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Absorption   /əbzˈɔrpʃən/  /əbsˈɔrpʃən/   Listen
Absorption

noun
1.
(chemistry) a process in which one substance permeates another; a fluid permeates or is dissolved by a liquid or solid.  Synonym: soaking up.
2.
(physics) the process in which incident radiated energy is retained without reflection or transmission on passing through a medium.
3.
The social process of absorbing one cultural group into harmony with another.  Synonym: assimilation.
4.
The process of absorbing nutrients into the body after digestion.  Synonym: assimilation.
5.
Complete attention; intense mental effort.  Synonyms: concentration, engrossment, immersion.
6.
The mental state of being preoccupied by something.  Synonyms: engrossment, preoccupancy, preoccupation.



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"Absorption" Quotes from Famous Books



... has heretofore appeared suited to the wants of the historical student, which combined the labors of artists, travellers, interpreters and critics, during the periods from the earliest records of the monarchy to its final absorption in the empire of Alexander. This work supplies ...
— Western Characters - or Types of Border Life in the Western States • J. L. McConnel

... or fiery outlines, beside the perfect and living figure of De Flores. The man is so horribly human, so fearfully and wonderfully natural, in his single-hearted brutality of devotion, his absolute absorption of soul and body by one consuming force of passionately cynical desire, that we must go to Shakespeare for an equally original and an equally unquestionable revelation of indubitable truth. And in no play by Beaumont and Fletcher is the concord ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... how delicious the most ordinary food is, when cooked and eaten in the open air, after a day of reasonable exertion? Climbing, riding, and walking expand the lungs, and this means the absorption of immeasurably more oxygen. Weak stomachs, fickle appetites, dyspeptic symptoms, insomnia, blue devils and a score of the ills that human flesh is heir to, disappear before the floods of sunshine and oxygen that bathe the body, inside ...
— The Grand Canyon of Arizona: How to See It, • George Wharton James

... I favoured a "neutral zone" from Mosul to Kut, and I shouldn't be surprised if that plan still finds favour at home. But frankly I see no prospect of a strong enough Government to make the neutral zone workable; on the contrary everything points to the absorption of the Persian neutral zone by either ...
— Letters from Mesopotamia • Robert Palmer

... cause and rationale of these pain-lines, only the barest outlines can be given. Take the mouth for an example. When all is going well in the alimentary canal, without pain, without hunger, and both absorption of food and elimination of waste are proceeding normally, the tissues about the mouth, like those of the rest of the body, are apt to be plump and full; the muscles which open the aperture, having fulfilled their duty and received their regular ...
— Preventable Diseases • Woods Hutchinson

... But after 1692 it aptly expressed the compromise the dominant party of the Church had then in mind. They did, indeed, mistake the power of the Church, or, rather, they submitted to the State so fully that what they had intended for a partnership became an absorption. So that the Erastianism of the eighteenth century goes deep enough to make the Church no more than a moral police department of the State. Saints like Ken and preachers like South are replaced by fashionable ...
— Political Thought in England from Locke to Bentham • Harold J. Laski

... the character of their beauty. Perhaps, indeed, on the girl's side, love sprung rather from those affections which the spring of life throws upward to the surface, as the spring of earth does its flowers, than from that concentrated and deep absorption of self in self, which alone promises endurance and devotion, and of which first love, or rather the first fancy, is often less susceptible than that which grows out of the more thoughtful fondness of maturer years. Yet he, the lover, was of so rare and singular ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... suffered heavily in the early days of the war and has lost many men since. Large numbers of recruits have come in to make good the losses. But the number of new men has never been so great as to destroy the old regiment's power of absorption. Recruits have been digested by the original body. They have grown up in the tradition of the regiment and have been formed by its spirit. The difference between the cavalry troopers and the infantry privates of the army of to-day is difficult ...
— A Padre in France • George A. Birmingham

... always determines the character of life; and I have known young men, even before they have approached middle age, to become mean and miserly to such a degree as to disappoint and disgust their friends, simply in consequence of a few years' absorption in business. Business is not life, nor is it life's end. It is simply a means of life; and all true living lies outside of it. Ministry is the mission of business—ministry to necessity, to comfort, and to a personal, family, and social life into which business never enters, save ...
— Lessons in Life - A Series of Familiar Essays • Timothy Titcomb

... absorption of small states that the Chinese people grew to greatness. The present work will trace their history as they emerge, like a rivulet, from the highlands of central Asia and, increasing in volume, flow, like a stately river, toward the eastern ocean. Revolutions many and startling are ...
— The Awakening of China • W.A.P. Martin

... himself within the radius of Deborah's observation whenever occasion served. And being there, although silent and keeping to the background, his gaze followed her as the gaze of an opossum follows a light on a dark night, with the same still absorption. Nothing but her returning gaze could divert it from its mark. It was so natural, so calmly customary, so unobtrusive, that nobody cared to attach importance ...
— Sisters • Ada Cambridge

... combustion was extremely rapid, attended with a very brilliant flame, and considerable disengagement of light and heat. In consequence of the great heat induced, the gas was at first much dilated, but soon after the mercury returned to its level, and a considerable absorption of gas took place; at the same time, the whole inside of the glass became covered with white light flakes ...
— Elements of Chemistry, - In a New Systematic Order, Containing all the Modern Discoveries • Antoine Lavoisier

