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Decompose   Listen
verb
Decompose  v. i.  To become resolved or returned from existing combinations; to undergo dissolution; to decay; to rot.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Decompose" Quotes from Famous Books



... rain, to turn mills, or which causes winds to blow by the unequal rarefaction of the atmosphere. It is from the sun too that the power comes which is liberated in a steam engine. The solar rays enable plants to decompose carbonic acid gas, the product of combustion, and the vegetation thus rendered possible is the source of coal and other combustible bodies. The combustion of coal under a steam boiler therefore ...
— A Catechism of the Steam Engine • John Bourne

... this connection to note that the organic matter in soil gradually disappears, just as a body buried in a grave will finally decompose. Experiments show that such organic matter as wheat straw or cloth in small pieces rots and decays in about three years. But this depends very largely on an excess of air. If the soil is open and the ...
— Rural Hygiene • Henry N. Ogden

... of the external genitals should never be omitted in any case of dysuria during childhood. You will not infrequently discover a phimosis which interferes more or less with the discharge of urine and retains portions of the latter behind the foreskin, where it may decompose and give rise to an inflammatory condition of the prepuce, with painful dysuria.... This is also true of the occasional adhesion of the labia minora in little girls, like the similar adhesion of the foreskin in boys. It is almost constant in the first period of life, but sometimes persists ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino

... a method of painting would seem to Seurat and Signac to be artless, primitive, unscientific, childish, presque du Louvre—above all, unscientific. They would say, "Decompose the tone. That tone is composed of yellow, white, and violet turning towards lake"; and, having satisfied themselves in what proportions, they would dot their canvases over with pure yellow and pure white, ...
— Modern Painting • George Moore

... does not weaken wood under static loading, although the indications are that the wood becomes brittle under impact. If the solution is too strong it will decompose ...
— The Mechanical Properties of Wood • Samuel J. Record

... the surgeon usually has recourse—a liquid one. Certainly not one that speedily deliquesces; for they are both unmanageable, and, what is a more important consideration, they may hold in solution, and not decompose the poison, and thus inoculate the whole of the wound. The application which promises to be successful, is that of the 'lunar caustic'. It is perfectly manageable, and, being sharpened to a point, may be applied with certainty to every recess ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt

... quality, may be of equal value, as a bottle of Burgundy may be worth a bottle of Bordeaux; but the mark, being significant, leads to an exact knowledge of the price, since it gives the analysis. To calculate the price of an article of merchandise is to decompose it into its constituent parts; now, that is exactly what the trade-mark must do, if designed to signify anything. Therefore we are on the road, as I have said, to a general ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon

... something which you conceive apart from the words; you apprehend them from point to point in the words, and the words as expressions of them. Afterwards, no doubt, when you are out of the poetic experience but remember it, you may by analysis decompose this unity, and attend to a substance more or less isolated, and a form more or less isolated. But these are things in your analytic head, not in the poem, which is poetic experience. And if you want to have the poem again, you cannot find it by adding together these ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)

... (see Chapter 5 for their address). Poppy seed used for cooking will often sprout. Sown densely in October, it forms a thick carpet of frilly spring greens underlaid with countless massive taproots that decompose very rapidly if the plants are tilled in in April before flower stalks begin to appear. Beware if using poppies as a green manure crop: be sure to till them in early to avoid trouble with ...
— Gardening Without Irrigation: or without much, anyway • Steve Solomon

... shall decompose the coarse unity of the question presented by Van Dale and his Vandals, as though the one sole "issue," that could be sent down for trial before a jury, were the likelihoods of fraud and gross swindling. It is not ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey

... clay or on one another. These do not descend the hill, and are the remains of an extensive formation which we could only find in situ at one spot on the road to Myrung (see earlier), but which must have been of immense thickness.* [The tendency of many volcanic rocks to decompose in spheres is very well known: it is conspicuous in the black basalts north of Edinburgh, but I do not know any instance equal to this of Nunklow, for the extent of decomposition and dimensions of the resulting spheres.] One block within ten yards of the bungalow door was fifteen feet ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker

... cumbersome gas-distributing system after the invention of the gas shell. These make a peculiar gobbling sound as they rush overhead. They explode with a very slight noise and scatter their contents broadcast. The liquids carried by them are usually of the sort that decompose rapidly when exposed to the air and give off the acrid gases dreaded by the soldiers. They are directed against the artillery as well as against intrenched troops. Every command, no matter how small, has its warning ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish

... that the wonderful explosive did not do what was expected of it, either in England or Holland, for it was found to decompose on keeping. It did everything else that was boasted of it, but no one succeeded in keeping it more than fifteen months, an irremediate defect in an explosive for military purposes. This, of course, was not discovered at first, and the honour ...
— The Good Comrade • Una L. Silberrad

... inmost region; he searched out what, in this totality which forms consciousness, is the province of reason; what comes from it, and not from the imagination and the senses—from within, and not from without."[578] Now to analyze is to decompose, that is, to divide, and to define, in order to see better that which really is. The chief logical instruments of the dialectic method are, therefore, Division and Definition. "The being able to divide according ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker

... oxidation. It is also used in titrating arsenic assays with "iodine" when a feeble acid is required to prevent the absorption of iodine by the alkaline carbonate. It is prepared when wanted in solution, by adding a gram or so of bicarbonate of soda and then as much acid as will decompose the bicarbonate mentioned. When a quantity of the gas is wanted, it is prepared, in an apparatus like that used for sulphuretted hydrogen, by acting on fragments of marble or limestone with dilute ...
— A Textbook of Assaying: For the Use of Those Connected with Mines. • Cornelius Beringer and John Jacob Beringer

... of a dying man. The Pali text vayadhamma sankhara (transitory-by-nature are the Sankharas) is brief and simple but any correct and adequate rendering sounds metaphysical and is dramatically inappropriate. Perhaps the rendering "All compound things must decompose" expresses the Buddha's meaning best. But the verbal antithesis between compound and decomposing is not in the original and though sankhara is etymologically the equivalent of confection or synthesis it hardly means what we call a compound thing as ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot

... existence of the fourth order. Successive generations of the Rovol proved their existence, determined the conditions of their liberation, and found that this metal of power was the only catalyst able to decompose matter and thus liberate the rays. This metal, which was called Rovolon after the Rovol, was first described upon theoretical grounds and later was found, by spectroscopy, in certain stars, notably in one star only eight light-years away, but ...
— Skylark Three • Edward Elmer Smith

... insulated line to a source of such currents, we may pass an inappreciable current over the line, and on any point of the same we are able to obtain a heavy current, capable of fusing a thick copper wire. Or we may, by the help of some artifice, decompose a solution in any electrolytic cell by connecting only one pole of the cell to the line or source of energy. Or we may, by attaching to the line, or only bringing into its vicinity, light up an incandescent lamp, an exhausted tube, ...
— Experiments with Alternate Currents of High Potential and High - Frequency • Nikola Tesla

... be said about fruits, that all those containing acids decompose the gastric juice, as they all contain potash salts in union with fruit acids. As soon as they reach the stomach the free hydrochloric acid of the gastric juice unites with the potash, setting the fruit acid free to irritate the ...
— The No Breakfast Plan and the Fasting-Cure • Edward Hooker Dewey

... infinite, rush into rash and wicked suicide, that they may thus escape from the contradictions and complicated pangs of the finite. The rays of light from the everlasting sun of wisdom and love are indeed forever falling round us, but we no longer bear the prism of faith which would decompose them for us, giving them such direction as they fall upon the symbolic, the relative, that we might read in their three-fold splendor the symbolized, the Absolute. The human soul was created for the enjoyment ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 1, July, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... rigid, with the exception of the upper margin, the stomach, and the tentacles. The tentacles are soft and waving, projected or drawn in at will; they retain their flexible character through life, and decompose when the animal dies. For this reason the dried specimens of corals preserved in museums do not give us the least idea of the living corals, in which every one of the millions of beings composing such ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner

... startled us with the information that we were in the execution grounds. He pointed out spots still damp with the blood of criminals, several jars containing the heads of victims, the protruding hair matted with the lime used to decompose the flesh more rapidly, and a rude cross still remaining upon which a woman had recently been crucified and cut to pieces while alive. Her crime was the gravest known to Chinese law: she had murdered her husband. Poor wretch! probably he had not illy deserved his fate were the whole story ...
— Round the World • Andrew Carnegie

