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Amplify   Listen
verb
Amplify  v. i.  
1.
To become larger. (Obs.) "Strait was the way at first, withouten light, But further in did further amplify."
2.
To speak largely or copiously; to be diffuse in argument or description; to dilate; to expatiate; often with on or upon. "He must often enlarge and amplify upon the subject he handles."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Amplify" Quotes from Famous Books



... in this sweet, beautiful world, in its fair incessant variety, its satisfaction, its opportunities, exultant in this glorious gift of life. Had I the power of music I would make a world-wide motif swell and amplify, gather to itself this theme and that, and rise at last to sheer ecstasy of triumph and rejoicing. It should be all sound, all pride, all the hope of outsetting in the morning brightness, all the glee of unexpected happenings, ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells

... and Mr. W. at Allfoxden house, and during this time, (beside the reading of MS. poems) they took me to Limouth, and Linton, and the Valley of Stones. This beautiful and august scenery, might suggest many remarks, as well as on our incidents upon the way, but I check the disposition to amplify, from recollecting the extent to which an unconstrained indulgence in narrative had formerly led me, in the affair of ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle

... most pleasing performances have been produced by learning and genius, exercised upon subjects of little importance. It seems to have been, in all ages, the pride of wit, to show how it could exalt the low, and amplify the little. To speak not inadequately of things really and naturally great, is a task not only diflicult but disagreeable; because the writer is degraded in his own eyes, by standing in comparison with his ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 6 - Reviews, Political Tracts, and Lives of Eminent Persons • Samuel Johnson

... We will now amplify, as far as is necessary, the points already touched upon, and introduce the Variations recognised in connection ...
— Round Games with Cards • W. H. Peel

... partly at least, in your eyes. You can amplify later. Come, get ready for the street. Put on what you please, so that you wear a smile. These are not times to worry over slight reverses as long as the vital ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe

... inserting a clause which should express the satisfaction of the house at the success of the army under General Wayne, Mr. Madison said, that it had been the wish of the committee who framed the address, to avoid the minutia of the speech: but as a desire was manifested to amplify particular parts, it might not be amiss to glance at the policy observed towards foreign nations. He therefore moved to amend the amendment by adding the words, "solicitous also as we are for the preservation of peace with all nations, ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 5 (of 5) • John Marshall

... a new fashion, wore a coif of slashed black velvet, a head-dress that recalls memories of mediaeval legend to a young imagination, to amplify, as it were, the dignity of womanhood. Her red-gold hair, escaping from under her cap, hung loose; bright golden color in the light, red in the rounded shadow of the curls that only partially hid her neck. Beneath a massive white brow, clean ...
— Two Poets - Lost Illusions Part I • Honore de Balzac

... investigator of nature is to trace likenesses and analogies between what seem on the surface to be dissimilar and unconnected events. As this idea, and this practice, were the foundations whereon the superstructure of alchemy was raised, I think it is important to amplify them more fully ...
— The Story of Alchemy and the Beginnings of Chemistry • M. M. Pattison Muir

... traced the origin of Pantomime, and the source of dancing, let us, in order to further amplify my subject, look at also for a moment the origin of music, in the ...
— A History of Pantomime • R. J. Broadbent

... full of precious detail. He was, himself, an eyewitness of much that happened; he pursued a personal acquaintance with many of those who were connected with Sir Oliver's affairs that he might amplify his chronicles, and he considered no scrap of gossip that was to be gleaned along the countryside too trivial to be recorded. I suspect him also of having received no little assistance from Jasper Leigh in the ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini

... also (no doubt) counsellors and governors which may be held sufficient (negotiis pares), able to manage affairs, and to keep them from precipices and manifest inconveniences; which nevertheless are far from the ability to raise and amplify an estate in power, means, and fortune. But be the workmen what they may be, let us speak of the work; that is, the true greatness of kingdoms and estates, and the means thereof. An argument fit for great and mighty princes to have in their hand; to ...
— Essays - The Essays Or Counsels, Civil And Moral, Of Francis Ld. - Verulam Viscount St. Albans • Francis Bacon

... king was to see those who listened to him laugh, whether with sincerity or with affectation, when he related something; he could narrate well and amplify in a very amusing manner all the particulars of an anecdote; but he called anyone who did not laugh at his jests a fool, and that was always the person who understood him best. He gave the preference to the opinion of Brambilla, ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt

... and nothing remains but to amplify and decorate them, this dim magnificence may be in place. But if it is admitted into a demonstration, it is very much worse than absolute nonsense; just as that transparent haze, through which the sailor sees capes and mountains of false sizes and in false bearings, is more ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson

... his life of Sir Thomas Browne, to have been in all ages the pride of art to show how it could exalt the low and amplify the little. To this ambition, perhaps, we owe the Frogs of Homer; the Gnat and the Bees of Virgil; the Butterfly of Spenser; the Shadow of Wowerus; and the ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli

... take it to the small table within the window there. I myself will sit here and jot down some ideas for my dedication which you can afterwards amplify." ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston

... in the story should be tested for its value in the development of the theme. An incident that does not amplify certain phases of the story has no right to be included, and great care should be used in an effort to incorporate just the material necessary for the proper evolution of the thought. The problem is not so much what can be secured to be included in the story, but rather, after ...
— Short-Stories • Various

... modern discoveries in chemistry and in geology, by having traced the causes of the combinations of bodies to remoter origins, as well as those in astronomy, which dignify the present age, contribute to enlarge and amplify our ideas of the power of the Great First Cause. And had those ancient philosophers, who contended that the world was formed from atoms, ascribed their combinations to certain immutable properties received from the hand ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. I - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin

... To continue and to amplify the results of his work must needs be my continual aim. I am full of hope that this book may bring me some help, not only towards his Memorial Scheme, which contemplates the erection and equipment in London and other Capitals ...
— The Authoritative Life of General William Booth • George Scott Railton

... of his own enthusiasm that our thoughts expand with his imagery and kindle with his sentiments. Nor is the naturalist without his part in the entertainment, for he is assisted to recollect and to combine, to arrange his discoveries, and to amplify the sphere of his contemplation. The great defect of the "Seasons" is want of method; but for this I know not that there was any remedy. Of many appearances subsisting all at once, no rule can be given why one should be mentioned before another; yet the memory wants the help ...
— Lives of the Poets: Gay, Thomson, Young, and Others • Samuel Johnson

... acknowledgment of the existence or value of his history. We may, however, set down certain books under the various subjects which the chapters have treated. These books will consist of (1) standard works for wider reading and (2) special works on which the author has relied for his statements or which amplify his point of view. The ...
— The Negro • W.E.B. Du Bois

... Lewis was up early, putting his great, bare studio in fitting order, and trying to amplify and secure the screened-in corner which previous models had frequently damned as a purely tentative dressing-room. Promptly at ...
— Through stained glass • George Agnew Chamberlain

... pamphlet, reprobating the matter and style of those critiques, and pointing out their perilous tendency, as guides of public feeling. But, as point after point presented itself for demonstration, I found myself compelled to amplify what was at first a letter to the Editor of a Review, into something very like a treatise on art, to which I was obliged to give the more consistency and completeness, because it advocated opinions which, to the ordinary connoisseur, will sound heretical. I now scarcely know whether I should ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin

... life," said the bon-vivant. "It's true I have given myself up to observing anxiously such an advancement as you describe—a vulgar one you will say. When I was a very young man I was a very thin man. I determined to amplify my dimensions. I followed with careful interest my daily increase toward my present—let us not say obesity, but ...
— Tales From Bohemia • Robert Neilson Stephens

... that the machine could reproduce and amplify thought patterns with strict fidelity, they began to fight light duels. The fenced with blunted foils—Hector won, of course, because of his much faster reflexes. Then they tried other weapons—pistols, sonic beams, grenades—but always wearing protective equipment. Strangely, even though Hector ...
— The Dueling Machine • Benjamin William Bova

... coldly critical is simply because their imagination is of the feeblest."[12] Necessarily there is always a certain coloration from the mind which transmits the message, just as the tones of two violins though played by the same hand might be different. Moreover, as a resonant instrument would amplify the sound and an inferior one would hamper it, so a greater artist would interpret a message to more effect than one less capable. The gramophone will give us the actual notes of the singer, but it depends upon ourselves as to whether we catch the real thing ...
— Spirit and Music • H. Ernest Hunt

... The original verses merely name the trees. I have been obliged to amplify slightly and to omit some quas versu dicere non est; e.g. the tinisa (Dalbergia ougeiniensis), punnaga (Rottleria tinctoria), tilaka (not named), syandana (Dalbergia ougeiniensis again), ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI

... not only necessary, but highly desirable. Even if this country were comfortably well-off, healthy, prosperous, and educated, men would go on inventing and creating opportunities to amplify the possibilities of life. These inventions would mean radical transformations. For we are bent upon establishing more in this nation than a minimum of comfort. A liberal people would welcome social inventions as gladly ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann

... undertook the pleasant task of writing out these reminiscences, I engaged, you will remember, to amplify the record of one week; judging that a rigidly faithful analysis of that sample would disclose the approximate percentage of happiness, virtue, &c., in Life. But whilst writing the annotations on Sept. 9th (which, by the ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy

... sensuous conception of an object in harmony with the category. (Numerus est quantitas phaenomenon—sensatio realitas phaenomenon; constans et perdurabile rerum substantia phaenomenon— aeternitas, necessitas, phaenomena, etc.) Now, if we remove a restrictive condition, we thereby amplify, it appears, the formerly limited conception. In this way, the categories in their pure signification, free from all conditions of sensibility, ought to be valid of things as they are, and not, as the schemata represent them, merely as they appear; and consequently the categories ...
— The Critique of Pure Reason • Immanuel Kant

... difficult to expand these doubts, to amplify these reasons, and even to adduce others which occurred to the unhappy young man as he climbed the hill. But enough has been said. Surely the reader, no matter how removed in sympathy from that line of argument, must be able now at least to sympathize, to perceive that Bennington de ...
— The Claim Jumpers • Stewart Edward White

... and most meagre nature. Examples, beginning with Monteverde, abound in all the early Italian opera composers.[129] Lully of the French school and Alessandro Scarlatti of the Italian were the first to amplify these beginnings and to establish a definite standard of structure. In both schools this standard represented an application of the Three-part form principle; the French arranging their contrasts, slow, fast, slow (the so-called French overture—of which we have an example ...
— Music: An Art and a Language • Walter Raymond Spalding

... this longing, and by no means a confirmed unveracity, that prompted her to amplify her comments upon her own filial independence. "Oh, I guess I pretty near never do anything I don't want to," she said. "I kind of run the house to suit myself. I guess if the truth had to be told, I just about run the whole Atwater family, when ...
— Gentle Julia • Booth Tarkington

... to lay before you all his letters, and my answers: I repeat that promise: and am the less solicitous, for that reason, to amplify upon the contents of either. But I cannot too often express my vexation, to be driven to such streights and difficulties, here at home, as oblige me to answer letters, (from a man I had not absolutely intended to encourage, and to whom I had really great objections,) filled as his are ...
— Clarissa, Volume 1 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson

... courtesy than to merit of mine, I am made queen of you all, yet I am not on that account minded to have respect merely to my own judgment in the governance of our life, but to unite your wisdom with mine; and that you may understand what I think of doing, and by consequence may be able to amplify or curtail it at your pleasure, I will in few words make known to you my purpose. The course observed by Pampinea to-day, if I have judged aright, seems to be alike commendable and delectable; wherefore, ...
— The Decameron, Volume I • Giovanni Boccaccio

... word—for nowadays we can but amplify, and so enfeeble, what some old dead master of language, immortal though obscure, has said in ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade

... are different methods of composition. Virgil was used to pour out a great number of verses in the morning, and pass the day in retrenching the exuberances, and correcting inaccuracies; and it was Pope's custom to write his first thoughts in his first words, and gradually to amplify, decorate, rectify, and refine them. Others employ, at once, memory and invention, and, with little intermediate use of the pen, form and polish large masses by continued meditation, and write their productions ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson

... her eyes. How dared he—how could he, say that? how so falsely misrepresent her actions, and misinterpret her purposes? Her mind went staggering back over the past, seeking for means of self-justification and defense. She had only meant to benefit him—to amplify and soften his character—to inspire him with more ideal views and aims; and to do this she had—what? Sophie paused, and shuddered. Could it, after all, be true? Had she, forgetful of maidenly modesty and reserve, opened to this man's ...
— Bressant • Julian Hawthorne

... was followed by a long line of Italian oratorio composers who contributed to amplify and enrich this form of composition. Among the earliest of these writers were Carissimi, Stradella, Scarlatti, Mazzocchi, Federici, Pistocchi, Caldara, and Colonna. Carissimi perfected the recitative and invested the music with more importance, giving it something like equal rank with the dramatic ...
— The Standard Oratorios - Their Stories, Their Music, And Their Composers • George P. Upton