... of our conversations about this period, I alluded to his position at St. Thomas's Hospital,—coasting and reconnoitring, as it were, that I might discover how he got on, and, with the total absorption that had evidently taken place of every other mood of his mind than that of imaginative composition, what was his bias for the future, and what his feeling with regard to the profession that had been chosen for him,—a circumstance I did ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various

... against the man who has these things. It is the party of the many small men against the fewer prevailing men. It has no more essential reason for loving the Collectivist state than the Conservatives; the small dealer is doomed to absorption in that just as much as the large owner; but it resorts to the state against its antagonists as in the middle ages common men pitted themselves against the barons by siding with the king. The Liberal Party is the party against "class privilege" because it represents ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells

... brought up,—he was not to speak unless spoken to; but under the press of hunger nature rebelled, for his uncle, in his absorption, had forgotten ...
— John Ward, Preacher • Margaret Deland

... didn't care who knew it. Since his sister's marriage to the millionaire philanthropist, Simon had found life appallingly dull; how could he have found interest in the passing years without his heart-complaint? Hamilton Gregory's perennial absorption in the miseries of folk beyond the horizon, and lack of sympathy with those who sat at his table, set him apart as a ...
— Fran • John Breckenridge Ellis

... same in all the pictures, and is so entirely simple that we forget the greatness of the art. The Virgin, dominating the composition, brings into unity the two smaller figures. This unity is somewhat less perfect in the Belle Jardiniere, because the little St. John is almost neglected in the intense absorption of mother and child in ...
— The Madonna in Art • Estelle M. Hurll

... coursed through his mind as he leaned back in his chair, his lips tight set, the jaw firm and determined—only the lids quivering as he mastered the tears that crept to their edges. Now and then, in his mental absorption, he would absently cross his legs only to straighten them out again, his state of mind an open book to Gorsuch, who had followed the same line of reasoning and who had brought the news himself that he might ...
— Kennedy Square • F. Hopkinson Smith

... provided for both; saying afterwards, when told of it, that the gentleman should have taken care of himself. This does not look very polite; but of course it was said in jest. His son attributed this carelessness at table to absorption ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Vol. 2 • Leigh Hunt

... bending some evening over your books in the exhausted air of your little room, and as if you should rise from your task, and pass out into the night, and the open door should deliver you from your weariness and your self-absorption, as you stood in the serene companionship of the infinite heavens ...
— Mornings in the College Chapel - Short Addresses to Young Men on Personal Religion • Francis Greenwood Peabody

... to have somewhat waned. She scarcely ever made her presents now or wrote her notes. She was chatty enough in the dormitory, but saw little of her in recreation hours. Marjorie set this down to jealousy of her friendship with Winifrede. In her absorption in her head girl she had certainly not given Chrissie so much of her time as formerly. She walked along the field now rather soberly. She disliked quarrelling, but her own temper was hot as well ...
— A Patriotic Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil

... that the reader knows that a red object, for example, appears red because it reflects (or transmits) red rays and absorbs the other rays in the illuminant. In other words, color is due to selective absorption reflection, ...
— Artificial Light - Its Influence upon Civilization • M. Luckiesh

... matter and motion, for each single thing, and the whole universe as well, is involved in a (continuously repeated) double process of evolution and dissolution, the former consisting in the integration of matter[1] and the dissipation of motion, the latter in the absorption of motion and the disintegration of matter. The law of evolution, in its complete development, then runs: "Evolution is an integration of matter and concomitant dissipation of motion; during which the matter passes from an indefinite, incoherent ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg

... of politics and piety, with its system of shrines and festivals, and in short the whole Kami no Michi, or Shint[o] as we know it, from the sixth to the eighth century, was in itself (in part at least), a case of the absorption of one religion ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis

... reckless spirit of aggressiveness, a disposition to lower all culture to the level of their interests and comprehension—evincing the while a defiant self-assertion? And on the side of individualism, what do we see? Paltry meanness in abundance, embroidered selfishness, idle self-absorption, the craving to be conspicuous at all costs, repulsive hypocrisy, lack of courage despite all boastful talk, a lukewarm attitude towards all spiritual tasks, but the busiest industry ...
— Rudolph Eucken • Abel J. Jones

... them, without getting some ideas which belong to many provinces of human intelligence? The air we breathe is made up of four elements, at least: oxygen, nitrogen, carbonic acid gas, and knowledge. There is something quite delightful to witness in the absorption and devotion of a genuine specialist. There is a certain sublimity in that picture of the dying scholar in ...
— Over the Teacups • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... with her son and heir and the nurse. She bent over the cot and smiled upon Henry Fitzgeorge; he smiled back at her, and even gave an absent-minded crow; but his gaze almost instantly swung back again to the window, through which, deeply and with solemn absorption, he watched ...
— The Golden Scarecrow • Hugh Walpole

... it," he said. "Blood diluted with water shows the well-known dark bands between D and E, known as the oxyhemoglobin absorption." I looked as he indicated and saw the dark bands. "Now," he went on, "I add some of ...
— The Treasure-Train • Arthur B. Reeve

