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

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




Spiral   Listen
adjective
Spiral  adj.  
1.
Winding or circling round a center or pole and gradually receding from it; as, the spiral curve of a watch spring.
2.
Winding round a cylinder or imaginary axis, and at the same time rising or advancing forward; winding like the thread of a screw; helical.
3.
(Geom.) Of or pertaining to a spiral; like a spiral.
Spiral gear, or Spiral wheel (Mach.), a gear resembling in general a spur gear, but having its teeth cut at an angle with its axis, or so that they form small portions of screws or spirals.
Spiral gearing, a kind of gearing sometimes used in light machinery, in which spiral gears, instead of bevel gears, are used to transmit motion between shafts that are not parallel.
Spiral operculum, an operculum whih has spiral lines of growth.
Spiral shell, any shell in which the whorls form a spiral or helix.
Spiral spring. See the Note under Spring, n., 4.






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 |





"Spiral" Quotes from Famous Books



... and opened, and fitted with modern improvements. One or two of them, of the Persian period, have wells (leading to the sepulchral chamber) of enormous depth, down which the modern tourist is enabled to descend by a spiral iron staircase. The Serapeum itself is lit with electricity, and in the Tombs of the Kings at Thebes nothing disturbs the silence but the steady thumping pulsation of the dynamo-engine which lights the ancient sepulchres of the Pharaohs. ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, And Assyria In The Light Of Recent Discovery • L.W. King and H.R. Hall

... Para in Brazil. It is gathered and prepared for shipment there today by the same methods the natives used four hundred years ago. The natives in their canoes follow the watercourses into the jungles. They cut V-shaped or spiral incisions in the trunks of the trees that grow sheer to sixty feet before spreading their shade. At the base of the incisions they affix small clay cups, like swallows' nests. Over the route they return later with large gourds in which they collect the ...
— The Age of Invention - A Chronicle of Mechanical Conquest, Book, 37 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Holland Thompson

... on the pedestal top, their ligaments wrenched into bizarre muscular patterns. Its body rose in an anatomical spiral. From its flattened pelvis that seemed like some evil bat stretched in flight, protruded a huge phallus. The head of the phallus was enlivened with the face of a saint. The eyes of this face were raised in pensive adoration. At the lower end of ...
— Fantazius Mallare - A Mysterious Oath • Ben Hecht

... the Greek mythology a sea deity, son of Poseidon and Amphitrite; upper part of a man with a dolphin's tail; often represented as blowing a large spiral shell; there were several of them, ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood

... this both by Proctor and, I think, by Herbert Spencer, while in Mr. Webb's volume (opposite p. 212) is a diagram showing the "Coal Sack" as a "vacant lane" running quite through and across the successive spiral extensions laterally of the galaxy, without any reference or a word of explanation that such features, of which there are many, really demonstrate ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences Vol 2 (of 2) • James Marchant

... the underside of this lever and another wire crossing the first at right angles. This action breaks an electric current which has traversed a second electro-magnet F (Fig. 2), and releases the iron armature N of the lever NP, pivoted at P, thus enabling a strong spiral spring G to lift a stout brass wire L out of mercury, and to break at the surface of the mercury a strong current that has circulated round the primary circuit of a Ruhmkorff's induction coil; this produces ...
— The Splash of a Drop • A. M. Worthington

... the men had seen the sunlight gleam on white steel far down in the valley. He had seen it several times—a long spiral flash, such as the sun would make on a fixed bayonet carried over the shoulder. Such a flash as this will carry twenty miles through a clear atmosphere; the spot pointed out by the sharp-eyed Goorkha was not more than ten miles distant. They stood in a group, this isolated little band, ...
— From One Generation to Another • Henry Seton Merriman

... Choulette if he had finished the portrait of Misery on his stick. Misery had now become a figure of Piety, and Choulette recognized the Virgin in it. He had even composed a quatrain which he was to write on it in spiral form—a didactic and moral quatrain. He would cease to write, except in the style of the commandments of God rendered into French verses. The four lines expressed simplicity and goodness. He ...
— The Red Lily, Complete • Anatole France

... once more a minute drop was taken and examined with the same lens as before. The field presented to the eye is depicted in Fig. 1, B, where it is visible that while the original organism persists yet a new organism has arisen in and invaded the fluid. It is a relatively long and beautiful spiral form, and now the movement in the field is entrancing. The original organism darts with its vigor and grace, and rebounds in all directions. But the spiral forms revolving on their axes glide like a flight of swallows over the ample area of their little ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XIX, No. 470, Jan. 3, 1885 • Various

... two Crows flapping their heavy wings among the trees, and observed that they were teasing a Hawk about as large as themselves, which was also on the wing. Presently all three had risen above the branches, and were circling higher and higher in a slow spiral. The Crows kept constantly swooping at their enemy, with the same angry buzz, one of the two taking decidedly the lead. They seldom struck at him with their beaks, but kept lumbering against him, and flapping him with their wings, as ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various

... the nebulas is remarkably actinic, so that photography has a specially fine field in revealing details imperceptible in the telescope. In 1885 the brothers Henry photographed, round the star Maia in the Pleiades, a spiral nebula 3' long, as bright on the plate as that star itself, but quite invisible in the telescope; and an exposure of four hours revealed other new nebula in the same district. That painstaking and most careful observer, Barnard, ...
— History of Astronomy • George Forbes

