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Impact   Listen
verb
Impact  v. t.  (past & past part. impacted; pres. part. impacting)  
1.
To drive close; to press firmly together: to wedge into a place.
2.
To affect or influence, especially in a significant or undesirable manner; as, budget cuts impacted the entire research program; the fish populations were adversely impacted by pollution.
3.
To collide forcefully with; to strike.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Impact" Quotes from Famous Books



... would splinter her spine. Later in all probability it would telescope her knee-joints. And never indeed now that she came to think of it had the arches of her feet felt less capable of resisting so terrible an impact. Quite unconsciously she groped out a little with one hand to steady herself against the ...
— The White Linen Nurse • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott

... are, besides, the sudden assaults of strong temptations, of sense and flesh, or of a more subtle and refined character. If a man is standing loosely, in some careless degage attitude, and a sudden impact comes upon him, over he goes. The boat upon a mountain-locked lake encounters a sudden gust when opposite the opening of a glen, and unless there be a very strong hand and a watchful eye at the helm, is sure to be upset. Upon us there come, in addition to that silent continuity of imperceptible ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... escapement distance, and had also invented the last essential of a good pianoforte action, the check. I will explain what is meant by escapement and check. When, by a key being put down, the hammer is impelled toward the strings, it is necessary for their sustained vibration that, after impact, the hammer should rebound or escape; or it would, as pianoforte makers say, "block," damping the strings at the moment ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 385, May 19, 1883 • Various

... of soldiers hit the edge of the mob with cold steel. That rush and impact seemed to serve only to madden the rioters, and in an instant there ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys as Lieutenants - or, Serving Old Glory as Line Officers • H. Irving Hancock

... big clock. Its head was Brower at high speed and tension; and its tail was the light alkali dust of Arizona mingled with the station agent. No irresistible force and immovable body proposition in mine; I gave to the impact. ...
— The Killer • Stewart Edward White

... instant the ship careened as something struck her a violent blow on the port side. Everyone almost toppled over from the force of the impact. ...
— Under the Ocean to the South Pole - The Strange Cruise of the Submarine Wonder • Roy Rockwood

... was a precedent in France for this method, of which perhaps the two chief exemplars were Jules Romains and Henri Barbusse. Although the two writers have little else in common, both are intensely conscious of the tremendous, if imponderable, impact of elemental and universal forces upon personality, of the profound modifications which natural and social environment unconsciously impress upon the individual life, and of the continual interaction of forces by which ...
— The Inferno • Henri Barbusse

... this impact. At one moment I was a lonely watcher in a sleeping world; the next saw every one about me afoot, the whole ...
— The World Set Free • Herbert George Wells

... Hertz effect, that when projected among gaseous molecules the electron soon attaches itself to one of these. In other words, it ionises a molecule of the gas or confers its electric charge upon it. The gaseous molecule may even be itself disrupted by impact of the electron, if this is moving fast enough, and left bereft of ...
— The Birth-Time of the World and Other Scientific Essays • J. (John) Joly

... cannot say what happened. No one knew. For the brief instant in which I remained conscious, I felt as if Terra had burst asunder under the terrific impact. ...
— Walls of Acid • Henry Hasse

... of the racquet at the moment of impact with the ball should be slightly "open" and you should feel the gut "biting" the side of the ball. This slight side-spin cut, with the racquet head tilting back and hit like a short, chip shot, will tend to keep the ball low ...
— Squash Tennis • Richard C. Squires

... surmounted by semi-conical eminences, half as high as the face itself. These peculiar elevations were unlike anything previously recorded and remained unexplained for a while, until closer inspection showed them to be the result of impact with other ice-masses—a curious ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson

... Under the skillfully gentle impact of Brice's shove, the man let go of the snarling collie and hopped insanely for a second or so, with arms outflung. Then he sat ...
— Black Caesar's Clan • Albert Payson Terhune

... leaping, twisting, always advancing. They tore his interference away from him, but, nevertheless, he penetrated their ranks and none of them could lay hands upon him. He was running free when tackled; his assailant launched himself with such savage violence that the sound of their impact came to us distinctly. As he fell I heard Alicia Harman gasp. ...
— Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories • Rex Beach

... panted as he forced himself through, and shut to the door, which resounded with the impact of spears as the bars were thrust into their places. Then a tall black with wide eyes and gleaming teeth moved up to thrust his spear through the loophole, but a flash came from the narrow opening, and he dropped, rose, turned to flee, and ...
— The Dingo Boys - The Squatters of Wallaby Range • G. Manville Fenn

... rowers to their fullest speed, Erik bore down with his ships upon the extreme of King Olaf's right wing. The heavy, iron bound bow of the Ram crashed into the broadside of Olaf's outermost longship, whose timber creaked and groaned under the impact. Vikings and berserks leapt down upon her decks, and now Norseman met Norseman in a terrible, deadly combat. The king's men were well nigh exhausted with the long day's fighting under the hot sun; their bronzed faces streamed ...
— Olaf the Glorious - A Story of the Viking Age • Robert Leighton

... at her, open-mouthed. "Marry? I, marry Lily?" He actually gasped under the impact of a perfectly new idea; then he ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland

... identified himself with everything American, and made the whole land redolent of his own quality. He has descended upon the gross materialism of our day and land and upon the turbulent democratic masses with such loving impact, such fervid enthusiasm, as to lift and fill them with something like the breath of universal nature. His special gift is his magnetic and unconquerable personality, his towering egoism united with such a fund of human sympathy. His power ...
— Whitman - A Study • John Burroughs

... late for him to dodge far enough. His sideward leap was short, and the horn caught him in midair, ripping across his ribs and breaking them, shattering the bone of his left arm and tearing the flesh. He was hurled fifteen feet and he struck the ground with a stunning impact, pain washing over him in a ...
— Space Prison • Tom Godwin

... like these than to scenes of historical and political tradition, because there hangs for me a glory about the scene of the conception and genesis of beautiful imaginative work that is unlike any glory that the earth holds. The natural joy of the youthful spirit receiving the impact of mighty thoughts, of poignant impressions, has for me a liberty and a grace which no historical or political associations could ever possess. I could not glow to see the room in which a statesman worked out the details of a ...
— At Large • Arthur Christopher Benson

... deterioration of her morals. A close study of these causes, however, will reveal the presence of moral influences. Professor Dill says: "The general tendency of modern inquiry has to discover in the fall of that august and magnificent organization, not a cataclysm, precipitated by the impact of barbarous forces, but a process slowly prepared and evolved by internal and economic causes." Two of these causes were the dying out of municipal liberty and self-government, and the separation of the upper class from ...
— A Short History of Monks and Monasteries • Alfred Wesley Wishart

... again charged with the vital, restless energy which kept him on his feet fourteen hours a day until the next break down. When he looked directly at you, this nerve-force seemed to communicate itself to you with the physical shock of an impact. ...
— Blazed Trail Stories - and Stories of the Wild Life • Stewart Edward White