... the seat behind her caused Elizabeth to look around. She was just in time to see the plainly-dressed woman suppress a laugh. As Elizabeth glanced at her, she was pretending absorption in a magazine, but her lips were ...
— Elizabeth Hobart at Exeter Hall • Jean K. Baird

... his clenched hand as he saw her leave that part of the boat, and retire as far from him as she could, as if his presence were an insult to her. Tears of rage started into the young man's eyes as he watched her graceful figure resume its former posture of dreamy absorption. ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... contrast of their painted faces with the waxen pallor of the dying man; the terrible incongruity of their voices, inflections, expressions, and familiarity; the mingled perfume of cosmetics and the faint odor of wine; the eyes of the younger woman following his movements with strange absorption, so affected him that he was glad when he could fall on his knees at last and bury his face in the pillow of the sufferer. The hand that had been placed in the bride's cold fingers slipped from them ...
— By Shore and Sedge • Bret Harte

... peasant enslaved, the merchant robbed and held to ransom. The freedom of the aristocracy spelled misery for every other class. These self-constituted tyrants passed their lives in devastating faction fights. Worst of all, their divisions and their absorption in petty schemes of personal aggrandisement left Europe at the mercy of uncivilised invaders. In the ninth and tenth centuries, medieval society experienced the same ordeal to which the Roman Empire ...
— Medieval Europe • H. W. C. Davis

... physician, Dr. Kaiser, has recently asserted, in a paper read before the Vienna Medical Society, that blue light is effective in reducing inflammation, allaying pain, and curing skin-disease, especially by promoting absorption of morbid humors. He asserts that a beam from a powerful lantern, after passing through blue glass, will kill cultures of various bacilli, when directed upon them at a distance of fifteen feet for half an hour daily ...
— Primitive Psycho-Therapy and Quackery • Robert Means Lawrence

... Quixote could not surpass the sublime absorption in which the gaunt old man, with arm uplifted, described this stage of affairs, till he ended in a shrewd chuckle, worthy of Sancho ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson

... enabled her to obtain a certain revenue, though entirely inadequate to her expenditure. Thus we beheld her pressing solidly on, and we knew not where she might stop. Pretexts, such as it was difficult to find a flaw in, were never wanting on which to ground a fresh absorption of territory. And seeing behind this advance a vast country—almost a continent—which was not merely a great Asiatic Power, but a great European State, under autocratic, irresponsible rule, with ...
— Afghanistan and the Anglo-Russian Dispute • Theo. F. Rodenbough

... procession of the dead takes place, while up stream and down stream the bank of the river is covered with men and women who fatally believe that by bathing in this dirty stream they are washing away their sins and preparing themselves for final absorption and eternal ...
— India, Its Life and Thought • John P. Jones

... triumphed in the end—triumphed over what, she had not always cared to inquire. But once the pen in her hand, once "Patroclus" begun, and the absorption of her mind, her imagination, her every faculty, in the composition of the story, had not permitted her to think of or to ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various

... Absorption of Callus.—It sometimes happens that when an acute infective disease, especially one of the exanthemata, supervenes while a fracture is undergoing repair, the callus which has formed becomes softened and is absorbed. This may occur weeks or even months after the bone has united, ...
— Manual of Surgery Volume Second: Extremities—Head—Neck. Sixth Edition. • Alexander Miles

... mysteries, for Philo introduces into his exegesis of the law of Moses an ordinance forbidding the practice.[66] He himself advocates a more spiritual mysticism, and it is a cardinal principle of his philosophy to treat the human soul as a god within and its absorption in the universal Godhead as supreme bliss, the end of all endeavor. He claimed to have attained, himself, to this union, and to have received direct inspiration. Giving a Greek coloring to the Hebrew notion of prophecy, "My soul," he says, "is wont to be affected with a Divine trance ...
— Philo-Judaeus of Alexandria • Norman Bentwich

... books he was reading. Evidently just an ordinary novel. The letters in the rack she saw were from Annie, Arthur, and from some man or other she did not know. Everything he had touched, everything that was in the least personal to him, she examined with lingering absorption. He had been gone from her for so long, she wanted to rediscover him, his position, what he was now. But there was not much in the room to help her. It only made her feel rather sad, it ...
— Sons and Lovers • David Herbert Lawrence

... temperature that the bare hand can no more touch it than it can iron at a white heat, and this, although it is a very poor conductor of heat; so great is the difference of temperature between it and the stomach that its absorption produces real suffocation. The Esquimaux prefer severe thirst to quenching it with this snow, which does not replace water, and only augments the thirst instead of appeasing it. The only way the travellers could make use of it was by melting it ...
— The Voyages and Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne

... were ushered in, and the meal was served. Neither one nor the other would share it; the abbe indeed sat down to table, but the chevalier remained leaning on the foot of the bed. The abbe appeared anxious, and only roused himself with a start from his absorption; then he seemed to drive away some dominant idea, but soon the idea, stronger than his will, plunged him again into a reverie, a state which struck everyone the more particularly because it was far from his usual temper. As to the chevalier, his ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE GANGES—1657 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE

... love with Barbara as a man could be who indulged no hope whatever of marrying her—who was not even tempted to build the humblest castle for her in the air of possibility. But so far was his love from causing in him any kind of selfish absorption, that his heart was much troubled at Alice's leaving him without a farewell. Her behaviour woke in him his first sense of the inexplicable: he little thought of its being but the first visible vapour of ...
— There & Back • George MacDonald

... of purpose, this absorption in a great life- work, that nerves our missionaries in their exile. A splendid example of this is presented in the career of the great missionary and explorer, ...
— How to Get on in the World - A Ladder to Practical Success • Major A.R. Calhoon

... per cent. upon yellow sensitiveness. Eosine and its varieties, eosine yellow shade, or eosine J, pyrosine J, erythrosine yellowish, may all be noted as very good sensitizers for green, yellow-green, and eventually for yellow. The bluish shades of eosine colors, on the contrary, have an absorption band further in the yellow. This is also the case with the blue shade eosine (eosine B) and the most bluish of all eosines, the bengal rosa. Of both eosines, yellow shade and blue shade, the latter ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 530, February 27, 1886 • Various

... nature and scope of the effects which would be incident to any general absorption, such as that contemplated by socialists, of productive enterprise by the state, will be yet more clearly seen if we turn to a kind of production on which I have dwelt already, as affording the simplest and most luminous example possible of the respective ...
— A Critical Examination of Socialism • William Hurrell Mallock

... repeatedly refer to his temptations (Luke iv. 13; Mark viii. 31-33; Luke xxii. 28; compare Heb. v. 7-9), but they also depict clearly the reality of these initial testings. The account as given in Matthew and Luke represents the experience with which the forty days' struggle culminated. The absorption of Jesus' mind had been so complete that he had neglected the needs of his body, and when he turned to think of earthly things he was pressed by hunger. A popular notion at a later time, and probably also in Jesus' day, was that the Messiah would be able ...
— The Life of Jesus of Nazareth • Rush Rhees

... light and air to plants is well known. When unassisted by these agents, plants lose their colour, and are deprived of many of their properties. Colour is thus evidently produced by the absorption of carbonic acid gas: and the colouring matter may be detected by a powerful microscope, lodged in the cellular substance of the leaf. How this colour is formed, and why it assumes different tints in different plants, are, however, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 572, October 20, 1832 • Various

... bellow of a war-whoop. His manner reminded me strongly of a bull, that by some mischance has lost the common herd; and as he gallops along the meadows, when he finds himself alone, will stop suddenly at times, and, placing his broad nostrils to the earth, sniff the grass with the absorption of a huge pump; then lifting his head loftily in the air, will lash his tail, and madly tossing his legs, roar till the country round is filled with the sounds ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross

... lessened number of blood-corpuscles gives rise to storing of fat, owing to lessened tissue-combustion. At all events, the absorption of oxygen diminishes after bleeding, and it used to be well known that some people grew fat when bled at intervals. Also, it is said that cattle-breeders in some localities—certainly not in this country—bleed their cattle to ...
— Fat and Blood - An Essay on the Treatment of Certain Forms of Neurasthenia and Hysteria • S. Weir Mitchell

... as a boy and as a young man. Walking tours were for long my favorite recreation, even after the bicycle became an increasing attraction. My health, however, suffered in other ways from too constant absorption in lustful thoughts, which found vent in erotic verses and tales, generally destroyed soon after they were written. I have been subject since I was a boy to more or less prolonged fits of mental depression. How far I have ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 3 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... fiend in its terror; when the breast on which man leaned for comfort has taken counsel to deceive him; when he learns that, day after day, the life entwined with his own has been a lie and a stage-mime,—he feels not the softness of grief, nor the absorption of rage; it is mightier than grief, and more withering than rage,—it is a horror that appalls. The heart does not bleed, the tears do not flow, as in woes to which humanity is commonly subjected; it is as if something that violates the course of nature had taken place,—something monstrous and ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... leaning farther and farther towards Mrs. Morris with an absorption of delight. It was as if the three had their heads together ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... good authority equals one square foot of exposed surface, and the amount of secretion per day equals about sixteen fluid ounces, or a pint, which must be secreted by a person in the normal condition of health. It also has the power of absorption of certain diverse substances, such as alkaloids, fluids of all kinds, hence the danger of alcoholic indulgence to the singer. Alcohol coagulates. It causes the epithelium to contract and to become so disintegrated as to be utterly incapable of performing ...
— The Voice - Its Production, Care and Preservation • Frank E. Miller

... fragrance only needing air and sunlight to diffuse itself. For all the youthfulness, a quality of indolent magic was about her, a soft haze, as it were, woven of matured experience, of detachment from youth's self-absorption, of the observer's kindly, yet ironic, insight. Her figure was supple; her nut-brown hair, splendidly folded at the back of her head, was hardly touched with white; her quickly glancing, deliberately pausing, eyes were as clear, as pensive, ...
— A Fountain Sealed • Anne Douglas Sedgwick