... alumine, sulphuric acid, and potash, so as to render the presence of the alum unequivocal, will readily suggest itself to those who are familiar with analytical chemistry; namely: one of the readiest means is, to decompose the vegetable matter of the bread, by the action of chlorate of potash, in a platina crucible, at a red heat, and then to assay the residuary mass—by means of muriate of barytes, for sulphuric acid; by ammonia, for alumine; and by muriate of platina, for potash[46]. The above method of detecting ...
— A Treatise on Adulterations of Food, and Culinary Poisons • Fredrick Accum

... the oxygen of the air combines with the newly deposited carbon to reproduce a little carbonic acid. But this must be placed to the account of decomposing, not of growing vegetation; for by so much as plants grow, they decompose carbonic acid and give its oxygen to the air, or, in other words, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various

... a Mr. J.B. Thompson, of New Cross, London, patented a new process of bleaching, the main feature of which consisted in the use of carbonic acid gas in a closed vessel to decompose the chloride of lime. The "chemicking" and "souring" operations he performed at one and the same time. The reactions which took place in his bleaching keir were stated by ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 530, February 27, 1886 • Various

... apprehend his claim, it is that he has established as a new principle of science that electricity possesses the qualities of weight, compressibility and gravitation; that he has proved water to be in reality a simple elemental substance, which he can decompose or transform into either hydrogen or oxygen gas according to its electrical condition, and according as positive or negative electricity is applied to it; and that he has invented the means whereby from water he can produce at will ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 1, August 1850 - of Literature, Science and Art. • Various

... our Milton had meted to him! Oh! these four verses! they are as fatal in their number as the date of Peele's letter proved to George Steevens! Something still escapes in the most ingenious fabrication which serves to decompose the materials. It is well our veracious historian dropped all mention of Guarini—else that would have given that coup de grace—a fatal anachronism! However, his invention supplied him with more originality than the adoption of this story and the four verses would lead ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli

... combined with avidity, and that the gold thus treated resisted amalgamation with mercury. Mr. Skey proved the act of absorption of sulphur by gold to be a chemical act, and that electricity was generated in sufficient quantity and intensity during the process to decompose metallic solutions. Sulphur in certain forms had long been known to exercise a prejudicial effect upon the amalgamation of gold, but this had always been attributed to the combination of the sulphur with the quicksilver used. Now, however, it is certain that ...
— Getting Gold • J. C. F. Johnson

... cells are not only the cause but also the product of sugar fermentation, so disease germs are not only a cause (secondary) but also a product of morbid fermentation in the system. Furthermore, just as yeast germs live on and decompose sugar, so disease germs live on and decompose morbid ...
— Nature Cure • Henry Lindlahr

... chapter. Suffice it to say that the intellect represents becoming as a series of states, each of which is homogeneous with itself and consequently does not change. Is our attention called to the internal change of one of these states? At once we decompose it into another series of states which, reunited, will be supposed to make up this internal modification. Each of these new states must be invariable, or else their internal change, if we are forced to notice it, ...
— Creative Evolution • Henri Bergson

... would joke about death? No, when you die, I'll follow your funeral and proclaim to all: "Behold, here is a man who has come to know the truth." Oh no, I'll rather hang you up as a banner of truth. And, the more your skin and flesh decompose and crumble, the more will the truth come out. It will be a most instructive object lesson, highly educative. Tony, why are you staring ...
— Savva and The Life of Man • Leonid Andreyev

... that the shells of pteropods and other surface Mollusca which are constantly falling on the bottom, are absent, or, if a few remain, they are brittle and yellow, and evidently decaying rapidly. These shells of Mollusca decompose more easily and disappear sooner than the smaller, and apparently more delicate, shells of rhizopods. The smaller Foraminifera now give way, and are found in lessening proportion to the larger; the coccoliths first ...
— Discourses - Biological and Geological Essays • Thomas H. Huxley

... all this; when they know and reflect that the body cannot remain any long time in the grave which it is placed in; I am sadly afraid that they will think twice before they will spend from thirty to several hundred pounds in merely putting a corpse into the ground to decompose. ...
— International Weekly Miscellany Vol. I. No. 3, July 15, 1850 • Various