... around the girl; but as Murray rose to his feet he pushed her gently behind him, and then as the man was upon him Jimmy ducked easily under the other's clumsy left and swung a heavy right hook to his jaw. As Murray staggered to the impact of the blow Jimmy reached him again quickly and easily with a left to the nose, from which a crimson burst spattered over the waiter and his victim. Murray went backward and would have fallen but for the fact he came ...
— The Efficiency Expert • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... between 1640 and 1840 belongs to those periods for which almost no significant work in the field of internal social and economic developments has been made; Western scholars have been too much interested in the impact of Western economy and culture or in the military events. Chinese scholars thus far have shown a prejudice against the Manchu dynasty and were mainly interested in the study of anti-Manchu movements ...
— A history of China., [3d ed. rev. and enl.] • Wolfram Eberhard

... eddies of women, buffeted by them, his toes stepped upon, elbowed, crowded, grew more and more scornful of their intelligence, and would probably have worked his way out—if he could, but the impact of the crowd worked ...
— Purple Springs • Nellie L. McClung

... continued discussion of long outdated questions in an outdated manner and, combined with his expressed disdain for "chymistry" and atomism, discouraged close cooperation between embryologists of different persuasions. It is perhaps easy to underestimate the impact and general importance of Harvey's work in view of these qualifications, and so it should be remarked that both positive and negative features of De Generatione influenced profoundly ...
— Medical Investigation in Seventeenth Century England - Papers Read at a Clark Library Seminar, October 14, 1967 • Charles W. Bodemer

... His arms were bent up at the elbows; his legs at the knees. He was jumping, with the intention, I feared, of landing in our boat, and I prepared to avoid the impact. But he had judged his ...
— "And they thought we wouldn't fight" • Floyd Gibbons

... water in the lead. Du Moncel had observed that powder of carbon altered in electrical resistance under pressure, and Edison found that lamp-black was so sensitive as to change in resistance under the impact of the sonorous waves. His transmitter consisted of a button or wafer of lamp-black behind a diaphragm, and connected in the circuit. On speaking to the diaphragm the sonorous waves pressed it against ...
— The Story Of Electricity • John Munro

... be busy all the while but slouch through the minutes. The other may be taut and intensive, working at white heat, and the output will be more extensive and of better quality. The mind that ambles through the period shows forth results that are both meager and mediocre; but the mind whose impact is both forceful and incisive produces results that serve to magnify the work of the school. Thus we have placed before us two basic considerations, one of which is the time itself, in actual minutes, and the other is the character of the reactions ...
— The Vitalized School • Francis B. Pearson

... heavy weight was hurled. The wood burst into splinters as the bolt shot from the socket. Drunkenly a man plunged across the threshold, staggering from the impact of the shock. ...
— Man Size • William MacLeod Raine

... plan Forms of material tested Size of test specimens Moisture determination Machine for static tests Speed of testing machine Bending large beams Bending small beams Endwise compression Compression across the grain Shear along the grain Impact test Hardness test: Abrasion and indentation Cleavage test Tension test parallel to the grain Tension test at right angles to the grain Torsion test Special tests Spike pulling test Packing boxes Vehicle and implement ...
— The Mechanical Properties of Wood • Samuel J. Record

... he seemed destined by the surroundings of his early childhood in Lima Street, and in many ways he was hardly any older than he was when he left London. In after years he looked back with gratitude upon the shock he received from what was as it were an experience of the material impact of death, because it made him think about death, not morbidly as so many children and young people will, but with the apprehension of something that really does come in a moment and for which it is necessary for every human being to ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie

... that the sun is fed and kept in splendour by the constant impact of bodies from without falling in upon it, and that if that supply were to cease, the furnace of the heavens would go out. But God, who is light in Himself, needs no accession of supplies from without to maintain His light, ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... had resulted from fracture of the skull, due to its forcible impact against the wall. The medical report, however, stated that fatal consequences had resulted on account of the unusual thinness of ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein

... old and stereotyped forms of worship, as scorning ordinary morality and treating love as paramount. Although he acts continually with princely dignity and is always aware of his true character as Vishnu, his impact on others is based more on the understanding of their needs than on their recognition of him as God. When, at times, Krishna the cowherd is adored as God, he has already been loved as a boy and a young man. In the later story, this early charm is missing. Krishna is frequently ...
— The Loves of Krishna in Indian Painting and Poetry • W. G. Archer

... a rush of feet in the darkness, followed by a metallic clang, as of hobnailed boots on metal. Hans, lying prostrate and half-stunned beneath the galvanised iron sheeting, which, dislodged from its former position by the impact of a heavy body descending from above, now forms part of the flooring of the trench, is suddenly aware that this same trench is full of men—rough, uncultured men, clad in short petticoats and the skins of wild ...
— All In It K(1) Carries On - A Continuation of the First Hundred Thousand • John Hay Beith (AKA: Ian Hay)

... and shovels fly! Shells tore through the air over them, bursting on impact with roof and chimney; the Turcos tucked up their blue sleeves, spat on their hands, and dug away like terriers, while their officers, smoking the eternal cigarette, coolly examined the distant landscape through ...
— The Maids of Paradise • Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers

... there is more or less loss of material, while, in back-filling, the material does not at first reach its final compactness. Therefore, in adjusting itself to normal conditions, this material causes impact loads to come upon the green arch, and these tend to ...
— Pressure, Resistance, and Stability of Earth • J. C. Meem

... of physics may be reduced to three great divisions: First, quantitative motion, which is proportioned to the quantity of matter exclusively. This is the science of weight or statics. Secondly, relative motion, as communicated to bodies externally by impact. This is the science of mechanics. Thirdly, qualitative motion, or that which is accordant to properties of matter. And this is chemistry. Now it is evident that the first two sciences presuppose that which forms the exclusive object of the third, namely, quality; for all quantity in nature ...
— Hints towards the formation of a more comprehensive theory of life. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... feet in air, deeply impaled on three of those gigantic spines. While he clawed and writhed, struggling to twist himself free, his companion sprang hardily to the rescue. She hurled herself with all her weight and strength full upon the stegosaur's now unprotected flank. So tremendous was the impact that, with a frightened grunt, he was rolled clean over on his side. But at the same time his sturdy forearms clutched his assailant, and so crushed, mauled and tore her that she was glad to wrench ...
— In the Morning of Time • Charles G. D. Roberts

... down, unfolded its three massive legs, crouched down behind it and threw in a switch. Dull red beams of frightful intensity shot from the reflectors and sparks, almost of lightning proportions, leaped from the shielding screen under their impact. Roaring and snapping, the conflict went on for seconds; then, under the superior force of the Standish, the greenish radiance gave way. Behind it the metal of the door ran the gamut of color—red, yellow, blinding whiter—then literally exploded; molten, vaporized, ...
— Triplanetary • Edward Elmer Smith

... structures have been put in place at short notice, few of which were even envisaged a few years ago. These are also operations that, because of intense, instantaneous media coverage, can have huge domestic political impact especially ...
— Shock and Awe - Achieving Rapid Dominance • Harlan K. Ullman and James P. Wade

... system of paying the taxes not in money but in kind. The system of the tithes, too, needed a complete overhauling, not with the mere object of abolishing the tithes, but in order that the gross inequalities which the Avis sets forth as existing, in regard to the impact of the tithes, both territorial and personal, might be done away with, and the support of religion put upon a sound basis. This led naturally to a demand for the release of great areas of valuable soil in Artois from the ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert

... our fate to find a huge oukhaba just when the horses were doing their best. I think the sleigh sometimes made a clear leap of six or eight feet from the crest of a ridge to the bottom of a hollow. The leaping was not very objectionable, but the impact made everything rattle. I could say, like the Irishman who fell from a house top, "'twas not the fall, darling, that hurt me, but stopping ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox

... thinking a great deal more than logic. Consciously or unconsciously, our feelings about almost everything are largely molded by ready-made opinions and attitudes fostered by our mass methods of communication. We cannot buy a bar of soap or a filtered cigarette without paying tribute to the impact of suggestion. Right or wrong, most of us place more confidence in what "they" say than we do in our own powers of reason. This is the basic reason why psychiatrists are in short supply. We distrust ...
— A Practical Guide to Self-Hypnosis • Melvin Powers

... the poop put a stunning period to our merriment. "Helm up, f'r God's sake! . . . Up!—oh God!—Up! Up!" A furious impact dashed us to the deck. Staggering, bruised, and bleeding, we struggled to our feet. Outside the yells of fear-stricken men mingled with hoarse orders, the crash of spars hurtling from aloft vied with the thunder of canvas, as the doomed barque swung ...
— Great Sea Stories • Various

... refusing to do battle with the youth, so with a muttered "Thy blood be upon thy head!" he laid his lance in rest and drew back a few paces. The stranger did likewise; then they rushed toward each other, and such was the force of their impact that both were unhorsed. Drawing their swords—for neither was injured—the knights resumed the conflict on foot. Conrad felt disgraced at having been unhorsed by a mere youth, and he was now further incensed by receiving a deep wound in his arm. Henceforth ...
— Hero Tales and Legends of the Rhine • Lewis Spence

... morning, and it was Margaret who decided on a horse for this little girl, a golliwog for that, for the rector's wife a copper warming-tray. "We always give the servants money." "Yes, do you, yes, much easier," replied Margaret, but felt the grotesque impact of the unseen upon the seen, and saw issuing from a forgotten manger at Bethlehem this torrent of coins and toys. Vulgarity reigned. Public-houses, besides their usual exhortation against temperance reform, invited men to "Join our Christmas ...
— Howards End • E. M. Forster

... disembarrassed from reflecting rocks, from a hard bed beneath, and from cracks and cavities that might be supposed to admit the sand; and indicating as its cause, either the accumulated vibration of the air when struck by the driven sand, or the accumulated sounds occasioned by the mutual impact of the particles of sand against each other. If a musket-ball passing through the air emits a whistling note, each individual particle of sand must do the same, however faint be the note which it yields; and the accumulation of these infinitesimal vibrations ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller

... the impact in silence, for at first she was in no condition to take in the answers she demanded. He suddenly realized, as a man thinks of an interesting circumstance that does not concern him at all, how beautiful she was; and the thought gave him ...
— Two on the Trail - A Story of the Far Northwest • Hulbert Footner

... that this whole world of wild, natural perfumes is lost to the tobacco-user and to the city- dweller. Senses trained in the open air are in tune with open-air objects; they are quick, delicate, and discriminating. When I go to town, my ear suffers as well as my nose: the impact of the city upon my senses is hard and dissonant; the ear is stunned, the nose is outraged, and the eye is confused. When I come back, I go to Nature to be soothed and healed, and to have my senses ...
— Time and Change • John Burroughs

... heroism that I am still trying to visualize (her nephew had thrown her down and was protecting her body with his own; but the heroine, seeing this, changed places with her defender "between the flash of the shell's impact and the explosion") and finishes, with an appropriately tearful death-scene, a tale that would have been improved by ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, May 21, 1919. • Various

... like that made by the wings of a great bird swooping down upon its prey. More quickly than he could apprehend the gradation, it increased to a hoarse and horrible roar, as the missile that made it sprang at him out of the sky, striking with a deafening impact one of the posts supporting the confusion of timbers above him, smashing it into matchwood, and bringing down the crazy edifice with a loud clatter, in clouds ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Vol. II: In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians • Ambrose Bierce

... were reflex. As the pistol hung beside his face, he snatched at it, wrested it away, struck with it, and heard a curse and felt the yielding impact of bone and flesh. He had missed the head but struck the shoulder. Next moment hands gripped the weapon, and a ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, October, 1930 • Various

... is, it does not, thanks to the presence of the amniotic fluid, result in the disfigurement of the child. For the same reason a blow struck upon the abdomen, as in a fall forward, is not so serious as might be thought, since the fluid, not the child, receives the force of the impact. Some physicians believe that the fetus swallows the amniotic fluid and thus secures nourishment. The fluid also serves to keep the fetus warm; or, to be more exact, protects it from sudden changes in the temperature of the mother's environment. ...
— The Prospective Mother - A Handbook for Women During Pregnancy • J. Morris Slemons

... pasteboard with sweet voices, while, on the other hand, the photoplay foreground is full of dumb giants. The bodies of these giants are in high sculptural relief. Where the lights are quite glaring and the photography is bad, many of the figures are as hard in their impact on the eye as lime-white plaster-casts, no matter what the clothing. There are several passages of this sort in the otherwise beautiful Enoch Arden, where the shipwrecked sailor is depicted on his desert island ...
— The Art Of The Moving Picture • Vachel Lindsay

... round sides of her iron turret. When the unwieldy rebel turtleback, with her slow, awkward movement, tried to ram the pointed raft that carried the cheese-box, the little vessel, obedient to her rudder, easily glided out of the line of direct impact. ...
— A Short Life of Abraham Lincoln - Condensed from Nicolay & Hay's Abraham Lincoln: A History • John G. Nicolay

... that each combatant should use his own shoulder-holster weapon. All three were nearly enough alike—small weapons, rather heavier than they looked, firing a tiny ten-grain bullet at ten thousand foot-seconds. On impact, such a bullet would almost disintegrate; a man hit anywhere in the body with one would be killed instantly, his nervous system paralyzed and his heart stopped by internal pressure. Each of the pistols carried twenty rounds ...
— Last Enemy • Henry Beam Piper

... humor, as could be found. The Hebrew prophet himself was often a story-teller. Thus, when Nathan would bring home the nature of his guilt to David, he does it by a story of the most dramatic character, which loses nothing, and indeed gains all its terrific impact, by being strongly impregnated with moral passion. Many such instances will occur to the student of the Bible. In the absence of a written or printed literature the story-teller had a distinct vocation, as he still has among the peoples of the East. Every visitor to Tangier ...
— The Great English Short-Story Writers, Vol. 1 • Various

... from the open furnace doors. He glares into her eyes, turned to stone. As for her, during his speech she has listened, paralyzed with horror, terror, her whole personality crushed, beaten in, collapsed, by the terrific impact of this unknown, abysmal brutality, naked and shameless. As she looks at his gorilla face, as his eyes bore into hers, she utters a low, choking cry and shrinks away from him, putting both hands up before her eyes to shut out the sight of his face, to protect her own. This startles Yank to ...
— The Hairy Ape • Eugene O'Neill