... SPIRAL: One husband! The woman consenting to marriage takes but one. For her there is no widowhood. That punctuation of the sentence called death is not the end of the chapter for her. It is the brilliant proof of her having a soul. So she exalts ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... Fitz, as he watched the active movements of the little snake that suddenly raised itself like a piece of spiral spring, its spade-shaped head playing about menacingly about a foot from ...
— Fitz the Filibuster • George Manville Fenn

... of marble, and supporting iron galleries, midway between the floor and the ceiling. The side walls form one continuous shelving, of a capacity sufficient for 100,000 volumes. This is reached by means of the main gallery, in connection with which are four iron spiral stairways and an intervening gallery, of a lighter and smaller description, connected by its eight staircases with the main gallery. The whole are very ingeniously arranged and appropriately ornamented, in ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various

... which modern visitors generally begin their inspection, are built of travertine, and bear evidence of having been paneled with Numidian marble. The pavement is of white mosaic. On the right side of this vestibule, near the niche, begins an inclined spiral way, 30 feet high and 11 feet wide, leading up to the central chamber, which is in the form ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 7 - Italy, Sicily, and Greece (Part One) • Various

... useful splice, unlay the ends of the rope about four times as much as for the short splice, or from four to five feet, unlay one strand in each rope for half as much again; place the middle strands together as at A, then the additional strands will appear as at B and C, and the spiral groove, left where they were unlaid, will appear as at D and E. Take off the two central strands, F and G, and lay them into the grooves, D, E, until they meet B and C, and be sure and keep them tightly twisted while so doing. ...
— Knots, Splices and Rope Work • A. Hyatt Verrill

... with every crook and passage, that the small light of a gas jet, inside, was not necessary to show him the way. Up he ran, sometimes clearing two steps at a jump, slipping his hand lightly along the rough wooden banister. A few spiral turns brought him to the bell, which hung in an open framework of timber. He gave the huge bronze a familiar tap as he passed, and wound on and upward until he came to a trap door, which Uncle Ith held invitingly open. Then he sprang into the little room at the top of the ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton

... berries: in the genus Hypericum, the seed-vessels are found to vary in a somewhat similar manner; in this part of the fructification there is not, therefore, that deviation which has been supposed, but there is a very great one in the antherae, which do not ultimately become spiral. ...
— The Botanical Magazine Vol. 7 - or, Flower-Garden Displayed • William Curtis

... large crystals are found in the outer part of the layer. The fibro-vascular bundles consist mainly of bast and wood fibers and vessels. The bast fibers are as large as 1 mm long and 25 mu broad, with thick walls and very small lumina. Spiral and pitted ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers

... buck, master!" he cried as soon as he saw me, and made a spiral gesture in imitation of ...
— African Camp Fires • Stewart Edward White

... she parted it in the middle and waved it symmetrically on either side of her low forehead; she brought it over her ears, covering all but the tips and the delicate pink lobes; she coiled it at the back in an elaborate spiral and twisted it into innumerable little curls about the nape of her neck. Unfortunately that neck was rather short; but she wore low collars which made the most of it. And then Flossie's features were so very correct. She had a correct little nose, neither straight nor aquiline, ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair

... ancient historical work of art was defective, I thought, but as a wild and barbarous spectacle the representation was beyond criticism. Far down the mountain we got out to look at a piece of remarkable loop-engineering—a spiral where the road curves upon itself with such abruptness that when the regular train came down and entered the loop, we stood over it and saw the locomotive disappear under our bridge, then in a few moments appear again, chasing its own tail; and we saw ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... the ash tray beside the match, where, smouldering, it sent up a gray spiral into the air of the library. Whether because of his words or because of the presence of the man himself, the warning, intuitive finger had again touched Paul Harley. "You saw or heard nothing on your way across the square to suggest ...
— Fire-Tongue • Sax Rohmer

... from cracking. When cool, your bivalves will be gaping open; simply scrape them clean. Your univalves will be more difficult; remove the animal with a crocket hook or other piece of bent wire, turning it gently with the spiral; try to get it out whole to save yourself trouble. Save the univalve's operculum and slice it off the muscle that holds it. It will preserve indefinitely and is a valuable part of ...
— Let's collect rocks & shells • Shell Oil Company

... necessarily rude, it gives at least the impression that you are merely talking because to talk is expected of you, otherwise you are slightly bored. I know that the popular picture of an Ideal Dinner for Two is one of an exquisitely gowned woman sitting so close to the man-she-loves that only a spiral table decoration prevents their noses from rubbing; with a quart bottle of champagne reclining in a drunken attitude in a bucket of ice, and a basket of choice fruit untouched on the table. But if you examine that picture of the ideal, you will ...
— Over the Fireside with Silent Friends • Richard King

... you that for the last two years no one has been in my studio." On the whole it is perhaps as well that I declined to make an appointment, for another old friend who went, and who stayed a little longer than he was expected to stay, was thrown down the staircase. And that staircase is spiral, as steep as any ladder. Until he succeeded in realising his art Degas's tongue was the terror of artistic Paris; his solitary days, the strain on the nerves that the invention and composition of his art, so entirely new and original, entailed, wrecked his temper, and there were moments ...
— Modern Painting • George Moore