... In the absorption of his own reflections, Rienzi fortunately did not notice the sudden paleness and agitation of his sister. Entered within his palace, he called for wine—the draught revived his spirits—he listened smilingly to the sparkling remarks of Nina; and enduing his mask and disguise, ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... offend. But a being who was entirely free from temptation would be either more or less than a man—"either a beast or a God," as Aristotle says.[179] There is, therefore, a half truth in the theory that the goal of earthly striving is negation and absorption. But it at once becomes false if we forget that it is a goal which cannot be reached in time, and which is achieved, not by good and evil neutralising each other, but by death being swallowed up in victory. If morality ...
— Christian Mysticism • William Ralph Inge

... emerging as a symbol of that brand of democracy in opposition to free trade in a minority. How we have fallen upon evil days! Farmers' sons at college no longer regard free trade as the forerunner of political absorption by the United States, but as the vindication of the farmer as ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino

... a spectroscope, and those are the lines of the absorption spectrum. Each of those lines, by its presence, denotes a different substance. Now, on the pavement of the Phelps mausoleum I found, you will recall, some roundish spots. I have made a very diluted solution of them which ...
— The Dream Doctor • Arthur B. Reeve

... Canada from absorption up to this time is the existence of those mighty natural barriers, the St. Lawrence and the great lakes. As population increases in the Northwest, where the dividing line is known only to surveyors, the situation will become critical. Already the rush to the ...
— Two Thousand Miles On An Automobile • Arthur Jerome Eddy

... lifting up of his upper lip, as though he were longing to bite, bowed stiffly in his chair. With the utter absorption of a man to whom love comes late, not as the most splendid of illusions, but like an enlightening and priceless misfortune, the sight of that woman (of whom he had been deprived for nearly a year) suggested ideas of adoration, of ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad

... speak for poor Eric," he said in a voice low and trembling with emotion, as, with downcast eyes, he modestly approached towards Dr Rowlands, not even observing the presence of the others in the complete absorption of his feelings. He stood in a sorrowful attitude, not venturing to look up, and his hand played nervously with the ribbon ...
— Eric, or Little by Little • Frederic W. Farrar

... Coggs, who sat on the seat opposite to him, and saw his cheeks and lips moving in slow and appreciative absorption of something. Coggs ...
— Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey

... FOODS The digestive organs The digestion of a mouthful of bread Salivary digestion Stomach digestion Intestinal digestion Other uses of the digestive fluids Absorption Liver digestion Time required for digestion Dr. Beaumont's table made from experiments on Alexis St. Martin Hygiene of digestion Hasty eating Drinking freely at meals Eating between meals Simplicity in diet Eating when tired Eating too much How much food is enough ...
— Science in the Kitchen. • Mrs. E. E. Kellogg

... to the new beginnings of art, literature, and scientific investigation. At scarcely a hint from her he told briefly of his past life and his hopes, and fondly mentioned his sister and her present absorption in some history ...
— Unleavened Bread • Robert Grant

... by Germany at the close of the so-called Franco-Prussian war resulted, as in well known, in Germany taking over the tremendous fields of iron ore and coal located in Alsace-Lorraine. It is my belief that this absorption is largely responsible for the prosperous condition of the iron and steel business in Germany and its being in second place in the world's production. I am assured by men prominent in the iron and steel trade in France, ...
— A Journey Through France in War Time • Joseph G. Butler, Jr.

... valleys branching off at the base of Mount Franklin, three only were wooded and rich in pasturage like that of the corral, which bordered on the west on the Falls River valley, and on the east on the Red Creek valley. These two streams, which lower down became rivers by the absorption of several tributaries, were formed by all the springs of the mountain and thus caused the fertility of its southern part. As to the Mercy, it was more directly fed from ample springs concealed under the cover of Jacamar Wood, and it was by springs of this nature, spreading ...
— The Secret of the Island • W.H.G. Kingston (translation from Jules Verne)

... her incomprehensible lack of social instinct, the fruit of India's purdah system. Loyal wives and mothers who 'adored' their children—yet spent most of their day in pursuit of other interests—were nonplussed by her complete absorption in the joys and sanctities of home. Yet, in course of time, her patent simplicity and sincerity had disarmed prejudice. The least perceptive could not choose but see that she was genuinely, intrinsically different, not merely in the matter of iridescent silks and saris, ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver

... is better than a narrow one, as in two flues containing the same number of square inches the square flue would have the smallest amount of wall surface, and consequently less friction for the ascending currents, and less absorption of heat by the walls. Chimneys should be closely built, having no cracks nor openings through which external air may be drawn to weaken the draught. If they could be made throughout their length as impervious to air as a tube of glass, with ...
— Scientific American, Volume 40, No. 13, March 29, 1879 • Various

... from the shelf; and as he went over them she heard him repeating the names of various goods now become familiar, pongees, poplins, percales and voiles, garbardines and galateas, lawns, organdies, crepes, and Madras shirtings, while he wrote down figures on a sheet of paper. So complete was his absorption in this task that Janet, although she had resented the insinuating pressure of his former attitude toward her, felt a paradoxical sensation of jealousy. Presently, without looking up, he told her to call up the Boston office and ask for Mr. Fraile, the cotton ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... of his grimy fingers rattled a number of frail-like staves and worked a number of wheels and drums, yet there was no indication of her ignorance in her sparkling eyes and smiling, breathless attitude. Perhaps she was interested in his own absorption; the revelation of his preoccupation with this model struck her as if he had made her a confidante of some boyish passion for one of her own sex, and she regarded him ...
— A Sappho of Green Springs • Bret Harte