... a bump. The shock absorbers of the liquid-smooth convertible neutralized all but a tiny percent of the jarring impact before it could reach the imported English flannel seat of Coulter's expensively-tailored pants. But it was sufficient to jolt him out of his reverie, trebly induced by a four-course luncheon with cocktails and liqueur, the nostalgia of returning to a hometown unvisited ...
— A World Apart • Samuel Kimball Merwin

... gives the average annual number of deaths during a year per 1,000 population at midyear; also known as crude death rate. The death rate, while only a rough indicator of the mortality situation in a country, accurately indicates the current mortality impact on population growth. This indicator is significantly affected by age distribution, and most countries will eventually show a rise in the overall death rate, in spite of continued decline in mortality at all ages, as declining fertility results in ...
— The 1999 CIA Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... pawed up the soft earth with their hoofs, rolling their eyes and tossing their heads. Each withdrew to a far corner of his own corral, and then they made for each other at a gallop. Thud, thud, we could hear the impact of their great heads, and their bellowing shook the pans on the kitchen shelves. Had they not been dehorned, they would have torn each other to pieces. Pretty soon the fat steers took it up and began butting and horning each other. Clearly, the affair ...
— My Antonia • Willa Sibert Cather

... shivered under the impact of the blow, when a thousand unexpected bullets were sent into its ranks. All the front line was blown away, the men were shot from their saddles, and many of the horses went down with them. Others, riderless, galloped about screaming with pain ...
— The Last of the Chiefs - A Story of the Great Sioux War • Joseph Altsheler

... himself, suddenly felt a cold tightening of the skin of his face, and a hard swell of his breast. The dance of Snap's eyes, the downward flit of his hand seemed instantaneous with a red flash and loud report. Instinctively Hare dodged, but the light impact of something like a puff of air gave place to a tearing hot agony. Then he slipped down, back to the stone, with a bloody ...
— The Heritage of the Desert • Zane Grey

... planted, and seek for signs of a change which we could trace with some certainty to the influence of the mission. That would be a stupendous and most intricate undertaking. Where innumerable forces are at work such as are implied in the impact of western civilisation upon the peoples of the East, or of Africa, it would be extremely difficult to state the exact impression made by the mission, even if we could survey the whole state of the people at regular and definite ...
— Missionary Survey As An Aid To Intelligent Co-Operation In Foreign Missions • Roland Allen

... Pai Utes almost equalling wheat in the size of its kernel. In the lowlands grows the stolid mesquite tree, more underground than above, whose roots furnish excellent firewood,—albeit they must be broken up with a sledge hammer, for no axe will stand the impact. Near it may be seen huge bunches of grass (or perhaps straw would describe it better), which the white man gathers for hay with a huge hoe. Then there is the ever-present, friendly sage-brush, miniature oak trees, with branch and trunk, so beautiful. It grows, as a rule, ...
— The Romance of the Colorado River • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh

... unrealistic glossing over of sex attraction and spurned the theory that woman expressed love and man wisdom, that these two qualities reached out for each other and blended in marriage. Because she spoke frankly for those days and did not soften the impact of her words with sentimental flowery phrases, her remarks were sometimes called "coarse" and "animal," but she justified them in a letter to Mrs. Stanton, who thought as she did, "To me it [sex] is not coarse or gross. If it is ...
— Susan B. Anthony - Rebel, Crusader, Humanitarian • Alma Lutz

... around the other's knees. The legs of the man shot from under him, his body cut a half circle through the air, and the part of his anatomy to first touch the floor was his head. The floor was of oak, and the impact gave forth a crash like the smash of a base-ball bat, when it drives the ball to centre field. The man did not move. He did not even groan. In his relaxed fingers the revolver lay, within reach of Lathrop's hand. He fell ...
— Once Upon A Time • Richard Harding Davis

... Point, in Narragansett Bay. The sounding of the whistle is well described by Price-Edwards, a noted English lighthouse engineer, "as caused by the vibration of the column of air contained within the bell or dome, the vibration being set up by the impact of a current of steam or air at a high pressure." It is probable that the metal of the bell is likewise set in vibration, and gives to the sound its timbre or quality. It is noted that the energy so excited expends its ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XIX, No. 470, Jan. 3, 1885 • Various

... approaching a dread of its repetition, I experienced a kind of rawness and sensitiveness of soul such as when, to put it pathologically, a super-sensitive mucous membrane surface is touched roughly by a hand or instrument. One is not exactly pained, but one quivers to the impact. So quivered my soul, though not my brain or my body, for there was no suggestion of any bodily faintness, or of any agitation of "grey matter," in the experience. For example, I was not in the least dizzy. I was outside my ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey

... remorselessly encourage, as we are kind to a beast of burden. In six years, among all the men who were introduced to her from twenty leagues round, there was not one in whose presence Dinah was conscious of the excitement caused by personal beauty, by a belief in promised happiness, by the impact of a superior soul, or the anticipation of a love affair, even ...
— Parisians in the Country - The Illustrious Gaudissart, and The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac

... sinking; for a moment she seemed unable to continue the struggle—then she recalled the dear burden upon her back. She fought the swift current and grappled madly with the jamming ice. It gathered about her—she feared she would be buried by the force of the impact. But with a mighty struggle she finally grasped hold of a fortunate ridge on a cake and clambered to its surface. The baby was unscathed. It was crying loudly in its hood. Although her hands were almost frozen, the cold water had not entered ...
— The Eternal Maiden • T. Everett Harre

... can understand it. All great discoveries are simple. I fix in a prominent situation a large and vertically revolving fan, of a light and vibrating substance. The movement of the air causes this to rotate by the mere force of the impact. The rotation and the vibration of the fan convert an irregular impulse into a steady and equable undulation; and such is the elasticity of the fluid called, in popular language, 'the air,' that for miles around ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore

... motion, and secondly, they like the mark to be moving too; it is not to be stationary, waiting for the arrival of the arrow, but passing at full speed; they can usually kill beasts, and their marksmen hit birds. If it ever happens that they want to test the actual impact on a target, they set up one of stout wood, or a shield of raw hide; piercing that, they reckon that their shafts will go through armour too. So, Lycinus, tell Hermotimus from us that his teachers fierce straw targets, and then say they have disposed ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata

... my Lectures to the Junior Sophs began, 39 names, lasting to Dec. 13th. Those to the Senior Sophs, 16 names, Oct 29th to Dec. 10th. I also examined Questionists as last year. I have notes about a Paper on the connection of impact and pressure, read at the Philosophical Society on Nov. 14th, but not printed, dipping-needle problems, curve described round three centres of force, barometer observations, theory of the Figure of the Earth with variable density, and effect on the Moon, correction to the Madras pendulum, wedge ...
— Autobiography of Sir George Biddell Airy • George Biddell Airy

... the same wire and the same nervous apparatus, and the amount of electric force required to give rise to these several states of consciousness will be the same, however often the experiment is repeated. And as the electric force, the light-waves, and the nerve-vibrations caused by the impact of the light-waves on the retina, are all expressions of the molecular changes which are taking place in the elements of the battery; so consciousness is, in the same sense, an expression of the molecular ...
— Critiques and Addresses • Thomas Henry Huxley

