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Elliptical   /ɪlˈɪptɪkəl/   Listen
Elliptical

adjective
1.
Rounded like an egg.  Synonyms: egg-shaped, elliptic, oval, oval-shaped, ovate, oviform, ovoid, prolate.
2.
Characterized by extreme economy of expression or omission of superfluous elements.  Synonym: elliptic.  "The explanation was concise, even elliptical to the verge of obscurity"






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Elliptical" Quotes from Famous Books



... after cupellation in flattened elliptical buttons, adhering but only slightly to the cupel. Its upper surface should show faint markings as if it were crystalline. The presence of platinum renders it still more crystalline, but removes the characteristic lustre and renders the ...
— A Textbook of Assaying: For the Use of Those Connected with Mines. • Cornelius Beringer and John Jacob Beringer

... never to reflect the bright face of the moon was easily moved now, and Tom stooped down and picked up one by one the three triangular pieces, and laid them upon the bench, to find then that a good-sized elliptical piece, something in shape like a fresh-water mussel-shell, yet remained upon the stones. This he raised, and found that it fitted in at ...
— The Vast Abyss - The Story of Tom Blount, his Uncles and his Cousin Sam • George Manville Fenn

... serrate-dentate Mulberry A D Ovate, serrate, oblong { Shadbush { Plums { Cherries A D Oval or oval-oblong, spines, evergreen Holly A D Broad-ovate, one-sided, serrate Linden A D Obovate, oval, lanceolate, oblong Chestnut oaks A D Broad-ovate to broad-elliptical, thorny Thorns A E F Lobes rounded Sassafras A E F Base truncate or heart-shaped Tulip tree A E F Obtuse, rounded lobes White oaks A E F 3-5-lobed, white-tomentose to glabrous beneath White poplar A E G 5-lobed, finely serrate Sweet ...
— Handbook of the Trees of New England • Lorin Low Dame

... and built under Telford's superintendence was one of no great magnitude, across the river Severn at Montford, about four miles west of Shrewsbury. It was a stone bridge of three elliptical arches, one of 58 feet and two of 55 feet span each. The Severn at that point is deep and narrow, and its bed and banks are of alluvial earth. It was necessary to make the foundations very secure, as the river is subject to high floods; and this ...
— The Life of Thomas Telford by Smiles • Samuel Smiles

... use the west-bound route as an illustration—traveled in an elliptical course through Springfield, Missouri, and Fayetteville, Arkansas, to Van Buren, Arkansas, where the Memphis mail was received. Continuing in a southwesterly course, they passed through Indian Territory and the Choctaw Indian reserve—now Oklahoma—crossed the Red River at Calvert's Ferry, then ...
— The Story of the Pony Express • Glenn D. Bradley

... The elliptical basin in which Denver is built, sloping north and east, gives it a picturesque and extended view; the mountains losing themselves in one direction in the now historic "Black Hills," and in the other merging into the "Spanish Peaks" and "Sangre de Christo Range," ...
— The World As I Have Found It - Sequel to Incidents in the Life of a Blind Girl • Mary L. Day Arms

... things, Raggles was a poet. He was called a tramp; but that was only an elliptical way of saying that he was a philosopher, an artist, a traveller, a naturalist and a discoverer. But most of all he was a poet. In all his life he never wrote a line of verse; he lived his poetry. His Odyssey would have been a Limerick, had it been written. But, ...
— The Trimmed Lamp and Others • O Henry

... outline, and very variable in size and depth, are frequently found on the outer slopes of the border. Some of them consist of great elliptical or sub-circular cavities, displaying many expansions and contractions, called "pockets," and suggesting the idea that they were originally distinct cup-shaped hollows, which from some cause or other have ...
— The Moon - A Full Description and Map of its Principal Physical Features • Thomas Gwyn Elger

... 1911, in the bulletin of the United States bureau of fisheries,[123] Dr. Evermann asserted concerning Clinton's drawing of Otsego bass, which he had examined, that "the cut, although crude, plainly shows Coregonus clupeaformis. The form is elliptical, and the back shows the dark streaks along the rows of scales usually characteristic of that species." The same author, in collaboration with Dr. Jordan,[124] says concerning the common whitefish: "This species, like others of wide distribution, is subject ...
— The Story of Cooperstown • Ralph Birdsall

... in any case it can be meritorious to be obscure; but I say that in many cases it is very natural to be so, and pardonable in profound thinkers, and in some cases inevitable. For the other kind of obscurity which I was going to notice is that which I would denominate elliptical obscurity; arising, I mean, out of the frequent ellipsis or suppression of some of the links in a long chain of thought; these are often involuntarily suppressed by profound thinkers, from the disgust which they naturally feel at overlaying a subject with superfluous explanations. So far from ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey

... Light that reflects thence to the Eye after the manner requisite to make the Object appear Green, Blew, &c. the Figures of these Particles have a great, but not the only stroak. 'Tis true indeed that the protuberant Particles may be of very great variety of Figures, Sphaerical, Elliptical, Conical, Cylindrical, Polyedrical, and some very irregular, and that according to the Nature of these, and the situation of the Lucid body, the Light must be variously affected, after one manner from Surfaces ...
— Experiments and Considerations Touching Colours (1664) • Robert Boyle

... idea of the peculiar charm and vividness of his talk. In a crowd he was nearly always silent. Even for his classroom he had no platitudes, no stock of professorial anecdotes. When he was tired his lectures were clouded, obscure, elliptical; but when he was interested they were wonderful. I believe that Gaston Cleric narrowly missed being a great poet, and I have sometimes thought that his bursts of imaginative talk were fatal to his poetic gift. He squandered too much in the heat of ...
— My Antonia • Willa Sibert Cather

... through the opening afforded by a connecting tube, is an advantage in the same direction, and avoids almost entirely the racking strains due to irregular furnace action. The weight of water carried is less, and that of the boiler may also be made less; while the elliptical form of the two ends gives greater ...
— Scientific American Suppl. No. 299 • Various

... one catches His doom's extremely hard - He's made to dwell In a dungeon cell On a spot that's always barred; And there he plays extravagant matches In fitless finger-stalls, On a cloth untrue With a twisted cue, And elliptical ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert

... Sutter tried unsuccessfully to put his new television set into operation. But the set refused to work. Turn the queer dials as he would, all he could get on the elliptical screen was ...
— Made in Tanganyika • Carl Richard Jacobi

... invariably from north-west to south-east; and at the latter point there is a large upright headstone, averaging from ten to fifteen feet high, varying in its form, from the square, elliptical, and conical, to that of three-fourths of an egg; and having in many instances an aperture about eighteen inches square at ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester

... the stage and lay the foundation of the plot. The story-teller's keen sense of fun and humor is shown in many little touches, but he never means to be irreverent. The whole legend is set forth in the racy, idiomatic, highly elliptical language of the common Russian muzhik, and is therefore extremely difficult of translation; but I have tried to preserve, as far as possible, the spirit and flavor ...
— Folk-Tales of Napoleon - The Napoleon of the People; Napoleonder • Honore de Balzac and Alexander Amphiteatrof

... vast assemblage rose from their stone seats and fell flat on their faces. It was then that I noticed, for the first time, an oval or elliptical plate of shining gold set in the wall of the cavern just above the outer edge ...
— Under the Andes • Rex Stout

... so far, that it is possible by just a touch to convert the noblest sentiment into commonplace. No more than a touch is necessary. The parabolic mirror will reflect the star to a perfect focus. The elliptical mirror, varying from the parabola by less than the breadth of a hair, throws an image which is useless. But Mr. Cardew was far more wrong than he was right. He did not take into account that what his wife said and what she felt might not be the same; that ...
— Catharine Furze • Mark Rutherford

... I struck it stood an extraordinary hill or ridge, consisting of a huge red turtle back having a number of enormous red stones almost egg-shaped, traversing, or rather standing in a row upon, its whole length like a line of elliptical Tors. I could compare it to nothing else than an enormous oolitic monster of the turtle kind carrying its eggs upon its back. A few cypress pine-trees grew in the interstices of the rocks, giving it a most elegant appearance. Hoping to find some rock or other reservoir of water, ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles

... valley of the Arno, perhaps twenty-five miles long, and five or six broad, lying like a long elliptical basin sunk among the hills. I can liken it to nothing but a vast sea; for a dense, blue mist covered the level surface, through which the domes of Florence rose up like a craggy island, while the ...
— Views a-foot • J. Bayard Taylor

... and the moon had, for several hours, an immense elliptical ring round it—a common ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 2 • James Richardson

... and diversely-shaped fruits growing out of the trunk and branches, some within a few inches of the ground, like the cacao. Most of them are called by the natives Cupu, and the trees are of inconsiderable height. One of them called Cupu-ai bears a fruit of elliptical shape and of a dingy earthen colour six or seven inches long, the shell of which is woody and thin, and contains a small number of seeds loosely enveloped in a juicy pulp of very pleasant flavour. The fruits hang like clayey ants'-nests ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates

... blue (top), white, red (double width), white, and blue, with the coat of arms in a white elliptical disk on the hoist side of the red band; above the coat of arms a light blue ribbon contains the words, AMERICA CENTRAL, and just below it near the top of the coat of arms is a white ribbon with the words, ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... solar attraction governs them, as it governs the movement of the planets and the small satellites. The chief point of difference between them and the planets is, that their orbits are very elongated; and, instead of being nearly circular, they take the elliptical form. In consequence of the nature of these orbits, the same comet may approach very near the Sun, and afterwards travel from it to immense distances. Thus, the period of the Comet of 1680 has been estimated at three thousand years. It approaches the Sun, so as to be nearer to it than our Moon ...
— Young Folks' Library, Volume XI (of 20) - Wonders of Earth, Sea and Sky • Various

... but this made no change in the direction of the succeeding ellipse. The next day I watched a plant similarly secured until the tendril (which was highly sensitive) made an ellipse in a line exactly to and from the light; the movement was so great that the tendril at the two ends of its elliptical course bent itself a little beneath the horizon, thus travelling more than 180 degrees; but the curvature was fully as great towards the light as towards the dark side of the room. I believe Dutrochet was misled by not having secured the ...
— The Movements and Habits of Climbing Plants • Charles Darwin

... color, with numerous black bands arranged transversely along the back, from the shoulders to the tail; hence the erroneous names tiger and hyaena, given to it by the early settlers. The muzzle is rather elongated, the ears short and erect, and the pupils elliptical, corresponding with its leaping, predaceous habits; if it had the characteristic brush instead of a long taper tail, its figure would bear a considerable resemblance to that of the fox. The female is much smaller, but more active and supple in its movements than ...
— The History of Tasmania, Volume I (of 2) • John West

... an octagonal building, now Suleiman Aga Mesjedi but generally regarded as a Byzantine library, which has on each side a large wall arch strongly elliptical in form (p. 270). Two arches of somewhat similar form and apparently original are found in the south end of the gynecaeum of the Pantokrator (p. 237). These arches may have been built in this manner to economise centering. ...
— Byzantine Churches in Constantinople - Their History and Architecture • Alexander Van Millingen

... pronounced movements of natural objects. If the reader will turn to the poem, "A Roxbury Garden", he will find in the first two sections an attempt to give the circular movement of a hoop bowling along the ground, and the up and down, elliptical ...
— Men, Women and Ghosts • Amy Lowell

... order in any branch of natural phenomena is but the prelude to the formulation of a set of laws, the simpler as the order is more universal, which describe, and as we say, explain it. Thus the perception of the even, elliptical courses of the heavenly bodies led to the statement of the law of gravitation and ...
— Supply and Demand • Hubert D. Henderson

... Duppo, on seeing it, began to search about in the neighbourhood, and came before long on a conical pile of dead leaves, from among which he dug out upwards of twenty eggs. They were nearly twice the size of those of a duck, and of an elliptical shape. The shells were very hard, of the texture of porcelain, and extremely rough on the outside. Duppo rubbed them together, producing a loud sound. Then he shook his head, as much as to say, "If the mother were alive that would bring her, but there she ...
— On the Banks of the Amazon • W.H.G. Kingston

