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Diurnal   Listen
adjective
Diurnal  adj.  
1.
Relating to the daytime; belonging to the period of daylight, distinguished from the night; opposed to nocturnal; as, diurnal heat; diurnal hours.
2.
Daily; recurring every day; performed in a day; going through its changes in a day; constituting the measure of a day; as, a diurnal fever; a diurnal task; diurnal aberration, or diurnal parallax; the diurnal revolution of the earth. "Ere twice the horses of the sun shall bring Their fiery torcher his diurnal ring."
3.
(Bot.) Opening during the day, and closing at night; said of flowers or leaves.
4.
(Zool.) Active by day; applied especially to the eagles and hawks among raptorial birds, and to butterflies (Diurna) among insects.
Diurnal aberration (Anat.), the aberration of light arising from the effect of the earth's rotation upon the apparent direction of motion of light.
Diurnal arc, the arc described by the sun during the daytime or while above the horizon; hence, the arc described by the moon or a star from rising to setting.
Diurnal circle, the apparent circle described by a celestial body in consequence of the earth's rotation.
Diurnal motion of the earth, the motion of the earth upon its axis which is described in twenty-four hours.
Diurnal motion of a heavenly body, that apparent motion of the heavenly body which is due to the earth's diurnal motion.
Diurnal parallax. See under Parallax.
Diurnal revolution of a planet, the motion of the planet upon its own axis which constitutes one complete revolution.
Synonyms: See Daily.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Diurnal" Quotes from Famous Books



... degree as, the estimates of others have varied at different times; but I myself have found that the more I read of it the more I liked and esteemed it; and I believe that, if I had a copy of my own and could turn it over in the proper diurnal and nocturnal fashion, not as duty- but as pleasure-reading, I should like it better still. Certain points that have appealed to me have been noticed already—its combination of sensuous and ideal passion is perhaps the most important of ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury

... I have heard my uncle, who was a learned hedgehog, say,—"the animal man is a diurnal animal; he comes out and feeds in the daytime." But a second cousin, who had travelled as far as Covent Garden, and who lived for many years in a London kitchen, told me that he thought my uncle was wrong, and that man comes out and feeds at ...
— Brothers of Pity and Other Tales of Beasts and Men • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing

... necessary to fill up all the recesses of the great vacancy. It was all very crude at the start; for years a great electric light was simply suspended in the centre of the cavern's roof and the light did not vary in color. A son of the first king suggested the plan of giving the sun diurnal movement and the changing light. The moon and stars were a later development. They found, too, that the light could not be made to reach certain recesses in the cavern where the roof approached the earth, so they finally built ...
— The Land of the Changing Sun • William N. Harben

... recesses but few and faint glimmering rays of light ever penetrated; for, by a diabolical ingenuity, the narrow loophole which served for a window to that subterraneous abode was so constructed, that, let the sun be at what point it might, during its diurnal course, but a few reflected beams of light could ever find their way into ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest

... it all happened, to Job, in the apparent compass of one piece of time not broken by diurnal intervals, not mitigated by recuperative cessations between blow and blow. It seemed to Rosalie that it was like that it happened also to her. There seemed no interval. It seemed to her wrath on wrath, visitation upon visitation, judgment ...
— This Freedom • A. S. M. Hutchinson

... garden lying in a lull Between the mountains and the mountainous sea, I know not where, but which a dream diurnal Paints on my lids a moment till the hull Be lifted from the kernel And Slumber fed to me. Your foot-print is not there, Mnemosene, Though it would seem a ruined place and after Your lichenous heart, being full Of broken columns, caryatides Thrown to the earth and fallen forward ...
— Second April • Edna St. Vincent Millay

... accurate observers at various points on the Lakes for the last ten years do not seem to confirm this theory; but it has been well established by the recent observations of Colonel Graham, at both ends of Lake Michigan, that there is a semi-diurnal lunar tide on that lake of at least one third of ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various

... their labours during the whole of this day, the 3rd of January, without thinking further of the volcano, which could not, besides, be seen from the shore of Granite House. But once or twice, large shadows, veiling the sun, which described its diurnal arc through an extremely clear sky, indicated that a thick cloud of smoke passed between its disc and the island. The wind, blowing on the shore, carried all these vapours to the westward. Cyrus Harding and Gideon Spilett remarked these sombre appearances, and from ...
— The Secret of the Island • W.H.G. Kingston (translation from Jules Verne)

... With thy diurnal sway that crowdest* aye, *pushest together, drivest And hurtlest all from East till Occident That naturally would hold another way; Thy crowding set the heav'n in such array At the beginning of this fierce voyage, That cruel Mars ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer

... 1534, is the date assigned for the trial, "befoir the Bishop of Ross, be ane commission of the Bischope of Sanctandrois," of Kirk and others. (Diurnal of Occurrents, p. 18.) Of these persons, Calderwood informs us, that Sir William Kirk, as his name denotes, was a priest; but "whether he compeared and abjured, or fled, we can find no certaintie;" that Adam Dayes, or Dease, was "a ship-wright that ...
— The Works of John Knox, Vol. 1 (of 6) • John Knox

... goes through its diurnal epochs, of working and slumbering; and now, for the second time, most European and African mortals are asleep. But here, in this Whirlpool of Words, sleep falls not; the Night spreads her coverlid of Darkness over it in vain. Within ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle

... Tourgenieff's own prose-poems that the dialogue of the Jungfrau and the Finsteraarhorn across the centuries is darkly shadowed. The evening of the world falls upon spirits sensitive to its intimations as the diurnal twilight falls upon the hearts of travellers descending a broad stream near the Ocean and the haven of ...
— The Origins and Destiny of Imperial Britain - Nineteenth Century Europe • J. A. Cramb

... which raise or depress the standard of vitality, there seems to be,—I think I may venture to say there is,—a rhythmic undulation in the flow of the vital force. The "dynamo" which furnishes the working powers of consciousness and action has its annual, its monthly, its diurnal waves, even its momentary ripples, in the current it furnishes. There are greater and lesser curves in the movement of every day's life,—a series of ascending and descending movements, a periodicity depending on the very nature of the force at work in the living ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... for example, discourse with authority upon the heteropterous mictidae or tell you in what genus or genera the prothorax and femora are digitate; or whether climatic and polymorphic forms of certain diurnal lepidoptera occur within certain boreal limits. I have only a vague and superficial knowledge of any science, ...
— Iole • Robert W. Chambers

... mighty, powerful, dark-dispelling sun, Now thou art risen, and thy day begun. How shrink the shrouding mists before thy face, As up thou spring'st to thy diurnal race! How darkness chases darkness to the west, As shades of light on light rise radiant from thy crest! For thee, great source of strength, emblem of might, In hours of darkest gloom there is no night. Thou shinest ...
— Fifty years & Other Poems • James Weldon Johnson

... temperature, with increase of elevation, has a diurnal range, and depends upon the hour of the day, the changes being the greatest at mid-day and the early part of the afternoon, and decreasing to about sunset, when, with a clear sky, there is little or no change of temperature ...
— The Dominion of the Air • J. M. Bacon

... and acted despair at being compelled to go, and then he departed. To the splendid party he went, and drowned all recollections of whatever love he had felt in the fresh intoxication of vanity—a diurnal stimulus which, however degrading, and he did feel it degrading, was now become necessary to ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth

... tufts of feathers that give rather the impression of horns. There are bare-legged owls and owls with feather stockings. There are owls that fly by day and owls that fly by night, though this is a less satisfactory distinction than that between the diurnal butterflies and nocturnal moths. Any reliable classification of owls must, in short, rest on certain structural bony differences of interest only to the student of anatomy. Nearly all these birds are able to turn the outer toe completely round, and most of them, ...
— Birds in the Calendar • Frederick G. Aflalo

... that, independent of those exterior causes, which are competent to totally change its face, as the impulse of a comet may do, this globe contains within itself, a cause adequate to alter it entirely, since, besides the diurnal and sensible motion of the earth, it has one extremely slow, almost imperceptible, by which every thing must eventually be changed in it: this is the motion from whence depends the precession of the equinoctial points, ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 2 • Baron D'Holbach

... journalist? What is journalism? Is it a trade, a commercial business, or a profession? Our word journal comes from the French. It has different forms in the several Romantic languages, and all go back to the Latin diurnalis, daily, from dies, a day. Diurnal and diary are derived from the same source. The first journals were in fact diaries, daily records of happenings, compiled often for the pleasure and use of the compiler alone, sometimes for monarchs or statesmen or friends; later to be circulated ...
— Composition-Rhetoric • Stratton D. Brooks

... to the accumulation of caloric from the sun's rays, as to the passage of a heated current of air derived from the much hotter regions to the westward. It would be interesting to know how far this N.W. diurnal tide extends; also the rate at which it gathers moisture in its progress over the damp regions of the Sunderbunds. Its excessive dryness in N.W. India approaches that of the African and Australian deserts; and I shall give an ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker

... Care," he runneth a chance of being "devoured by lions"! At least he appears to have sought the company of those parlous beasts in their native Afric wilds. We hear that "the lions kept him tucked up one night," which same news (—gathered from a diurnal intituled the Johannesberg Star—) hath a fearsome and ill-boding sound. That he is—for the time at least—in every sense "tucked up," is only too obviously true. Peradventure he may yet think the better of it, correct his Frothy Distemper and Vagrant Disposition, and (as the agonising advertisements ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, November 7, 1891 • Various

... Parliament. By this act was the supremacy of the people over the Parliament acknowledged, for the very publication of its transactions was an appeal to the people for approval and support. This printed record of parliamentary affairs came out in 1641, and was entitled The Diurnal Occurrences, or Daily Proceedings of both Houses in this great and happy Parliament, from the 3d of November, 1640, to the 3d of November, 1641. The speeches delivered from the first date down ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, Issue 2, February, 1864 • Various

... so widely awakened by the phenomenon that she sat up in bed, and stared steadily at the shine. An appearance of this sort, sufficient to excite attention anywhere, was no less than a marvel in Hintock, as Grace had known the hamlet. Almost every diurnal and nocturnal effect in that woodland place had hitherto been the direct result of the regular terrestrial roll which produced the season's changes; but here was something dissociated from these normal sequences, and foreign to local habit ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy

... gives place to a nervous restlessness; at the least tremor it leaps violently, and often swims actively from one food-plant to another. This blue fit lasts till daybreak, and is then succeeded by the prawn's diurnal tint. ...
— The Outline of Science, Vol. 1 (of 4) - A Plain Story Simply Told • J. Arthur Thomson

... the daily rotation takes place is an imaginary straight line passing through the centre of the earth, and its extremities are called poles, hence the names of the North and the South pole. The diurnal movement is from West to East and takes place in ...
— The Land of the Long Night • Paul du Chaillu

... conversation to themselves, and others, and instead of celebrating, censure their superiors. It is by a curious person, and industrious friend of mine, observ'd, that the sap of this tree rises and descends with the sun's diurnal course (which it visibly slackens in the night) and more plentifully at the root on the south side, though those roots cut on the north were larger, and less distant from the body of the tree; and not only distill'd from the ends, which were next the stem, but from ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn

... endeavours had answered to the sole end and intention which he had proposed to himself, how could it avoid having terrible effects upon a head and heart so furnished as his? However, the poor remainders of his coat bore all the punishment. The orient sun never entered upon his diurnal progress without missing a piece of it. He hired a tailor to stitch up the collar so close that it was ready to choke him, and squeezed out his eyes at such a rate as one could see nothing but the white. What little ...
— A Tale of a Tub • Jonathan Swift

... like the thunder-wielding chief of the celestials himself. And, O thou best of the Kuru race, King Yudhishthira the just, endued with high intelligence, was then, O monarch, residing in the vicinity of that lake at will and celebrating with his wedded wife, the daughter of Drupada, the diurnal sacrifice called Rajarshi, according to the ordinance sanctioned for the celestials and persons living in the wilderness. And, O monarch, having reached that spot, Duryodhana commanded his men by thousands, saying, 'Let pleasure-houses ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 2 • Translated by Kisari Mohan Ganguli

... lands with vasty murk Either when sun, after his diurnal course, Hath walked the ultimate regions of the sky And wearily hath panted forth his fires, Shivered by their long journeying and wasted By traversing the multitudinous air, Or else because the self-same ...
— Of The Nature of Things • [Titus Lucretius Carus] Lucretius

... also and low grounds must be likewise hot or temperate, as the clime doth give in Newfoundland: though I am of opinion that the sun's reflection is much cooled, and cannot be so forcible in Newfoundland, nor generally throughout America, as in Europe or Afric: by how much the sun in his diurnal course from east to west, passeth over, for the most part, dry land and sandy countries, before he arriveth at the west of Europe or Afric, whereby his motion increaseth heat, with little or no qualification by moist ...
— Sir Humphrey Gilbert's Voyage to Newfoundland • Edward Hayes

... as never sun Has his diurnal journey run. And, Moon, slip past the ladders of air In a single flash, while your streaming hair Catches the stars and pulls them down To shine on some slumbering Chinese town. O Kindly Sun! Understanding Moon! Bring evening to crowd the footsteps ...
— A Dome of Many-Coloured Glass • Amy Lowell

... of diurnal heat No reliques chafe the cold beams of the moon, O'erpower'd by earth, or planetary sway Of Saturn; and the geomancer sees His Greater Fortune up the east ascend, Where gray dawn checkers first the shadowy cone; ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante

... evening, from every village within three or four miles of the metropolis, may be remarked a tide of young men wending diurnal way to and from their respective desks and counters in the city, preceded by a ripple of errand-boys, and light porters, and followed by an ebb of plethoric elderly gentlemen in drab gaiters. Now these individuals compose—for ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various

... became aware of a dull, continuous sound, and knew that the stream which intersected the park on its way to the river had been freed from ice by the January thaw, and was pouring its swollen waters over the dam. The note was deep and full, like a solemn recitative, as if Nature's diurnal harmonies had sunk to this one transitional key. Above all, the mildness of the air, full of the alluring witchery of a false spring, affected the imagination like ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins

... features of the evening landscape; they abound in every cave and subterranean passage, in the tunnels on the highways, in the galleries of the fortifications, in the roofs of the bungalows, and the ruins of every temple and building. At sunset they are seen issuing from their diurnal retreats to roam through the twilight in search of crepuscular insects, and as night approaches and the lights in the rooms attract the night-flying lepidoptera, the bats sweep round the dinner-table and carry off their tiny prey within the glitter of the lamps. ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent

... of mind the most inconsequential inferences were drawn. One said that the brightness of the dawn—a fact easily explained by the diurnal motion of the globe—showed him that his soul was immortal. He asserted further that he had, at an earlier period of his life, trailed bright clouds behind him. ...
— Literary Lapses • Stephen Leacock

... of the present State of Wit in Town; which, without further Preface, I shall therefore endeavour to perform, and give you the Histories and Characters of all our Periodical Papers, whether Monthly, Weekly, or Diurnal, with the same freedom I used to send you ...
— The Present State of Wit (1711) - In A Letter To A Friend In The Country • John Gay

... earliest discoveries are indeed prehistoric. The great diurnal movement of the heavens, and the annual revolution of the sun, seem to have been known in times far more ancient than those to which any human monuments can be referred. The acuteness of the early observers enabled them to single out the more important of the wanderers which we now call planets. ...
— Great Astronomers • R. S. Ball

... that the diurnal rotations of the planets could not be derived from gravity, but required a divine arm to impress them. And though gravity might give the planets a motion of descent towards the sun, either directly, or with some little obliquity, yet the transverse motions, by ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 6 - Reviews, Political Tracts, and Lives of Eminent Persons • Samuel Johnson

... Generoso, lively with waterfalls and watercourses; and they fell so in love with the place, that after roaming along the flowery borderways by moonlight, they resolved to rest there two or three days and try some easy ascents. In the diurnal course of nature, being pleasantly tired, they had the avowed intention of sleeping there; so they went early to their beds, and carelessly wished one another good-night, none of them supposing slumber to be anywhere one ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... not constantly subject to the action of north winds, which we rarely are? Because of the diurnal motion of the earth, which at the equator equals one thousand miles an hour, the polar winds in coming down to the equator do not have any such velocity, because there is a less comparative diurnal speed ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 6, No. 33, July, 1860 • Various

... now; no force, She neither hears nor sees, Roiled round in earth's diurnal course With ...
— English Literature: Modern - Home University Library Of Modern Knowledge • G. H. Mair

... pocket. Natheless affection rules us all, and when the poor wench would bring me her thorn leaves, and lilies, and ivy, and dewberries, and ladybirds, and butterfly grubs, and all the scum of Nature-stuck fast in gold-leaf like wasps in a honey-pot, and withal her diurnal book, showing she had pored an hundred, or an hundred and fifty, or two hundred hours over each singular page, certes I was wroth that an immortal soul, and many hours of labour, and much manual skill, should be flung away on Nature's trash, leaves, ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade

... say that these sudden storms were diurnal in their nature, and frequently of great fury and destructiveness, so the following morning he moved all his belongings into the grotto, as he liked best to call the cave, and set up housekeeping in a manner that no hurricane, however ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls - Volume XIII, No. 51: November 12, 1892 • Various

... speaks of the fixed stars, and of the motions of the orbs of the planets. He here alludes, says M. Bonhier, to the different and diurnal motions of these stars; one sort from east to west, the other from one tropic to the other: and this is the construction which our learned and great geometrician and astronomer, Dr. Halley, made of ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero

... between the latitudes of 30 deg. and 60 deg., to supply the place of the lower air, drawn off towards the equator by the Trade-winds. But this partially-cooled air falls on a part of the earth's surface which is moving much more slowly towards the east, in its diurnal rotation, than the air which has descended upon it, and which is still impressed with a great proportion of its eastern velocity due to the equatorial parallels of latitude, where it was heated and raised up. The necessary ...
— The Lieutenant and Commander - Being Autobigraphical Sketches of His Own Career, from - Fragments of Voyages and Travels • Basil Hall

... unable to settle to his work, Alec ran upstairs to Mr Cupples, whom he had not seen for some days. He found him not more than half-way towards his diurnal goal. ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald

... having got together a pretty handsome sum, I determined to quit a business which had always gone rather against my conscience, and in a more liberal way still to indulge my talents for fiction and embellishment, through my favourite channels of diurnal communication—and so, sir, you have my history. Sneer. Most obligingly communicative indeed! and your confession, if published, might certainly serve the cause of true charity, by rescuing the most useful channels of appeal to benevolence from the cant of imposition. But, surely, ...
— Scarborough and the Critic • Sheridan

... in winter, when the straits are filled with ice, which, in the shape of floe, and berg, and pinnacle, pass in ghostly procession to and fro, as the wind wafts them, or they feel the diurnal impetus of the tides they cover, to escape in time from the narrow limits of the pass, and lose themselves in the vast ice-barrier that for five long months shuts out the havens of St. ...
— Adrift in the Ice-Fields • Charles W. Hall

... Philalethes himself says he has written in the preface to Ripley Revived. He there says, after naming other works: "Two English Poems I wrote, declaring the whole secret, which are lost. Also an Enchiridion of Experiments, together with a Diurnal of Meditations, in which were many Philosophical receipts, declaring the whole secret, with an Aenigma annexed; which also fell into such hands which I conceive will never restore it. This last was written in English." Can this Enchiridion and Diurnal ...
— Poems of Henry Vaughan, Silurist, Volume II • Henry Vaughan

... person short and thick-set. He often sacrificed copiously to the jolly god, in his box behind the door; he was a great smoker, and had numbered between seventy and eighty years. Early in the evening he was punctually at his post; he called, for his pipe and his "go of rack," according to his diurnal custom; and surveying first the persons at his own table, and then those in other parts of the room, he commonly sat a few minutes in silence, as if waiting the stimulating effect of the tobacco to wind up his conversational powers, or perhaps he was bringing out defined images from the dim reminiscences ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 392, Saturday, October 3, 1829. • Various

... immoral book! Now, I find it very hard to exist without at least a weekly peep into Pepys. And, by the way, in a number of the Atlantic Monthly not so long ago there is a vivid, pathetic, and excellently written piece of literature. It is "A Portion of the Diurnal of Mrs Eliz^th Pepys" ...
— Confessions of a Book-Lover • Maurice Francis Egan

... inquire, says Dr. Rennie, what are the effects of climate on healthy constitutions, as respects heat, cold, moisture, and vicissitudes; including also the diurnal and annual revolutions. ...
— The Mirror, 1828.07.05, Issue No. 321 - The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction • Various

... ride their diurnal round Each day-span's sum of hours In peerless ease, without jolt or ...
— Moments of Vision • Thomas Hardy

... tropical Asia, and it is curious that, although not very closely allied, they have each the same red and black colours, and are very distinct from all the other butterflies of their respective countries. There is reason to believe also that many of the brilliantly coloured and weak-flying diurnal moths, like the fine tropical Agaristidae and burnet-moths, are similarly protected, and that their conspicuous colours serve as a warning of inedibility. The common burnet-moth (Anthrocera filipendula) and the equally conspicuous ragwort-moth (Euchelia ...
— Darwinism (1889) • Alfred Russel Wallace

... variations" takes Manson into an interesting excursion which is not productive of any positive results; nor is any more certain conclusion come to with regard to the fate of the embryos which disappear from the blood during the day time. Manson does not incline to the view that there is a diurnal intermittent reproduction of embryos with a corresponding destruction. An original and important speculation is made with respect to the intimate pathology of elephantiasis, chyluria, and lymph scrotum, which is thoroughly worthy of consideration. Our readers ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 384, May 12, 1883 • Various