... that his time would come, when he had pushed his great discovery; and if the art of photography had been known, his face would have been his fortune. For he bore at the very top of it the seal and stamp of his patent—the manifest impact of a bullet, diffracted by the power of Pong. The roots of his hair—the terminus of blushes, according to all good novelists—had served an even more useful purpose, by enabling him to blush again. Strengthened by ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore

... pine board. It was the development of gun power and projectiles that called forth the thick armor, but it was soon found that it was impossible for the armor to keep pace with the deadliness of the guns as it was utterly impossible to carry the weight necessary to resist the force of impact. Then came the use of special plates, the compound armor where a hard face to break up the projectile was welded to a softer back to give the necessary strength. This was followed by the steel armor treated ...
— Marvels of Modern Science • Paul Severing

... any warning, the horse's back arched like a bent bow, and all four feet came off the ground. It was an extraordinary experience for Vaughan—everything sloping away from him. Then the back straightened suddenly and the hoofs struck the ground with such impact that, if the boy had not been very firmly in the stirrups, he would have been tossed in the air like ...
— In the Musgrave Ranges • Jim Bushman

... from a scientific point of view—that which we call Matter is held to be merely an aggregation of atoms, which atoms themselves are merely a grouping of units of force, called electrons or "ions," vibrating and in constant circular motion. We kick a stone and we feel the impact—it seems to be real, notwithstanding that we know it to be merely what we have stated above. But remember that our foot, which feels the impact by means of our brains, is likewise Matter, so constituted of electrons, and for that matter so are our brains. And, at the best, if it were not by reason ...
— The Kybalion - A Study of The Hermetic Philosophy of Ancient Egypt and Greece • Three Initiates

... a special study of that shot," he confided. "Yes, I can tell you how it's done, but it needs a lot of practice. It's done in turning over the wrists sharply just at the moment of impact. You get everything there is to be got into the stroke that way, and you keep ...
— The Pawns Count • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... either of the sea-pieces for the sake of these decorous arrangements; neither did he paint the Scarborough as a professor of physical science, to show you the level of low tide on the Yorkshire coast; nor the Indiaman to show you the force of impact in a liquid mass of sea-water of given momentum. He painted this to show you the daily course of quiet human work and happiness, and that, to enable you to conceive something of uttermost human misery—both ordered by the ...
— Lectures on Landscape - Delivered at Oxford in Lent Term, 1871 • John Ruskin

... other gains really out-balance my losses? Henceforth I should, it was true, be leader and chief; but I should also be the buffer between the Olympians and my little clan. To Edward this had been nothing; he had withstood the impact of Olympus without flinching, like Teneriffe or Atlas unremoved. But was I equal to the task? And was there not rather a danger that for the sake of peace and quietness I might be tempted to compromise, compound, ...
— The Golden Age • Kenneth Grahame

... impact of the man's death had driven all thought of its consequences from Brion's mind. Now he began to realize. Telt had never sent word of his discovery of the radioactive trace to the Nyjord army. He had been afraid to use the radio, and had wanted to tell Hys ...
— Planet of the Damned • Harry Harrison

... Nothing escaped Miss Cursiter; if her face grew tender for the young girls and the eight-year-olds, at the sight of Miss Quincey it stiffened into tolerance, cynically braced to bear. Miss Cursiter had an eye for magnificence of effect, and the unseemly impact of Miss Quincey was apt to throw the lines into disorder, demoralising the younger units and ruining the spectacle as a whole. To-day it made the new Classical Mistress smile, and somehow that smile ...
— Superseded • May Sinclair

... over his shoulder. "I've got to catch Andy! Then I'll explain. He's trying to get ahead of us. I guess, but we'll stop him!" Thereupon Tom flung himself against the door of the airship shed. The young inventor found the portal bolted, though it vibrated with the impact of his body. ...
— Tom Swift in the Caves of Ice • Victor Appleton

... firing, having time to step back again, between the flash of the enemy's gun and the passing of the shot. The deck of the monitor, being almost awash, was no mark at all for the artillerists in the fort, and it would be the merest chance if a ricochet shot struck it. If it did, the very low angle of impact made it fly off without doing any harm. The turret was dented with some centre shots, as I saw when I visited the vessel later, but it was practically impregnable to the ordnance the Confederates used. On the other hand, the direct fire from the ship was limited in its effect to the displacement ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V2 • Jacob Dolson Cox

... (also 'sub-optimal solution') An astoundingly stupid way to do something. This term is generally used in deadpan sarcasm, as its impact is greatest when the person speaking looks completely serious. Compare {stunning}. See also ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0

... England. One or two boats overturned, and a number of frightened women jumped into the water without obtaining life preservers. Others strapped on the cork jackets and were rescued hours later. Some of the victims were killed outright by the impact of the torpedo and the second explosion. Fortunately the vessel remained afloat and her wireless brought rescue craft from both ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume V (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)

... of religion by the romance of miracles and paradises and torture chambers that makes it reel at the impact of every advance in science, instead of being clarified by it. If you take an English village lad, and teach him that religion means believing that the stories of Noah's Ark and the Garden of Eden are literally true on the authority of ...
— Back to Methuselah • George Bernard Shaw

... Rosella took her resolve. She raised the iron flap once more, and saying aloud and with a ring of defiance in her voice: "Deliberately, deliberately; I don't care," loosed her hold upon the letter. She heard it fall with a soft rustling impact upon the accumulated mail-matter in the bottom of ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various

... material of river deposits, such as cobblestones, gravel, and the larger grains of sand, are WATER WORN, or rounded, except when near their source. Rolling along the bottom they have been worn round by impact and friction as they rubbed against one another and the rocky bed ...
— The Elements of Geology • William Harmon Norton

... in syllogisms, loved to follow the deductive jugglery of the abbe-philosopher: I saw, or seemed to see, the statue take life in that action of the nostrils, acquiring attention, memory, judgment and all the psychological paraphernalia, even as still waters are aroused and rippled by the impact of a grain of sand. I recovered from my illusion under the instruction of my abler master, the animal. The Capricorn shall teach us that the problem is more obscure than the abbe led me ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre

... springs to the impact. Plunk! Like the snap of a taut string. "Oh! Minna!" The shuttlecock drops zigzagedly, Out of orbit, Hits the path, And rolls over quite still. Dead white feathers, With a weight ...
— Men, Women and Ghosts • Amy Lowell

... wild enough to frighten anybody who might be listening. Truchen remained behind at table with Porthos. While the two wine-bibbers were looking behind the firewood for what they wanted, a sharp report was heard like the impact of a pair of lips ...
— Louise de la Valliere • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... in great bounds at the pace of a wolf, but silent. Lawrence had but just time to swing Isabel behind him before the Dane leapt for his throat. Lawrence struck him over the head, but the blow glanced: so sudden, so thundering came the impact that Lawrence all but went down under it: and once ...
— Nightfall • Anthony Pryde

... of defiance he jumped out of the door and slammed it shut after him, feeling it grow searing hot an instant later under the impact of the rays from the tubes that had been ...
— The Red Hell of Jupiter • Paul Ernst