... See—Elliptical wheels on a Cart! It looks very fair In the Picture up there; But imagine ...
— The Best Nonsense Verses • Various

... hill terminates in a long, elliptical mound, about one-third of a mile in length. We made the tour of it, and were surprised at finding a large number of columns, each of a single piece of marble. They had once formed a double colonnade, extending from the church ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor

... of starting his legs next day, if he had to do the journey alone: and he clouded the yacht for Fleetwood with talk of the Wye and the Usk, Hereford and the Malvern Hills elliptical over the plains. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... the direct agent of the heart, the interpreter of speech. It is elliptical discourse. Each part of this ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various

... disappear after a lapse of time. It is difficult, if not impossible, to give any certain or positive opinion as to the age of a scar; recent scars are pink in colour; old scars are white and glistening. The cicatrix resulting from a wound depends upon its situation. Of incised wounds an elliptical cicatrix is typical, linear being chiefly found between the fingers and toes. By way of disguise the hair may be dyed black with lead acetate or nitrate of silver; detected by allowing the hair to grow, or by steeping some of it in dilute nitric acid, and testing with ...
— Aids to Forensic Medicine and Toxicology • W. G. Aitchison Robertson

... the objects. His epithets and single phrases are like sparkles, thrown off from an imagination, fired by the whirling rapidity of its own motion. His language is hieroglypnical. It translates thoughts into visible images. It abounds in sudden transitions and elliptical expressions. This is the source of his mixed metaphors, which are only abbreviated forms of speech. These, however, give no pain from long custom. They have, in fact, become idioms in the language. They are the building, ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt

... conclusions on the subject of English Gothic she had been rereading an analysis of the structural features of the principal English cathedrals; and she was murmuring over to herself the phrase: "The longitudinal arches of Lincoln have an approximately elliptical form," when there came a knock on the door, and Maria's voice announced: "There's a lady ...
— The Hermit and the Wild Woman and Other Stories • Edith Wharton

... and often absent; it is pointed-elliptical, and is rarely above the 1/40th of an inch long. After arriving at this full size, calcareous matter is added to the under surface over a less and less area, so that it becomes internally pointed, and finally, in place of calcareous matter, continuous sheets ...
— A Monograph on the Sub-class Cirripedia (Volume 1 of 2) - The Lepadidae; or, Pedunculated Cirripedes • Charles Darwin

... water, but looked at more closely, the analogy halts badly. When a chemist tells us that two atoms of hydrogen and one of oxygen combine themselves of their own accord into the new compound substance 'water,' he knows (if he believes in the mechanical view of nature) that this is only an elliptical statement for a more complex fact. That fact is that when H2 and O, instead of keeping far apart, get into closer quarters, say into the position H-O-H, they affect surrounding bodies differently: they ...
— A Pluralistic Universe - Hibbert Lectures at Manchester College on the - Present Situation in Philosophy • William James

... of the fact that at the long ranges the angle of fall of the bullets is much greater than at short ranges, it follows that at short ranges the elliptical figure (beaten zone) is much more elongated than at long ranges. In other words, the longer the range, the shorter is the depth of the beaten zone. This is ...
— Manual of Military Training - Second, Revised Edition • James A. Moss

... Browning often defies the established laws of literature. Distorted and elliptical sentences, long and irrelevant parentheses, curious involutions of thought, and irregular or incoherent development of the narrative or the picture, often leave the reader in despair even of the meaning. Nor can these departures from orderly beauty ...
— Browning's Shorter Poems • Robert Browning

... resplendent frame, would probably have escaped my attention. I did proper homage to the easel, and then turned to those pictures. It was plain enough who had painted them. Armour's broad brush stood out all over them. They were mostly Indian sporting subjects, the incident a trifle elliptical, the drawing unequal, but the verve and feeling unmistakeable, and colour to send a quiver of glorious acquiescence through you like a pang. What astonished me was the number of them; there must have been at least a dozen, all the same size and shape, all hanging in a line ...
— The Pool in the Desert • Sara Jeannette Duncan

... of all known; some specimens weighing nearly one ounce; elliptical-oblong in shape; medium thin shell, clean, bright in color; kernel plump, sweet and rich; quality very best, a quick grower; early bearer, very prolific; habit of growth like the Frotscher, forming a round-headed tree. (Catalogue J. Steckler ...
— The Pecan and its Culture • H. Harold Hume

... more like the possessive noun, which belongs to another word, but is still a noun. They may be regarded as elliptical expressions, meaning a walk in the morning, a bank in New York, a bill as to tax on ...
— An English Grammar • W. M. Baskervill and J. W. Sewell

... found," he continues, "that all valid arguments whatever may be easily reduced to such a form as that of the foregoing syllogisms; and that consequently the principle on which they are constructed is the UNIVERSAL PRINCIPLE of reasoning. So elliptical, indeed, is the ordinary mode of expression, even of those who are considered as prolix writers,—i.e. so much is implied and left to be understood in the course of argument, in comparison of what is actually stated, (most men being impatient, even to excess, of any appearance of unnecessary ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various

... the banks of the Ohio, where opium helped him end his life in an obscure Kentucky inn, while his steamboat rotted on the shores of the Delaware. Then John Stevens of Hoboken began a series of experiments in 1791, trying elliptical paddles, smoke-jack wheels, and other ingenious contrivances, which soon found the oblivion of Fitch's inventions. Subsequently Rumsey, another ingenious American, sought with no better success to drive a boat by expelling water from the stern. ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander

... onwards to the south, then to the west, and back again to the north. If the movement had been quite regular, the apex would have described a circle, or rather, as the stem is always growing upwards, a circular spiral. But it generally describes irregular elliptical or oval figures; for the apex, after pointing in any one direction, commonly moves back to the opposite side, not, however, returning along the same line. Afterwards other irregular ellipses or ovals are successively described, ...
— The Power of Movement in Plants • Charles Darwin