... the face of the earth was so laid out by design, it was for some good reason. But what that reason may be, it will be difficult to shew. Perhaps this disposition may be of service to keep up a proper balance; or, it may assist toward the diurnal rotation of the earth, the free motions of the tides, &c.; or the water on one side may give a freer passage to the rays of the sun, and being convex and transparent, may concentrate, or at least condense, the solar rays internally, for some benefit to ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 15 (of 18) • Robert Kerr

... great discoveries which Copernicus made relates to the rotation of the earth on its axis. That general diurnal movement, by which the stars and all other celestial bodies appear to be carried completely round the heavens once every twenty-four hours, had been accounted for by Ptolemy on the supposition that the apparent movements were the real movements. Ptolemy himself felt the extraordinary ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various

... effect. You, sir, whose curiosity is so extensive, will easily conceive with what pleasure a philosopher, furnished with wings, and hovering in the sky, would see the earth, and all its inhabitants, rolling beneath him, and presenting to him, successively, by its diurnal motion, all the countries within the same parallel. How must it amuse the pendent spectator to see the moving scene of land and ocean, cities and deserts! To survey, with equal security, the marts of trade, and the fields of battle; mountains infested by barbarians, and fruitful regions ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson

... then recovering myself I shouted, "Father—an owl!" For although I had never seen its like before I knew it was an owl. Not until that moment had I known any owl except the common burrowing-owl of the plain, a small grey-and-white bird, half diurnal in its habits, with a pretty dove-like voice when it hooted round the ...
— Far Away and Long Ago • W. H. Hudson

... Magnetic Objects, representing the races of mankind, animals, trees, light-houses, are supplied with it, which, adhering to the surface, illustrate clearly the attraction of gravitation, the rotundity of the earth, its diurnal motion, the changes of day and night, and many other things very difficult to make intelligible to children. Teachers will find this globe and its magnetic objects of incalculable value in affording facilities for striking illustrations ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No. 6, December 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... efficient, completed the mounting of the long-range guns which were to add to the safety of the place and the discomfiture of its besiegers. On the whole, the position was becoming somewhat serious, particularly for those whose nerves were unaccustomed to the uproar of diurnal thunderstorms. Lord Wolseley has somewhere said that "the effect of artillery fire is more moral than actual; it kills but very few, but its appalling noise, the way it tears down trees, knocks houses into small pieces, and mutilates ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 2 (of 6) - From the Commencement of the War to the Battle of Colenso, - 15th Dec. 1899 • Louis Creswicke

... as he sat after dinner alone with his relations, and had seen the eyes of his brother close in diurnal slumber, "tell me, Miss Lucy, what you think of Lord Mauleverer; do you ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... caldron in the Gulf of Mexico, it carries a freight of caloric towards the North Atlantic. Owing partly to the diurnal motion of the Earth on its axis, its flow trends towards the east; hence its warm waters embrace our favoured coasts, and ameliorate our climate, while the eastern sea-board of North America is left, in winter, to the rigour ...
— The Ocean and its Wonders • R.M. Ballantyne

... The reflector and conical heater are sustained by a flat hub and eight radial spokes bent upward toward the ends at an angle of 45 deg.. The hub and spokes are supported by a vertical pivot, by means of which the operator is enabled to follow the diurnal motion of the sun, while a horizontal axle, secured to the upper end of the pivot, and held by appropriate bearings under the hub, enables him to regulate the inclination to correspond with the altitude of the luminary. The heater is composed of rolled plate ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 458, October 11, 1884 • Various

... starting thews upon their calves. Another is impatient for their place. But they strain still, locked together, and forgetful of the world. At length they have enough: then slowly, clingingly unclasp, turn round with gazing eyes, and are resumed, sedately, into the diurnal round of common life. Another pair is in their room ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds

... the wing, never resting except in chimneys of houses, or hollow trees, where they nest. Tips of tail feathers with sharp spines, used as props. They show their kinship with the goatsuckers in their nocturnal as well as diurnal habits, their small bills and large mouths for catching insects on the wing, and their weak feet. Gregarious, especially at the nesting ...
— Bird Neighbors • Neltje Blanchan

... through the "darkness visible" in which Mr. Shelley veils his subject, some beautiful imagery and poetical expressions: but he appears to be a poet "whose eye, in a fine phrenzy rolling," seeks only such objects as are "above this visible diurnal sphere;" and therefore we entreat him, for the sake of his reviewers as well as of his other readers, (if he has any,) to subjoin to his next publication an ordo, a glossary, and copious notes, illustrative of his allusions and explanatory of his ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney

... Treves (809-814). Liber Officiorum, from a MS. at Treves, quoted by Morin, fol. 6, De Missa Innocentium. "The Mass of the Innocents begins in the Diurnal with this Rubric: 'Gloria in Excelsis Deo is not sung, nor Alleluia, unless it be Sunday; this day is passed in a sort of sadness.' The Holy Pope Gregory, in whom dwelt in very truth the Holy Ghost, and to whom is due the composition of this office, means us to share the feelings of the ...
— St. Gregory and the Gregorian Music • E. G. P. Wyatt

... former are cold and dry; the latter, soft and humid. As soon, therefore, as the former subside, and the sun rises in the horizon, the humidity commences to shew itself in the atmosphere; whilst, on the contrary, when the diurnal winds cease, and the sun sets, the above hygrometric condition of the air disappears.' M. Carriere cannot conceive why our countrymen prefer Nice to a milder climate, and considers that the annual mortality in the English colony ought to discourage other ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 444 - Volume 18, New Series, July 3, 1852 • Various

... characterizes the air near a lake of cool water; the sweet serenity of my father's soul exhaled as a perfume from the dusty leaves I was unfolding. The journal of his life lay open before me; I could count the diurnal throbbings of that noble heart. I began to yield to the influence of a dream that was both sweet and profound, and in spite of the serious firmness of his character, I discovered an ineffable grace, the flower of kindness. While I read, the recollection of his death mingled with the narrative ...
— Child of a Century, Complete • Alfred de Musset

... tolls an' taxes; While moorlan' herds like guid fat braxies; While terra firma, on her axes Diurnal turns, Count on a friend, in faith an' ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham

... Babylonian origin (Herod., ii., 109). The gnomon seems to have consisted of a column, the shadow of which was thrown on a flight of twelve steps representing the twelve double hours into which the diurnal revolutions of the earth were divided and which thus indicated the time ...
— Babylonians and Assyrians, Life and Customs • Rev. A. H. Sayce

... the end hustles him away before he has had time to make anything more lovely or lasting than a reputation as a hero. In the amazing fantasy The Cream of the Jest Mr. Cabell has embodied the visions of the romancer Felix Kennaston so substantially that Kennaston's diurnal walks in Lichfield seem hardly as real as those nightly ventures which under the guise of Horvendile he makes into the glowing land he has created. Nor are the two universes separated by any tight wall which the fancy must leap over: they flow with exquisite caprice one into another, as indeed ...
— Contemporary American Novelists (1900-1920) • Carl Van Doren

... now!—ask me not how I feel, in thinking of the person who has touched my indurate heart. Need I say that the individual in question has only to demand that heart, to have it detailed to him in all its infantile simplicity and diurnal self-reliance? Do ...
— The Last of the Foresters • John Esten Cooke