... Stott's absorption in any matter that was occupying his mind made him exceedingly careless about the detail of his affairs. He took the first cottage that offered when he looked for a home, he took the first woman who offered when ...
— The Wonder • J. D. Beresford

... it has been churned into a pulpaceous mass, it passes into the duodenum or second stomach, where it receives an augmentation of liquid material from the liver and pancreas; consequently, when it reaches the small intestine, where absorption takes place, it is in a well diluted condition. During its passage through the small intestine, the nutrient portion of the ingesta is abstracted from it by the villi (small hair-like processes) with ...
— The Royal Road to Health • Chas. A. Tyrrell

... she wore faded blue, which melted into the blue of the mists, stubbed and shabby russet shoes and an air of absorption in her returned soldier. This absorption Dalton found himself subconsciously resenting. Following an instinctive urge, he emerged, therefore, from his chrysalis of ill-temper, and smiled ...
— The Trumpeter Swan • Temple Bailey

... not see or hear any more of the bandits. Evidently the conversation died down, or she, in the absorption of new thoughts, no longer heard. She relaxed, and suddenly seemed to quiver all over with the name she whispered to herself. "Jim! Jim! Oh, Jim!" And the last whisper was an inward sob. What he had done was terrible. It tortured her. She had not believed it in him. Yet, now ...
— The Border Legion • Zane Grey

... Nile, being then received on board, the leaden coffin was opened, and the Body taken out; when it was found still in most excellent condition, and completely plastic. The features were somewhat tumid, from absorption of the spirit; but on using friction with a napkin, they resumed in a great degree their natural character. All the Officers of the ship, and several of HIS LORDSHIP'S friends, as well as some of Captain HARDY'S, who had come on board the Victory that day from the shore, were present at the time ...
— The Death of Lord Nelson • William Beatty

... Felix, Octavius, p. 96, Ouzel (chap. 11, Boenig). 'Quid quod toti orbi et ipsi mundo cum sideribus suis minantur incendium, ruinam moliuntur?' The doctrine in their mouths became a very different thing from the Stoic theory of the periodic re-absorption of the universe in the Divine Element. Ibid., pp. ...
— Five Stages of Greek Religion • Gilbert Murray

... his absorption by another scream. One, he was sure, which had not come from any Salariki throat. He got to his feet. Rip was stationed four men beyond him. Yes, the tall Astrogator-apprentice was there, outlined against torch flare. Ali? No—there was the assistant Engineer. Weeks? But ...
— Plague Ship • Andre Norton

... and historians have speculated that this might occur. The theory is that the conquest of space may prove to be the moral equivalent of war by substituting for certain material and psychological needs usually supplied through war; that the absorption of energies, resources, imagination, and aggressiveness in pursuit of the space adventure may become an effective ...
— The Practical Values of Space Exploration • Committee on Science and Astronautics

... fire-place, instead of a mirror, was a Mater dolorosa that caught the eye by its dazzling whiteness. Big marble tears stood arrested in mid-career down the cheeks, while the features expressed the pious absorption of the Divine Mother's grief. Jean Servien read the inscription cut in red letters on the pedestal, ...
— The Aspirations of Jean Servien • Anatole France

... courses open to the Church. There was the policy of abstention and isolation; there was the policy of extermination or absorption; and there was a middle course, avoiding abstention and not aiming at absorption, which consisted of holding friendly and constant intercourse with Christians of other Churches, earnestly and lovingly endeavouring to create as many points of contact as were compatible with holding ...
— Faces and Places • Henry William Lucy

... room, it is clear that that material is best for the construction of a fire-place which reflects the most, or which absorbs the least of it, for that heat which is absorbed cannot be reflected. Now, as bodies which absorb radiant heat are necessarily heated in consequence of that absorption; to discover which of the various materials that can be employed for constructing fire-places are best adapted for that purpose, we have only to find, by an experiment very easy to be made, what bodies acquire ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton

... in time of peace, to support an attenuated garrison and its horses. But for his revenues the Alwa-sahib had to look many a long day's march afield. Leagues of desert lay between him and the nearest farm he owned, and since—more in the East than anywhere—a landlord's chief absorption is the watching of his rents, it followed that he spent the greater part of his existence in the saddle, riding from one ...
— Rung Ho! • Talbot Mundy

... The absorption of the English mind in the war is, to me, a melancholy thing. Every other subject of popular solicitude and sympathy goes down before it. I fear I clearly see that for years to come domestic reforms are shaken to the root; every miserable red-tapist flourishes ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 1 (of 3), 1833-1856 • Charles Dickens

... less formidable. A prescient eye might have foreseen that the great struggles of Media would be with these powers, and that if she attained imperial proportions it must be by their subjugation or absorption. ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 3. (of 7): Media • George Rawlinson

... electricity, of that barrier which then appeared so formidable—the Atlantic Ocean. He might have foreseen the immense influx of men of every race and tongue into the unpeopled West; but he could scarcely have anticipated with confidence the ready absorption of all these alien elements (save one!) into the dominant Anglo-Saxon polity. It was quite on the cards that a new American language might have developed from a fusion of all the diverse tongues of all the scattered ...
— America To-day, Observations and Reflections • William Archer