... Teeth, bone and wood don't last long in their original state. However, buried materials decompose, leaving a film of carbon as a fossil. This results in a leaf tracery, or the outlines of some simple animal. On a gigantic scale, this process of forming carbon has resulted in our great ...
— Let's collect rocks & shells • Shell Oil Company

... substances confined too long in receptacles decompose and generate pathogenic poisons, that is, poisons productive of disease; and that the intestinal reservoirs are no exception to this law of putrefactive changes. How could we avoid drawing the inference, therefore, that disease-breeding germs, (generated in the organism and hence ...
— Intestinal Ills • Alcinous Burton Jamison

... sinking a pit near Iaci in the region of Mount Etna, they pierced through seven distinct formations of lava, with parallel beds of earth interposed between each stratum. He estimates that two thousand years were required to decompose the lava and form it into soil, and consequently that fourteen thousand years were needed for the whole series of formations. A little further on, he however furnishes data, showing to every candid mind on what ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft

... skins will slip off, which is called blanching; they must always be pounded with rose or orange flower water, to prevent their oiling. When cream is used, put it in just before the mixture is ready; much beating will decompose it. Before a pudding or cake is begun, every ingredient necessary for it must be ready; when the process is retarded by neglecting to have them prepared, the article is injured. The oven must be in a proper state, ...
— The Virginia Housewife • Mary Randolph

... it remembered, is not subject to decay; a saint does not decompose in the flesh like mortal sinners. One of these, I have been told, dead fifty years ago and now canonised, can be seen yet in one of the monasteries of North Lebanon, keeping well his flesh and bones together—divinely embalmed. It has been truly said that the work of a good man never dies; ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani

... and honest in their idolatry of the Great Babylon. Young Oxonians or young barristers, even when they become slashing London critics, are more harmless than they themselves imagine, and after all inspire less awe than Ben-Nevis, or than the celebrated agriculturist who proposed to decompose that mountain with acids, and to scatter the debris as a fertiliser over the Lochaber moss. But a Highlander born, who has been nurtured on oatmeal porridge and oatmeal cakes; who in his youth wore home-spun cloth, and was innocent of shoes and stockings; who blushed in his attempts to ...
— The Celtic Magazine, Vol. 1, No. 1, November 1875 • Various

... process is to combine the "Leblanc" and the "ammonia-soda" manufacture. But in place of using caustic lime to decompose the ammonium chloride and get back the ammonia, the "alkali waste" spoken of above is employed, it being found that not only is the ammonia driven off, but that also the sulphur in the "waste" is obtained in a form allowing of its easy utilization, it and the ammonia ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 611, September 17, 1887 • Various

... were buried in the soil of the plot at a little depth, so that the roots of the garden plants set would come in contact with the wires, the supposition being that the currents of electricity passing along the wires would decompose into its constituents the plant food in the vicinity of the roots and more readily prepare it for the plants. Two electric gardens were thus prepared and each furnished with two common battery cells, so ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 841, February 13, 1892 • Various

... fever has shown itself in any household, the very first thing is to see to the continuous freshening of the air in the sick-room and in all the house. Ventilation is, indeed, the first and most important method of disinfection. Chloride of lime and other disinfecting fluids will decompose the offensive and noxious odours, but pure air will sweep the organisms of disease themselves away. Fresh air kills the microbes of certain diseases, e.g., consumption, and is hostile to all disease. The stools ...
— Papers on Health • John Kirk

... containing shavings is chiefly objectionable because of the amount of inert material. The shavings are exceedingly slow to decompose, and in light soil in considerable quantities would cause a serious loss of moisture. If applied, on the other hand, to a heavy soil and accompanied by sufficient irrigation water, the effect of making the soil more friable ...
— One Thousand Questions in California Agriculture Answered • E.J. Wickson

... used to make up a heap o' songs, den. Dey'd decompose[FN: compose] dey own songs an' sing' em. I never will forgit one song dey sung when dey buried anybody. It made Old Marster, Mistis, an' all of' em cry. Us chillun cried, too. It went ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Mississippi Narratives • Works Projects Administration



Words linked to "Decompose" :   moulder, physics, crack, decomposition, rot, biodegrade, break up, hang, chemical science, decay, break down, digest



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