... of the people," said Mr. de Saint Cricq, a minister who has laid not a few shackles upon our commerce. This was no elliptical expression, meaning that the "results of labor constitute the riches of the people." No,—this statesman intended to say, that it is the intensity of labor, which measures riches; and the proof of this is, that from step to step, from restriction ...
— Sophisms of the Protectionists • Frederic Bastiat

... form, it challenges the accuracy of mathematics; in its most vicious, the processes of the human reason. The Barbarian is as proud as a savage in a top hat when he talks of the elliptical or the hyperbolic universe, and tries to picture parallel straight lines converging or diverging—but never doing anything so vulgarly old-fashioned ...
— Old and New Masters • Robert Lynd

... which the sun maintains in their elliptical orbits by the great law of gravitation, some few in turn possess satellites. Uranus has eight, Saturn eight, Jupiter four, Neptune possibly three, and the Earth one. This last, one of the least important of the entire solar system, we call the Moon; and it is she whom the daring ...
— Jules Verne's Classic Books • Jules Verne

... residence is a full constructed hill, surrounded by an innumerable number of others, differing in shape and dimensions, arched in various forms, circular, and elliptical, which communicate by passages, occupied by guards and attendants, and surrounded by nurseries and magazines. But when the community is in an infant state, these are contiguous to the royal residence; and in proportion as the size of the queen ...
— Observations Upon The Windward Coast Of Africa • Joseph Corry

... constructed a large stone basin, open at the bottom, through which springs bubble. From this reservoir the new aqueduct leads. It is an elliptical tunnel of brick, placed under ground, and marked by turrets of brick and stone placed along ...
— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead

... inches from the end of the web for the first turn. Sew into an elliptical form three and one-half inches long for the sole. Sew two more rows without widening for the sides of the foot; then sew two rows across the front for the toe; the third row bring all around the ...
— Spool Knitting • Mary A. McCormack

... with coal dust. "Everybody," as Dick remarked, "had a coaly look." People were heard conversing in a broad Northumbrian accent, with a burr in most of their words. They were broad-shouldered men, capable of doing any amount of hard work. We came in sight of a fine stone bridge with nine elliptical arches, which connects Newcastle with Gateshead, on the opposite bank. Above it is another magnificent bridge; it is double, the lower roadway, ninety feet above the river, being used for carriages and foot passengers, ...
— A Yacht Voyage Round England • W.H.G. Kingston

... jousted on a lovelier field than the green little valley toward which the Hon. Sam waved one big hand. It was level, shorn of weeds, elliptical in shape, and bound in by trees that ran in a semicircle around the bank of the river, shut in the southern border, and ran back to the northern extremity in a primeval little forest that wood-thrushes, even then, were making musical—all of it shut in by a wall of living green, save for one ...
— A Knight of the Cumberland • John Fox Jr.

... intra-ocular tension is by the suction method, which consists in the use of certain cups from which the air is exhausted by means of a suction apparatus. Domec uses an elliptical eye cup, the concave margins of which fit closely about the globe. The air is exhausted with each respiration of the patient and from 50 to 200 tractions are made at each sitting. Domec is of the opinion that this method succeeds in two ways, namely, in producing ...
— Glaucoma - A Symposium Presented at a Meeting of the Chicago - Ophthalmological Society, November 17, 1913 • Various

... elliptical carriage spring composed of a single piece, F, or two separate pieces, E E, of steel, united by means of blocks and bolts, substantially as herein ...
— Scientific American, Vol. 17, No. 26 December 28, 1867 • Various

... Society a Paper on the Theory of Pendulums, Balances, and Escapements: and I find applications of Babbage's symbolism to an escapement which I proposed. I have various investigations about the Earth, supposed to project at middle latitudes above the elliptical form. In November an account of the Dolcoath failure (by Whewell) was ...
— Autobiography of Sir George Biddell Airy • George Biddell Airy

... have a mean diameter of 35 mu, but with considerable variations from the mean in the individual fibres; equally wide variations in form are observed in cross-section. The general form is elliptical, but the surface is marked by deep striae, and the cross-section is therefore of irregular outline. This is due to irregular conditions of evaporation of the solvents, the thread being 'spun' into the air from cylindrical orifices ...
— Researches on Cellulose - 1895-1900 • C. F. Cross

... a competition among the architects of London to be employed in the building of Blackfriars-bridge, a question was very warmly agitated whether semicircular or elliptical arches were preferable. In the design offered by Mr. Mylne the elliptical form was adopted, and therefore it was the great object of his rivals to attack it. Johnson's regard for his friend Mr. Gwyn ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell

... twisted column, the silk hangings and fringe looking very worn and faded after being exposed to the light of over two hundred years. Adjoining this room is the salle a manger, the immense hearth, with seats at the ingle corners, being covered by an elliptical arch. Most of the furniture here and elsewhere is of massive oak, carved in the style of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The family into whose possession this castle has passed, although distinct from that of Salignac de la Motte, which has now no representative, reverently preserves all ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker

... castle, the result being the compound hieroglyph [—] Again, when the son of a king became king in his turn, they enclose his ordinary name in the long flat-bottomed frame [—] which we call a cartouche; the elliptical part [—] of which is a kind of plan of the world, a representation of those regions passed over by Ra in his journey, and over which Pharaoh, because he is a son of Ra, exercises his rule. When the names of Teti or Snofrui, following the group [——] which respectively express sovereignty over ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 2 (of 12) • G. Maspero

... astronomical phenomenon may be defined as an apparent motion of the heavenly bodies; the stars describing annually orbits more or less elliptical, according to the latitude of the star; consequently at any moment the star appears to be displaced from its true position. This apparent motion is due to the finite velocity of light, and the progressive motion ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... sharp grating sound as of iron cutting into ice, came suddenly to a stop, and the persons gathering round had an opportunity to examine it. It was the work of a village genius, and consisted of some boards, cut in an elliptical form (as, perhaps, the most convenient), supported by two pieces of iron, parallel to each other, to which the boards were fastened, and running the whole length from bow to stern. In the forward part ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams

... Geneva, based on the diary of Razumov. It is a favourite device of Conrad's which might be described as, structurally progressing from the homogeneous to the heterogeneous. His novel, Chance, is a specific instance of his intricate and elliptical method. Several personages of the story relate in almost fugal manner, the heroine appearing to us in flashes as if reflected by some revolving mirror. It is a difficult and elusive method, but it presents us with ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker

... entrance is a simple but effective arched doorway, now plastered and whitewashed. The double door frame projects pilaster-like, with a four-membered cornice above, from which rises an elliptical arch, with an elliptical cornice about a ...
— The Old Franciscan Missions Of California • George Wharton James

... intellectual discipline from the study of the ellipse. Then came a new era in the history of this curve. Hitherto it had been an abstract form, a geometrical speculation. But Kepler, by some fortunate guess, was led to examine whether the orbits of the planets might not be elliptical, and, lo! it was found that this curve, whose beauty had so fascinated so many men for so many ages, had been deemed by the great Architect of the Heavens beautiful enough to introduce into Nature on the grandest scale; the morning stars had been for countless ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various

... black depths of space toward Venus gleamed the tiny, elliptical, silvery hull of a ship, bearing slightly toward them. Although sharply outlined, the craft was hundreds of miles away as the men realized. Winford checked it swiftly through the telescope distance calculator, determined its speed, and ...
— The Space Rover • Edwin K. Sloat

... is not without merit in the details and examples of English construction. But its fault even in that part is that he confounds the genius of the English language, making it periphrastic and literal, instead of elliptical and idiomatic. According to Mr. Murray, hardly any of our best writers ever wrote ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt

... continued, "this tale of King Charles and Buckingham." He read it. "Now here is the scene as I picture it." In quick elliptical phrases he gave the ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... campagne che quello del re per le sue parole). It is difficult, however, in this instance as in many others, to discover with certainty Boccaccio's exact meaning, owing to his affectation of Ciceronian concision and delight in obscure elliptical forms of construction; whilst his use of words in a remote or unfamiliar sense and the impossibility of deciding, in certain cases, the person of the pronouns and adjectives employed tend still farther ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio

... developed about four horsepower. The power was transmitted from the motor to the countershaft by a belt and from the countershaft to the rear wheel by a chain. The car would hold two people, the seat being suspended on posts and the body on elliptical springs. There were two speeds—one of ten and the other of twenty miles per hour—obtained by shifting the belt, which was done by a clutch lever in front of the driving seat. Thrown forward, the lever put in the high speed; thrown back, the low speed; with the lever upright the engine could ...
— My Life and Work • Henry Ford

... dioecious, growing in axillary racemes. The male flowers have a corolla of six petals, the three smaller ones arranged alternately. In the female flower the stamens are represented by three glands situated at the base of the petals. Fruit, an elliptical drupe. ...
— The Medicinal Plants of the Philippines • T. H. Pardo de Tavera

... Wilton leaned in at the window-opening of the cell where the doctor and Bourne were examining a carefully-smoothed, elliptical, cell-like stone with a hole through the thickest part as if for holding ...
— The Peril Finders • George Manville Fenn

... evident, from what has been advanced, that an equilibrium could still obtain, by variations in the densities, distances and diameter of the planets. Supposing, again, that the planets still move in the same plane, but in elliptical orbits, and that they are in equilibrium at their mean distances, under the influence or action of the tangential current, the radial stream, and the density of the ether; we see that the force of the radial stream is too great at the perihelion, and too small at the aphelion. ...
— Outlines of a Mechanical Theory of Storms - Containing the True Law of Lunar Influence • T. Bassnett

... rightly regarded as one of the most important on the whole overland route; for near it passed the favourite highway of the Indians on their yearly migrations north and south, in the wake of the strange elliptical march of the buffalo far beyond the Platte, and back to the ...
— The Old Santa Fe Trail - The Story of a Great Highway • Henry Inman

... miles wide, and about 886 square miles in area. The next isoseismal (2) includes the places in which some buildings were ruined, but not as a rule completely, and in which there was no loss of life. Its bounding line is also elliptical, the longer axis being about 71 miles long and running nearly east and west. Towards the south this zone is interrupted by the sea. It will be noticed that these isoseismals are not concentric, the second extending much farther to the west and south-west than in the opposite direction. A third ...
— A Study of Recent Earthquakes • Charles Davison

... a tremendous tempest was blowing, the wind coming from the north, and the Ark, notwithstanding her immense breadth of beam, was canted over to leeward at an alarming angle. On the larboard side the waves washed to the top of the great elliptical dome and broke over it, and their thundering blows shook the vessel to her center, causing many to believe that she was ...
— The Second Deluge • Garrett P. Serviss

... have their apexes or points on the outer edge of the bone; and these apexes or points are so contrived, that, lying upon, and seemingly losing themselves, on the processes of the anterior maxillary, they complete, superiorly and posteriorly, that elliptical bony opening into the nose which was commenced by the maxillary anteriorly and inferiorly. The nasal cavity of the dog, therefore, and of all carnivorous animals, terminates by a somewhat circular opening, more or less in the form of an ellipse. This bony aperture varies in size in ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt

... recurved, branching panicle of bloom borne by the early, Plume, or Sharp-toothed Golden-rod or Yellow-top (S. juncea), so often dried for winter decoration, may wave four feet high but, usually not more than two, at the summit of a smooth, rigid stem. Toward the top, narrow, elliptical, uncut leaves are seated on the stalk; below, much larger leaves, their sharp teeth slanting forward, taper into a broad petiole, whose edges may be cut like fringe. In dry, rocky soil this is, perhaps, the first and last golden-rod to bloom, having been found ...
— Wild Flowers Worth Knowing • Neltje Blanchan et al

... orbit which takes a hundred and forty-two years to traverse! So that only every one hundred and forty-second year could we hope to see a good display. When all these facts had been gathered up, it seemed without doubt that certain groups of meteors travelled in company along an elliptical orbit. But there remained still something more—a bold and ingenious theory to be advanced. It was found that a comet, a small one, only to be seen with the telescope, revolved in exactly the same orbit as the November meteors, and another one, larger, in exactly the same orbit as the ...
— The Children's Book of Stars • G.E. Mitton

