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Spiral   Listen
adjective
Spiral  adj.  
1.
Winding or circling round a center or pole and gradually receding from it; as, the spiral curve of a watch spring.
2.
Winding round a cylinder or imaginary axis, and at the same time rising or advancing forward; winding like the thread of a screw; helical.
3.
(Geom.) Of or pertaining to a spiral; like a spiral.
Spiral gear, or Spiral wheel (Mach.), a gear resembling in general a spur gear, but having its teeth cut at an angle with its axis, or so that they form small portions of screws or spirals.
Spiral gearing, a kind of gearing sometimes used in light machinery, in which spiral gears, instead of bevel gears, are used to transmit motion between shafts that are not parallel.
Spiral operculum, an operculum whih has spiral lines of growth.
Spiral shell, any shell in which the whorls form a spiral or helix.
Spiral spring. See the Note under Spring, n., 4.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Spiral" Quotes from Famous Books



... has sunk to sleep, The castle keep is hushed and still— See, up the spiral stairway creep, To work his wicked will, Lord Massingbert of odious fame, Soft followed by his cut-throat staff; Ah, "Hold" has justified his name And pinned ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 4 (of 4) • Various

... out where the flashing static on the radar is coming from," explained Strong. "We'll make wide circles, starting outside and working in. Blast in a continuous circle inward, like a spiral. If there's anything around here, we'll find ...
— On the Trail of the Space Pirates • Carey Rockwell

... telescope and a few chairs. The observer's chair was upholstered with velvet. It was not a complicated observatory like the worldly ones.... I removed the cap of the great telescope, covering the object-glass, and then uncovered the eye-piece. As I looked around the heavens to find the great spiral of planets (the planetary chain told about) I heard a voice from the lens of the telescope saying: "This is ...
— Child and Country - A Book of the Younger Generation • Will Levington Comfort

... together, to the risping, whistling sound of a wind-blown waterfall. "It comes down peat-red," she told him gloatingly, and with an air of showing off a private treasure she led him to the grey fold in the hills where the Logan Burn tumbled down a spiral staircase of dark polished rock. She ran about the pools at its feet, crying that this wee one was red as rust, that this big one was red as a red rose—was it not, if you looked in the very middle? But suddenly she looked up into his face and ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West

... and distinct, thick wreaths of gray-white smoke were sailing straight aloft. The waiting Apache of the Mazatzal was signalling the coming brother from the dark clefts of the Sierra Ancha. One hour later, just as ten was striking on the spiral of the office clock, two sudden shots were heard on the flats to the north-west, and the little herd of horses and mules, not two dozen in all, grazing under cover of the rifles of Sentries 3 and 4, came ...
— Tonio, Son of the Sierras - A Story of the Apache War • Charles King

... cylinder that has sharp knives upon it. They call them knives, but they are like strips of sharp steel fastened on to the cylinder. They are 'bout half an inch high, and run the whole length of the cylinder in a spiral way, just the same as I would wind a string round this stick from bottom to top, if every time the string went round it was an inch from where it ...
— Under Fire - A Tale of New England Village Life • Frank A. Munsey

... obeyed, Randalin laughed a little, for the ring was a man's ring, a massive spiral whose two ends were finished with serpents' heads, and her thickest finger was but a loose fit in its girth. But Elfgiva, when she had seen it on, closed her eyes with ...
— The Ward of King Canute • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz

... escape of flue dust, &c., from the destructor chimney. Externally, it appears a large circular block of brickwork, 18 ft. in diameter and 13 ft. 7 in. high, connected with the main flue, and situated between the destructor cells and the boiler. Internally it consists of a spiral flue traversing the entire circumference and winding upwards to the top of the chamber. There is an interior well or chamber 6 ft. diameter by 12 ft. high, having a domed top, and communicating with the outer spiral flue by four ports ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various

... sea. The low-lying tracts of country were desert-dry, and about Athens the world was arrayed in the garb of the East. Nevertheless there was still a delicate freshness in the winds that blew to the little city from the purple Aegean or from the mountains of Argolis; stirring the dust into spiral dances among the pale houses upon which Lycabettos looks down; shaking the tiny leaves of the tressy pepper trees near the Royal Palace; whispering the antique secrets of the ages into the ears of the ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens

... not have removed, you could not have taken to pieces all articles of furniture in which it would have been possible to make a deposit in the manner you mention. A letter may be compressed into a thin spiral roll, not differing much in shape or bulk from a large knitting-needle, and in this form it might be inserted into the rung of a chair, for example. You did not take ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Detective Stories • Various

... stretching along the ground like a tunnel. Far away in the distance, where it narrowed towards the opening, there was a sparkling, white spot; if he could get there, he might escape. He seemed to be travelling day and night towards that chink along unending spiral lines running within the surface of the tunnel; he travelled under compulsion and with great effort, slowly, like a snail, although within him something leapt up like a rabbit caught in a snare, or as if wings were fluttering in his soul. He knew what was beyond that chink. Only a few steps would ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various

... been distinguished in Cornwall and Devonshire. The Brachiopods and Molluscs still abound, but the Molluscs begin to outnumber the lower type of shell-fish. In the Cephalopods we find an increasing complication of the structure of the great spiral-shelled types. ...
— The Story of Evolution • Joseph McCabe

... few minutes, he was apparently absorbed in the lecture; so intent indeed, was he in the task, that he did not hear the steps which wound the spiral stairs that conducted to his cell, and it was not till the wards harshly grated beneath the huge key, and the door creaked on its hinges, that Rienzi, in amaze at intrusion at so unwonted an hour, lifted his eyes. The door had reclosed on the dungeon, and by the lonely and pale ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... long young limbs and came out of the darkness, seating herself on the running board on our side, where the firelight shone on her clean young features, her splendid young figure of an American girl. She was comely enough in her spiral putties and her tanned boots as she sat, her small round chin on the hand whose arm was supported by a knee. Rowena appeared downcast. While Maw was busy a moment later, I asked ...
— Maw's Vacation - The Story of a Human Being in the Yellowstone • Emerson Hough

... rectifying. It is a sort of check valve that permits current to flow through the charging circuit in one direction only. In appearance the bulb, see Figure 49, resembles somewhat an ordinary incandescent bulb. In the bulb is a short tungsten filament wound in the form of a tight spiral, and supported between two lead-in wires. Close to the filament is a graphite disk which serves as one of the electrodes. Figure 50 shows the operating principle of the Tungar. "B" is the bulb, containing the filament "F" and the graphite electrode "A." To serve as ...
— The Automobile Storage Battery - Its Care And Repair • O. A. Witte

... four or five feet long, and is encircled in a spiral form at the thick end, by a row of deer's horns. A single long horn is fastened in the centre, the chief use of which is to stick it in the earth when the club is rested. Only a few races of upper and lower Ucayali and the Sensis ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi

... of a morning-glory the evening before the dawn which is to see it unfold. The delicate petals are twisted into a spiral, which at the appointed hour, when the sunlight touches the hidden springs of its life, will uncoil itself and let the day into the chamber of its virgin heart. But the spiral must unwind by its own law, and the hand that shall try to hasten the process ...
— The Guardian Angel • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... Young ceratodus six weeks after issuing from the egg. s spiral fold of gut, b rudimentary ...
— The Evolution of Man, V.2 • Ernst Haeckel

... that there is a great stream of Egos, or Monads, which originally emanated from a Source of Being, and which are pursuing a spiral journey around a chain of seven globes, including the earth, called the Planetary Chain. The Life Wave of Monads reaches Globe A, and goes through a series of evolutionary life on it, and then passes on to Globe B, and so on until Globe G is reached, when after a continued ...
— Reincarnation and the Law of Karma - A Study of the Old-New World-Doctrine of Rebirth, and Spiritual Cause and Effect • William Walker Atkinson

... about the river and pick up quantities of small crabs, called "ag-ka'-ma," and also a small spiral shell, called "ko'-ti." It is safe to say that every hour of a rainless day one or more persons of Bontoc is gathering such food in the river. Immediately after the first rain of the season of 1903, coming April 5, there were twenty-four ...
— The Bontoc Igorot • Albert Ernest Jenks

... which, liberated into the space behind the bullet when the trigger is pulled, propels the bullet from the barrel by its expansion. The common forms of air-gun, which are merely toys, are charged by compressing a spiral spring, one end of which forms a piston working in a cylinder; when released by a pull on the trigger, this spring expands, and the air forced out in front of it propels the bullet. Air-guns of this kind are sometimes ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... for a bit," said he, nodding his head on his shoulder at the door, "until you come to a spiral staircase; and on the second landing is a door covered with green baize. Go through that, and down the long corridor to the end, and the Red Room is on ...
— The Red Room • H. G. Wells

... direct our telescopes to this Milky Way and find that what we took for nebula is for the most part an accumulation of countless millions of suns, each perhaps with its planets. Then, as we sweep the sky with our glass, we discover numberless little wreath-like spiral cloudlets, and find that they also are just such wreaths of countless millions of suns and solar systems, and that these seemingly tiny wreaths are revolving round some central body or system, which itself must revolve round some other, and that again round another ... until ...
— The Faust-Legend and Goethe's 'Faust' • H. B. Cotterill

... when he saw a thin spiral of smoke from a rise of ground. Smoke meant that some human being was abroad in the land, and every man on the range called for investigation. The rider ...
— Oh, You Tex! • William Macleod Raine

... the upper landing of the spiral ascent, he paused a moment before laying hold of a grotesque knocker which ornamented the door of the atelier where the famous painter of Henry IV.—neglected by Marie de Medicis for Rubens—was probably at work. The young man felt the strong sensation which vibrates in the soul of great artists ...
— The Hidden Masterpiece • Honore de Balzac

... yards away. Slowly, as he advanced, he made out the dim shadow of life in the white gloom—a bit of smoke climbing weakly in the storm, the black opening of a brush shelter—and then, between the opening and the spiral of smoke, a living thing that came creeping toward him on all fours, ...
— The Honor of the Big Snows • James Oliver Curwood

... of enigmatical or indifferent religious convictions, who yet reigned over peoples, largely influenced by enthusiasm for freedom. Thus liberty was preserved for the world; but, as the law of human progress would seem to be ever by a spiral movement, it; seems strange to the superficial observer not prone to generalizing, that Calvinism, which unquestionably was the hard receptacle in which the germ of human freedom was preserved in various countries and at different epochs, should have so often degenerated into tyranny. ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... Trocar.—"It consists of a hollow cylinder six inches long, and half an inch in diameter, within which another cylinder fitting it tightly plays. The inner one is cut off at its extremity, somewhat in the form of a pen, and is sharp. The sharp end is kept retracted within the outer cylinder by a spiral spring in the handle at the other end, but can be protruded by pressing on this handle when required for use. When thus protruded it is plunged into the cyst up to its middle; the pressure on the handle is taken ...
— A Manual of the Operations of Surgery - For the Use of Senior Students, House Surgeons, and Junior Practitioners • Joseph Bell

... come to us they're thin, They're angular, or smooth and fat, Some spiral are, and gimlet in, And some are sharp, and others flat. The slim one pink you clean and neat, The flat ones bat a solid blow Much as a camel throws his feet, And leave you beastly incomplete. If lucky you don't ...
— 'Hello, Soldier!' - Khaki Verse • Edward Dyson

... Andrea, sitting bolt upright in his excitement, and forgetting the pigeon which, loosed by the sudden movement, escaped, and soared, with a quick spiral curve, ...
— Chico: the Story of a Homing Pigeon • Lucy M. Blanchard

... figures rushed upon the dais—and paused. It was the girl who had been brought before Yolara when the gnome named Songar was driven into the nothingness! With all the quickness of light a spiral of the Shining One stretched out ...
— The Moon Pool • A. Merritt

... working in a vertical guide frame, are operated from the main shaft by eccentrics and vertical connecting rods, as shown. These rods are connected to the lower strap of the eccentric by long guide bolts, on which intermediate spiral springs are mounted, and by this means, although the dies are brought quickly down to the dough, they are suffered to remain in contact therewith, under a gradually increasing pressure, for a sufficient length of time to ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 613, October 1, 1887 • Various

... eschatologies to scorn. And the higher they ascend, as they follow the path, the more vividly do they realise how unimaginably high above them is the summit of the mountain which the path is ascending in spiral coils. ...
— What Is and What Might Be - A Study of Education in General and Elementary Education in Particular • Edmond Holmes

... first Barrel-Gentian by the roadside; and there is a pretty insect in the meadows—the Mourning-Cloak Moth it might be called—which gives coincident warning. The innumerable Asters mark this period with their varied and wide-spread beauty; the meadows are full of rose-colored Polygala, of the white spiral spikes of the Ladies'-Tresses, and of the fringed loveliness of the Gentian. This flower, always unique and beautiful, opening its delicate eyelashes every morning to the sunlight, closing them again each night, has also a thoughtful charm about it as the last of the year's especial darlings. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 62, December, 1862 • Various

... over the Turkey-red cloth, which was not unhaunted by the ghosts of dead dinners, he became chastely and divinely happy. His mind floated away into the empyrean; he saw visions of a far more perfect Society; dreamed dreams of the ascending spiral whose law others had groped at, but he would be the first to formulate; caught and fondled the secret of the whole great Design; reduced it to a rule-of-thumb to do his bidding; bestrode the whole ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison

... and picking out the berries. While I was surveying this scene, suddenly one of the blackcock jumped up and the rest of the frightened flock immediately flew away. To my astonishment the first bird began going straight up in a spiral flight and afterwards dropped directly down dead. When I approached there sprang from the body of the slain cock a rapacious ermine that hid under the trunk of a fallen tree. The bird's neck was badly torn. I then understood ...
— Beasts, Men and Gods • Ferdinand Ossendowski

... made splendidly at home. Not only in the ward-room that did a jazz with a disturbing spiral movement when we speeded up from our casual 18 knots to something like 28 in a rough sea, but from the bridge down to the boiler room, where we watched the flames of oil fuel making steam in the modern manner, we were drawn into the charmed circle of comradeship and keenness that made up ...
— Westward with the Prince of Wales • W. Douglas Newton

... masters here. The moderns are in the billiard-room. The furniture here is a little curious. In fact, I fancy that it is unique. It is made of ebony and narwhals' horns. You see that the legs of everything are of spiral ivory, both the table and the chairs. It cost the upholsterer some little pains, for the supply of these things is a strictly limited one. Curiously enough, the Chinese Emperor had given a large order for narwhals' horns to repair some ancient pagoda, which was fenced in with them, but I outbid ...
— The Doings Of Raffles Haw • Arthur Conan Doyle

... Coercion Bill. He was describing the promises of equal laws to Ireland, with the restrictions on Irish liberty which were contained in the Bill, and as he described restriction he gradually raised the fingers on one hand, then turned them spiral fashion until he had pointed the index finger to the roof—- as though he were describing the ascent of a funambulist to the top of spiral stairs. It was at once eloquent and grotesque, and the House cheered and cheered yet again ...
— Sketches In The House (1893) • T. P. O'Connor

... exports may be satisfied earlier. No backlog of demand can exist very long in the face of our tremendous productive capacity. We must expect again to face the problem of shrinking demand and consequent slackening in sales, production, and employment. This possibility of a deflationary spiral in the future will exist unless we now plan and adopt an effective full ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... settle arrears on its bilateral debt, leading to a cancellation of rescheduling agreements with official and private creditors. Devaluation of its Francophone currency by 50% in January 1994 did not set off an expected inflationary spiral but the government must continue to keep a tight reign on spending ...
— The 1995 CIA World Factbook • United States Central Intelligence Agency

... or screw-pump. The more distant fields of the valley of the Nile, rising above the level of the inundation, have to be watered artificially by pumping out of the canals into ditches at a higher level. For this work Archimedes proposed a spiral tube, twisting round an axis, which was to be put in motion either by the hand or by the force of the stream out of which it was to pump; and this was found so convenient that it soon became the machine most in ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 10 (of 12) • S. Rappoport

... swayed on her feet. The pistol wavered and swung in a feeble spiral, no longer pointed at Wayne. Gently, he took it from her nerveless fingers and caught her supple body as ...
— The Judas Valley • Gerald Vance

... eighteenth century. His period was the most tumultuous and yet the most fruitful in the world's history. But the progress made in it was not altogether direct; rather was it like the advance of a traveler whirled through the spiral tunnels of the St. Gotthard. Flying from the inclemency of the north, he is carried by the ponderous train due southward into the opening. After a time of darkness he emerges into the open air. But at first sight the goal is no nearer; the direction is perhaps reversed, ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane

... fell back dead. Flames crackled out from the wood pile, and the air became rich with the smell of burning flesh. And lo! in another moment the cloud above had melted into nothingness, and the flames burnt pale, and the smoke went up in a thin blue spiral towards the deeper blueness of ...
— The Lost Continent • C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne

... hall and chamber, while, nevertheless, the second story, projecting far over the base, and itself retiring beneath the third, threw a shadowy and thoughtful gloom into the lower rooms. Carved globes of wood were affixed under the jutting stories. Little spiral rods of iron beautified each of the seven peaks. On the triangular portion of the gable, that fronted next the street, was a dial, put up that very morning, and on which the sun was still marking the passage of the ...
— Composition-Rhetoric • Stratton D. Brooks

... breeds the horns are deficient in the ewe, though this likewise occurs occasionally with the female of the wild musmon. In the rams of the Wallachian breed, "the horns spring almost perpendicularly from the frontal bone, and then take a beautiful spiral form; in the ewes they protrude nearly at right angles from the head, and then become twisted in a singular manner." (3/82. 'Youatt on Sheep' page 138.) Mr. Hodgson states that the extraordinarily arched nose or chaffron, which ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication - Volume I • Charles Darwin

... republican sabre on a mediaeval hackbut. Mme. du Barry, with a star above her head, naked, and surrounded by a cloud, seemed to look longingly out of Latour's pastel at an Indian chibook, while she tried to guess the purpose of the spiral curves that wound towards her. Instruments of death, poniards, curious pistols, and disguised weapons had been flung down pell-mell among the paraphernalia of daily life; porcelain tureens, Dresden plates, translucent cups from china, ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac

... church, and passing through the streets of Vieux Calvaire l'Ermitage, Jeanne d'Arc and St. Gatien, gained the entrance to the Abbey of Marmoutier, where Saint Gatien dug out his cave in the rocky hillside. We also saw the ruins of a fine thirteenth century basilica once the glory of Touraine, and by a spiral staircase ascended to the Chapelle des Sept Dormants, really a cavern cut in the side of the hill in the shape of a cross, where rest the seven disciples of St. Martin, who all died on the same day as he had predicted. Their bodies remained intact for days and many miracles ...
— In Chteau Land • Anne Hollingsworth Wharton

... with great skill, and the powerful craft mounted much more swiftly than the distant spark of light. The spiral course the 'plane now followed carried it at times much farther from the mountain side than it had been when first the strange light was noticed. That light followed the Snowbird up and up in similar spirals, and the ...
— On a Torn-Away World • Roy Rockwood

... eye; the craft, as seen through the telescope, appearing to be merely a wavering blot of creamy white, with another wavering blot of dark colour, representing the hull, below it; a dark line with a spiral motion to it, which made it look like a corkscrew, representing above the sails the bare topgallant and royal- masts. This was vexatious, but the sun was still fully an hour high. By the time that he would reach the horizon the craft would probably be some seven or ...
— The Congo Rovers - A Story of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood

... to the pleasant sounds of the jungle a loud rich note, which closely resembles the frequent repetition of the name bestowed upon it by the blacks, "Calloo-calloo." As are its visits so are its notes—casual, coming in erratic bursts and sudden sallies of whirling spiral sound. Its advent is hailed with satisfaction, for the belief exists that it causes the bean-tree—the source of a much-esteemed food—togrow more quickly. This faith has a substantial origin, for shortly after the bird's first fluty notes are heard the bean tree ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield

... And thus a moralizing theme assumes:— Know, gentle Ladies, once these shapeless walls, O'er whose grey wreck the shading ivy crawls, Compos'd a graceful mansion, whose fair mould Led from the road the trav'ller, to behold. Oft, when the morning ting'd the redd'ning skies, Far off the spiral smoke was seen to rise; At noon the hospitable board was spread, Then nappy ale made light the weary head; And when grey eve appear'd, in shadows damp, Each casement glitter'd with th' enliv'ning lamp; Here the laugh titter'd, there ...
— Poems • Sir John Carr

... over Percival, and he made a lightning calculation of the distance from the table to the stairway. In doing so he noted that it was a spiral stairway. Why in the name of heaven was everything round? The port-holes, the revolving-chairs, the electric ...
— The Honorable Percival • Alice Hegan Rice

... found no stakes to show him the boundaries of his property, he gained the upper rim of the high cliff which walled the southern side of the Big Bend, and all the valley opened before him. Smoke lifted in a pale spiral from the house below his camp. Abreast of the log boom he had passed in the river, he marked the roofs of several buildings, and back of the clearings in the logged-over land opened white squares against the dusky green of the ...
— The Hidden Places • Bertrand W. Sinclair

... the door and the white cat, round and symmetrical, formed the center of the visible universe. On the marble table beside Andrews were some pieces of crisp bread with butter on them, a saucer of damson jam and a bowl with coffee and hot milk from which the steam rose in a faint spiral. His tunic was unbuttoned and he rested his head on his two hands, staring through his fingers at a thick pile of ruled paper full of hastily drawn signs, some in ink and some in pencil, where now and then he made a mark with a pencil. At the other edge of the pile of papers were two books, ...
— Three Soldiers • John Dos Passos

... driving, of course," he goes on. "I don't attempt spiral dips, or exhibition work. I've never been up more than five hundred feet. And this is such a safe type. Oh, the folks will come around to it after they've seen me up once or twice. I want to surprise 'em. There she is, up the ...
— Torchy, Private Sec. • Sewell Ford

... in the filigreed, silver twilight beside Lhar, I had a concept of teeming universes of space-time, of an immense spiral of lives and civilizations, races and cultures, covering an infinite cosmos. And yet—what had happened? Very little, in that inconceivable infinity. A rift in time, a dimensional slip—and a sector of land and three beings on it had been wrenched from ...
— Where the World is Quiet • Henry Kuttner

... difficulty in voiding the urine, several ineffectual efforts being made before it will flow. The stream is diminished in size, of a flattened or spiral form, or divided in two or more parts, and does not ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis

... rolled up like a window shade. The ninety pound ingnue, withholding her silver-lace flouncings from the raw edges of moving landscape, high-stepped to a rearward dressing room; the khaki clad hero brushing past her and the pink satin drummer boys for first place down a spiral staircase. ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy

... if he had finished the portrait of Misery on his stick. Misery had now become a figure of Piety, and Choulette recognized the Virgin in it. He had even composed a quatrain which he was to write on it in spiral form—a didactic and moral quatrain. He would cease to write, except in the style of the commandments of God rendered into French verses. The four lines expressed simplicity and goodness. He ...
— The Red Lily, Complete • Anatole France

... a kind of scale of linear expression—the two extremes at either end: the horizontal and the vertical, with every degree and modulation between them; the undulating curve giving way to the springing energetic spiral, the meandering, flowing line sinking to the horizontal: or the sharp opposition and thrust of rectangular, the nervous resistance of broken curves, the flame-like, triumphant, ascending verticals. Truly the designer may find a great range of expression ...
— Line and Form (1900) • Walter Crane

... ultimately referred to Donatello, the head of the Madonna being rendered by fluent and precise strokes of the chisel. A bronze relief in the Louvre (No. 390), which came from Fontainebleau, has Donatellesque motives; but the spiral coils of hair, and still more the fact that the Virgin's breasts are hammered into the likeness of putti's faces—wholly alien to Donatello's serious ideas—sufficiently prove it to belong to the later Italian school which flourished ...
— Donatello • David Lindsay, Earl of Crawford

... empty. Both were drawn close to the snapping logs. A grandfather clock stood in the corner between the fireplace and the first window, and gave out a steady deep tock. The carpet was a soft Indian rug of fine texture and many colors, red, blue, and gold predominating. Most surprisingly, a steep spiral staircase of polished wood came down into the room in the right-hand corner near where Chris stood, and Chris wondered for a moment, if Mr. Wicker's voice had come from ...
— Mr. Wicker's Window • Carley Dawson

... full of salt, and went after the Mouse-bird. It was at the bottom of the big tree, creeping up, round and round, as if on a spiral staircase, and the Brownie began to climb in the same way. But every little while the climber had to stop and rest. This had strange results, for there is a law in Brownie land, that wherever one of the little people stops to sit down, or rest, a toadstool must spring ...
— Woodland Tales • Ernest Seton-Thompson

... of her nation. Her turban of yellow silk suited well with the darkness of her complexion. The brilliancy of her eyes, the superb arch of her eyebrows, her well-formed aquiline nose, her teeth as white as pearl, and the profusion of her sable tresses, which, each arranged in its own little spiral of twisted curls, fell down upon as much of a lovely neck and bosom as a simarre of the richest Persian silk, exhibiting flowers in their natural colours embossed upon a purple ground, permitted to be visible—all these constituted a combination ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott

... Salvatore), can hardly be Pliny's templum priscum. Hobhouse, in his Historical Illustrations, pp. 37-41, defends the antiquity of the "facade, which consists of a pediment supported by four columns and two Corinthian piers, two of the columns with spiral fluting, the others covered with fish-scaled carvings" (Handbook for Central Italy, p. 289); but in the opinion of modern archaeologists the whole of the structure belongs to the fourth or fifth century of the Christian era. It ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron

... down Wordsworth Avenue, under the thunder of the L, past lighted lunchrooms, oyster saloons, and pawnshops, Miss Chapman resumed her sway. With the delightful velocity of thought his mind whirled in a narrowing spiral round the experience of the evening. The small book-crammed sitting room of the Mifflins, the sparkling fire, the lively chirrup of the bookseller reading aloud—and there, in the old easy chair whose horsehair stuffing ...
— The Haunted Bookshop • Christopher Morley

... a Tuscan column on a rustic pedestal, with a pedestal for a statue; the diameter of the base of the column was seventeen feet six inches, and the abacus of the capital was surrounded with an iron railing. The centre shaft, containing the spiral wooden staircase, was ten feet ...
— The Life and Correspondence of Sir Isaac Brock • Ferdinand Brock Tupper