... dozen yards away. Slowly, as he advanced, he made out the dim shadow of life in the white gloom—a bit of smoke climbing weakly in the storm, the black opening of a brush shelter—and then, between the opening and the spiral of smoke, a living thing that came creeping toward him on ...
— The Honor of the Big Snows • James Oliver Curwood

... away from the central point like the familiar "pin-wheel" fireworks toy. Another form is akin the ring of smoke projected from the coughing locomotive, or the rounded lips of the cigar smoker, the movement in this kind being a form of spiral rotation. Other thought forms have the appearance of swiftly rotating balls of cloudy substance, often glowing ...
— The Human Aura - Astral Colors and Thought Forms • Swami Panchadasi

... first is in triumphs most usually found; Old houses and trees show my second; My whole is long, spiral, red, tufted, and round, And with beef is most ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various

... hemisphere, is that air moving along the surface of the earth is deflected to the right. Thus in the case we are considering, the lower currents, approaching the heated center, do not come in equally from all directions, but are compelled to approach in spirals. This spiral action once begun increases, of itself, in power and velocity. This is a ...
— Plotting in Pirate Seas • Francis Rolt-Wheeler

... received from without; for there is every reason to believe, that the movement of a homogeneous fluid towards its centre, if it could take place without disturbing causes, would be in radial lines, and not in a spiral. ...
— A Theory of Creation: A Review of 'Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation' • Francis Bowen

... sufficient in the inward contrivance to make a new species? There are some watches that are made with four wheels, others with five; is this a specific difference to the workman? Some have strings and physics, and others none; some have the balance loose, and others regulated by a spiral spring, and others by hogs' bristles. Are any or all of these enough to make a specific difference to the workman, that knows each of these and several other different contrivances in the internal constitutions of ...
— An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume II. - MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books III. and IV. (of 4) • John Locke

... degree that I should not sleep for weeks. But, strangely enough, they had just the opposite effect. I think Mr. Washburn must be writing a book on modern history, and Mr. Hoffman must be writing one on ancient history. I sat between them—a drowsy victim—feeling as if my brain was making spiral efforts to come out of the top ...
— In the Courts of Memory 1858-1875. • L. de Hegermann-Lindencrone

... contemplating the spiral of smoke rising from his long cigar. He was dreaming pleasantly. He was dreaming of those successful manipulations of finance it was his purpose to achieve. He had lunched, so his dream was of the ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum

... and Madelon followed out of the room across the front entry, with its spiral of stair mounting its landscape-papered height, and Lot opened the door of the opposite room, the great north parlor. "Wait here a minute," he said to Madelon, and she waited in the entry after he entered until he ...
— Madelon - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... great builder and improver, so that one of his successors called him a wall-flower, because his name was everywhere to be seen on walls and bridges and roads—some of which still remain, as does his tall column at Rome, with a spiral line of his conquests engraven round it from top to bottom. He was on his way back from the East when, in 117, he died at Cilicia, leaving the empire to another brave warrior, Publius AEtius Hadrianus, who took the command with great vigor, but ...
— Young Folks' History of Rome • Charlotte Mary Yonge

... admitted the sunlight into hall and chamber, while, nevertheless, the second story, projecting far over the base, and itself retiring beneath the third, threw a shadowy and thoughtful gloom into the lower rooms. Carved globes of wood were affixed under the jutting stories. Little spiral rods of iron beautified each of the seven peaks. On the triangular portion of the gable, that fronted next the street, was a dial, put up that very morning, and on which the sun was still marking the ...
— The House of the Seven Gables • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... thick hair into a crown of plaits above the broad, curving lines of the bandeaux upon her forehead, added to the queenliness of her face. Imagination could discover the ducal coronet of Burgundy in the spiral threads of her golden hair; all the courage of her house seemed to gleam from the great lady's brilliant eyes, such courage as women use to repel audacity or scorn, for they were full of tenderness ...
— The Deserted Woman • Honore de Balzac

... assumes:— Know, gentle Ladies, once these shapeless walls, O'er whose grey wreck the shading ivy crawls, Compos'd a graceful mansion, whose fair mould Led from the road the trav'ller, to behold. Oft, when the morning ting'd the redd'ning skies, Far off the spiral smoke was seen to rise; At noon the hospitable board was spread, Then nappy ale made light the weary head; And when grey eve appear'd, in shadows damp, Each casement glitter'd with th' enliv'ning lamp; ...
— Poems • Sir John Carr

... Nature hides her internal striving under a smother of white for many months in every year, when what is now gold in the sun will be a soft—sometimes, too, a hard-shining coverlet like impacted wool. Then, instead of the majestic clouds of incense from the threshers, will rise blue spiral wreaths of smoke from the lonely home. There the farmer rests till spring, comforting himself in the thought that while he waits, far under the snow the wheat is slowly expanding; and as in April, the white frost flies out of the soil into the sun, it ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... that this conclusion was correct in theory, and Dr. Hooke is said to have given an experimental demonstration of it before the Royal Society in December, 1679. Newton had erroneously concluded that the path of the falling body would be a spiral; but Dr. Hooke, on the same occasion on which he made the preceding experiment, read a paper to the society in which he proved that the path of the body would be an eccentric ellipse in vacuo, and an ellipti-spiral if the body ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson

... foot, and, catching at the railing against which he leaned, was about to make a quick move forward when a puff of smoke arose from below and sent him staggering backward, gasping with a terror I could hardly understand till I saw that the smoke had taken the form of a spiral and was sailing away before him in what to his disordered imagination must have looked like a gigantic image of the coil with which twice before on this day he had ...
— Room Number 3 - and Other Detective Stories • Anna Katharine Green

... time the pipes were beginning to scream their opening note, and Lauchie was blowing his anger into the chanter. The tune rose on a shrill spiral and high and clear it poured forth the challenging notes of a fierce pibroch, the war song of the Clan McDonald. The player marched back and forth across the platform keeping quick step to the mad tune, that rose louder and faster and shriller at ...
— In Orchard Glen • Marian Keith

... The newly-kindled fire on Green Knoll sent a spiral of blue smoke mounting skyward. There was the delicious odor of pancakes and farm-made sausage hovering all about the camp of the Go-Ahead girls. Windmill Farm had supplied these first "goodies" of the autumn and the members of the club ...
— Wyn's Camping Days - or, The Outing of the Go-Ahead Club • Amy Bell Marlowe

... Frank! Oh! look at them boring up, will you, in that corkscrew spiral way! Tell me that Casper Blue doesn't know his business; Perc will never get as much out of his biplane as that old and experienced aviator means to. Are we going to ...
— The Aeroplane Boys Flight - A Hydroplane Roundup • John Luther Langworthy

... to the clouds, extended their sharp points to the ocean below. From the distinctness with which they were seen, it was judged that the furthest could not have been many miles distant. In some they imagined they could trace the spiral motion of the water as it was drawn up to the clouds, which were every moment being augmented in their portentous darkness. The sense of personal danger, Mr Ellis confesses, and the certainty of instant destruction if brought within their vortex, prevented a very careful observation of their appearance ...
— The Ocean and its Wonders • R.M. Ballantyne

... believe we were both equally pleased. But I had the best of it, for there was much in what he did of which he could not always give me an explanation. For instance, that a piece of iron that falls through a spiral should become magnetic. Now, how does that happen? The spirit comes upon it; but whence does it come? It is as with people in this world; they are made to tumble through the spiral of this world, and the spirit comes ...
— What the Moon Saw: and Other Tales • Hans Christian Andersen

... in a novel," his friend said; as they entered under some heavy draperies which the footman pushed aside and found a tiny spiral staircase, which wound its way aloft in a style that Jack liked immensely and the latter ...
— The Rejuvenation of Aunt Mary • Anne Warner

... down and fastening the shutters; how he had thrown himself across the current of a torrential gutter to divert the stream into the cellar shop of a tradesman who had offended him; above all, that feat of his when, ascending the spiral turret stair of the church, he had lowered himself down from the parapet, and, astride upon a gargoyle, had worked his way along it until he could secure a stone that lay in its mouth, the perilous and dizzy adventure watched by a breathless throng ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang

... moodily toiled over the plain, my attention was arrested by a dust whirlwind that suddenly sprang up about fifty yards to our left. The few dry leaves on the ground began to whirl round and round, and to ascend. In a minute a spiral column was formed, reaching, perhaps, to the height of fifty feet, consisting of dust and dry dead leaves, all whirling round with the greatest rapidity. The column was only a few yards in diameter. It moved slowly along, nearly parallel with our course, but only lasting a few minutes. Before I could ...
— The Naturalist in Nicaragua • Thomas Belt

... representation, and if you posit a real past and a real future you posit independent objects. In absolute immediacy, on the contrary, instead of change taken realistically, you can have only a feeling of change. The flux becomes an idea in the absolute, like the image of a moving spiral, always flowing outwards or inwards, but with its centre and its circumference always immovable. Duration, we must remember, is simply the sense of lasting; no time is real that is not lived through. Therefore various lives cannot be dated in ...
— Winds Of Doctrine - Studies in Contemporary Opinion • George Santayana

... ordinary width, to supply the place of a bridge. The venerable Professor led the way—tripping along so lightly, and yet so surely, as to excite our wonder. We then mounted the hill on the opposite side of the convent; where there are spiral, and neatly trimmed, gravel walks, which afford the means of an easy and pleasant ascent—but not altogether free from a few sharp and steep turnings. From the summit of this hill, the Professor bade me look around, ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Three • Thomas Frognall Dibdin

... an exact circle round them. In one sense the picture is correct enough. That is to say, the squares are correct; the circles are correct; the man and the woman are in a most correct line with the tree; and the snake forms a most correct spiral. ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... marbles and old-time columns, and threading the grove by the bronze lion, came upon the tree-crowned terrace above the fountain. Below lay the basin shining in the sunlight. Flowering almonds encircled the terrace, and, in a greater spiral, groves of chestnuts wound in and out and down among the moist thickets by the western palace wing. At one end of the avenue of trees the Observatory rose, its white domes piled up like an eastern mosque; at the ...
— The King In Yellow • Robert W. Chambers

