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Amplification   Listen
noun
Amplification  n.  
1.
The act of amplifying or enlarging in dimensions; enlargement; extension.
2.
(Rhet.) The enlarging of a simple statement by particularity of description, the use of epithets, etc., for rhetorical effect; diffuse narrative or description, or a dilating upon all the particulars of a subject. "Exaggeration is a species of amplification." "I shall summarily, without any amplification at all, show in what manner defects have been supplied."
3.
The matter by which a statement is amplified; as, the subject was presented without amplifications.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Amplification" Quotes from Famous Books



... is the amplification of a paper, the subject of which was, "A Plea for Circumcision; or, the Dangers that Arise from the Prepuce," which was read at the meeting of the Southern California Medical Society, at Pasadena, in December, 1889. The material gathered for that paper ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino

... true shape. Mr. Child regarded the tale as "one of the numerous wild growths" from Beauty and the Beast. It would be more correct to say that Beauty and the Beast is a late, courtly, French adaptation and amplification of the original popular "wild growth" which first appears (in literary form) as Cupid and Psyche, in Apuleius. Except for the metamorphosis, however, there is little analogy in this case. The friendly act of the Fairy Queen ...
— A Collection of Ballads • Andrew Lang

... the text goes the original Torah may have been either oral or written, and the scribes have falsified it, by amplification or distortion,(293) either when reducing it for the first time to writing or when copying and editing it from an already written form. This leaves open these further questions. If written was the Torah the very Book of the Torah discovered ...
— Jeremiah • George Adam Smith

... while in matters of detail extreme care is taken to make the contrast of Prophet and King as great as circumstances permit. The part of Salome, who is the only other dramatic person, contains no more amplification of the Bible narrative than was exacted by the necessities of musical treatment. In structure, the libretto is partly dramatic, partly narrational, the dramatic form being employed in all the chief scenes; and as little use is made of 'Greek chorus,' the ...
— The Standard Oratorios - Their Stories, Their Music, And Their Composers • George P. Upton

... is not enough to have barely proved his point; he proceeds, either immediately, or towards the conclusion of his speech, to heighten the effect by amplification.[244] Here he goes (as it were) round and round his object; surveys it in every light; examines it in all its parts; retires, and then advances; turns and re-turns it; compares and contrasts it; illustrates, confirms, enforces his view of the question, till at last the ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman

... now, and they do not know how we hate them. They do not know how disgusting and hideous we find them, with their ugly misshapen bodies, so narrow-shouldered and tiny-chested, their weak sibilant voices that need amplification to carry in our Martian air, and above all ...
— Keep Out • Fredric Brown

... her friend as soon as the conversation of which I have just given a sketch was resumed, as it was very soon, you may be sure, and very often, in the course of the next few days. That was her way of saying that a great crisis had arrived in her life, and the statement needed very little amplification to stand as a shy avowal that she too had succumbed to the universal passion. Olive had had her suspicions, her terrors, before; but she perceived now how idle and foolish they had been, and that this was a different affair ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. II (of II) • Henry James

... logically to accord in practical life with the political principle of equal freedom. In the present work, certain of the positions taken in the first are amplified. In each of the volumes to come, which will be issued as I find time to complete them, similar amplification in the case of other positions will be made. Naturally, the order of publication of the proposed works may be influenced by the general trend in the ...
— Direct Legislation by the Citizenship through the Initiative and Referendum • James W. Sullivan

... be the common teaching of almost all Christians, that Salvation, that is to say the consolidation and amplification of one's motives through the conception of a general scheme or purpose, is to be attained through the personality of Christ. Christ is made cardinal to the act of Faith. The act of Faith, they assert, is not ...
— First and Last Things • H. G. Wells

... this was much wanted,—a work giving in clear and intelligible outline the leading facts of the science, without amplification or irksome details. It is admirable in arrangement, and clear, easy, and at the same time forcible, in style. It will lead, we hope, to the introduction of geology into many schools that have neither time nor room for the ...
— Books and Authors - Curious Facts and Characteristic Sketches • Anonymous

... an immovable base—an aliquid inconcussum—on which the edifice of science might be built, and he was simple enough to search for it! And the Hermes of economy, Trismegistus Say, devoting half a volume to the amplification of that solemn text, political economy is a science, has the courage to affirm immediately afterwards that this science cannot determine its object,—which is equivalent to saying that it is without a principle or foundation! He does not know, then, the illustrious ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon

... style and loftiness of subject. More especially I urge the telling of the Christ-story, in such parts as seem likely to be within the grasp of the several classes. In all Bible stories it is well to keep as near as possible to the original unimprovable text.[1] Some amplification can be made, but no excessive modernising or simplifying is excusable in face of the austere grace and majestic simplicity of the original. Such adaptation as helps to cut the long narrative into separate ...
— How to Tell Stories to Children - And Some Stories to Tell • Sara Cone Bryant

... Touchstone, but infinitely richer, this new ideal personage still delights by the fertility of his expedients and his perpetual and vigorous gaiety. In Le Depit Amoureux is the exquisite scene of the quarrel and reconciliation of the lovers. In this fine scene, though perhaps but an amplification of the well-known ode of Horace, Donec gratus eram tibi, Moliere consulted his own feelings, and ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli

... was willing to pay or as long as his chits were good. With them, secrecy was the watchword. Tiberius, probably more sinned against than sinning (he has had an able defender in Beasley) is charged, by Suetonius, with the invention of an amplification and refinement of this vice. The performers were called "spinthriae," a word which signified "bracelet." These copulators could be of both sexes though the true usage of the word allowed but one, and that the male. They formed a chain, each link of which was an individual in ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter

... greatest of all anti-supernatural philosophers has observed, merely pushes ignorance a little farther back; and he was possessed of an extraordinary fertility of imagination which made comment, analogy, and amplification both easy and delightful to him. He was, therefore, much more disposed—except in the face of absolutely conclusive evidence—to rationalise than to deny a vulgar error, to bring explanations and saving clauses to its aid, than to cut it adrift utterly. In this part of his work his distinguishing ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury

... increase of size &c 35; enlargement, extension, augmentation; amplification, ampliation^; aggrandizement, spread, increment, growth, development, pullulation, swell, dilation, rarefaction; turgescence^, turgidness, turgidity; dispansion^; obesity &c (size) 192; hydrocephalus, hydrophthalmus [Med.]; dropsy, tumefaction, intumescence, swelling, tumor, diastole, distension; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... is to some extent a re-statement and partly an amplification of a theory I have elsewhere advanced.[1] But as that theory, although it has been advocated by several writers, especially during the past half-century, is not familiar to everybody, some remarks of an explanatory nature are necessary. And if this explanation assumes a narrative form, not without ...
— Fians, Fairies and Picts • David MacRitchie

... rule refers to the very important subject of the text, and is an amplification of the last part of the third fundamental rule. The rule of the committee is as follows:—"That the text to be adopted be that for which the evidence is decidedly preponderating; and that when the text so adopted differs from that from which the Authorised Version was made, the alteration be ...
— Addresses on the Revised Version of Holy Scripture • C. J. Ellicott

... diction varies sufficiently with the varying demands of his subjects, and often glides from the tingling concussion of antithesis into the softest music, or rises from sarcastic brevity and stinging emphasis into rich and sonorous amplification. The analysis of Iago, and the analysis of the Weird Sisters, indicate, perhaps, the extremes of his manner. Throughout the volumes, whether the subject be comic or tragic, humorous or sublime, there is ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 6 June 1848 • Various

... might have borne, I do not say amplification, for it was quite long enough, but a word or two of elucidation. I have no doubt Mery would have been quite ready to explain everything, for she had nothing to conceal and the subject would have done as well as any other to display her feminine ...
— Castellinaria - and Other Sicilian Diversions • Henry Festing Jones

... that thereby they may act with united force ... and prevent any isolation or cutting off of ships occurring in time of fight;' adding 'that it behoved them to stand by and relieve one another loyally, and rescue such as might be hotly attacked.' This is clearly no more than an amplification of Tromp's order of the previous June. It introduces no new principle, and is obviously based on the time-honoured idea of group tactics and mutual support. It is true that De Jonghe, the learned historian of the Dutch navy, regards it as conclusive ...
— Fighting Instructions, 1530-1816 - Publications Of The Navy Records Society Vol. XXIX. • Julian S. Corbett

... telescope a gradation from somewhat coarse grooves, easily visible at suitable times in very moderately sized instruments, to striae so delicate as to require the largest and most perfect optical means and the best atmospheric conditions to be glimpsed at all. Viewed under moderate amplification, the majority of rills resemble deep canal-like channels with roughly parallel sides, displaying occasionally local irregularities, and fining off to invisibility at one or both ends. But, if critically scrutinised in the best observing weather ...
— The Moon - A Full Description and Map of its Principal Physical Features • Thomas Gwyn Elger