... long feelers. On each division of the body is a single pair of legs. This is the centiped. The other animal is more cylindrical in shape and has two pairs of legs on each division of the body. Its colour is a darker brown than that of the centiped, and it has a habit of coiling into a spiral shape, when disturbed, so that the soft under surface is concealed. This is the milliped. Both of these animals are quite harmless and feed on decaying vegetable matter. They stand midway between worms and insects in forms ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Nature Study • Ontario Ministry of Education

... that this conclusion was correct in theory, and Dr. Hooke is said to have given an experimental demonstration of it before the Royal Society in December, 1679. Newton had erroneously concluded that the path of the falling body would be a spiral; but Dr. Hooke, on the same occasion on which he made the preceding experiment, read a paper to the society in which he proved that the path of the body would be an eccentric ellipse in vacuo, and an ellipti-spiral if the body moved in ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson

... turned towards the land, and looked at it attentively. It lay before him as far as the sky-line, flat, frozen, and covered with snow. Some tufts of heather shivered in the wind. No roads were visible—nothing, not even a shepherd's cot. Here and there pale spiral vortices might be seen, which were whirls of fine snow, snatched from the ground by the wind and blown away. Successive undulations of ground, become suddenly misty, rolled themselves into the ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo

... him t'other night; not only the whole house, but the garden, was illuminated, and was quite a fairy scene. Arches and pyramids of lights alternately surrounded the enclosure; a diamond necklace of lamps edged the rails and descent, with a spiral obelisk of candles on each hand; and dispersed over the lawn were little bands of kettle-drums, clarionets, flutes, etc., and the lovely moon, who came without a card. The birthday was far from being such a show; empty and unfine as possible. In truth, ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole

... is in triumphs most usually found; Old houses and trees show my second; My whole is long, spiral, red, tufted, and round, And with beef ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various

... period. About the close of the seventeenth century an improved engine was patented in England. It was a strong cistern of oak placed upon wheels, furnished with a pump, an air chamber and a suction pipe of strong leather, through which run a spiral piece of metal. This engine was little improved until the early part of ...
— Reminiscences of Pioneer Days in St. Paul • Frank Moore

... containing bushels of the empty shells were seen along the canals outside the villages. The snails are cooked in the shell and often sold by measure to be eaten from the hand, as we buy roasted peanuts or popcorn. When a purchase is made the vender clips the spiral point from each shell with a pair of small shears. This admits air and permits the snail to be readily removed by suction when the lips are applied to the shell. In the canals there are also large ...
— Farmers of Forty Centuries - or, Permanent Agriculture in China, Korea and Japan • F. H. King

... compose the locomotive muscles, whose contractions move the bones of the limbs and trunk, to which their extremities are attached. The annular or spiral muscular fibres compose the vascular muscles, which constitute the intestinal canal, the arteries, veins, glands, ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. I - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin

... a miniature whirlpool, grooved in a spiral and pleasant to see. Slowly the water went round and round, and so did the boat without any assistance from Jane. Watching this movement thoughtfully, she brought forth from her drenched pocket some ...
— Seventeen - A Tale Of Youth And Summer Time And The Baxter Family Especially William • Booth Tarkington

... thought what would become of the water after it had traversed the chamber. There it was pouring down from the end of the wooden spout, just clearing the tarred roof of the spiral stair, and plashing on the ground close to the foot of it; in their eagerness they had never thought of where it would run to next. And now Willie was puzzled. Nothing was easier than to stop it for the present, which of course he ran at once to ...
— Gutta-Percha Willie • George MacDonald

... are bestowed upon us to reach it, there is stamped upon every Christian life unmistakably as God's purpose and ideal concerning it, that it should for ever and for ever be growing nearer and nearer, as some ascending spiral that ever circles closer and closer, and yet never absolutely unites with the great central Perfection which ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... for the spread of their kind on seeds equipped with spiral wings that when they fall they may reach the ground outside the shadow of the parent tree and so have a chance to grow into wide-spreading trees. Thomas Lincoln, the father of Abraham, was as the spirals that carried ...
— The French in the Heart of America • John Finley

... of which Mrs. Dallas's store closet held undoubtedly a great stock and variety. The brass of the old-fashioned grate glittered in the sunlight, it was so beautifully kept; between the windows hung a circular mirror, to the frame of which were appended a number of spiral, slim, curling branches, like vine tendrils, each sustaining a socket for a candle. The rest of the furniture was good; dark and old and comfortable; painted vases were on the mantelpiece, and an old portrait hung over it. The place made a peculiar agreeable ...
— A Red Wallflower • Susan Warner

... cabinet, with ebony panels decorated with simple filaments of inlaid copper: a duchess of the reign of Louis XV stretched nonchalantly her graceful feet under a massive Louis XIII table with heavy, spiral oaken legs, and carvings of intermingled ...
— Humorous Ghost Stories • Dorothy Scarborough

... banking, cement, oil refining and transshipment, salt, rum, aragonite, pharmaceuticals, spiral-welded steel pipe ...
— The 2002 CIA World Factbook • US Government

... in atmospherical air without a very great elevation of temperature; but it is eminently combustible in pure oxygen gas; and what will surprise you still more, it can be set on fire without any considerable rise of temperature. You see this spiral iron wire—I fasten it at one end to this cork, which is made to fit an opening at the top of the glass-receiver. (PLATE ...
— Conversations on Chemistry, V. 1-2 • Jane Marcet

... portion of that mediaeval building, half monastic, half military, exposed even then to the searching winds many bare and roofless chambers; broken vaults filled with driven sands; more than one spiral stair with hanging steps leading into space. But the massive square keep had been substantially restored. Although roofless its upper platform was as firm as when it was first built; and in a corner, solidly ensconced, rose the more modern turret ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle

... the river slope come out into view again, for a time, as I wander back down the spiral road toward the town and think on these things; a cloud drifts across the sun and dims their brightness; then the ...
— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix

... waterhole on the Del Oro, where cows were wont to frequent even in the summer drought, and toward this he was making in the fag-end of the sultry day. While still some hundred yards distant he observed a spiral of smoke rising from a camp-fire at the spring, and he at once made a more circumspect approach. For it might be any one of a score of border ruffians who owed him a grudge and would be glad to ...
— Bucky O'Connor • William MacLeod Raine

... was so familiar with every crook and passage, that the small light of a gas jet, inside, was not necessary to show him the way. Up he ran, sometimes clearing two steps at a jump, slipping his hand lightly along the rough wooden banister. A few spiral turns brought him to the bell, which hung in an open framework of timber. He gave the huge bronze a familiar tap as he passed, and wound on and upward until he came to a trap door, which Uncle Ith held invitingly open. Then ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton

... cut out and my entrance to the house is arranged for. Frenhofer will tamper with the electric lights in the kitchen premises and I shall arrive in response to his telephonic message, in the clothes of a working-man and with a bag of tools. Then he smuggles me on to the spiral stairway which leads out on to the roof where the flag-staff is. I can crawl the rest of the way to my place. The trouble is that notwithstanding the ledge around, if it is a perfectly clear night, just a fraction of ...
— Mr. Grex of Monte Carlo • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... obelisk which towered like a pillar of snow against the dense blue of the sky. Below it a massively sculptured lion, also of white granite, lay couchant, holding a shield between its paws,—and on either side two fine fountains were in full play, the delicate spiral columns of water being dashed up beyond the extreme point of the obelisk, so that its stone face was wet and glistening ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli

... come through... We were constantly in fear of the falling of those gigantic boulders that overhung our path behind the swishing trees that clung along the precipice.... The zigzag road that runs down this slope is like a spiral stair in crookedness and bumps.... We could catch a glimpse now and again of a light from the little bungalows that clung to the mountain sides.... But we dare not arouse the dwellers for many obvious ...
— Rescuing the Czar - Two authentic Diaries arranged and translated • James P. Smythe

... already stored up, and even assimilated, at its host's expense. By rapidly lengthening the cells on the outer side of its stem more than on the inner side, the former becomes convex, the latter concave; that is to say, a section of spiral is formed by the new shoot, which, twining upward, devitalizes its benefactor as it goes. Abundant, globular seed-vessels, which develop rapidly while the blossoming continues unabated, soon sink into the soft ...
— Wild Flowers Worth Knowing • Neltje Blanchan et al

... to him to lave his hands. "And now to the walls," he added, after he had filled a cup with water from the pitcher and refreshed himself with it. Gaston followed his example, not without a wistful look at the wine, and Sanchez was obliged to lead the way up a long flight of spiral steps to two other vaulted apartments, one over the other—the lower destined for the sleeping chamber of the Knight and his Squire, the higher for such of the men-at-arms as could not find accommodation in the hall, or in the offices below. Above this they came out ...
— The Lances of Lynwood • Charlotte M. Yonge

... roller of the caster and the plate which attaches it to the chair-leg, a strong spiral spring is inserted. The chair thus supported adapts itself to every movement of the sitter, and gives ease and comfort that no firmly fixed seat ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 53, November 11, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various

... soaring now, no mounting heavenward, as I have seen him mount till his petty persecutor grew dizzy with the height and returned to earth. But the next day, with a fairly good breeze blowing, I watched two hawks for many minutes climbing their spiral stairway to the skies, till they became very small objects against the clouds, and not once did they flap their wings! Then one of them turned toward the mountain-top and sailed straight into the face of the wind, till he was ...
— Under the Maples • John Burroughs

... ligna najlo. Spill (liquid) disversxi. Spill (corn, etc.) dissxuti. Spin sxpini. Spinage spinaco. Spinal spina. Spindle akso. Spine spino. Spinning-wheel radsxpinilo. Spinning-top turnludilo. Spinster sxpinistino (frauxlino). Spiral helikforma. Spire pregxeja turo, sonorilejo. Spirit (soul) spirito. Spirit (energy) energio. Spirit (ghost) fantomo. Spirit alkoholo. Spiritual spirita. Spiritualism spiritualismo. Spiritualist ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes

... came last, and they slipped and grunted upward, round and round a spiral staircase that was hewn out of solid rock. No light came through from anywhere to help them, but the priest climbed on, as though he were accustomed to the stair and knew the way from constant use. After five minutes of steady climbing the stone ...
— Told in the East • Talbot Mundy

... are curious animals, and build some curious nests. I like, as well as you, to get up above my neighbors now and then, and look down upon them. I never see a tall chimney or church spire without wishing there was a spiral staircase around the outside of it, from which to view the landscape o'er. In fact, to be candid, if I had happened to live a few thousand years ago, I am afraid I should have taken stock in the Babel enterprise, not really ...
— Homes And How To Make Them • Eugene Gardner

... columns, and threading the grove by the bronze lion, came upon the tree-crowned terrace above the fountain. Below lay the basin shining in the sunlight. Flowering almonds encircled the terrace, and, in a greater spiral, groves of chestnuts wound in and out and down among the moist thickets by the western palace wing. At one end of the avenue of trees the Observatory rose, its white domes piled up like an eastern mosque; at the other end stood the heavy palace, with every window-pane ablaze ...
— The King In Yellow • Robert W. Chambers

... single, and of various colours, sporting about in every direction. Numerous species resemble pearly or opaline cups or vases, fringed round the margin with delicate fibres, that are in constant oscillation. Some of these are attached by spiral tendrils; others are united by a slender stem to one common trunk, appearing like a bunch of hare-bells; others are of a globular form, and grouped together in a definite pattern, on a tabular or spherical membranous ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various

... us, however, that all things move in an ascending spiral. We do in order to be. What we are bears unconscious fruit in what we do. A woman who is cultivated in the true sense exerts a constant influence for good. One rich woman says, "I will not live to myself," and gives ...
— Girls and Women • Harriet E. Paine (AKA E. Chester}

... altiloquent was once talking of liberty, when he said, "White-robed liberty sits upon her rosy clouds above us; the Genius of our country, standing on her throne of mountains, bids her eagle standard-bearer wind his spiral course full in the sun's proud eye; while the Genius of Christianity, surrounded by ten thousand cherubim and seraphim, moves the panorama of the milky clouds above us, and floats in immortal fragrance—the very aroma of Eden through all ...
— Talkers - With Illustrations • John Bate

... of mixed Venetian beads, but of more elegant form. From whichever side they are seen, the curves are the perfection of flowing line. The colouring and ornament of each is a marvel and delight. Some are black, with white spots arranged in lines following the curves, and with the top of the blunt spiral white. These "black-and-white marble" patterns are followed by a whole series in which purple takes the place of black, and the spots are modified into scales. Then comes a row of rose-coloured shells, some with white lance-heads, or scales, others with alternate bands of white ...
— The Naturalist on the Thames • C. J. Cornish

... of Corson's looks like a final plunge; a fatal fall; a hopeless retrogression. But we must not judge prematurely. "Man advances; but in spiral lines," said Goethe. The river goes forward, in spite of its eddies. You can complete a geometric circle from a minute portion of its curve; but not a human cycle. We can not predict the final issue of a human life until ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss

... and pleasant. If any one could have counted the hairs upon his head, the result would have been surprising, for they were as close as on an otter's skin, and growing in a peculiar manner. They looked as if a whirlwind had first attacked the crown of his head from behind, twisting up a spiral tuft in the centre, and laying the remainder flat, pointing forwards, along the sides. It seemed as if his hair had remained fixed and unmoved ever since. About his ears there were rows of small curls, like the ripple-marks on sand after a ...
— Skipper Worse • Alexander Lange Kielland

... against it, when he must unconsciously have touched some secret spring, for a secret door opened, dividing the picture in two parts, and, to our hero's unbounded astonishment, he saw before him a small spiral staircase leading down into ...
— Jack's Ward • Horatio Alger, Jr.