... blackberries be to Cynthia now? She felt as if she could not understand it all; but as for that matter, what could she understand? Nothing. For a few minutes her brain seemed in too great a whirl to comprehend anything but that she was being carried on in earth's diurnal course, with rocks, and stones, and trees, with as little volition on her part as if she were dead. Then the room grew stifling, and instinctively she went to the open casement window, and leant out, gasping for breath. Gradually the consciousness of the ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

... It has no nation, it costs no weariness, it knows no bonds. The terrestrial scenery—the tourist's—is a prisoner compared with this. The tourist's scenery moves indeed, but only like Wordsworth's maiden, with earth's diurnal course; it is made as fast as its own graves. And for its changes it depends upon the mobility of the skies. The mere green flushing of its own sap makes only the least of its varieties; for the greater it must wait upon the visits of the light. Spring and autumn are inconsiderable ...
— Essays • Alice Meynell

... acutest of observers, and they were presented to critics who were filled with the keenest curiosity, and were accustomed to demand full and precise information. Not a detail is omitted as unimportant; the diurnal gossip of the Court, the daily movements of the sovereign and his favourites; are all recorded with impartial and unerring observation. The relation of the Dispacci to the Relazioni is the relation of the study to the picture. The Relazioni are the ...
— The Quarterly Review, Volume 162, No. 324, April, 1886 • Various

... own axis, in the same way as you turn the balls round on the wires of the arithmeticon. Q. What are these motions called? A. Its motion round the sun is called its annual or yearly motion. Q. What is its other motion called? A. Its diurnal or daily motion. Q. What is caused by its motion round the sun? A. The succession of summer, winter, spring, and autumn, which are called the four seasons, is caused by this. Q. What is caused by its daily motion round its own axis? A. Day and night. Q. Into what two principal things is ...
— The Infant System - For Developing the Intellectual and Moral Powers of all Children, - from One to Seven years of Age • Samuel Wilderspin

... an author, who to great learning, judgment, sagacity, and luminous fancy, joined unparalleled industry, gratified the British public for a long time with a diurnal paper wholly from his own pen, called "the Inspector." In the course of this work he gave some of the most admirable strictures upon the plays and players of his day. From that work we intend to give some select passages. The following is deserving of particular attention for the truth and accuracy ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 5, May 1810 • Various

... diurnal Course, Thy daily streight and yearly oblique path. Thy pleasing fervor and thy scorching force, All mortals here the feeling knowledg hath. Thy presence makes it day thy absence night, Quaternal Seasons caused by thy might; Hail Creature full of sweetness, ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell

... moving with it in all respects like the denser fluid which constitutes the mighty ocean. But there must be a point in the ascent upward, where the centrifugal force of the particles of air, in the diurnal rotation, must over-balance the power of gravitation; and from that limit, the motions of the atmosphere must be subject to a law of a wholly different character—partaking of the nature of planetary ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol IV, Issue VI, December 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various

... and no opaque substance intervenes between earth and sun, day and night will continue to be as invariably and unconditionally each other's antecedents as sunlight will continue to be the antecedent or concomitant of day. True, Mr. Mill denies that the earth's diurnal motion is part of the present constitution of things, because, according to him, 'nothing can be so called which might possibly be terminated or altered by natural causes:' but, if so, then neither ought sunlight to be so called, for it too quite ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton

... which they valued above all others — There was no remedy; Mr Campbell, being obliged to acquiesce, is fain to stop his ears with cotton; to fortify his head with three or four night-caps and every morning retire into the penetralia of his habitation, in order to avoid this diurnal annoyance. When the music ceases, he produces himself at an open window that looks into the courtyard, which is by this time filled with a crowd of his vassals and dependents, who worship his first appearance, by uncovering ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett

... which the rats in general avoid danger. Its food seems to be vegetable, the only contents of the stomach being the roots of the haryalee grass. Its habits are solitary (except when the female is bringing up her young) and diurnal, feeding in the mornings and evenings." Dr. Jerdon says: "The Yanadees of Nellore catch this rat, surrounding the bush and seizing it as it issues forth, which its comparatively slow actions enable them to do easily. ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale

... out into several pages a thought that might have been more clearly expressed in a few lines, and, what is worse, often falls into contradiction and repetitions, which are almost unavoidable to all voluminous writers, and can only be forgiven to those retailers whose necessity compels them to diurnal scribbling, who load their meaning with epithets, and run into digressions, because (in the jockey phrase) it rids the ground, that is, covers a certain quantity of paper, to answer the demand of the day. A great part of Lord B.'s letters are designed to show his reading, which, indeed, appears ...
— Lady Mary Wortley Montague - Her Life and Letters (1689-1762) • Lewis Melville

... and the men's sitting-and smoking-room after nine. Here Mr. Polly, who had been an only child, first tasted the joys of social intercourse. At first there were attempts to bully him on account of his refusal to consider face washing a diurnal duty, but two fights with the apprentices next above him, established a useful reputation for choler, and the presence of girl apprentices in the shop somehow raised his standard of cleanliness to a more acceptable level. He didn't of course have very ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells

... the cabin, drank a parting glass to old friends, turned into our births, and soon were cradled by the motion of the vessel into sweet repose. The events of the former evening, the novelty of the scene, and, above all, the magnificence of Nature, as she appeared when viewed from sea, in her diurnal progress through the transition 167of morning, noon, and night, all inspired my Muse to attempt poetic sketches of the character of the surrounding island scenery. A delightful pleasure I have endeavoured to convey to my ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle

... thus that the decent burgess who, in 1572, kept The Diurnal of such daily events as he deemed important, cautiously records the death of the great Scottish Reformer. The sorrows, the "cumber" of which Knox was "alleged" to bear the blame, did not end with his death. They persisted in the conspiracies and rebellions of the earlier years ...
— John Knox and the Reformation • Andrew Lang

... this old Stock Exchange having fallen into few hands, they boldly attempted, instead of a sixpenny diurnal admission to every person presenting himself at the bar, to make it a close subscription-room of ten guineas per annum for each member, and thereby to shut out all petty or irregular traffickers, to increase the revenues of this their monopolised market. A violent democracy revolted at ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury

... "tide," for so the various elements are denoted. We can always determine beforehand, with as much accuracy as we may require, what the period of that tide will be. For instance, the period of the lunar semi-diurnal tide will of course be half the average time occupied by the moon to travel round from the meridian of any place until it regains the same meridian; the period of the lunar diurnal tide will be double as great; and there are fortnightly ...
— Time and Tide - A Romance of the Moon • Robert S. (Robert Stawell) Ball

... cheerful commerce of mankind, The groaning captive wastes his life away, For ever exiled from the realms of day, Not half such pangs his bosom agonize When up to distant light he rolls his eyes! Where the broad sun, in his diurnal way 530 Imparts to all beside his vivid ray; While, all forlorn, the victim pines in vain For scenes he never shall possess again. V. But now Athenian mountains they descry, And o'er the surge Colonna frowns on high; ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]

... city ward established a guard, Diurnal and nocturnal: Militia volunteers, light dragoons, and bombardiers, With ...
— Ballads • William Makepeace Thackeray

