of lime applications is the one who is not satisfied with yields. The tests for acidity have been so many throughout our eastern ...
— Right Use of Lime in Soil Improvement • Alva Agee

... which had hitherto been to them hard bondage, not easy to bear, had become a privilege and a pleasure. Having survived the too exaggerated notions of what the new era might mean for them, and the inevitable reaction of disappointment which followed, they could now take stock of life and realise that they had been enormous gainers by at last coming into that inheritance for which their forefathers had so earnestly longed and prayed. The responsibilities, and even the commonplace things associated with ...
— From Slave to College President - Being the Life Story of Booker T. Washington • Godfrey Holden Pike

... girl was looking rather pale and haggard. This was partly due to the fact that the strain of the last few months she had spent in England was commencing to tell on her. She had borne it courageously, but a reaction had afterwards set in, and, as it happened, the Scarrowmania had plunged along bows under against fresh north-westerly gales most of the way across the Atlantic. There is very little comfort on board a small, deeply-loaded steamer when she rolls her rails in, and lurches with thudding ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss

... few hours of relaxation," continued Miss Jones, "of private indemnification for the toilsome virtues displayed in public, who could wade through days of correct behaviour? There would be no reaction, no room for better impulses, no place for repentance. Parents, priests, and governesses would be in the situation of a stout lady who never has a quiet moment in which she can take off ...
— Elizabeth and her German Garden • "Elizabeth", AKA Marie Annette Beauchamp

... during Peter's reaction to his shock there began to assert itself in him that capacity for profound indolence inherent in his negro blood. To a white man time is a cumulative excitant. Continuous and absolute idleness is ...
— Birthright - A Novel • T.S. Stribling

... There was a little reaction after this, and he saw the mule's eyes closed and the two mustangs sniffing again at the farther barrel, and heard them sigh as if in weary disappointment at not being able to get at the contents. But Ned ...
— The Peril Finders • George Manville Fenn

... him down, this scene had restored all Dick Sand's moral force. His physical energy underwent a happy reaction, and at the same time regained the mastery. In bending over him in his rage, had Negoro slightly loosened the bands that till then had rendered all movement impossible? It was probable, for Dick Sand thought that his members had more play than before the arrival of his executioner. The young ...
— Dick Sand - A Captain at Fifteen • Jules Verne

... anywhere. Sure, we can isolate the virus. It grows nicely on monkey lung cells. But that doesn't help. The thing has no apparent antigenicity. It parasitizes, but it doesn't trigger any immune reaction. We can kill it, but the strength of the germicide is too great for ...
— Pandemic • Jesse Franklin Bone

... order to prevent it from issuing an address to the people, the government abandoned even the pretense of acting in conformity with the principles laid down in the freedom manifesto, and boldly entered upon the policy of reaction and repression that it has ever since pursued. It now finds itself confronted by social and political problems of extraordinary difficulty and complexity, which are the natural and logical results of long-continued misgovernment or neglect. ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. 31, No. 1, May 1908 • Various

... indeed the low-water mark of English religion and morality. But by 1809—the year of Ruatara's arrival—an improvement had begun. What is known as the Evangelical movement was changing the tone of life and thought. The excesses of the French Revolution had led to a reaction among the upper classes and made them think more seriously. This revival did not at once lead to much thought for the poor at home; it reached out rather towards the heathen abroad. The "Romantic" school was in the ascendant, and a black skin under a palm-tree formed a ...
— A History of the English Church in New Zealand • Henry Thomas Purchas

... ebb and flow of power in our internal mechanism, corresponding to the phases of the moon. I mean, that the blood flows more rapidly, and the powers of nature are more stimulated, at the flood and full, than at the ebb and neap, when a reaction takes place in proportion to the previous acceleration. Dr Mead has observed, that of those who are at the point of death, nine out of ten quit this world at the ebb of the tide. Does not this observation ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat

... did not have long to wait as life-times go. Eighteen months later, Sam Chipfellow dropped dead while walking in his garden. The news was broadcast immediately but the stir it caused was nothing to the worldwide reaction that came a few ...
— Mr. Chipfellow's Jackpot • Dick Purcell