... on his knees with both elbows and one hand, and contriving with the help of his chin to get his magazine open again: "No, no; I won't, my dear." He loses himself in his reading, while people come and go restlessly. A gentleman finally drops into the seat beside him, and contemplates his absorption with friendly amusement. ...
— The Albany Depot - A Farce • W. D. Howells

... highest evolvement of all, came the absorption of revolver-lore under the instruction of experts who made but pastime of picking a jack-rabbit in its flight, or bringing a kite, soaring high in air, tumbling precipitate to earth. A wild life it was and a rough, but fascinating nevertheless in its demonstration of the overwhelming ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge

... talk to them! Denounce them traitors! Up whip, and set the ruffians capering! Hit them facers! Our men are always for the too-clever trick. They pluck the sprouts and eat them, as if the loss of a sprout or two thinned Manchester! Your policy of absorption is good enough when you're dealing with fragments. It's a devilish unlucky thing to attempt with a concrete mass. You might as well ask your head to absorb a wall by running at it like a pugnacious nigger. I ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... first he did not care for it. His soaring spirit disdained boys in slums. It had its being on higher planes. But he read on, and, reading on, grew interested, until interest was intensified into absorption For the outcast boy in the slums, you must know, was really the kidnapped child of a prince and a princess, and after the most romantic adventures was enfolded in his parents' arms, married a duke's beauteous daughter, whom in his poverty he had worshipped from afar, and drove ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke

... advantage, or had the widest gape, seized the less fortunate, and slowly and with much straining and little apparent joy swallowed it. Often the rivals would not meet in mid air, and the lapse provided the delusion of innocent play. There were hundreds of examples of absorption of the least fit by the fittest to survive, and the chronicling of the cannibal feast would be incomplete if a singular detail were unrelated. The participators seemed of like size. Complexion alone varied and foppish discrimination was exercised, for since dog does not in ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield

... independent and individual existence, requiring less nourishment from any source, and that not so much from the earth through its stem as from the sun and air, acquires a bright tint. So do leaves. The physiologist says it is "due to an increased absorption of oxygen." That is the scientific account of the matter,—only a reassertion of the fact. But I am more interested in the rosy cheek than I am to know what particular diet the maiden fed on. The very forest and herbage, the pellicle of ...
— Excursions • Henry D. Thoreau

... Returning homeward, hungry, from a day of much adventure, he had espied from this eminence a camp of nomads in a certain hollow, and at once forgot his supper in desire to sketch it. He had settled to the work with such complete absorption that Elias Abdul Messih, his companion, for once grew tired of the sound of his own voice, and left him, with a sigh for his obtuseness. And Iskender was glad to be rid of him, to lie alone and nurse ...
— The Valley of the Kings • Marmaduke Pickthall

... impossible that Hunter could have intended to deny the existence of purely mechanical operations in the animal body. But while, with Borelli and Boerhaave, he looked upon absorption, nutrition, and secretion as operations effected by means of the small vessels, he differed from the mechanical physiologists, who regarded these operations as the result of the mechanical properties ...
— Science & Education • Thomas H. Huxley

... Darken the sun and every engine on the earth's surface would soon stop, every wheel cease to turn, and all movement cease. How prodigal this supply of power is we seldom stop to consider. Deducting the atmospheric absorption, it is still true that the sun delivers on each square yard of the earth's surface, when he is shining, the equivalent of one horse-power working continuously. Enough mechanical power goes to waste on the college campus to warm and light and supply all the manufactories, street railroads and other ...
— James Watt • Andrew Carnegie

... organs and process of nutrition, absorption by the veins of the stomach is correctly noticed, and the union of the mesenteric veins into one common vena portae is pointed out. The communications between the ramifications of the vena portae and of the proper veins of the liver are supposed by Galen ...
— Fathers of Biology • Charles McRae

... on the one hand, the concentration of capital, and the absorption which results therefrom; and, on the other, he objects to the extreme division of the land. Now I think that I have demonstrated in my First Memoir, that large accumulation and minute division are the first two terms ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon

... phosphorus salts can only be properly utilised when the hydrochloric acid of the stomach juice is well formed, for it converts them into acid salts which are readily absorbed. Therefore to ensure free absorption we must always remember to give the phosphorus-containing foods with such meals as will cause free ...
— The Healthy Life, Vol. V, Nos. 24-28 - The Independent Health Magazine • Various

... cannot be surprised if he turns an unseeing eye upon any object you may present for his inspection. Now, since I have basked longer in your light, I may perhaps—allow me." He reached for the book and began to turn over the leaves. She watched his growing absorption with indulgent amusement, and the comradeship of the two omnivorous readers was evident. Cardington was frankly reading, oblivious of his hosts, a liberty which indicated his familiar standing in ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins

... expression, as if sweet music were in the air around them, or as if their inmost souls were about to float away in song. One or two, perhaps, stole a glance at the bystanders, to watch if their poetic absorption were observed. Others stood talking in groups, with a liveliness of expression, a ready smile, and a light, intellectual laughter, which showed how rapidly the shafts of wit were glancing to and ...
— The Hall of Fantasy (From "Mosses From An Old Manse") • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... dropped on the tongue will also be of great benefit: if there should be effusion or compression from fracture of the bones of the cranium, nothing but trephining will be of any service, as we can hardly hope for the absorption of the matter, and the removal of the spicula of bone can alone afford relief to the patient. Paralysis arising from poisoning should be treated as described under the head of mineral poisons. Chronic cases of paralysis arising from ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt

... boy stood at the door. The reply to Tim's proposal was a jerk of Felix's great-coat on his left shoulder, and a sly glance at the earthen mug which he held, as he gradually bent it from its upright position, until it was evident that the process of absorption had been rapidly acting on its contents. Tim, who understood the freemasonry of the manoeuvre, removed all the latent scruples of Felix by adding—"There's more of that stuff—where you know; and by the crook of St. Patrick we'll have ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, December 4, 1841 • Various

... 192). When this happens in association with disease in the middle ear or frontal sinus, it is attended with severe headache referred to the seat of the abscess, a sudden rise of temperature preceded by shivering, and other evidence of the absorption of toxins. Over the situation of the abscess, the scalp becomes swollen and oedematous—a condition which Percival Pott, in 1760, first observed to be characteristic of extra-dural suppuration, hence the name, Pott's puffy ...
— Manual of Surgery Volume Second: Extremities—Head—Neck. Sixth Edition. • Alexander Miles

... that it almost lifts itself up above the clouds; snow seldom falls on it, but only hail in summer, when the clouds are at their greatest height, and this hail is preserved there so that were it not for the absorption of the rising and falling clouds, which does not occur twice in an age, a great quantity of ice would be piled up there by the hail, which in the middle of July I found to be very considerable; and I saw above me the ...
— Thoughts on Art and Life • Leonardo da Vinci

... looked upon the student end of her husband's parish with disapproving eyes. The girls annoyed her by their cocksure alertness, their little air of being primed, ready for any emergency that chanced to offer. They vexed her by their manifest absorption in her husband; they vexed her yet more by their inexplicable lack ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray

... impulses awaken, and the still plaint becomes a complaint against cruel fate. It seeks the conflict, and tries through force of will to burst the fetters of pain, or at least to alleviate it through absorption in a happy past. But in vain! The heart has not lost something—it has lost everything. The musical poem divides into three, or if one views the little episode in B major as a special part, into four parts (strophes), of which the last is an elaborated repetition of the first with a brief closing ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker

... of song. Mr. Jones raised his waspish eyebrows, at the sound. The secretary got down on his knees before an old leather trunk, and, rummaging in there, brought out a small looking-glass. He fell to examining his physiognomy in it with silent absorption. ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad

... woman thought that he had been hurt by the evident absorption of her husband and daughter with their new friend, and wished to make all easy and straight. But do what she would, he did not recover his temper all evening: he was uncomfortable, put out, not enjoying himself, ...
— Sylvia's Lovers — Complete • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

... popularity of the Jenkins Pearls suddenly arrested, the very thorough exposure of the position of the foreign physician, the charlatan, by old Bouchereau in the journal of the Academy, caused the leaders of society to gaze at one another in alarm, even paler from terror than from the absorption of arsenic into their systems, and the Irishman had already felt the effect of those bewilderingly sudden changes of the wind which make Parisian infatuations ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet

... in such a trance of enjoyment of her twin sister, that she seemed scarcely able to enter into anything else. She went through her duties as usual, but with an effort to shake off her absorption in the thought of having Alda at home; and every moment she was not in sight of her darling seemed a cruel diminution of her one poor fortnight. Indeed it was tete-a-tetes that her exclusive tenderness ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge

... But suddenly, through his absorption, danger prickled the short hairs of his neck. A lithe, sinuous shadow close ahead was wavering, and large, placid brown eyes were staring at him. A sealman! He was discovered! And instinctively, immediately, Ken Torrence brought the torpoon's ...
— Under Arctic Ice • H.G. Winter

... Holmes's poetry is mostly on the colloquial level, excellent society-verse, but even in its serious moments too smart and too pretty to be taken very gravely; with a certain glitter, knowingness, and flippancy about it, and an absence of that self-forgetfulness and intense absorption in its theme which characterize the work of the higher imagination. This is rather the product of fancy and wit. Wit, indeed, in the old sense of quickness in the perception of analogies, is the staple of his mind. His resources in the way of figure, illustration, ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers

... had out; so that certainly there was that amount of justification for Kate's vision of success. He had, for Mrs. Lowder—he couldn't help it while sitting there—the air, which was the thing to be desired, of no absorption in Kate sufficiently deep to be alarming. He had failed their young hostess each morning as little as she had failed him; it was only to-day that she hadn't been well enough ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume II • Henry James

... hunched, in the manner of one harkening to inner voices, Jeff betook himself around the corner of the back porch. Once out of her sight, though, he flung from him his mien of absorption. The overture had been rendered; there remained much to be done before the curtain rose. The languorous shade invited one to tarry and rest, but Jeff breasted the sunshine, going hither and yon upon his errands. Back of a cabin on Plunket's Hill he had private ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb



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