... Wednesday, March 20, 1881: "A fountain pen is attached to a diaphragm so as to be vibrated in a plane parallel to the axis of a cylinder—The ink used in this pen to contain iron in a finely divided state, and the pen caused to trace a spiral line around the cylinder as it turned. The cylinder to be covered with a sheet of paper upon which the record is made.... This ink ... can be rendered magnetic by means of a permanent magnet. The sounds were to be reproduced by simply substituting ...
— Development of the Phonograph at Alexander Graham Bell's Volta Laboratory • Leslie J. Newville

... where Joan and the baby—and the man—had been. For a long time he went hopefully, looking each day or night to see some sign of life there. But the door was never open. The boards and saplings at the windows always remained. Never a spiral of smoke rose from the clay chimney. Grass and vines began to grow in the path. And fainter and fainter grew that scent which Kazan could still find about it—the scent of man, ...
— Kazan • James Oliver Curwood

... The spiral striae that cross its whorls are grouped in pairs; their interstices are raised, and more or less finely crenulated; as they pass out on the expanded and wing-like varices they diverge, and the lobe-like projections that scallop the margins of the wings are separated from each other ...
— Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John MacGillivray

... horn (Plate IX.), as it is called in the orchestra, is the sweetest and mellowest of all the wind instruments. In Beethoven's time it was but little else than the old hunting-horn, which, for the convenience of the mounted hunter, was arranged in spiral convolutions that it might be slipped over the head and carried resting on one shoulder and under the opposite arm. The Germans still call it the Waldhorn, i.e., "forest horn;" the old French name was cor de chasse, the ...
— How to Listen to Music, 7th ed. - Hints and Suggestions to Untaught Lovers of the Art • Henry Edward Krehbiel

... swooping with the grace of the eagle and the speed of the wind. It was so very large that it seemed, to Chick, that if all the other birds he had ever known were gathered together into one they would still be as the swallow. Down, down it came in a tremendous spiral, until it gracefully alighted in a splash of molten colour on the bosom of the silver sea. For a moment it was lost in a shower of water jewels—and then lay still, ...
— The Blind Spot • Austin Hall and Homer Eon Flint

... an industrial town in the Swiss canton of Bern. It is built on the left bank of the Emme and is 14 m. by rail N.E. of Bern. The lower (or modern) town is connected by a curious spiral street with the upper (or old) town. The latter is picturesquely perched on a hill, at a height of 1942 ft. above sea-level (or 167 ft. above the river); it is crowned by the ancient castle and by the 15th-century parish church, in the former of which Pestalozzi set ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various

... the cluster are quite thin, but they are decorated with the yellow and brown straw-like material above referred to in connection with abdominal belt No. 6 (being prepared from the same plant, apparently Dendrobium, and in the same way), the material being twisted in a close spiral round the strings, and making them look, when seen from a short distance off, like strings of very small yellow and brown beads, irregularly arranged in varying lengths of the two colours, shading off gradually from one to the other. Even ...
— The Mafulu - Mountain People of British New Guinea • Robert W. Williamson

... rises, Frank! Oh! look at them boring up, will you, in that corkscrew spiral way! Tell me that Casper Blue doesn't know his business; Perc will never get as much out of his biplane as that old and experienced aviator means to. Are we going to follow ...
— The Aeroplane Boys Flight - A Hydroplane Roundup • John Luther Langworthy

... to confess to a small extravagance. I contracted with a carpenter to build an ornamental tower, fifty-five feet high, twenty feet across at the base, and fifteen feet at the top, sheeted and shingled, with a series of small windows in spiral and a narrow stairway leading to a balcony that surrounded the tower on a level with the top of the tank. This tower cost $425; but it was not all extravagance, because a third of the expense would have been incurred in protecting the engine ...
— The Fat of the Land - The Story of an American Farm • John Williams Streeter

... granite jewel, which is as light in its effect as a bit of lace and is covered with towers, with slender belfries to which spiral staircases ascend. The flying buttresses raise strange heads that bristle with chimeras, with devils, with fantastic ani-mals, with monstrous flowers, are joined together by finely carved arches, to the blue sky by day, and to the black ...
— Selected Writings of Guy de Maupassant • Guy de Maupassant

... and drawings there is a sort of disk made by a single line in spiral, on each toe,—together with the ...
— In Ghostly Japan • Lafcadio Hearn

... pretty talk! Eh, I will tell thy father, I will have a stop put to this—hush, would you have him hear?" she admonished, in a sudden whisper, as they opened the little door at the foot of the dark well of spiral steps. ...
— The Fortieth Door • Mary Hastings Bradley

... quiet, without visible emotion or speech; but there was an utter tumult, a tumult like the spiral of a hurricane, within him. Rebellious feelings, tyrannical desires and thoughts, swept through him in waves of heat and cold. Nettie's voice grew weak, the shadows deepened under her eyes, for a little they ...
— Java Head • Joseph Hergesheimer

... further from us at present, so, looking back into past time, we find that the moon was nearer and nearer to the earth the further back our view extends; in fact, concentrating our attention solely on essential features, we may say that the path of the moon is a sort of spiral which winds round and round the earth, gradually getting larger, though with extreme slowness. Looking back we see this spiral gradually coiling in and in, until in a retrospect of millions of years, instead ...
— Time and Tide - A Romance of the Moon • Robert S. (Robert Stawell) Ball

... feathery clasp of the elm branches, and the whole landscape was in a pale, clear glow. Then Horace came. Rose started up. She stood for an instant irresolute, then she stole out of her room and down the spiral stair very noiselessly. She opened the front door before Horace could insert his key ...
— The Shoulders of Atlas - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... has inspired much more or less fantastic speculation. The shells begin to assume such strange forms that observers speak occasionally of the "convulsions" or "death-contortions" of the expiring race. Some of the coiled shells take on a spiral form, like that of a snail's shell. Some uncoil the shell, and seem to be returning toward the primitive type. A rich eccentricity of frills and ornamentation is found more or less throughout the whole race. But every ...
— The Story of Evolution • Joseph McCabe