... the only insertion made in the latter editions which has improved the play. The rest seem to have been added for the sake of amplification, or of ornament. When the imagination had subsided, and the mind was no longer agitated by the horror of the action, it became at leisure to look round for specious additians. This addition is natural. Desdemona can at first hardly forbear to sing the song; she endeavours to change ...
— Notes to Shakespeare, Volume III: The Tragedies • Samuel Johnson

... has not come down to us: Wace's (written in 1155) has, and though there is, as yet, no special attention bestowed upon Arthur, the Arthurian part of the story shares the process of dilatation and amplification usual in the Middle Ages. The most important of these additions is the appearance of ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury

... with which it can be compared. The noblest models of Greek composition must yield to it. His words are the fewest and the best which it is possible to use. The first expression in which he clothes his thoughts is always so energetic and comprehensive that amplification would only injure the effect. There is probably no writer in any language who has presented so many strong pictures to the mind. Yet there is probably no writer equally concise. This perfection of style is the principal merit of the Paradiso, which, ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Contibutions to Knight's Quarterly Magazine] • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... hoped she was going to leave it at that "Nothing," and bore her a grudge for her amplification at the same time that the way she looked when she made it swept him into sympathy. Indeed, he always felt about the lavish gratitude with which Ellen laid her personality at the disposal of the firm rather as ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West

... and passions, but of such as are more internal and radical, which are generally neglected.' 'This is a study,' he says, which 'might afford GREAT LIGHT TO THE SCIENCES.' And again he refers us to the existing supply, such as it is, and repeats with some amplification, his previous suggestions. 'In astrological traditions, the natures and dispositions of men, are tolerably distinguished according to the influence of the planets, where some are said to be by nature formed for contemplation, others ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon

... Statesman. The same ingenious arts of giving verisimilitude to a fiction are practised in both dialogues, and in both, as well as in the myth at the end of the Republic, Plato touches on the subject of necessity and free-will. The words in which he describes the miseries of states seem to be an amplification of the 'Cities will never cease from ill' of the Republic. The point of view in both is the same; and the differences not really important, e.g. in the myth, or in the account of the different kinds of states. ...
— Statesman • Plato

... now more distinctly made—has become more intense—than at any former period. The veto message and the Baltimore resolution I understand to be, in substance, the same thing; the latter being the more general statement, of which the former is the amplification the bill of particulars. While I know there are many Democrats, on this floor and elsewhere, who disapprove that message, I understand that all who voted for General Cass will thereafter be counted as having approved it, as having ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln

... preoccupied with the development of a theory which would show that immaterial substance, with space and time as attributes, is as real and as absolute as the Cartesian geometrical and spatial account of matter which he felt was true but much in need of amplification. ...
— Democritus Platonissans • Henry More

... and thus save scarce materials from wastage it is difficult to see why the same principle is not applicable to the distribution of fuel oil."[75] Sanctions were, therefore, constitutional when the deprivations they wrought were a reasonably implied amplification of the substantive power which they supported and were directly conservative of the interests which this power was created to protect and advance. It is certain, however, that sanctions not uncommonly exceeded ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin

... not cancelled by repentance or pardon. Christian Science not only elucidates but demonstrates this verity of be- ing; namely, that mortals suffer from the wrong they commit, whether intentionally or ignorantly; that every [10] effect and amplification of wrong will revert to the wrong- doer, until he pays his full debt to divine law, and the measure he has meted is measured to him again, full, pressed down, and running over. Surely "the way of the ...
— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy

... truth, just as it may relax the will and endanger morality. This last thought contained the germ of his further essays, 'On the Dangers of Aesthetic Culture' and 'On the Moral Benefit of Aesthetic Culture'. These, however, are only an amplification of ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas

... throw myself into the mind and spirit of my Margery and repeat her tale with occasional amplification, in a familiar style, yet with such a choice of words as seems suitable to the date of her narrative. Thus I have perpetuated all that she strove to record for her descendants out of her warm heart and eager brain; though often ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... amplification, however, his plea evidently still had for his companion a flaw; which, after he had considered it a moment, Nick exposed in the simple words: "Why, you originally introduced them in Paris, Biddy and Miss Rooth. Didn't they meet at your rooms and fraternise, and wasn't that much more ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James