... Byzantium the conqueror had pitched his tent on the commanding eminence of the second hill. To perpetuate the memory of his success, he chose the same advantageous position for the principal forum, which appears to have been of a circular or rather elliptical form. The two opposite entrances formed triumphal arches; the porticos, which enclosed it on every side, were filled with statues; and the centre of the forum was occupied by a lofty column, of which a mutilated fragment is now degraded by the appellation of ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various

... termed sausage-shaped. These are either hyaline or coloured of some shade of brown. Coloured sporidia of this kind are common in Xylaria and Hypoxylon, as well as in certain species of the section Superficiales. Coloured sporidia are often large and beautiful: they are mostly of an elongated, elliptical form, or fusiform. As noteworthy may be mentioned the sporidia of Melanconis lanciformis, those of Valsa profusa, and some species of Massaria, the latter being at first invested with a hyaline coat. Some coloured sporidia have hyaline appendages at each extremity, as in ...
— Fungi: Their Nature and Uses • Mordecai Cubitt Cooke

... which was at that time in blossom. I noticed a small tree (Santalum oblongatum, R. Br.), very remarkable for having its branches sometimes slightly drooping, and at other times erect, with membranous glaucous elliptical leaves, from an inch to an inch and a half long, and three-quarters broad, with very indistinct nerves, and producing a small purple fruit, of very agreeable taste. I had seen this tree formerly at the Gwyder, and in the rosewood scrubs about Moreton Bay, and ...
— Journal of an Overland Expedition in Australia • Ludwig Leichhardt

... half, beginning from a narrow strip of ground, called the Jardin de l'Infante, is decorated externally with large pilasters of the Composite order, which run from top to bottom, and with pediments alternately triangular and elliptical, the tympanums of which, both on the side of the Louvre, and towards the river, are charged with emblems of the Arts and Sciences. The other part is ornamented with coupled pilasters, charged with vermiculated rustics, and ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon

... discovered by Canon Tristram in Moab, of which the most important parts have now been brought to the new Kaiser Friedrich Museum in Berlin, shows that there are Persian ideas intermixed with Byzantine in its decoration, and there are also brick arches of high elliptical form in the structure. He seems disposed to date this work rather in the 5th than in the 6th century, and to see in it an intermediate step between the Byzantine work of the west and a Mesopotamian style, which he postulates as probably having its centre at Seleucia-Ctesiphon. From the examples ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various

... colours. A certain loss of balance is caused by the overweight of the head in the Virgin as compared with the slightness of her frame. The features are the old ones of the 13th century; only softened, as regards the expression of the eye, by an exaggeration of elliptical form in the iris, and closeness of the curves of the lids. In the angels the absence of all true notions of composition may be considered striking; yet their movements are more natural and pleasing than hitherto. One indeed, to the spectator's ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various

... eidos, form). Applied to those scales of fishes which have a regularly circular or elliptical outline with ...
— The Ancient Life History of the Earth • Henry Alleyne Nicholson

... they receive instead of it fresh oxygen, and thus bring about the bright red colour that distinguishes oxydised or arterial blood. The red colouring matter of the blood (haemoglobin) is regularly distributed in the pores of their protoplasm. The red cells of most of the Vertebrates are elliptical flat disks, and enclose a nucleus of the same shape; they differ a good deal in size (Figure 2.358). The mammals are distinguished from the other Vertebrates by the circular form of their biconcave red cells and ...
— The Evolution of Man, V.2 • Ernst Haeckel

... Karpin attaches a small rocket to McCann's body, stuffed into its atmosphere suit. He sets the rocket going, and off goes McCann. Not that he aims it toward the sun, that wouldn't work well at all. Instead of falling into the sun, the body would simply take up a long elliptical orbit around the sun, and would come back to the asteroids every few hundred years. No, he would aim McCann back, in the direction opposite to the direction or rotation of the asteroids. He would, in essence, slow McCann's body down, make it practically stop in relation to ...
— The Risk Profession • Donald Edwin Westlake

... if this drop be allowed to fall on the hand it will be found that it is still cool. The fact is that the water never touches the hot iron at all, provided the heat is sufficiently intense, but assumes a slightly elliptical shape and is supported by a cushion of vapor. If, instead of a flat-iron, we use a concave metal disk about the size and shape of a watch crystal, some very interesting results may be obtained. If the temperature of the disk is at, ...
— The Miracle Mongers, an Expos • Harry Houdini

... enjoyable, thanks once more to my friend's influence. For a change we did not sleep on the floor, and by way of recreation I scented out a billiard table, not a good one, it is true, and the balls were rather elliptical; but as I had once personated the "Mikado," a la Gilbert & Sullivan, the conditions were not so disconcerting as they would doubtless have been to a less famous personage! Sorata, being the nearest town to the Bolivian rubber districts which export ...
— Argentina From A British Point Of View • Various

... was already mooted at Constantinople in the sixth century whence the Ab Actis derived his somewhat elliptical name; and our archaeology-loving scribe was able to inform his readers that as the officer of the household who was called A Pigmentis had the care of the aromatic ointments of the Court; as the A Sabanis[157] had charge of the bathing towels of the baths; as the A Secretis (who was called ...
— The Letters of Cassiodorus - Being A Condensed Translation Of The Variae Epistolae Of - Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator • Cassiodorus (AKA Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator)

... Lord Bute's), and Dr. Johnson's friend, Gwynn, well known for his admirable work on London improvements. The committee were, however, just enough to be unanimous in favouring the young unknown Scotchman, and he carried off the prize. Directly it was known that Mylne's arches were to be elliptical, every one unacquainted with the subject began to write in favour of the semi-circular arch. Among the champions Dr. Johnson was, if not the most ignorant, the most rash. He wrote three letters to the printer of the Gazetteer, praising Gwynn's ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury

... was bright daylight ahead, and in a few more strides the last trees were passed, and they came out suddenly in an amphitheatre of bare rocks, almost elliptical, but coming together at the head, and bending away like a comma turned ...
— The Crystal Hunters - A Boy's Adventures in the Higher Alps • George Manville Fenn