... (A. nasomaculatus) from North Africa and Arabia. It is a little over 3 ft. high, yellowish white in colour, with a brown mane and a fringe of the same hue on the throat. Both sexes carry horns, which are ringed and form an open spiral. The addax is a desert antelope, and in habits probably resembles the gemsbuck. It is hunted by the Arabs for its flesh and to test the speed of their horses and greyhounds; it is during these hunting parties that the young are captured ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... was seated he resettled himself on the sofa, and, keeping his eyes fixed on the lad, placed the amber mouth-piece of a long spiral tube connected with a narghile which was smouldering on the floor to his lips, and the gurgling sound was once more produced. But to Harry's astonishment, no cloud issued from his uncle's mouth; like a law-abiding factory chimney, he appeared to consume ...
— For Fortune and Glory - A Story of the Soudan War • Lewis Hough

... communicate it to them? Finally, how could the planets have left the body of the sun without falling back into it again? What curve did they describe in leaving it, so as never to return? Can you suppose that gravitation could cause the same body to describe a spiral and an ellipse? In the same exact spirit, Turgot brings known facts to bear on Buffon's theory of the arrangement of the terrestrial and marine divisions of the earth's surface. The whole criticism ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 2 of 3) - Turgot • John Morley

... Golden Butterfly doing? As the steamer raced onward, that aerial wonder had swung in a spiral, and was now seemingly hovering about, awaiting the arrival of the ...
— The Girl Aviators' Sky Cruise • Margaret Burnham

... of an insect is a system of tiny white tubes. Some day we'll look at these tubes under the microscope, and you will see that they are made up of rings. From end to end of the tube is a fine thread of chitin twisted in a close spiral like a spring. It is these little coils which look like rings. The coiled thread holds the little tube open so that the air may pass readily. But your little fellow, Jack, cannot have pores on the sides of the body like the ...
— Little Busybodies - The Life of Crickets, Ants, Bees, Beetles, and Other Busybodies • Jeanette Augustus Marks and Julia Moody

... an invisible spiral in the air. Bland half turned his head, and Johnny caught his meaning with telepathic keenness. They were going to loop, and Bland wanted him to yield the control and to watch closely ...
— The Thunder Bird • B. M. Bower

... many interesting relics of bygone splendour. No. 9—now to let—has a splendid well staircase with spiral balusters. The walls and ceiling of this are lined with oil-paintings of figures larger than life. These have unfortunately been somewhat knocked about during successive tenancies, but clearly show that the house was one of considerable importance ...
— The Strand District - The Fascination of London • Sir Walter Besant

... is winning, too, with its ample arches, perfect proportions, and that aesthetic satisfaction that often attends the cruciform shape. An interesting monument of the Cowper and Coles families is preserved in the south transept—three full-size coloured figures. In the north transept is a spiral staircase leading to the tower, and elsewhere are memorials of the Fords and Featherstonhaughs of Up-Park, a superb domain over the brow of Harting's Down, and of the Carylls of Lady Holt, of whom we shall see ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas

... watch-work (for I do really think, from the experience I have had of it, that a superior piece of work was never made) would be better fixed upon a small horizontal table, made on purpose, and well secured; and under the box which contains the watch, a kind of spiral spring or worm, which, with every jerk or pitch of the ship, would yield a little with the weight of the watch, and thereby take off much of that shock which must in some degree affect ...
— An Historical Journal of the Transactions at Port Jackson and Norfolk Island • John Hunter

... of the future, as constructed for the purposes of storing power, will have a long barrel upon which will be set numerous very short blades or sails. Reducing this again to its most convenient form, it is plain that a spiral of sheet-metal wound round the barrel will offer the most convenient type of structure for stability and cheapness combined. At the end of this long barrel will be fixed the dynamo, the armature of which is virtually a part of ...
— Twentieth Century Inventions - A Forecast • George Sutherland

... gone. For all he knew, it might be years. For that matter, he might never return to Earth. This Ronny Bronston had realized before he ever applied for an interplanetary appointment. Mankind was exploding through this spiral arm of the galaxy. There was a racial enthusiasm about it all. Man's destiny lay out in the stars, only a laggard stayed home of his own accord. It was the ambition of every youth to join the snowballing avalanche of man into the ...
— Ultima Thule • Dallas McCord Reynolds

... skull with spiral-curved horns. He looked up the canyon wall, and understood. The high-heaped bones were the skeletons of sheep. In a flash, he remembered Isobel's account of Gowan, that first day up there on the top of the mesa. Not only had the puncher killed six ...
— Out of the Depths - A Romance of Reclamation • Robert Ames Bennet

... remains of an old fortress. The front foundation had been laid in the rocks of the shore; the cliff had then been faced up with masonry; and behind chambers had been cut in the rock; into one of which Herbert had descended a ruined spiral stair. The castle itself, which had stood on the top, had mouldered away, leaving only a rugged and ...
— Adela Cathcart, Vol. 3 • George MacDonald

... developed it were not sure—just as men had developed generators long before they knew the laws that governed them. Ato had a theory that the Fourth Gear slid the ship from plane to plane. If a bug were crawling along a million mile spiral of wire, he might go on until he died before getting anywhere—but if he simply lumbered across the intervening space to the next coil, would he have traveled a short distance, or a million miles? Ato had also told Odin that the ship took energy from the gravitational field that it created ...
— Hunters Out of Space • Joseph Everidge Kelleam