... out of each consecutive month the 9th day for amplification and comment, keeping not too long in one tune, but a snip and away. This will prospect the gutter of Life (gutter is good) at different points; in other words, it will give us a range of seven months instead ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy

... of a Husbandman.} Now for the necessitie, the profit inferreth it without any larger amplification: for if of all things it be most profitable, then of all things it must needs be most necessary, sith next vnto heauenly things, profit is the whole aime of our liues in this world: besides it is most ...
— The English Husbandman • Gervase Markham

... Ryle (Can. of Script, p. 157) thinks that the amplification of Daniel, as of Esther, may have been tolerated because Daniel was not then deemed canonical. But we must remember that additional sections, though smaller in extent, appear in other books of the LXX, of whose canonicity there appears to have been no question, ...
— The Three Additions to Daniel, A Study • William Heaford Daubney

... great neglect, were we to omit satisfying our readers in this respect, more particularly as we can, without making use of a figure in rhetoric, (which is of very great service to many authors,) called amplification; or, in plain English, enlarging, present our readers with ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Bampfylde Moore Carew • Unknown

... astonished me; it appears to me quite out of character; though it is certain that an undertaking, when I have entered upon it, holds me rather than I it. But however this immaterial matter may be, I am glad to remember that I thoroughly liked Tom Sawyer, and said so with every possible amplification. Very likely, I also made my suggestions for its improvement; I could not have been a real critic without that; and I have no doubt they were gratefully accepted and, I hope, never acted upon. I went with him to the ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... work of shaping the body of ancient experience into law was done, there remained the larger and more difficult task of continuing the development of the sympathetic motives with a corresponding amplification of customs and statutes so that the steps of advance should be duly embodied in these rules of conduct. The stages of this purely human attainment have been slowly taken, the onward way has been effectively won but by few peoples. A part of the slowness in advance in the enlargement of ...
— Domesticated Animals - Their Relation to Man and to his Advancement in Civilization • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler

... thing is certain, and I state it pointedly, the application of Natural Law to the Spiritual World has decided and necessary limits. And if elsewhere with undue enthusiasm I seem to magnify the principle at stake, the exaggeration—like the extreme amplification of the moon's disc when near the horizon—must be charged to that almost necessary aberration of light which distorts every new idea while it is yet ...
— Natural Law in the Spiritual World • Henry Drummond

... combat are considered in Part II of these regulations. They are treated in the various schools included in Part I only to the extent necessary to indicate the functions of the various commanders and the division of responsibility between them. The amplification necessary to a proper understanding of their application is to be sought ...
— Manual for Noncommissioned Officers and Privates of Infantry • War Department

... shakes off its bondage. It asserts its right to be free. In its freedom, its thoughts turn to the race. Like begets like. We gather perfect fruit from perfect trees. The race is but the amplification of its mother body, the multiplication of flesh habitations—beautified and perfected for souls akin to the ...
— Woman and the New Race • Margaret Sanger

... touched both officers and men of the expedition, can be felt by the reader of Flinders' narrative. There was a consciousness of having crossed a line separating what simply required verification and amplification, from a totally fresh field of research. Every reach of coastline now traversed was like a cable, long buried in the deep of time, at length hauled into daylight, with its oozy deposits of seaweed, shell and mud lying thick ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott

... as in friendship or in the emotions of love, sentimentality is none other than an exaggerated amplification of ...
— Common Sense - - Subtitle: How To Exercise It • Yoritomo-Tashi

... persons outside a certain limited and sordid circle—that the message lacks amplification and elaboration; in its terse, bald diction there is a ghastly suggestion of traffic in human flesh, for which in California there is no market since the abolition of slavery and the importation of thoroughbred beeves. If woman suffrage had been established all would have been clear; Mr. Stenner ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8 - Epigrams, On With the Dance, Negligible Tales • Ambrose Bierce

... tearmes of a compact, he requiring that she should forsake God, and depend vpon him: to which she condescended in expresse tearmes, renouncing God, and betaking herselfe vnto him. I am sparing by anie amplification to enlarge this, but doe barely and nakedly rehearse the trueth, and number of her owne words vnto mee. After this hee presented himselfe againe at sundry times, and that to this purpose (as may probably bee coniectured) to hold her still in his possession, who was not able, ...
— A Treatise of Witchcraft • Alexander Roberts