... this appearance is due to the impact of the images, or to the effusion of the rays from the eye, as the physicists hold, in either case it is obvious that the vision may lead us to ...
— Ten Books on Architecture • Vitruvius

... carries you through, as in the case of a fall from horse-back. To tumble off when your horse is standing still and receive a dead blow from the ground might easily break a limb. But at full gallop immunity often lies in the fact that you strike the earth at an angle, and being carried forward, impact is less abrupt. I can only say that I have on more than one occasion found the greatest safety in a balloon venture involving the element of risk to lie in complete abandonment to circumstances, and in the increased life and activity which the delirium ...
— The Dominion of the Air • J. M. Bacon

... set sail, escorted by twenty Spanish sail-of-the-line. The French squadron made for the Bank of Newfoundland and inflicted great damage. Why it did not proceed along with the Spaniards to the West Indies is hard to say. The impact of twenty-seven sail-of-the-line in that quarter would have been decisive; but probably Godoy did not yet feel warranted in throwing down the gauntlet. Pitt and Grenville decided to overlook the gross breach of neutrality at ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose

... along its slippery surface and reach out his arms. Then a cheer went up from a hundred throats, and as instantly died away in a moan of terror. Behind, towering over them like a huge wall, came a wave of black water, solemn, merciless, uncrested, as if bent on deadly revenge. Under its impact the shattered end of the mast rose clear of the water, tossed about as if in agony, veered suddenly with the movement of a derrick-boom, and with its living freight dashed headlong into the swirl ...
— The Tides of Barnegat • F. Hopkinson Smith

... launch, which sped down the Sheepscot with so sudden a burst of speed that all felt the impulse. The sharp bow cut the current like a knife, the water curving over in a beautiful arch on each side and foaming away from the churning screw. Even with the wind-shield they caught the impact of the breeze, caused by their swiftness, and each was thrilled by the battle ...
— The Launch Boys' Adventures in Northern Waters • Edward S. Ellis

... also reflect, as religion always reflects, contemporaneous movements in Philosophy, Science, Ethics and Social Relationship, they cannot be understood without some consideration of the forces under whose strong impact inherited faiths have, during the last half century, been slowly breaking down, and in answer to whose suggestions faith has been ...
— Modern Religious Cults and Movements • Gaius Glenn Atkins

... his own denomination, above the petty interests and divisions of his former life to face world problems and the wide extension of the Kingdom of God. Four lecturers have followed each other to present a great world view to the men in these thirty huts: Butcher of New Guinea showed the effect of the impact of the Gospel upon primitive native races; Farquhar of India showed the power of Christianity over the great ethnic religions of India; Lord Wm. Gascoyne Cecil came next on the transformation of China, and was followed ...
— With Our Soldiers in France • Sherwood Eddy

... and of seeing his father's intimate internal economy seriously and permanently disarranged by the two-handed sword of one of the camel rider's colleagues (who flung aside a heavy gun which he had just emptied into Moussa's mamma) as his father fell to the ground under the impact and weight of the novel missile. Though Moussa was unaware, in his abysmal ignorance, of the interesting fact, the great two-handed sword so effectually wielded by the supporter of his captor, was exactly like that of a Crusader of old. It was like that of a Crusader of old, because it was ...
— Driftwood Spars - The Stories of a Man, a Boy, a Woman, and Certain Other People Who - Strangely Met Upon the Sea of Life • Percival Christopher Wren

... into the saddle. With both hands he clung to the horn. Up went the bronco on its hind legs. It pitched, bucked, sun-fished. In sheer terror Bob clung like a leech. The animal left the ground and jolted down stiff-legged on all fours. The impact was terrific. He felt as though a piledriver had fallen on his head and propelled his vital organs together like a concertina. Before he could set himself the sorrel went up again with a weaving, humpbacked twist. The rider ...
— The Fighting Edge • William MacLeod Raine

... inspiration and of light. The doctrine of Shakespeare, where it is not vaguer, is darker in its implication of injustice, in its acceptance of accident, than the impression of the doctrine of Aeschylus. Fate, irreversible and inscrutable, is the only force of which we feel the impact, of which we trace the sign, in the upshot of "Othello" or "King Lear." The last step into the darkness remained to be taken by "the most tragic" of all English poets. With Shakespeare—and assuredly not with Aeschylus—righteousness itself seems subject and subordinate to the masterdom ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... puffs of smoke, sharp cracks, heard above the general din, as they exploded and showered around us pieces of jagged iron. When a shell bursts, its fragments strike the ground obliquely, with a forward movement; therefore our comparative safety behind our rock, which often shook from the terrific impact of missiles on its outer side. So many had now sought its shelter that some extended beyond its protection, and before the cannonade was over two were killed outright, almost within reach of my arm. Many of the wounded, in going to the rear, ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe

... steep angle and ran back. It banked again. The pilot stared carefully. He reached forward and pushed a button. There was a tiny impact underfoot. Another steep banking turn, and Joe saw a puff of smoke ...
— Space Platform • Murray Leinster

... to admiration in the first amazement of impact, she carried them off equally to admiration in her meeting with Damaris. It was the prettiest little scene ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet

... use once more, to play my part, to fling aside, thank God, that old cloak of apathetic disappointment, of selfish betrayal, of cynical disbelief. Semyonov had brought the old life back to me and I had shrunk from the impact of it; but he had brought back to me, too, the presences of my absent friends who, during these weary months, had been lost to me. It seemed to me that, in the flickering twilight, John and Marie were bringing forward to me Vera and Nina and Jerry ...
— The Secret City • Hugh Walpole

... But the idea of cooeperation is taking root, and here and there there is a breaking away from the conventional mode of life. The best thing about it is that people are thinking, and pretty soon the impact of public opinion will be so strong that there will be a national movement to bring together the idle people and the idle land. We are paying a high price for our tuition, but we must admit that the war is ...
— The Next of Kin - Those who Wait and Wonder • Nellie L. McClung

... the Head of the Church and the source of its energy. If his life is spiritually poor and weak and thin, if it lacks moral passion and insight, his ministry will be correspondingly ineffective and futile, for the dynamic spiritual impact of a life is in proportion to its personal experience and its moral capacity to transmit divine power. Here again the emphasis is on the moral aspect of religion as contrasted with the magical. There can be no severing ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones

... train, with a box stove on end in the passenger car, fed with cordwood upside down, and with seventeen flat cars of pine lumber set between the passenger car and the locomotive so as to give the train its full impact ...
— Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town • Stephen Leacock

... unhorsed, and captured. The artillery-men had unlimbered the gun, pointed it, and the gunner stood with the lanyard in his hand, when he was struck by a charging horse; the gun was fired by the concussion, but at the same moment it was capsized into the ditch by the impact of the cavalry column. The enemy had no time to right the gun or carry it off, nor to stop for prisoners. They forced Moor on another horse, and turned tail as the charging lines of infantry came up on right and left as well as the column ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V1 • Jacob Dolson Cox