... broken, 15 what has he got? what is he advantaged by his rich adventure? Perhaps, you will say, he has got gold enough to obtain his ransom. Indeed this may be; and therefore no similitude can be found that can fully amplify the matter, 'for what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?' 'Tis a loss that standeth by itself, there is not another like it, or unto which it may be compared. 'Tis only like itself—'tis singular, 'tis the chief of all losses—the highest, the greatest loss. 'For ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... boots could not spoil the beauty of the scene. Prescott asked for a room; and sitting outside after dinner, he gathered from some men, who were not working, the story of Kermode's next exploit. Their accounts of it were terse and somewhat disconnected, but Prescott was afterward able to amplify them from the narrative of ...
— Prescott of Saskatchewan • Harold Bindloss

... expressed, that he who runs may read its meaning. The wisest and best men of the nation have differed as to its true construction, and their differing interpretations are mainly the result of adherence to one or the other of the adverse principles already stated—the one aiming to amplify the jurisdiction of the Federal government by liberal or latitudinarian construction—the other aiming to limit it by ...
— The Relations of the Federal Government to Slavery - Delivered at Fort Wayne, Ind., October 30th 1860 • Joseph Ketchum Edgerton

... young English painters studying there, who just about then, by some common impulse, seemed drawn towards this corner of their native land.... It was part of our creed to paint our pictures directly from nature, and not merely to rely upon sketches and studies which we could afterwards amplify in the comfort of ...
— The Cornish Riviera • Sidney Heath

... lo, behold these talents of their hair, With twisted metal amorously impleach'd, I have received from many a several fair, Their kind acceptance weepingly beseech'd With the annexions of fair gems enrich'd, And deep-brain'd sonnets that did amplify Each stone's dear nature, worth and quality. The diamond,—why, 'twas beautiful and hard, Whereto his invised[8] properties did tend; The deep-green emerald, in whose fresh regard Weak sights their sickly radiance ...
— Shakespeare and Precious Stones • George Frederick Kunz

... been about seven years upon the market, when a New York youth, inspired by the pages of Doddridge, Flint, and Withers, with a fervid love for border history, entered upon the task of collecting documents and traditions with which to correct and amplify the lurid story which these authors had outlined. In the prosecution of this undertaking, Lyman C. Draper became so absorbed with the passion of collecting that he found little opportunity for literary effort, and in time his early facility in this direction ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers

... her mistress's presence. There is a species of hymenoptera, observed by Fabre, the burrowing wasp, which in order to provide a supply of fresh meat for her offspring after her own decease, calls in the science of anatomy to amplify the resources of her instinctive cruelty, and, having made a collection of weevils and spiders, proceeds with marvellous knowledge and skill to pierce the nerve-centre on which their power of locomotion (but none of their other vital functions) depends, so that the paralysed insect, ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust

... of tedious evenings: in Germany, it has the advantage of being comparatively new; and its exhibitions are directed to a class of minds attuned to a far higher pitch of feeling. The Germans are accused of a proneness to amplify and systematise, to admire with excess, and to find, in whatever calls forth their applause, an epitome of a thousand excellencies, which no one else can discover in it. Their discussions on the theatre ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle

... principally took the shape of drawings from the antique statues. When he first went to Edinburgh, Mr. Macnee became connected with Mr. Lizars, the eminent engraver, by whom he was employed in executing anatomical drawings, colouring engravings, and other cognate works, which greatly tended to amplify his experience, and through Mr. Lizars he obtained numerous commissions from lithographers in Edinburgh, which brought him in emoluments of considerable value. Having completed his studies under Sir ...
— Western Worthies - A Gallery of Biographical and Critical Sketches of West - of Scotland Celebrities • J. Stephen Jeans

... turned out as it deserved, I would have raised all Fleet Street, and borrowed the giant's staff from St. Dunstan's Church, to immolate the betrayer of trust. I have written to him as he was never written to before by an author, I'll be sworn; and I hope you will amplify my wrath, till it has an ...
— A Publisher and His Friends • Samuel Smiles

... wherefore not? A reasonable reason, If good, is none the worse for repetition; If bad, the best way 's certainly to tease on, And amplify: you lose much by concision, Whereas insisting in or out of season Convinces all men, even a politician; Or—what is just the same—it wearies out. So the end 's ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron

... the scene closes with absolute suddenness; there is no attempt to describe, to amplify, to analyse. There follows the charge to Peter, the strange prophecy of his death, and the still stranger repression of curiosity as to what should be ...
— The Thread of Gold • Arthur Christopher Benson

... a faculty, or a moral and social principle, another would just as naturally refer to a personal and more complex deity:—that which in one instance would form the very nature of a superior being, in the other would form only an attribute—swell the power and amplify the character of a Jupiter, a Mars, a Venus, or a Pan. It is in the nature of man, that personal divinities once created and adored, should present more vivid and forcible images to his fancy than abstract personifications of physical objects and moral impressions. ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... are thrown back wholly upon yourself—for God and Faith are not there. The people outside disperse their affections, you hoard yours, you nurse them into intensity. What they let slip, what they forget in the movement and changes of free life, you hold on to, amplify, exaggerate into a rank growth of memories. They can look with a smile at the troubles and pains of the past; but you can't. Old pains keep on gnawing at your heart, old desires, old deceptions, old dreams, assailing you in the dead stillness of ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad

... wages they pay. As the investigation shows, there never was a more unfounded charge, but the very fact that it was used is an indication of what I mean. It manifests itself in the movement to dispense with all reticence and amplify in every way sex education on the theory that society is to blame because it is not telling young people of the danger of sin. You do not have to stand over a sewer and breathe in the bad smell in order to recognize that it has a bad smell when you ...
— Ethics in Service • William Howard Taft

... approaching; the semicircle was almost travelled round; he came to the last pupil; he turned. But Madame was before me; she had stepped out suddenly; she seemed to magnify her proportions and amplify her drapery; she eclipsed me; I was hid. She knew my weakness and deficiency; she could calculate the degree of moral paralysis—the total default of self-assertion—with which, in a crisis, I could be struck. ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte

... Amiability amindeco. Amiable afabla, aminda. Amicably pace. Amid meze. Amidst meze. Amity amikeco. Ammonia amoniako. Among inter. Amongst inter. Amorous amema. Amount sumo. Amphibious amfibia. Amphitheatre amfiteatro. Amphora amforo. Ample suficxa. Amplify grandigi. Amplitude amplekso. Amputate detrancxi. Amulet talismano. Amuse amuzi. Anagram anagramo. Analogy analogio. Analysis analizo. Analyze analizi. Anarchy anarhxio. Anatomy anatomio. Ancestors praavoj, prapatroj. Anchor ankro. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes

... than that of David Poindexter. It will be my aim here to tell the tale as simply and briefly as possible —to repeat it, indeed, very much as it came to my ears while living, several years ago, near the scene in which its events took place. There is a temptation to amplify it, and to give it a more recent date and a different setting; but (other considerations aside) the story might lose in force and weight more than it would thereby gain in ...
— David Poindexter's Disappearance and Other Tales • Julian Hawthorne

... course the origin of these displays. "Look at me," say these youthful beginners in womanly artifice, without reflecting whether or not it be to their advantage to show so very much of themselves. (Amplify and correct ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy

... have arranged these primal truths in the order of their importance, in the hope that some patient investigator may amplify and codify them into a coherent body of doctrine, and so establish a new religion. I would do it myself were it not that a very corpulent and most unexpected pudding is claiming ...
— The Fiend's Delight • Dod Grile

... state of the great Mexican republic, takes the character of territory, the government of which is under the charge of a commandant-general, who exercises the charge of a superior political chief, whose attributes depend entirely upon the president of the republic and the general congress. But, to amplify the legislation of its centre, it has a deputation made up of seven vocals, the half of these individuals being removed every two years. The superior political chief presides at their sessions. The inhabitants of the territory are divided amongst ...
— What I Saw in California • Edwin Bryant

... one of the earliest of foreign writers on the English constitution, remarks that the explanation of English liberty is to be found in the absolute power of her early kings, and the most careful modern student can do no more than amplify this statement. That this centralization was the result of any deliberate policy on the part of William can hardly be maintained. A conscious modification of the feudal system as he introduced it into England, with a view to the preservation of his own power, has ...
— The History of England From the Norman Conquest - to the Death of John (1066-1216) • George Burton Adams



Words linked to "Amplify" :   compound, heighten, hyperbolise, misinform, magnify, enlarge, vaunt, overemphasize, hyperbolize, amplifier, deepen, aggrandise, expand, swash, pad, intensify, overstress, blow up, shoot a line, understate, brag, gas, bluster, embellish, blow, lard, gasconade, dramatize



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