... this fine building is elliptical, and some notion of its vast extent may be formed, when it is stated to have been capable of ...
— The Idler in France • Marguerite Gardiner

... trusted so much to the excellence of my memory, that my notes were never either sufficiently full or accurate. Ideas which I had thought could never be effaced from my mind were now totally forgotten, and I could not comprehend my own mysterious elliptical hints and memorandums. I remember spending two hours in trying to make out what the following words could ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth

... the balcony because Faust was singing through laryngitis and a cloud of fog in his throat. A critic who wrote in terms of elliptical rhythms and tonal arabesques tiptoed out for a smoke. One of those sympathetic fits of coughing swept the house. But Lilly sat hunched in her habitual beatific attitude against the chair back, the old opera flowing back to her in association that caught her ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst

... of the valley would suggest the existence of the grand elliptical crater of some extinct volcano. But instead of the black sulphuric scoria, that you might expect to see strewed over its base, you behold a verdant landscape of smiling loveliness, park-like plains interposed with groves and copses, ...
— The Cliff Climbers - A Sequel to "The Plant Hunters" • Captain Mayne Reid

... gravitation to cease to operate, the entire plan of our universe would be sadly disarranged. The earth, for example, and the other planets would leave their elliptical orbits and hurtle away on a tangential course. We should soon be beyond the reach of the sun's beneficent influence; an arctic chill would pervade polar and tropical regions alike, and the term of man's existence would come suddenly ...
— A History of Science, Volume 5(of 5) - Aspects Of Recent Science • Henry Smith Williams

... in long elliptical or parabolic orbits round the sun at great velocities. They seem to consist partly of glowing vapours, especially hydrogen, and partly of meteoric stones. 'Shooting stars,' that is to say, stones which fall to the earth, are known to ...
— A Trip to Venus • John Munro

... three compartments,—for betel-nut, buyo-leaf, and calcined shell,—cast in brass or bell-metal from a wax mould. This type has rectangular surfaces, and is to be distinguished from the kapulan, a type marked by its circular, or elliptical, or polygonal ...
— Philippine Folk-Tales • Clara Kern Bayliss, Berton L. Maxfield, W. H. Millington,

... sheer strake; a beautifully carved and gilded full-length figure of a woman wearing a star of cut-glass facets on her forehead formed her figurehead; and her quarters were adorned with a considerable amount of gilded scroll-work. Her elliptical stern bore, in large gilded block letters, the words: Stella ...
— The First Mate - The Story of a Strange Cruise • Harry Collingwood

... which poise at one spot, are able to do so because, instead of moving forwardly, or changing the position of its body horizontally, in performing the undulatory motion of the wing, it causes the body to rock, so that at the point where the wing joins the body, an elliptical motion ...
— Aeroplanes • J. S. Zerbe***

... Figs. 96 (a) and 96 (b) presents a little difficulty in each case. The straight tube is the more difficult to insert, owing to the elliptical shape of the ends; whereas the bent tube requires only circular holes, but must be shaped on ...
— Things To Make • Archibald Williams

... the carcasses of decayed camels, we took up our route in the morning, led by our guide, and soon emerged on the sublimest scenery of the desert. Our line of travel lay through the center of grand elliptical amphitheaters, which called to mind the Coliseum at Rome and the exhumed arena at Pompeii. These eroded structures, wrought by the hand of nature at some remote period, were floored over by hard, gravelly sand, inclosed by lofty, semi-circular sides, and vaulted only ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller

... MAESTAM (sic). (A victory brilliant for thee, sorrowful for thy country). A funeral urn upon a tomb is surrounded with naval emblems; a crown of laurel is hanging from a trident, and in a cartoon of elliptical form: W. (William) ...
— The Medallic History of the United States of America 1776-1876 • J. F. Loubat

... Hipparchus, though the ellipse was recognized as a geometrical figure (it had been described and named along with the parabola and hyperbola by Apollonius of Perga, the pupil of Euclid), yet it would have been the rankest heresy to suggest an elliptical course for any heavenly body. A metaphysical theory, as propounded perhaps by the Pythagoreans but ardently supported by Aristotle, declared that the circle is the perfect figure, and pronounced it inconceivable ...
— A History of Science, Volume 1(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams

... distance from Battery-street, which is a spacious and elegant promenade, on the south westerly part of the city. It was formerly a fort, and is about one hundred and seventy feet in diameter, of a circular or elliptical form. It has lately become a place of great resort in the warm season of the year. Everything which labor and expence, art and taste could effect was done to render it convenient, showy and elegant. An awning covered the whole area of the garden suspended at an altitude of seventy-five ...
— Memoirs of General Lafayette • Lafayette

... perturbed, spun the mighty planet Jupiter and his moons sweeping splendid round the sun. Every moment now the attraction between the fiery star and the greatest of the planets grew stronger. And the result of that attraction? Inevitably Jupiter would be deflected from its orbit into an elliptical path, and the burning star, swung by his attraction wide of its sunward rush, would "describe a curved path," and perhaps collide with, and certainly pass very close to, our earth. "Earthquakes, volcanic outbreaks, cyclones, sea waves, floods, and a steady rise in temperature to I know ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells

... measured 91/2 ft. in circumference; its weight a ton. Afterwards, it exhibited symptoms of internal injury. The inside became a putrid mass, and the crust, or shell, fell in by its own weight. The shape of the stem is elliptical, with numerous ridges and stout brown spines arranged in tufts along their edges. The flowers are freely produced from the woolly apex; the tube is scaly and brown, and the petals are arranged like a saucer about the cluster of orange-coloured stamens. The colour of the petals is ...
— Cactus Culture For Amateurs • W. Watson

... he explained in his elliptical style. "You're one them dames uses a fella like he was a napkin, then trows him down. You used me twice and used me good. I desoived the second one, for I'm the kind o' guy gets his once and comes ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes

... results. For lyrical poetry differs from epic poetry, just as lyrical music differs from recitative: each still further intensifies the natural language of the emotions. Lyrical poetry is more metaphorical, more hyperbolic, more elliptical, and adds the rhythm of lines to the rhythm of feet; just as lyrical music is louder, more sonorous, more extreme in its intervals, and adds the rhythm of phrases to the rhythm of bars. And the known fact that ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer

... he was too much preoccupied to be careful about trifles; he probably had John in his mind, and did not bother himself about Alfonso; King Ferdinand, to whom he was writing, did not need to have such points minutely specified, and could understand an elliptical statement; and the fact stated by Columbus was simply that during a residence of fourteen years in Portugal he had not been able to enlist even that enterprising government in ...
— The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2) - with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest • John Fiske

... brevity; but while this quality with the Greek historian is natural and involuntary, with the Roman it is intentional and studied. The brevity of Thucydides is the result of condensation, that of Salust is elliptical expression. ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta

... in character, with an elliptical pediment, was set up in 1725, the cost being partly met by private subscriptions. It must have struck most people as incongruous, for it was not liked, and in 1848 ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Abbey Church of Tewkesbury - with some Account of the Priory Church of Deerhurst Gloucestershire • H. J. L. J. Masse

... relation between the magnitudes of the orbits of the five principal planets and the five regular solids of geometry. At first he inclined to believe that the orbit of Mars is oval, nor was it until after a wearisome study that he detected the grand truth, its elliptical form. An idea of the incorruptibility of the celestial objects had led to the adoption of the Aristotelian doctrine of the perfection of circular motions, and to the belief that there were none but circular motions in the heavens. He bitterly complains of this as having been a fatal ...
— History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science • John William Draper

... visible in the sky. Two of them, Ollier's Comet and Halley's, are known to return into sight after intervals of seventy-four and seventy-six years, during which they have visited portions of space a few hundred millions of miles further than the orbit of Neptune. Six comets travel in elliptical orbits that are never so far from the sun as the planet Neptune, and return into visibility in short periods that never exceed seven or eight years. These interior comets of short period seem to ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 450 - Volume 18, New Series, August 14, 1852 • Various

... interlacing work round the head of the actual window opening. Inside the church has been more altered. Formerly the aisle was separated from the nave by two arches, but when the south aisle was built the central pier was taken out and the two arches thrown into one large and elliptical arch, but the capitals of the chancel arch and the few others that remain are all well wrought and well designed. The west door is a good simple example of the first pointed period, with plain moulded arches and shafts which bear simple French-looking capitals. Other churches of the same class ...
— Portuguese Architecture • Walter Crum Watson

... head, neck, shoulder and sides of body; a hairy brown muzzle, with pale under-lip; long whiskers, some white, the posterior ones dark; under-parts white; fur soft and fine. The upper lip is lobed as in the hare; ears elliptical, with rounded tops. ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale

... woods and waters about one are a book from which he may draw exhaustless entertainment, if he will. One must not only learn the writing, he must translate the language, the signs, and the hieroglyphics. It is a very quaint and elliptical writing, and much must be supplied by the wit of the translator. At any rate, the lesson is to be well conned. Gilbert White said that that locality would be found the richest in zooelogical or botanical specimens ...
— A Year in the Fields • John Burroughs

... Benefits," as a laissez-faire motto, postulating the natural or spontaneous harmony between individual interests and the public good. The motto as it appeared on title pages of The Fable of the Bees was elliptical. In his text, Mandeville repeatedly stated that it was by "the skilful Management of the clever Politician" that private vices could be made to serve the public good, thus ridding the formula of any ...
— A Letter to Dion • Bernard Mandeville

... are contained in small elliptical cases found underlying the surface muscles of the breast, and in advanced cases extending deeper into the flesh and the muscular tissues of the legs and wings. They are not noticeable in the ordinary process of plucking the bird for the table, and are not found internally, so that the only ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday

... here, MS. p. 67, is very confused. [The speech of Muhsin seems to be elliptical. In Ar. it runs: "Li-ann iz, lam nukhullis-ha (or nukhlis-h, 2nd or 4th form) taktuln, wa an iz lam tattafik ma' ann iz khallastu-h tu't-h alayya" —which I believe to mean: "for if I do not deliver her, thou wilt kill me; so ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton

... fortunate valley, in about fifty-two hours. We then ascended, for about three miles, with far fatigue than I formerly experienced in climbing the Catskill mountains of my native State, and found ourselves on the summit of an extensive ridge, which formed the margin of a vast elliptical basin, the bottom of which presented a most beautiful landscape. The whole surface was like a garden, interspersed with patches of wood, clumps of trees, and houses standing singly or in groupes. A lake, about ...
— A Voyage to the Moon • George Tucker

... twisting into points, black eyebrows, and long effeminate black lashes. You would have expected his dress in the city to be just a trifle flashy, not enough so to be loud, but sinning as to the trifles of good taste. The two men conversed in short elliptical sentences, ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White

... fluent as it were in their utterance, while others are confined to a few important sounds: no bird, like the fish kind, is quite mute, though some are rather silent. The language of birds is very ancient, and, like other ancient modes of speech, very elliptical: little is said, but much is meant and understood. (* See Spectator, Vol. VII., ...
— The Natural History of Selborne • Gilbert White

... Sonnets' was properly taken as the title of a book. 'A Century of Inventions' was adopted by Lord Worcester as the title of his book. And when we use the word century (as generally we do) to indicate a certain duration of time, it is allowable only on the understanding that it is an elliptical expression; the full expression ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. II (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey

... apparatus, the instrument that really produces the varied vocalization of the bird realm. But the music is not the product of vocal cords, as is the case in the human larynx, for at the upper end of the avian larynx there is a slit or fissure, somewhat elliptical in form, and set in the fork of the hyoid bone, which constitutes the bifurcated root of the tongue. This fissure is called the glottis. At the bird's fiat, it can be opened and closed and made to assume a great ...
— Our Bird Comrades • Leander S. (Leander Sylvester) Keyser

... is elliptical in shape and covers about five acres of ground, being six hundred and twelve feet in its greatest length and five hundred and fifteen in greatest breadth. It is based on rows of arches, eighty in ...
— Historic Tales, Volume 11 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris



Words linked to "Elliptical" :   ellipse, concise, rounded



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