... shells filled with high explosives which detonate with terrific violence and form craters large enough to act as graves for five horses. The German howitzer shells are 8 to 9 inches in caliber, and on impact they send up columns of greasy black smoke. On account of this they are irreverently dubbed 'Coal-boxes,' 'Black Marias,' or 'Jack Johnsons' by the soldiers. Men who take things in this spirit, are, it seems, likely to throw out the calculations based on the loss of moral so carefully framed ...
— Tommy Atkins at War - As Told in His Own Letters • James Alexander Kilpatrick

... praises of Rumple's action in breaking the old lady's fall; but Nealie was secretly uneasy as to whether he had received more damage from the impact than had at first appeared. So, when she had been assured that Mrs. Barrow, who apparently weighed about fourteen stone, was only shaken, and not otherwise hurt, she hurried back again to satisfy herself that Rumple was sound in wind ...
— The Adventurous Seven - Their Hazardous Undertaking • Bessie Marchant

... little room, cosiest in the house, Jolyon would catch a moment of communion with his father. Not, indeed, that he had definitely any faith in the persistence of the human spirit—the feeling was not so logical—it was, rather, an atmospheric impact, like a scent, or one of those strong animistic impressions from forms, or effects of light, to which those with the artist's eye are especially prone. Here only—in this little unchanged room where his father had spent the most of his waking hours—could be retrieved ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... man, not quite coordinated with his tongue. In a breath, a space too short for thought, Weldon flung himself across the gap between them and drove his head and shoulders straight at the rounded, broadcloth vest: under his impact the elaborate swivel-chair slipped, swayed, crashed to the ground, and they went down together, Weldon's ...
— The Strange Cases of Dr. Stanchon • Josephine Daskam Bacon

... of God so brilliantly may not be all of first water. We must allow for the hues in the less perfect prisms. Were the greatest musical genius in the world to sit before the key-boards he could not draw from a harmonium the notes of a Lucerne organ. The impact of a writing on our souls must be proportionate to the spiritual and ethical force with which it is charged. Everyone recognizes this practically. None of us, however orthodox, professes to be as much inspired by Esther as by Job; by Chronicles ...
— The Right and Wrong Uses of the Bible • R. Heber Newton

... met those of Dalhousie's friend, and in that meeting she was conscious of an odd little shock, almost like a physical impact.... Why was it that this impossible man, with his ridiculous opinions, his wicked untruths, and his face so full of a misplaced hopefulness, kept coming like a destiny across and across her path? What was ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison

... but with a stuttering, weak impact. Eyre, bulky and powerful, staggered, toppled to ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams

... was a loud pop, while Billie's senses reeled with the stunning suddenness of the impact. Next second the machine had darted to a safe distance, and Billie could see the man gnawing frantically at the back of his hand. Too late; his hand went stiff, and his arm twitched spasmodically. The fellow made a step or two forward, then swayed where he stood, his whole body rigid ...
— The Devolutionist and The Emancipatrix • Homer Eon Flint

... passage. The nearest of the trio, a tall dark savage with a deep scar across his cheek, was just reaching out his hand to seize Luella when I sprang forward and planted a blow square upon his chin. He fell back heavily, lifted almost off his feet by my impact, and lay like a log on ...
— Blindfolded • Earle Ashley Walcott

... that there was, at a very early date, among a certain sect of Christian Gnostics, a well-developed body of doctrine, based upon the essential harmony existing between the Old Faith and the New, which claimed by means of a two-fold Initiation to impact to the inner circle of its adherents the secret of life, physical and spiritual, being, in face of the evidence given in the previous chapter, placed beyond any possible doubt, we must now ask, is there any evidence that such teaching ...
— From Ritual to Romance • Jessie L. Weston

... water-line; and those in charge of the vessel seemed powerless to close it. Every now and then I could hear parts of the ship give way under the strain. I could hear the air hiss and whistle spitefully under the resistless impact of the invading waters; I could hear the crashing of timbers as partitions were wrecked; and as the water rushed in at one place I could see, at another, scores of helpless passengers swept overboard into the sea—my unintended victims. I ...
— A Mind That Found Itself - An Autobiography • Clifford Whittingham Beers

... make a good end. So there, where the shadow lay thickest under the arch, was a patch of still black water, confined in stagnancy by a sunk log on which alluvial mud had made a garden of whitish grasses like the beard of an unclean old man. The impact of the unchecked floods that rushed past made this black patch shake perpetually, and this irregular motion gave it a sort of personality. It suggested a dark man shaking with a suppressed passion of malice. It was like Mr. Philip. From ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West

... The impact was terrific. The Germans stood gallantly to their work, encouraged by the shouts of their officers, but they were no match for the British ...
— The Boy Allies On the Firing Line - Or, Twelve Days Battle Along the Marne • Clair W. Hayes

... swept the school with that glance peculiar to head masters which convinces each separate boy it is directed at him. Stover felt the impact on his own forehead and dropped his eyes uneasily. When the hymn began he looked curiously among his classmates, located Doc Macnooder and caught the eye of the Tennessee Shad, who winked at him to show him he was ...
— The Varmint • Owen Johnson

... horrible gulf as if it were nothing, and, landing well on to the rocky point, he threw himself upon his face, to prevent his pitching off into the depths. I felt the spur above me shake beneath the shock of his impact, and as it did so I saw the huge rocking-stone, that had been violently depressed by him as he sprang, fly back when relieved of his weight till, for the first time during all these centuries, it got beyond its balance, fell with ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard

... being run down by a waiter, he sheered to starboard, and collided with a table at which there was a theatre party. Endeavoring to apologize, he backed into a great pottery vase, which rocked at the impact and threatened to topple from ...
— The Silver Horde • Rex Beach

... old song has it. Each man's eye receives the straight impact of its universal beams. It is my sun, though it be the light that lightens all men that come into the world. 'My atmosphere'—will one man claim the free, unappropriated winds of heaven as his? Yes, for they will pour into his lungs; and yet his ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... not feel the full impact of this prophecy at the moment. Indeed, it appeared to him that he had known since the previous midnight of his father's sudden doom; it appeared to him that the first glimpse of his father after the funeral had informed him of it positively. What ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett

... walking past a delicatessen store, and looking straight into the countenance of a pleasant-faced woman. I must have walked right into her, for she seemed amused, and went on her way laughing at something—probably my look of surprise as the impact brought me suddenly to full consciousness. A clock was hanging in the delicatessen-store window, and the hour-hand stood at nine. A cooling sea-breeze was blowing up from the south, and as I continued my walk home I realized ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson

... ground of the banana grove was rising. We dropped, as though we were sinking in water. But we gathered speed; we felt a weight coming to our bodies. At last we fell; my feet struck a solid surface with a solid impact. Don and I lost our balance, but Jane steadied us. We were standing upon a dark ...
— The White Invaders • Raymond King Cummings

... Jesse had rushed into the bar, attracted by the firing, and soon Ezra Manners came running down from the floor above. After the first impact against the door those without had withdrawn, evidently taking up a position in the courtyard again, for almost at once there was a fusilade of shots against door and windows, which luckily the heavy oak ...
— The Inn at the Red Oak • Latta Griswold