... fast-flying boche who immediately attacked him. Being unable to return the fire, he tried every trick known to the birdman to escape but without avail. He came lower and lower in his evolutions and finally settled into a wide and sweeping spiral. The boche did not come very low as several machine guns and "Archies" opened on him. The other plane came slowly down in its perfect spiral course and, noticing that the engine was not running, we thought the aviator was intending to make a ...
— The Emma Gees • Herbert Wes McBride

... The wind had veered once more, and a cold drizzle of rain was falling through a yellow fog. The reflections of the street lamps in the sloppy pavement went down through spiral gleams to an infinite depth of misery. Young Gourlay's brain was aching from his last night's debauch, and his body was weakened with the want both of sleep and food. The cold yellow mist chilled him to the ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown

... series."[Footnote*:Emerson] "While the earth remaineth seed-time and harvest . . . shall not cease." Life leads on to new death, and new death back to life again. Over and over when we think we know our lesson, we find ourselves beginning another round of God's Divine spiral: "in deaths oft" is the measure of our growth, "always delivered unto death for Jesus' sake, that the life also of Jesus might be made ...
— Parables of the Cross • I. Lilias Trotter

... will depend on its shape and on the thickness and character of the paper to be pared, and can only be learned by practice. If the knife is in order, and is held at the proper angle, the shaving removed from a straight edge of paper should come off in a long spiral. If the knife is not in proper order, the paper may ...
— Bookbinding, and the Care of Books - A handbook for Amateurs, Bookbinders & Librarians • Douglas Cockerell

... what his young people could do. Wonderfully well made were many of the trials. One boy showed a bow of two great horns joined together, which only Thorolf the Strong could bend. Another showed an oxhorn, with the tip cut off and ornamented, and the whole horn carved in spiral grooves; and raising it to his lips he blew a blast that could be heard a mile! There seemed to be as many different things as there were boys and girls to make them; and Jarl Sigurd was pleased indeed when ...
— The Iron Star - And what It saw on Its Journey through the Ages • John Preston True

... Young ceratodus six weeks after issuing from the egg. s spiral fold of gut, b rudimentary belly-fin. (From ...
— The Evolution of Man, V.2 • Ernst Haeckel

... residential wings attached, dating from the mid-eighteenth century, but these had been pulled down and used for the foundations of the new mansion. Now it stood a lonely shell, its three storeys, each a single great room connected by a spiral stone staircase, being dedicated to lumber and the storage of produce. But it was dry and intact, its massive oak doors defied any weapon short of artillery, its narrow unglazed windows would scarcely have admitted a cat—a place portentously ...
— Huntingtower • John Buchan

... for some time, appeared again about the middle of the rocks, and by his course appeared to descend in a spiral path around ...
— Eastern Tales by Many Story Tellers • Various

... the point next the twig it was fastened to, and circling round and round, one fold upon another, which gradually increased to the size of my wrist in the middle, and then as gradually decreased till it terminated in a point again at the contrary extreme; all which spiral, if it were fairly extended in length, might be a yard or an ell long. I surveyed this strange vegetable very attentively; it had a rind, or crust, which I could not break with my hand, but taking my knife and making an ...
— Life And Adventures Of Peter Wilkins, Vol. I. (of II.) • Robert Paltock

... Ojen was there with his two close-cropped poets. He was speaking about his latest prose poems: "A Sleeping City," "Poppies," "The Tower of Babel." Imagine the Tower of Babel—its architecture! And with a nervous gesture he drew a spiral ...
— Shallow Soil • Knut Hamsun

... has two deltas and at least one ridge making a complete circuit, which may be spiral, oval, circular, or any variant of a circle. An imaginary line drawn between the two deltas must touch or cross at least one of the recurving ridges within the inner pattern area. A recurving ridge, however, which has an appendage connected with it in the line of flow cannot be construed as ...
— The Science of Fingerprints - Classification and Uses • Federal Bureau of Investigation

... intensely rapid vibrations, so rapid indeed that, when flying, the wings are almost, if not quite, invisible. This intensely rapid movement enables them to fly, and is somewhat analogous to the rapid movements of the vertical spiral screws, which you have seen on some of the Martian air-ships that screw their ...
— To Mars via The Moon - An Astronomical Story • Mark Wicks

... refers. If you will look into Roget's Bridgewater Treatise, you will find a figure of one of these shells, and a section of it. The last will show you the series of enlarging compartments successively dwelt in by the animal that inhabits the shell, which is built in a widening spiral. Can you find no ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... though this likewise occurs occasionally with the female of the wild musmon. In the rams of the Wallachian breed, "the horns spring almost perpendicularly from the frontal bone, and then take a beautiful spiral form; in the ewes they protrude nearly at right angles from the head, and then become twisted in a singular manner." (3/82. 'Youatt on Sheep' page 138.) Mr. Hodgson states that the extraordinarily arched nose or chaffron, which is so highly ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication - Volume I • Charles Darwin

... steps. On the first floor, behind curtains of red damask, the soft light of a lamp, placed upon a low table, faintly illumined the room, at the other extremity of which, on a large bedstead supported by spiral columns, around which curtains of the same color as those which deadened the rays of the lamp had been closely drawn, lay De Guiche, his head supported by pillows, his eyes looking as if the mists of death seemed gathering there; his long black hair, scattered over the pillow, set off the ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas

... describing the promises of equal laws to Ireland, with the restrictions on Irish liberty which were contained in the Bill, and as he described restriction he gradually raised the fingers on one hand, then turned them spiral fashion until he had pointed the index finger to the roof—- as though he were describing the ascent of a funambulist to the top of spiral stairs. It was at once eloquent and grotesque, and the House cheered and cheered yet again ...
— Sketches In The House (1893) • T. P. O'Connor

... plate gold, passing under her chin, runs along her cheeks till it twists itself in spiral fashion around her head, over which blue powder is scattered; then, descending, it slips over her shoulders and is fastened above her bosom by a diamond scorpion, which stretches out its tongue between her breasts. From her ears hang two great ...
— The Temptation of St. Antony - or A Revelation of the Soul • Gustave Flaubert

... give me some little account of your cruise, and fill up, if you can, any chinks that I haven't seen through already," he concluded, throwing his legs again over the back of the settee, and elevating his eyebrows as the cigar smoke curled in spiral wreaths around his face. ...
— Captain Brand of the "Centipede" • H. A. (Henry Augustus) Wise

... one is sure almost at any time of the day of a solitary corner for a dream. It is a sweet provision, too, that it is managed by ladies, whom you may, if you can, image to yourself as the Hesperides; for there are three of them; and may not the innumerable galleries and spiral staircases, serried with countless shelves, clustered thick with tome on tome, figure the great tree, with its many branches and its wonderful gold fruit—the tree of knowledge? The absence of the dragon from the similitude is as ...
— The Book-Bills of Narcissus - An Account Rendered by Richard Le Gallienne • Le Gallienne, Richard

... upon a spiral runway leading to a lower floor, and this I followed downward for several stories until I reached the doorway of a large apartment in which were a number of guardsmen. The walls of this room were hung with transparent tapestries behind which I secreted ...
— A Princess of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... accordingly, and, on the second floor, came to a landing where they found the spiral staircase ...
— The Eight Strokes of the Clock • Maurice Leblanc

... withered palm. She was now engaged in repeating the prayers for the dead, pausing from time to time to dip the palm branch in the holy water, and sprinkle the bed. Both windows had been opened in spite of the cold. On the marble hearth stood a chafing-dish full of embers from which rose spiral rings of smoke, filling the room with a pungent odor as a servant poured some vinegar and sugar on ...
— The Count's Millions - Volume 1 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau

... Then she drew out the card, read its dryly practical information over and over again, examined the soiled edges, brushed them daintily, and held it for a moment, with eyes that saw not, motionless in her hand. Then she raised it slowly to her lips, rolled it into a spiral, and, loosening a hook and eye, thrust it gently into ...
— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte

... arrangement of stock, A, mouth piece, B, inhaling and exhaling tubes, C' C, plate, D, air tube, E', valve, E, spiral spring, b, valves, c c, rods, d d, fulcra, e e, arm, f, and rod, g, substantially in the manner and for ...
— Scientific American, Vol. 17, No. 26 December 28, 1867 • Various

... was once talking of liberty, when he said, "White-robed liberty sits upon her rosy clouds above us; the Genius of our country, standing on her throne of mountains, bids her eagle standard-bearer wind his spiral course full in the sun's proud eye; while the Genius of Christianity, surrounded by ten thousand cherubim and seraphim, moves the panorama of the milky clouds above us, and floats in immortal fragrance—the very aroma of Eden through ...
— Talkers - With Illustrations • John Bate

... examination, recognized and correctly described by him. When he was asked to point out either of the figures, he never moved his hand directly and decidedly, but always as if feeling, and with the greatest caution; he pointed them out, however, correctly. A zigzag and a spiral line, both drawn on a sheet of paper, he observed to be different, but could not describe them otherwise than by imitating their forms with his finger in the air. He said he had no idea of ...
— The Mind of the Child, Part II • W. Preyer

... of the red is true of every other ray of the spectrum, visible and invisible. We cannot indeed see the augmentation of intensity in the region beyond the red, but we can measure it and express it numerically. With this view the following experiment was performed: A spiral of platinum wire was surrounded by a small glass globe to protect it from currents of air; through an orifice in the globe the rays could pass from the spiral and fall afterwards upon a thermo-electric pile. Placing in front of the orifice an opaque solution of ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall

... transformations which these undergo all the different tissues in vegetables are formed; for instance, the spiral and dotted ducts, woody fibre, and so on. Schwann showed that the formation of tissues in animals went through exactly the same progress, a fact which has been confirmed by the microscopic observations of Valentin and Barry. Thus vessels, glands, the brain, nerves, muscles, and ...
— The Economist - Volume 1, No. 3 • Various

... an irresistible tendency to rush. Underneath the dense impending cloud, the sea becomes violently agitated, and the waves dart rapidly towards the centre of the troubled mass of water: on reaching it they disperse in vapor, and rise, whirling in a spiral direction towards the cloud. The descending and ascending columns unite, the whole presenting the appearance of a hollow cylinder, or tube of glass, empty within. This, Maltebrun tells us, and he further adds, "it glides over the sea without any wind being felt; indeed several ...
— Thrilling Stories Of The Ocean • Marmaduke Park

... yet in the heart of it," he said. "It is evident to me now that what I took for the nucleus was only a close-coiled spiral, and we're run out of that, but the worst is yet to come. When we strike the center, then we'll catch it, and ...
— The Second Deluge • Garrett P. Serviss