... that he was glad indeed when the furnace door was opened for fuel, and he could see only the inanimate, ever-descending sheet of water—the reverse interior aspect of Hoho-hebee Falls—all suffused with the uncanny tawny light, but showing white and green tints like its diurnal outer aspect, instead of the colorless outlines, resembling a drawing of a cataract, which the cave knew by day. He did not pause to wonder whether the sudden transient illumination was visible without, or how it might mystify the untutored denizens of the ...
— The Moonshiners At Hoho-Hebee Falls - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)

... saith, If it were not for two things that are constant (the one is, that the fixed stars ever stand a like distance one from another, and never come nearer together, nor go further asunder; the other, that the diurnal motion perpetually keepeth time), no individual would last one moment. Certain it is, that the matter is in a perpetual flux, and never at a stay. The great winding-sheets, that bury all things in oblivion, are two; deluges and earthquakes. As for conflagrations ...
— Essays - The Essays Or Counsels, Civil And Moral, Of Francis Ld. - Verulam Viscount St. Albans • Francis Bacon

... fleeting state—of mild Graves' disease. In the early stages of Graves' disease, before the destructive phenomena are felt, the kinetic speed is high, and life is on a sensuous edge. Not only is there a seasonal rhythm to the rate of flow of energy, but there is a diurnal variation—the ebb is at night, and the full tide in the daytime. This observation is verified by the experiments which show that certain organs in the kinetic chain are histologically exhausted, the depleted cells being for the ...
— The Origin and Nature of Emotions • George W. Crile

... astute to no purpose, so much more nice than wise, as to govern themselves by any such ideas. The session for the day, at whatever hour it commences, or at whatever hour it breaks up, is the legislative day. Every thing has reference to the commencement of that diurnal session. For instance, this is the 14th day of January; we assembled here to-day at twelve o'clock; our journal is dated January 14th, and if we should remain here until five o'clock to-morrow morning ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster

... against the colonists, he described as loose and random shots, fired by inexperienced hands. In reducing the plan of clubs to practical details, he insisted they were unequal, and even impossible. The minute appraisement, both of good and evil; reckoning up the diurnal merits of the men—the balance of which was to furnish their capital stock, to discharge their fines, to find them food and clothing, and liberty—he described as a gigantic scheme of finance.[223] He amused himself by supposing the number of chances which might ...
— The History of Tasmania , Volume II (of 2) • John West

... the worst of it. I disliked the abstruse studies of my new profession; but I absolutely hated the diurnal slavery of qualifying myself, in a social point of view, for future success in it. My fond medical parent insisted on introducing me to his whole connection. I went round visiting in the neat brougham—with a stethoscope and medical review in the front-pocket, with ...
— A Rogue's Life • Wilkie Collins

... because, in the first place, many small streams descend from the mountain ranges, supplying the means of both natural and artificial irrigation; and, next, that the country near the coast is favored with a diurnal land and sea breeze; and, from the comparatively low temperature of the sea, the latter is always in summer accompanied with fogs, in the latter part of the night, and which are dissipated by the ...
— The Exploring Expedition to the Rocky Mountains, Oregon and California • Brevet Col. J.C. Fremont

... imperfect; a typographical error, even, I have heard him say, sometimes depressed him like actual illness. He translated and revised so carefully, he corrected so many errors and added so many footnotes, that his industry actually devoured its own wages; and his eight dollars gradually diminished to a diurnal fifty cents. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various

... press producing 3,600 pieces per hour; but making allowance for occasional stoppages, the daily progress of each press may be reckoned at 30,000 pieces; the eight presses, therefore, will furnish a diurnal average of ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 10, No. 279, October 20, 1827 • Various

... of the afternoon tide varies from that of the morning tide; sometimes one is the higher and sometimes the other, according to the declination of the sun and moon. This is called the "diurnal inequality." The average difference between the night and morning tides is about 5 in on the east coast and about 8in on the west coast. When there is a considerable difference in the height of high water of two consecutive tides, the ebb which follows ...
— The Sewerage of Sea Coast Towns • Henry C. Adams

... the dragging days of it, with their dreary round of domestic duties. She was not a week home, and already sleep was her dearest friend, and to open her eyes in the morning upon the sunny but silent room and miss the clangour of Edinburgh streets was a diurnal grief. ...
— Gilian The Dreamer - His Fancy, His Love and Adventure • Neil Munro

... ascertained, and also the direction of the true meridian from the said monument established. For this latter purpose several observations were in the first place made upon the polar star ([Greek: alpha] Ursae Minoris) when at its greatest eastern diurnal elongation, and the direction thus obtained was afterwards verified and corrected by numerous transit observations upon stars passing the meridian at various altitudes both north and south of the zenith. These were multiplied with ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 3: Martin Van Buren • James D. Richardson

... who knew the springs of that public opinion which is delivered ready digested to the nation every morning, and who have not scrupled to work them for their own diurnal glorification, even although the recoil might injure their colleagues. But Lord Russell has never bowed the knee to the potentates of the Press; he has offered no sacrifice of invitations to social ...
— Prime Ministers and Some Others - A Book of Reminiscences • George W. E. Russell

... Copernicus placed the earth in its true position in the solar system, making it merely one of a number of other worlds revolving about a central luminary. And observe that there are two phenomena to be thus accounted for and explained: first, the diurnal revolution of the heavens; second, the annual motion of ...
— Pioneers of Science • Oliver Lodge

... continent, and might easily have been answered by themselves, as the prodigious current which set them through the Straits of Le Maire with such rapidity, could not have originated from any such cause. Currents are well known to be occasioned by the tides, the diurnal revolution of the earth, and by prevailing winds, influenced and directed by the bendings of coasts, the interposition of islands, and the position of straits. No such currents could possibly come from rivers in an austral land, locked up ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr

... shadow—if my life has no roots in the Eternal, nor any consciousness of a life that does not pass, and a light that never perishes, if it is derived from, directed to, 'cribbed, cabined, and confined' within this visible diurnal sphere, then it is all flat and unprofitable, an illusion while it seems to last, and all its pursuits are folly, its hopes dreams, its substances vapours, its years a lie. For, if life be thus short, ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... appeareth to be an island, insomuch as the sea runneth by nature circularly from the east to the west, following the diurnal motion of the Primum Mobile, and carrieth with it all inferior bodies movable, as well celestial as elemental; which motion of the waters is most evidently seen in the sea, which lieth on the south side ...
— Voyages in Search of the North-West Passage • Richard Hakluyt

... to a friend he wrote: "I begin my diurnal course with the sun; if my hirelings are not in their places by that time I send them messages of sorrow ...
— Washington's Birthday • Various

... that he should not be in the least surprised, on going up there, to find that the two old women had made away with Caddy, and hidden her remains in the coal-bin. Whilst she was thus engaged, to Charlie was assigned the duty of transporting to Winter-street her diurnal portion of food, without a hearty share of which she found it impossible to maintain herself in a state of efficiency; her labours in chasing the women about the house being of a ...
— The Garies and Their Friends • Frank J. Webb

... not the only insects who have prolonged their existence by imitating the great protected group of Heliconidae;—a genus of quite another family of most lovely small American butterflies, the Erycinidae, and three genera of diurnal moths, also present species which often mimic the same dominant forms, so that some, as Ithomia ilerdina of St. Paulo, for instance, have flying with them a few individuals of three widely different insects, which ...
— Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection - A Series of Essays • Alfred Russel Wallace