... times in that distance of fifty feet. Then a mass of twisting foam broke under him, and up out of it shot the head of one of the roaring monsters of rock that he and Joanne had looked upon. They struck it fairly, and Aldous was uppermost. He felt the terrific impact of the other's body. The foam boiled upward again, and they ...
— The Hunted Woman • James Oliver Curwood

... colony's ability to maintain an adequate and healthful living standard, that the destructive and disrupting impact of the massacre brought a period of severe famine and sickness. After the raid the surviving colonists had to abandon many of the outlying plantations with their arable fields, livestock, and supplies. And having had the routine of ...
— Medicine in Virginia, 1607-1699 • Thomas P. Hughes

... remote future, our sun is reduced to vapour by the impact of the several planets upon his surface, the resulting nebulous mass must be a very insignificant affair compared with the nebulous mass with which we started. In order to make a second nebula equal in size and potential energy to the first one, all the energy of position at first ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske

... in not having a discriminating eye for the incidental—for the externals—no eye for the hod of the rag-picker or the fine linen of the next man. Next man—that's it. I have met so many men,' he pursued, with momentary sadness—'met them too with a certain—certain—impact, let us say; like this fellow, for instance—and in each case all I could see was merely the human being. A confounded democratic quality of vision which may be better than total blindness, but has been of no advantage to me, I can assure ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad

... tankettes struck almost simultaneously. One took a boulder squarely between its tracks, and stopped in a shower of rock fragments. The track cleats bit futilely at the ground. The vehicle stalled, the boulder jammed against it. The impact did not seem to have been particularly severe; but the entire body of the tankette had been buckled and accordioned. Possibly only the boulder's own bulk between the tracks had kept them from coming together like ...
— The Barbarians • John Sentry

... naturally, of course to make his entrance too. If like a tenuous smoke he can get in, the probability is that he gets out in precisely the same fashion. For really, if you weren't consciously expecting the customary impact (you actually jerk forward in the act of resistance unresisted), you would not notice his going. I am afraid I must be horribly boring you with all these tangled theories. All I mean is, that if you were really absorbed in what you happened ...
— The Return • Walter de la Mare

... the sudden arrival of his old friend, Mr. Peters, whom he had imagined at his home in Putney packing for his trip to America, would have suggested nothing to him. As it was, it suggested a great deal. He had had a brain-wave, and for fully a minute he sat tingling under its impact. He was not a young man who often had brain-waves, and, when they came, ...
— The Girl on the Boat • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse

... and disgusted that he could find no words for the moment, and he stood there watching the two old tree-trunks coming closer and closer, till the foremost just missed the cable, and directly after touched the brig's bows with a slow, dull, heavy impact which made her jar from ...
— Old Gold - The Cruise of the "Jason" Brig • George Manville Fenn

... atmosphere of the sun; and, on the temperature becoming lower, condensed into these "ultimate cosmical particles." These afterward collected into larger masses, which have been variously changed by subsequent metamorphic action, and broken up by repeated mutual impact, and often again collected together and solidified. The meteoric irons are probably those portions of the metallic constituents which were separated from the rest by fusion when the metamorphism was ...
— Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel • Ignatius Donnelly

... a hard wood, however, and at last the tree started to fall; but instead of coming down on our side of the gully it fell diagonally across it and crashed into the top of a great hemlock that stood near the stream below. The impact was so tremendous that many of the brittle branches of both trees were broken off. At first we thought that the basswood was going to break clear, but it finally hung precariously against the hemlock at a height of thirty feet or more above ...
— A Busy Year at the Old Squire's • Charles Asbury Stephens

... have contributed to the silence. Besides, segregationists could do little in an immediate legislative way to counteract the presidential command. Congress had already passed the Selective Service Act and Defense Appropriations Act, the most suitable vehicles for amendments aimed at modifying the impact of the integration order. National elections and the advent of a new Congress precluded any other significant moves in this direction until later in the ...
— Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 • Morris J. MacGregor Jr.

... at about seven seconds to the hundred yards. Certainly I should say that a man charged from fifty yards or so would have little chance for a second shot, provided he missed the first. A hit seemed, in my experience, to the animal, by sheer force of impact, long enough to permit me to throw in another cartridge. A lioness thus took four frontal bullets starting at about sixty yards. An initial miss would probably have ...
— The Land of Footprints • Stewart Edward White

... then to say that the sea, raised by the rain water, had carried these shells to such a height, we have already said that things heavier than water cannot rise upon it, but remain at the bottom of it, and do not move unless by the impact of the waves. And if you were to say that the waves had carried them to such high spots, we have proved that the waves in a great depth move in a contrary direction at the bottom to the motion at the ...
— The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, Complete • Leonardo Da Vinci

... scraping of feet up and down, back and forth along the bare floor, the thudding of heavy shoulders into an unexpected wall, the impact of fist against body. In the utter darkness the two men gripped each other, struck, swayed together, staggered apart, only to come together again to strike ...
— Man to Man • Jackson Gregory

... planetismals' fall into it, and this velocity will increase with its mass and consequent force of gravity. In the early stages of a planet's growth it will probably remain cold, the small amount of heat produced by each impact being lost by radiation before the next one occurs; and with a small and slowly aggregating planet this condition will prevail till it approaches its full size. Then only will its gravitative force be sufficient ...
— Is Mars Habitable? • Alfred Russel Wallace

... inventor, had been published. He also made swords which could be bent as if they were of lead, and sharp enough to cut iron like wood. He performed a more wonderful feat in fashioning iron breast-plates which would resist the impact of red-hot missiles. In the De Sapientia, Cardan records that when Galeazzo perfected his water-screw, he lost his wits ...
— Jerome Cardan - A Biographical Study • William George Waters

... smashed by the impact of the Lee-Metford bullet, but close investigation of the trigger-guard, and the discovery of certain unmistakable evidences on the beach, showed that the Dyak leader had lost two if not three fingers of his ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy

... been an economy in disarray because of a quarter century of nearly continuous warfare. An apparently durable peace was established after the death of rebel leader Jonas SAVIMBI on February 22, 2002, but consequences from the conflict continue including the impact of wide-spread land mines. Subsistence agriculture provides the main livelihood for 85% of the population. Oil production and the supporting activities are vital to the economy, contributing about 45% to GDP and more ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency

... The result was that these well-vitalized persons, whenever they returned to the city, were better able to stand—and adjust themselves to—the severe urban pace, than were the fagged city people. It was largely by the impact of this new vitality that the city was roused to the importance of physical efficiency, so that it went in for parks, gymnasia, baths, health and welfare campaigns, athletic fields, playgrounds, Boy Scouts, Campfire ...
— The Joyful Heart • Robert Haven Schauffler

... how can so wise a brain Court ruin by abiding calmly here The impact of a force so large as ours? He may be mounting up this very hour! What think you, ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy



Words linked to "Impact" :   colour, impinging, effect, queer, result, affect, distort, consequence, encroachment, touch, fighting, outcome, stimulate, strike, impaction, tinge, process, combat, bear on, discommode, incommode, put out, hit, bump, force, slam-dunk, work, modify, touch on, repercuss, hydrolise, disoblige, alter, hydrolize



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