... attended to when opportunity serves, but to be neglected in the meantime. And the same result follows, not by miracle, but by natural necessity. Haggai puts these results in our text with bitter, indignant amplification. His words are all the working out of one idea-the unprofitableness, on the whole and in the long-run, of a godless life. He illustrates this in the clauses of our text in various forms, and my purpose now is simply to apply each of these to the realities ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren

... accomplished by moral as well as by purely medical treatment marked, therefore, the very earliest stages of the development in America of the system of study and treatment of mental disorders which with increasing amplification and precision ...
— A Psychiatric Milestone - Bloomingdale Hospital Centenary, 1821-1921 • Various

... still Greek Ideal was forgotten in this noisy splendor, how entirely the chaste spirituality of the Greek line was lost in the round and lusty curves which are the inevitable footprints of Sensual Life, scarcely needs further amplification. I have referred to the Ionic capital of the Erechtheum as containing a microcosm of Attic Art, as presenting a fair epitome of the thought and love which Hellenic artists offered in the worship of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various

... the very reason that they are so elaborately explained. Printer's ink, when used as a pigment or pencil, should be used sparingly, with a few, sharp, clear, bold touches, and without painful finish or niggling. What amplification would not weaken instead of heightening the effect of "the copse-wood gray that waved and wept on Loch Achray"? Breadth, distance and atmosphere are obscured by H. H.'s carefully itemized foregrounds. But the itemizing is done admirably and con amore by one who is a botanist, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878 • Various

... that made Malone feel he'd been caught cribbing during an exam, but the scientist said nothing to back up the look. Instead he went on: "I will grant that there may be an amplification of the telepathic faculty in the normal ...
— Supermind • Gordon Randall Garrett

... practicable to a statement of the department's desires, and that this statement should be as clear as possible. If, for instance, the only desire of the department is that the enemy's fleet shall be defeated, no amplification of this statement is required. But if the department should desire, for reasons best known to itself, that the enemy should be defeated by the use of a certain method, then that should be stated also. Maybe it would not be wise for the department to state ...
— The Navy as a Fighting Machine • Bradley A. Fiske

... Mount Argaeus Isamus, Aegilus, the hill of Mamas, Cyrisus, Mocilus, the hill of Auxentius, the sun-dial of the Pharus of the great palace. He affirms that the news were transmitted in an indivisible moment of time. Miserable amplification, which, by saying too much, says nothing. How much more forcible and instructive would have been the definition of three, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon

... diplomatists. Perhaps they were unaware that the WHOLE OF SPAIN WAS UNDER MARTIAL LAW, or if they were, the true significance of the fact failed to strike them. Mr Brandram's letter accompanying these Resolutions is little more than an amplification of the Committee's decision: ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins

... microphone receiver could be adjusted for audible air vibrations. I crouched and held it cautiously above my head with its face, like a listening ear, turned toward the distant men. My single-vacuum amplification brought up the sound until their voices sounded like ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science September 1930 • Various

... others. The first six refer to pagan Rome, and constitute the first period, properly styled the PERIOD OF THE SEALS. The seventh seal, introducing the trumpets, is the second period, called the PERIOD OF THE TRUMPETS. In attempting to unfold their mystical import, greater amplification will ...
— Notes On The Apocalypse • David Steele

... remarked the sins of omission and commission, of abridgment, amplification and substitution, and the audacious distortion of fact and phrase in which Galland freely indulged, whilst his knowledge of Eastern languages proves that he knew better. But literary license was the order of his day and at that time ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton

... one of the common distresses of a writer, to be within a word of a happy period, to want only a single epithet to give amplification its full force, to require only a correspondent term in order to finish a paragraph with elegance, and make one of its members answer to the other; but these deficiencies cannot always be supplied: and after a long study and vexation, ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson

... and the famous letter of remonstrance. Southey accused Elia of wanting "a sounder religious feeling," and Lamb suggests in his reply that "New Year's Eve" was the chief offender. See Vol. I. for Lamb's amplification of one ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb

... sounde, and also in sence, sometime by way of surplusage, sometime by defect, sometime by disorder, or mutation, & also by putting into our speaches more pithe and substance, subtilitie, quicknesse, efficacie or moderation, in this or that sort tuning and tempring them, by amplification, abridgement, opening, closing, enforcing, meekening, or otherwise disposing them to the best purpose whereupon the learned clerks who haue written methodically of this Arte in the two master languages, Greeke and Latine, haue sorted all their figures into three rankes, ...
— The Arte of English Poesie • George Puttenham