... Darrell at that hour might have ridden by him scathless. Cutts might have jeered and said, "I blabbed your secret, and sent the aid that foiled it"; and Losely would have continued to hang his head, nor lifted the herculean hand that lay nerveless on the horse's mane. Is it not commonly so in all reaction from excitements in which self-love has been keenly galled? Does not vanity enter into the lust of crime as ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... between colors and the emotions of the soul, if, as Locke's blind man said, scarlet produces on the sight the effect produced upon the hearing by a blast of trumpets, it is permissible to compare this reaction of melancholy to ...
— Ferragus • Honore de Balzac

... existence the Puritan, austere, bigoted, opposed to beauty of church and ceremonial, yet filled with superb moral and religious enthusiasm. It had brought about the persecution of Catholics and the still more merciless persecution of Protestants during the Catholic reaction under Queen Mary. Its successes, which began again with Elizabeth's reign, gave occasion for continual intrigues of Catholic emissaries. It all but plunged the nation into civil war, a war averted only by the victory over Spain ...
— An Introduction to Shakespeare • H. N. MacCracken

... had returned upon her over-whelmingly with his brief reference to it. His lack of emotion seemed to her as hideous callousness, more horrible than the deed itself. His physical exhaustion had called her out of herself, but the reaction was ...
— The Way of an Eagle • Ethel M. Dell

... number of the house in Park Avenue where Roger Sands lived. The door of the taxi shut with a reassuring "click." It was heavenly to lean back against the comfortable cushions! She ought to be entirely happy, entirely satisfied. Perhaps it was only reaction after so many hopes and fears, this weight that seemed to press upon her heart. Yet it was an obstinate weight. It grew heavier as the taxi ...
— The Lion's Mouse • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

... hope yet, till I felt that the water was perceptibly lower, and then the reaction was so fearful that I could hardly retain my hold till the tide had sunk so that once more I could stand, when my shouts for help brought assistance to me through the gowt, for they lowered down a little skiff with ropes, ...
— Begumbagh - A Tale of the Indian Mutiny • George Manville Fenn

... sort of gaiety in her tone. She might have been frightened but she certainly was not overcome and suffered from no reaction. This confirmed and augmented if possible Mr Powell's good opinion of her as a "jolly girl," though it seemed to him positively monstrous to refer in such terms to one's captain's wife. "But she doesn't look it," he thought in extenuation and was going ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad

... midst of progress comes reaction. The far northern European country of Finland had for a century been progressing in advance of its neighbors. It was a true democracy. It had even established, first of European lands, the full suffrage for women; and numerous women sat in its parliament. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor

... of the party seemed dull; they had gone through such a round of pleasure and excitement, for the last two or three days, that now a reaction was beginning, and they wanted rest, especially the very little ones, who all retired quite early, when Elsie and her mates joined ...
— Elsie Dinsmore • Martha Finley

... Did she discern my weakness, perhaps, and know that the subtle power would work upon me most effectively if left to itself? Did she, rich in experience, deem that its too direct use might waken a reaction in my better self? I cannot say, I do not know.... Every feminine art was at her disposal, as every use of magic pertaining to young and comely womanhood was easily within her reach. As you and I might express it bluntly, she knew men thoroughly, she knew every trick; she drew ...
— The Garden of Survival • Algernon Blackwood

... end of the second season, a reaction set in. The public was clamorous for a new work from him; he was tired of being lionized by people who called his beloved overture pretty. The madness of the spring was upon him, the spirit of work had seized him, ...
— Phebe, Her Profession - A Sequel to Teddy: Her Book • Anna Chapin Ray

... woman!" cried Isabel, who herewith burst into tears. It was a long time since she had shed any; she had suffered a high reaction from weeping. But now they flowed with an abundance in which the Countess Gemini found only ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 2 (of 2) • Henry James

... was one of the temptations which led the Prussian militarists to embark upon the hazard. France had had her troubles with militarism, and its excesses over the Dreyfus case had produced a reaction from which both the army command and its political ally the Church had suffered. A wave of national secularism carried a law against ecclesiastical associations which drove religious orders from France, ...
— A Short History of the Great War • A.F. Pollard

... the scourge that had lashed her all through this weary day of miserable reaction; that now stung her to a passion that was like the passion of purity. As she made this statement there was a question in her eyes, but it was a question of despair, that scarcely even asked for the negative which Julian hastened to give. He was both perplexed and troubled by the unexpected violence ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens

... come into our community, which is strong enough to save our community; but which has not yet got a name. Let no one fancy I confess any unreality when I confess the namelessness. The morality called Puritanism, the tendency called Liberalism, the reaction called Tory Democracy, had not only long been powerful, but had practically done most of their work, before these actual names were attached to them. Nevertheless, I think it would be a good thing to have some portable and practicable way of referring to those who think as we do in our main ...
— Utopia of Usurers and other Essays • G. K. Chesterton

... minutes I "thickened the heat up" by adding iron oxide to the bath. This was in the form of roll scale. The furnace continued in full blast till that was melted. The liquid metal in the hearth is called slag. The iron oxide is put in it to make it more basic for the chemical reaction that is to take place. Adding the roll scale had cooled the charge, and it was thick like hoecake batter. I now thoroughly mixed it with a rabble which is ...
— The Iron Puddler • James J. Davis

... intensified by the agonies of an unprecedented war, ought to be sufficient to bring about disarmament; it should be unnecessary to invoke financial reasons. But national debts have increased so enormously as to have become unbearable and the world must disarm or face universal bankruptcy. The reaction against militarism is more advanced, but the reaction against navalism is just as sure to come—one cannot survive without the support of the other. Rivalry in the building of battleships will not long be tolerated after rivalry in land forces ...
— In His Image • William Jennings Bryan

... us that something must be done. Now is the time to set in force certain agencies to make good these losses in so far as they can be repaired. Now is the time, when the excitement of the war is still on us, when the frenzy is still in our blood, for the time of reaction is surely to be reckoned with by and by. Now we are sustained by the blare of the bands and the flourish of flags, but in the cold, gray dawn of the morning after, we shall count our dead with disillusioned eyes and wonder what was the use of all this ...
— The Next of Kin - Those who Wait and Wonder • Nellie L. McClung

... wise that Lucy battled with the intolerable shame that oppressed her. In that quiet corner of Hampshire in which her early years had been spent, among the memories of her dead kindred, the pride of her race had grown to unreasonable proportions; and now in the reaction she was terrified lest its decadence was in her, too, and in George. She could do nothing but suffer whatever pain it pleased the gods to send; but George was a man. In him were placed all her hopes. But now and again wild panic seized her. Then the ...
— The Explorer • W. Somerset Maugham

... "It's just the reaction following the long train," Tom tried to tell himself. "Whew! Until within the last two or three days I haven't half realized how much the strain was taking out of me! I'll wager I'll sleep, tonight, after I once have the satisfaction of seeing ...
— The Young Engineers in Colorado • H. Irving Hancock

... fiery journals of her class, when it struck her one day that they were carrying the thing too far. She had the courage to say so, and got roundly abused for it. She persisted, obtained adherents and helpers, and soon a decided reaction set in. Like a house of cards, which a breath will destroy, the unstable structure the children had built fell to the ground, never ...
— Daybreak: A Romance of an Old World • James Cowan

... lake, and the latter, after a long resistance, suddenly finding vent for its escape, had been obliged to let in the cataract from above. As in all extraordinary efforts, whether physical or moral, reaction would seem to be a consequence of excessive action, the currents of air, pushed beyond their proper limits, were now setting back again, like a tide on its reflux. This cause produced the northern gale ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper



Words linked to "Reaction" :   equilibrium, learned response, reducing, neutralization, GSR, exothermic reaction, defense reaction, type IV allergic reaction, oxidisation, rebound, reaction time, electrodermal response, chemical decomposition reaction, decomposition, conditioned reaction, idea, chemical science, thermonuclear reaction, redox, chemical action, unconditioned reflex, reflex, instinctive reflex, chemical equilibrium, overreaction, double decomposition reaction, double take, immune reaction, backlash, displacement reaction, Catholic Reaction Force, transfusion reaction, reaction-propulsion engine, chemical change, reaction turbine, thought, anamnestic reaction, innate reflex, endothermic reaction, physiological reaction, exoergic reaction, elimination reaction, double replacement reaction, allergic reaction, neutralisation reaction, inborn reflex, aldol reaction, reflex response, mechanics, Tarchanoff phenomenon, bodily process, conditional reaction, conversion reaction, tropism, galvanic skin response, resistance, chain reaction, oxidoreduction, activity, defence reaction, answer, conservatism, taxis, opposition, startle reaction, endoergic reaction, oxidization, react, Wasserman reaction, reaction engine, law of action and reaction, chemistry, hypersensitivity reaction, bodily function, oxidation-reduction, Fere phenomenon



Copyright © 2024 Diccionario ingles.com