... noiseless rapid fan pumps air out of the room. The air enters by a Tobin shaft. There is a recess dressing-room, equipped with a bath and all that is necessary to one's toilette, and the water, one remarks, is warmed, if one desires it warm, by passing it through an electrically heated spiral of tubing. A cake of soap drops out of a store machine on the turn of a handle, and when you have done with it, you drop that and your soiled towels and so forth, which also are given you by machines, into ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells

... announced briefly, and swung off without further parley toward the curling spiral of smoke that marked a cabin a quarter of a mile below. Ten minutes later, his bare feet swung against the ribs of a gray mule, and his rifle lay balanced across the unsaddled withers. Sally sat mountain fashion behind him, facing straight to ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck

... devious, deformed, tortuous, sinuous, winding, flexuous, curved, curvilinear, spiral, labyrinthial; distorted, awry, askew, wry; ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming

... for weeks. But, strangely enough, they had just the opposite effect. I think Mr. Washburn must be writing a book on modern history, and Mr. Hoffman must be writing one on ancient history. I sat between them—a drowsy victim—feeling as if my brain was making spiral efforts to come out of the top ...
— In the Courts of Memory 1858-1875. • L. de Hegermann-Lindencrone

... of a small dark staircase they saw the body of a man lying—wounded or dead. Cranstoun now rushed up the dark stairs, followed by Gowrie, two Ruthvens, Hew Moncrieff, Patrick Eviot, and perhaps others. At the head of the narrow spiral stair they found, in a room called the Gallery Chamber, Sir Thomas Erskine, a lame Dr. Herries, a young gentleman of the Royal Household named John Ramsay, and Wilson, a servant, with drawn swords. A fight began; Cranstoun was wounded; he and his friends fled, leaving Gowrie, ...
— Historical Mysteries • Andrew Lang

... banking, cement, oil refining and transshipment, salt production, rum, aragonite, pharmaceuticals, spiral weld, steel pipe ...
— The 1991 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... the wondering crowd, and came to a standstill alongside the steps on which Tremayne was standing. The crowd saw a man on her deck shake hands with Tremayne and give him a folded paper. Then the air-ship swept gracefully upward again in a spiral curve until she hung motionless over the ...
— The Angel of the Revolution - A Tale of the Coming Terror • George Griffith

... of a woman in Greek draperies, holding in her right hand a torch.... A spiral stairway leads from the base of this pedestal to the torch. We climbed up to the head which will hold forty persons, and viewed the scene on which Liberty gazes day and night, and O, how wonderful it was! We did not wonder that the great French artist thought the ...
— Story of My Life • Helen Keller

... trees behind me, and the facade of the old house and its terrace in front. And lying on the lawn, just under the terrace, was the white end of the cigarette which he had abandoned; it breathed upwards a thin spiral of blue smoke through the morning sunshine, and then it ceased to breathe. And the music recommenced, on a different plane, more brilliantly than before. It was as though, till then, he had been laboriously building the bases of a tremendous triumphal arch, and that now ...
— Sacred And Profane Love • E. Arnold Bennett

... simple columella is not only lateral, but occupies indeed the sharp vertical angle of the triangular, prismatic sporangium. Furthermore, the sporangium is at maturity strangely twisted, so that the columella in its ascent accomplishes one or more spiral turns. In forms collected by Dr. Rex, which seemed to him most nearly to agree with Massee's species, the inner capillitium is somewhat abundant, but the character of the columella ...
— The North American Slime-Moulds • Thomas H. (Thomas Huston) MacBride

... hair is worn very long, rolled into little curls and plentifully oiled. A most peculiar deformation is applied to the nose and results in extreme ugliness: the septum is perforated, and instead of merely inserting a stick, a springy spiral is used, which presses the nose upward and forward, so that in time it develops into an immense, shapeless lump, as if numberless wasps had stung it. It takes a long time to get used to this sight, ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser

... the expanded wings would be brought into a slanting condition over a smaller area of supporting air, and the whole apparatus would tend to glide downwards in that direction. The projection of a small vertical plane upon either side would make the gliding mass rotate in a descending spiral, and so we have all the elements of a controllable flight. Such an affair would be difficult to overset. It would be able to beat up even in a fair wind, and then it would be able to contract its bladders and fall down a long ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells

... reluctant fist; but once made, strong, and can be used with great effect. There are today Americans who are held against their will in foreign lands, and Americans who are unaccounted for. Assistance can be shown here, and will be long remembered. Good will begets good will. Good faith can be a spiral that endlessly moves on. ...
— U.S. Presidential Inaugural Addresses • Various

... was an old-fashioned hydrant, with a half-spiral crank of a handle on its top and the curved end of a lead pipe always aleak thrust through its rotten side, with its little statues of ice all winter and its spattering slop all summer. Besides all this there were some broken flower-pots in a heap in one corner,—suicides from the window-sills ...
— Colonel Carter of Cartersville • F. Hopkinson Smith

... the year 1500, but who was the inventor is disputed. They were, however, of little value as time-keepers, before the application of the spiral spring as a regulator to the balance; the glory of this excellent invention lies between Dr. Hooke and M. Huygens; the English ascribing it to the former, the Dutch, French, &c., to the latter. Some assert that pocket-watches were first made ...
— A Catechism of Familiar Things; Their History, and the Events Which Led to Their Discovery • Benziger Brothers

... offers you prescriptions For the grip an' for the croup, An' they give you plain descriptions How you looped the spiral loop; They all swear you beat a circus Or a hoochy-koochy dance, Moppin' up the canon's surface With ...
— Songs of the Cattle Trail and Cow Camp • Various

... this you get to a rising ground on the western bank where stands a single hut, and about half a mile in the forest there are a few more: some of them square and some round, with spiral roofs. ...
— Wanderings In South America • Charles Waterton

... through cold holes in the wool mittens; the old coat with two buttons gone flaps and blows about the knees; dirt, old papers, spiral upward on the chill gusts of a raw winter day. Close your eyes, duck your head, and hurry on. Under one arm is clutched the paper bag with lunch and the blue-checked apron. Under the other the old brown-leather bag. In the old brown-leather bag is an old black purse. In the old ...
— Working With the Working Woman • Cornelia Stratton Parker

... structure, having a central elongated axis, with leaves arranged regularly around and along it. At the top of the axis in the male plant rise the antheridia, surrounded by an envelope of modified leaves called the perigonium. The antheridia are stalked sacs, with a single wall of cells, and the spiral antherozoids arise by free-cell formation from the cells of the interior. They are discharged by the bursting of the antheridium, together with a mucilage formed of the degraded walls of ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XXI., No. 531, March 6, 1886 • Various



Words linked to "Spiral" :   ornament, ornamentation, turbinate, helical, construction, coiling, deflationary spiral, coiled, spiral-shelled, turn, curve, volute, wind, gyrate, voluted, spiral bandage, spiral spring, twist, double helix



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