... drew in, and when dusk fell upon the wilderness a dozen fires kept company with the lone little spiral ...
— The Maid of the Whispering Hills • Vingie E. Roe

... picture. Here we reach definite survivals of Celtic traditions. There flourished in Britain before the Claudian conquest a vigorous native art, chiefly working in metal and enamel, and characterized by its love for spiral devices and its fantastic use of animal forms. This art—La Tene or Late Celtic or whatever it be styled—was common to all the Celtic lands of Europe just before the Christian era, but its vestiges are particularly clear in Britain. When the Romans spread ...
— The Romanization of Roman Britain • F. Haverfield

... after year beheld the silent toil That spread his lustrous coil; Still, as the spiral grew, He left the past year's dwelling for the new, Stole with soft steps its shining archway through, Built up its idle door, Stretched in his last-found home, and ...
— Voices for the Speechless • Abraham Firth

... Bashforth chronograph a platform, arranged to descend slowly alongside of a vertical rotating cylinder, carries two markers, controlled by electromagnets, which describe a double spiral on the prepared surface of the cylinder. One electromagnet is in circuit with a clock, and the marker actuated by it marks seconds on the cylinder; the circuit of the other is completed through a series of contact ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various

... room to room. All this activity delighted old Huerlin. He looked on with cheerful interest, pretending not to hear the malicious remarks of the workmen; he plunged his hands into the deep pockets of his greasy coat, and twisted his charity trousers, much too long and wide for him, into various spiral forms in which his legs looked like corkscrews. He pulled continually at a chipped clay pipe, which was not lit but still smelt of tobacco. His approaching entry into his new abode, from which he promised himself a new and fairer ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various

... dark-brown or iron-grey colour—its short semi-erect ears—its thin lanky body—long but muscular legs—soft thick hair, and the hair of its tail forming a spiral twist, or fan, (thence called the fan-tailed dog,) and as he runs having a very pleasing appearance. He hunts by scent as well as by sight, and, therefore, small packs of this kind are sometimes kept, against which the wolf, or even the bear, would ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt

... too long," answered Tom. "We'll just cruise about, beginning with small circles and gradually enlarging them, spiral fashion. We'll have to go up a few feet to ...
— Tom Swift and his Undersea Search - or, The Treasure on the Floor of the Atlantic • Victor Appleton

... have removed—you could not have taken to pieces all articles of furniture in which it would have been possible to make a deposit in the manner you mention. A letter may be compressed into a thin spiral roll, not differing much in shape or bulk from a large knitting-needle, and in this form it might be inserted into the rung of a chair, for example. You did not take to pieces ...
— The Short-story • William Patterson Atkinson

... rough, flat, cold, slimy—had twisted itself round his naked arm. It crept upward towards his chest. Its pressure was like a tightening cord, its steady persistence like that of a screw. In less than a moment some mysterious spiral form had passed round his wrist and elbow, and had reached his shoulder. A sharp ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume V. • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.

... sharp spades, when they cut off the head of the whale, which was at once secured under the counter. A large hook being then fastened in a hole cut in the blubber at the head end of the animal, the operator commenced cutting off a strip about three feet broad, in a spiral direction, and a tackle having been fixed to the hook, this was drawn up on board, the body of the whale turning round and round. As the blubber was thus hoisted up, it was cut into pieces, known, as blanket pieces, ...
— The Three Admirals • W.H.G. Kingston

... they huddled in the shelter of the monument she brooded over the plain below wherein the canal, livid, yet unfrozen still, half girdled the town in a serpentine fold. Each chimney curled a light spiral into the nipping air. "Under every one a wagging tongue," she said. "It's known to ...
— The Henchman • Mark Lee Luther

... into a Celtic illumination is at once treated as a matter of ornament. When the human figure appears it is remorselessly subjected to the same rules as the rest of the work; the hair and beard are spiral coils, the eyes, nostrils, and limbs are symmetrical flourishes. Colour is quite regardless of natural possibility. The hair and draperies are simply patterned as compartments of green or blue, or red or black, as may be required for the tout ensemble; ...
— Illuminated Manuscripts • John W. Bradley

... reached him, Mr. Owen was disposed to class the promise with too many others made in the like circumstances. But on his first return to this country Livingstone presented himself, bearing the tusk of an elephant with a spiral curve. He had found it in the heart of Africa, and it was not easy of transport. "You may recall," said Professor Owen, at the Farewell Festival in 1858, "the difficulties of the progress of the weary sick traveler on the ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie

... he suddenly exclaimed. "That's it! A very interesting little puzzle. The height of the shaft of the Nelson column being 200 feet and its circumference 16 feet 8 inches, it is wreathed in a spiral garland which passes round it exactly five times. What is the length of the garland? It looks rather difficult, but ...
— The Canterbury Puzzles - And Other Curious Problems • Henry Ernest Dudeney



Words linked to "Spiral" :   curved shape, rotary motion, spiral-shelled, economic process, corkscrew, coiled, spiral spring, decoration, structure, coil, spiral bandage, spiraling, construction, helix, whorled, coiling, wind, inflationary spiral, spiral galaxy, gyrate, turn, ornamentation, ornament, deflationary spiral, helical



Copyright © 2024 Diccionario ingles.com