... in the very dawn of science, Pythagoras or his disciples explained the apparent motion of the heavenly bodies about the earth by the diurnal revolution of the earth on its axis. But this theory, though bearing so deeply impressed upon it the great seal of truth, simplicity, was in such glaring contrast with the evidence of the senses, that it failed of acceptance in antiquity or the middle ages. It found no favor with minds ...
— The Uses of Astronomy - An Oration Delivered at Albany on the 28th of July, 1856 • Edward Everett

... which the planets are carried round the sun: they also have created another particular vortex which floats in the great one, and which turns daily round the planets. When all this is done, it is pretended that gravity depends on this diurnal motion; for, say these, the velocity of the subtile matter that turns round our little vortex, must be seventeen times more rapid than that of the earth; or, in case its velocity is seventeen times greater than that of the earth, its centrifugal force must be vastly greater, and consequently ...
— Letters on England • Voltaire

... of a future state," "metempsychosis of nature," "nefandous villanies," "diurnal and annual," "my visive faculty," "soul-transparent and diaphonous," "translucid ray," "terrene enjoyments," "our minds are clarified," "types both of the ante and post-diluvian world," "the tenuity thereof," "the aereal heavens," "effluxes of divine glory," "all aenigmas," ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 66, February 1, 1851 • Various

... were any preparations to be made, he replied that it Would be necessary to pour a bottle of sea-water into each river a fortnight before the sacrifice, and that this ceremony was to be performed by Semiramis in person, at the first diurnal hour ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt

... raise or depress the standard of vitality, there seems to be—I think I may venture to say there is—a rhythmic undulation in the flow of the vital force. The 'dynamo' which furnishes the working powers of consciousness and action has its annual, its monthly, its diurnal waves, even its temporary ripples, in the current it furnishes. There are greater and lesser curves in the movement of every day's life,—a series of ascending and descending movements, a periodicity depending on the very nature of the force at ...
— Mastery of Self • Frank Channing Haddock

... diurnal. 'Letters of Intelligence' was an early and common name for a periodical. In 1662 we have A Monthly Intelligence Relating the Affaires of the People called Quakers. No. I, August—September 1. (The only number.) ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. II • Aphra Behn

... first—the man's own firm conviction rests That he was dead (in fact they buried him) —That he was dead and then restored to life By a Nazarene physician of his tribe: 100 —'Sayeth, the same bade "Rise," and he did rise. "Such cases are diurnal," thou wilt cry. Not so this figment!—not, that such a fume, Instead of giving way to time and health, Should eat itself into the life of life, As saffron tingeth flesh, blood, bones and all! For see, how he takes up the after-life. The man—it is one Lazarus a Jew, ...
— Men and Women • Robert Browning

... as in the ease of those devoted persons who venture their lives in the deglutition of patent medicines (dolus latet in generalibus, there is deceit in the most of them) and thereafter are wonderfully preserved long enough to append their signatures to testimonials in the diurnal and hebdomadal prints. I say not this as covertly glancing at the authours of certain manuscripts which have been submitted to my literary judgment, (though an epick in twenty-four books on the "Taking of Jericho" might, save for the prudent forethought of Mrs. Wilbur in secreting the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various

... by the name of the moon's libration. When we examine with a telescope the outline of the moon, we observe that certain parts of her disc, which are seen at one time, are invisible at another. This change or libration is of four different kinds, viz. the diurnal libration, the libration in longitude, the libration in latitude, and the spheroidal libration. Galileo discovered the first of these kinds of libration, and appears to have had some knowledge of the second; but the third was discovered by Hevelius, ...
— The Martyrs of Science, or, The lives of Galileo, Tycho Brahe, and Kepler • David Brewster

... is agitated by violent gusts of wind, (called tornadoes,) accompanied with thunder and rain. These usher in what is denominated the rainy season, which continues until the month of November. During this time, the diurnal rains are very heavy; and the prevailing winds are from the south-west. The termination of the rainy season is likewise attended with violent tornadoes; after which the wind shifts to the north-east, and continues to blow from ...
— Life and Travels of Mungo Park in Central Africa • Mungo Park

... possibility of delaying old age, and I do not see why his method should not be applied to the diurnal need of sleep. No vital process seems to be absolutely fated in itself; it is a thing conditioned and capable of modification. If Metchnikoff is right—and to a certain extent he must be right—the decay of age is due to changing ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells

... she had been for her box, but left no address, he sent Pearman to hunt for her. He could not find her. She avoided the house, but sent a woman for her diurnal love letters. Dr. Staines sent the woman back to fetch her. She came, received her box, her letters, and the balance of her wages, which was small, for Staines deducted the three ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade

... or 18 degrees Southern Latitude, and that about the middle of November last, and sooner, unless it have been too small: That however it hath been seen in Holland ever since the 2d. of December last, at which time, according to his reckoning, the Diurnal motion of the Comet should already amount to 17 or 18 minutes. He finds, that this Star moveth just enough in the Plan of a Great Circle, which inclineth to the Equinoctial about 30 degrees, and to the Ecliptick about 49d. or 491/2 cutting the Equator ...
— Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society - Vol 1 - 1666 • Various

... earth, and all other planets, move round the sun in certain periodical times; that the sun revolves around his own axis, and round the common center of gravity included in his own surface; that the solar influence is the cause of the annual and diurnal motions of the earth, and that the motions of the earth must continue while the solar influence continues to act upon it; that no power but that of Jehovah can change this solar influence; that he can suspend the operation of this influence; ...
— The Christian Foundation, February, 1880

... never failed to make his appearance at the medical coffee-house, with all that solemnity of feature and address, by which the modern sons of Paean are distinguished; not but that he was often puzzled about the decision of his diurnal route. For the method of driving up one street and down another, without halting, was become such a stale expedient, that the very 'prentices used to stand at the shop doors, and ridicule the vain parade. At length, however, he perused the map of London with great diligence, and, having acquired ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett

... the bats to their diurnal retreat, which was in the thatch above my hammock, informed me that the sun was now fast approaching to the eastern horizon. I arose in languor and in pain, the pulse at one hundred and twenty. I took ten grains of calomel and a scruple of jalap, and ...
— Wanderings In South America • Charles Waterton

... as those of a Land's Husband (not inferior to his Father in that respect); and, like the benefits of the diurnal Sun, are to be considered incessant, innumerable and, in result to us-ward, SILENT also, impossible to speak of in this place. From the highest pitch of State-craft (Russian Czarina now fallen plainly hostile, and needing lynx-eyed diplomacy ever and anon), down to that of Dredging and Fascine-work ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVI. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Ten Years of Peace.—1746-1756. • Thomas Carlyle

... contributors, and in this he was aided by his wife, who, according to Smollett, was "an antiquated female critic and a dabbler in the 'Review.'" Such was the literary vassalage to which Goldsmith had unwarily subjected himself. A diurnal drudgery was imposed on him, irksome to his indolent habits, and attended by circumstances humiliating to his pride. He had to write daily from nine o'clock until two, and often throughout the day; ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving

... worth Have I wrought, pondered, planned; no one thing asking blame or praise, Since the pale corpse-like birth Of this diurnal unit, bearing blanks in all its rays— ...
— Old and New Masters • Robert Lynd