... beginnings at least on the surroundings of the school—out of the mass of possible materials a very rich and comprehensive syllabus can be made, beginning with any one of the central points already suggested. Above all there should be plenty of pictures, not as amplification, but as material, by means of which a child may interpret more fully; a picture should be of the nature of a problem or of a map—and picture reading should be in the junior school what map reading is in ...
— The Child Under Eight • E.R. Murray and Henrietta Brown Smith

... 1844 is written in a clerk's hand, in two hundred and thirty- one pages folio, blank leaves being alternated with the MS. with a view to amplification. The text has been revised and corrected, criticisms being pencilled by himself on the margin. It is divided into two parts: I. "On the variation of Organic Beings under Domestication and in their Natural State." II. "On the Evidence favourable and opposed to the view that Species are naturally ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin

... that perhaps his first question could use some amplification, said: "Dionysus? Bacchus? You ...
— Pagan Passions • Gordon Randall Garrett

... equal rights of man. She proudly proclaims them now; but the world is involved in such a complicated muddle, that the utterances of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln (to say nothing of their intellectual and political ancestor Jean Jacques Rousseau) require amplification. The political thought of the older nations of Europe is tired out. It is for the fresher genius of America to lead them towards the solution of the greatest problem which has ever faced mankind:—the final, constructive ...
— Defenders of Democracy • The Militia of Mercy

... too of the physiological function of the blood platelets still needs much amplification. The original view of Hayem, who regards the blood platelets as early stages of the red blood discs, and for this reason calls them "haematoblasts," is, according to the judgment of ...
— Histology of the Blood - Normal and Pathological • Paul Ehrlich

... the studies, or of the occupations, in which he involved me, or led me the way. An excited and highly distempered ideality threw a sulphureous lustre over all. His long improvised dirges will ring forever in my ears. Among other things, I hold painfully in mind a certain singular perversion and amplification of the wild air of the last waltz of Von Weber. From the paintings over which his elaborate fancy brooded, and which grew, touch by touch, into vaguenesses at which I shuddered the more thrillingly because I shuddered knowing not why;—from these paintings (vivid as their images ...
— Selections From Poe • J. Montgomery Gambrill

... recalls the dialogue between Angelique and Lisette in the first scene of Dancourt's l'Ete des Coquettes (July 12, 1690), and may be a clever amplification of the same. ...
— A Selection from the Comedies of Marivaux • Pierre Carlet de Chamblain de Marivaux

... appointment of a committee to revise our constitution and rules. These have so far served our purpose fairly well but, in the opinion of the secretary, they now need modification and amplification. ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Fifth Annual Meeting - Evansville, Indiana, August 20 and 21, 1914 • Various

... reverse of this must be true. The story is written first and the headlines are written from the facts contained in the lead—and usually by another man. In writing the lead disregard the existence of headlines, for many readers do not read them at all. This is but an amplification of the old rule of composition that any piece of writing should be independent of its title. The title may be lost, but the essay must be clear ...
— Newspaper Reporting and Correspondence - A Manual for Reporters, Correspondents, and Students of - Newspaper Writing • Grant Milnor Hyde

... rather apostrophizing Jesus Christ in a strain which would seem to savour of Socinianism. This letter he calls "a distracted scrawl which the writer dare scarcely read." And yet it appears to have been deliberately copied with some amplification from an entry in his last year's commonplace book. Even the few passages from his correspondence already given are enough to show that there was in Burns's letter-writing something strained and artificial. But such discoveries as this seem to reveal an extent of effort, and even of artifice, which ...
— Robert Burns • Principal Shairp

... I like to indulge in my faculty of invention and amplification, and you may possibly have an idea that I have done so in the account I have given you of my female parent's early adventures. Ho! ho! ho!" and he heaved back, and indulged in a long, low, hoarse laugh, such as a facetious hippopotamus might be ...
— Marmaduke Merry - A Tale of Naval Adventures in Bygone Days • William H. G. Kingston