... the Family of Pickerels, with their flat, long snout, and slender, almost cylindrical body, as contrasted with the plump, compressed body and tapering tail of the Trout Family. Or compare, among Insects, the Hawk-Moths with the Diurnal Butterfly, or with the so-called Miller,—or, among Crustacea, the common Crab with the Sea-Spider, or the Lobsters with the Shrimps,—or, among Worms, the Leeches with the Earth-Worms,—or, among Mollusks, the Squids with the Cuttle-Fishes, or the Snails with the Slugs, or the Periwinkles ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 54, April, 1862 • Various

... luck of all things of the past to come down to us with some poetry about them; while from those of diurnal experience we must extract this poetry ourselves: and although all good men are, more or less, poets, they are passive or recipient poets; while the active or donative poet caters for them what they fail to collect. For let a poet walk through London, and he shall see a succession of incidents, ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various

... diurnal fancies trooped into the wide liberties of endless luminous vistas of azure sunlit mountains beneath the shining azure heavens. The sky, looking down in deep blue placidities, only here and there smote the water to azure emulations ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... every day, one thousand and one aspers, according to a former custom received from his ancestors; notwithstanding that otherwise his diurnal expense is very much, and not certainly known, which sum maketh sterling money by the year, two thousand one hundred and ninety-two ...
— Voyager's Tales • Richard Hakluyt

... daily visits to town, amounting usually to between three and four hours of absence, were a constant source of annoyance and disquiet to her. Where did he go? What did he do with himself? Whom did he see in these diurnal expeditions into London? She wore herself into a fever with her perpetual effort to ...
— Vera Nevill - Poor Wisdom's Chance • Mrs. H. Lovett Cameron

... my gratitude and right good feeling to our diurnal and hebdomadal amusers and instructors, I cannot but consider that gazette and newspaper reviewers are insufficient and unsatisfactory judges of literature, if not indeed sometimes erring guides to the public taste; the main cause ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper

... cruel firmament, With thy diurnal swegh that croudest ay, And hurtlest all from Est til Occident, That naturally wold hold ...
— Mediaeval Lore from Bartholomew Anglicus • Robert Steele

... realm of Wanless went on its diurnal course. Luncheon was served at two by a trembling parlour-maid; the coffee was set in the hall, the cigar-box, the spirit-flame. Frodsham came for orders, Mr. Menzies reported Glyde absent without leave. These things were done by rote: yet the whole house ...
— Rest Harrow - A Comedy of Resolution • Maurice Hewlett

... destroy the flavour and pungency of the leaf. It requires great care in the cultivation, and every day a man enters the shed by a little door and carefully cleans the plants. The shed where it grows is usually a favourite lurking-place for poisonous snakes, and this diurnal visit of the betel-grower to his crop is rather a dangerous business; but the article is so profitable, and the mature crop yields such a fine price, that both the labour and the danger are disregarded. Ossaroo chanced to have some of the ...
— The Plant Hunters - Adventures Among the Himalaya Mountains • Mayne Reid

... ocean gifted with real life? It has its tempers and its gentle moods. Yesterday it slept as we did, and now it has woke after a quiet night. Look!" he continued, "it wakes under the caresses of the sun. It is going to renew its diurnal existence. It is an interesting study to watch the play of its organisation. It has a pulse, arteries, spasms; and I agree with the learned Maury, who discovered in it a circulation as real as the circulation ...
— Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea • Jules Verne

... definition that an animal is possessed of life and locomotion, a plant of life without locomotion, and a mineral deficient in both, seems to be sufficient, until some day he travels beyond the circuit of diurnal routine, and encounters a sponge or a zoophyte, which possesses only one of his supposed attributes of animal life, but which he is assured is nevertheless a member of the animal kingdom. Such an encounter usually perplexes ...
— Fungi: Their Nature and Uses • Mordecai Cubitt Cooke

... Brodrick lived in his library, the long, book-lined, up-stairs room that ran half the length of the house on the north side. But even there, violate as he would his own sanctuary, the indestructible propriety renewed itself by a diurnal miracle. He found books restored to their place, papers sorted, everything an editor could want lying ready to his hand. For the spirit of order rose punctually to ...
— The Creators - A Comedy • May Sinclair

... base of French Hill lay Eldorado Creek, and on a creek claim stood the cabin of Clyde Wharton. At present he was not washing out a diurnal thousand dollars; but his dumps grew, shift by shift, and there would come a time when those dumps would pass through his sluice-boxes, depositing in the riffles, in the course of half a dozen days, several ...
— The Son of the Wolf • Jack London

... island in the Archipelago; he flourished about 500 years before Christ, in the time of Tarquin, the last King of Rome. Pythagoras was the first among the Europeans who taught that the Earth and Planets turn round the Sun, which stands immovable in the centre;—that the diurnal motion of the Sun and Fixed Stars is not real, but apparent,—arising from the Earth's motion round its own axis, &c. After the time of Pythagoras, ...
— A Catechism of Familiar Things; Their History, and the Events Which Led to Their Discovery • Benziger Brothers

... is the time of year at which the larger birds of prey, both diurnal and nocturnal, rear up their broods. Throughout January the white-backed vultures are occupied in parental duties. The breeding season of these birds begins in October or November and ends in February or March. The nest, which is placed high up in a lofty tree, is a large platform ...
— A Bird Calendar for Northern India • Douglas Dewar

... see the sun, then hid by the vast screen of the upper cone, which masked the half-horizon of the west, and whose enormous shadow stretching to the shore increased as the radiant luminary sank in its diurnal course. Vapor—mist rather than clouds—began to appear in the east, and assume all the prismatic colors under the influence ...
— The Mysterious Island • Jules Verne

... but not a workhouse orphan. No chance-child was he, for he could trace his genealogy all the way back to his parents, who lived hard by; his mother being a washerwoman, and his father a drunken soldier, discharged with a wooden leg, and a diurnal pension of twopence-halfpenny and an unstateable fraction. The shop-boys in the neighbourhood had long been in the habit of branding Noah in the public streets, with the ignominious epithets of 'leathers,' ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens

... attempt to conceal or explain—and it was from out of the heart of the common life that he sang his rapturous lyrics of divine love. Here his works corroborate the traditional story of his life. Again and again he extols the life of home, the value and reality of diurnal existence, with its opportunities for love and renunciation; pouring contempt—upon the professional sanctity of the Yogi, who "has a great beard and matted locks, and looks like a goat," and on all who think it necessary to flee a world pervaded ...
— Songs of Kabir • Rabindranath Tagore (trans.)

... of action during those ensuing days fell on Larcher. Besides regular semi-diurnal calls on the young ladies and at Mrs. Haze's house, and regular consultations of police records, he made visits to every place he had ever known Davenport to frequent, and to every person he had ever known Davenport to be acquainted with. Only, for a time Mr. Bagley had to be excepted, he not having ...
— The Mystery of Murray Davenport - A Story of New York at the Present Day • Robert Neilson Stephens

... of renunciation, and was as familiar with the wreck of each day's wishes as with the diurnal setting of the sun. If her earthly career had taught her few book philosophies it had at least well practised her in this. Yet her experience had consisted less in a series of pure disappointments than in a series of ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy



Words linked to "Diurnal" :   nocturnal, diurnal variation, diurnal parallax, periodic



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