... Reb Shemuel regarded and reverenced and loved these gigantic pages with their serried battalions of varied type. They were facts—absolute as the globe itself—regions of wisdom, perfect and self-sufficing. A little obscure here and there, perhaps, and in need of amplification or explication for inferior intellects—a half-finished manuscript commentary on one of the super-commentaries, to be called "The Garden of Lilies," was lying open on Reb Shemuel's own desk—but ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill

... framework, of Stello, ou Les Diables Bleus, requires very little amplification of its double title to explain it. Putting that title in charade form, one might say that its first is a young poet who suffers from its second—like many other young persons, poetical and unpoetical, of ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury

... to point out the exquisite beauty of the imagery or the pathos and peace that breathe in the majestic rhythm of the words. There is something more than poetical beauty or rhetorical amplification of a single thought in those three clauses. The 'hiding-place' and 'covert' refer to one class of wants; the 'rivers of water in a dry place' to yet another; and 'the shadow of a great rock in a weary land' to yet a third. And, though they are tinged and dyed in Eastern ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren

... fierce question at his son; but Philip was not looking at him, and with a certain penitent consciousness went on, in a few moments, as if in amplification of ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot

... mental viewpoint, it is a difference in conduct and action.* The eternal moral law of self-sacrifice was revealed to him in letters of fire when he wrote "The Cossacks" and "Sevastopol;" everything that he wrote after was a mere amplification and additional emphasis. But he was young then; and although he saw the light, he preferred the darkness. He knew then, just as clearly as he knew later, that the life in accordance with New Testament teaching was ...
— Essays on Russian Novelists • William Lyon Phelps

... service. This is as true in other languages as in our own: "In almost every word of the Greek," says a learned author, "we meet with contractions and abbreviations; but, I believe, the flexions of no language allow of extension or amplification. In our own we may write sleeped or slept, as the metre of a line or the rhythm of a period may require; but by no license may we write sleepeed."—Knight, on the Greek Alphabet, 4to, p. 107. But, if after contracting sleeped into slept, we add an est and make sleptest, is ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown

... of our wants grammar is the theory formed afterwards. Speech never proceeded from grammar, but the reverse. As speech progresses and changes from unknown causes, grammar must follow" (p. 313). The whole book, which keeps unusually close to concrete facts, is little more than an amplification of this text. ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James

... narrative, but it is worthy of some amplification. If Ader actually did what he claimed, then the position which the Wright Brothers hold as first to navigate the air in a power-driven plane is nullified. Although at this time of writing it is not a quarter of a century since Ader's experiment in the presence ...
— A History of Aeronautics • E. Charles Vivian

... way home Mrs. Churton talked a good deal to her companion. She went over her discussion with the carpenter, repeating her own arguments with much amplification; then passing to his, she pointed out their weakness, and explained how that neutral state of mind is unworthy of a rational being, and dangerous as well, since death might come unexpectedly and give no time ...
— Fan • Henry Harford

... interpret different authors, use different language, and attack from different angles, even when treating the same object. Children must in their studying be taught to use books as a means to an end—not an infallible means, but one which needs continual criticism, modification, and amplification. ...
— How to Teach • George Drayton Strayer and Naomi Norsworthy

... deteriorated by close and constant intermarriage; and it was already, both morally and intellectually, below the level of the rest of the nation. Yet this very aristocracy, whose claim to consideration was based not upon its own achievements but upon the length of its pedigrees, insisted upon an amplification of its privileges which endangered the economical and political interests of the state and the nation. The time was close at hand when a Danish magnate was to demonstrate that he preferred the utter ruin of his country to any abatement ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various

... St. Bernard's narrative of these transactions. Sections 22 and 23 present no difficulty. They are simply an amplification, with differences in detail, of what we learn from A.T. In the early part of Sec. 24 it is stated that Malachy remained in Armagh after the king, with whose aid he had "ascended the chair of Patrick," had returned home; and in the ...
— St. Bernard of Clairvaux's Life of St. Malachy of Armagh • H. J. Lawlor

... of the Isle of Demons is founded on a story told first by Marguerite of Navarre in her "Heptameron" (LXVII. Nouvelle), and then with much variation and amplification by the very untrustworthy traveller Thevet in his "Cosmographie" (1571), Livre XXIII. c. vi. The only copy of the latter work known to me is in the Carter-Brown Library at Providence, R.I., and the passage has been transcribed for me through the kindness of A. E. Winship, Esq., ...
— Tales of the Enchanted Islands of the Atlantic • Thomas Wentworth Higginson

... Calvus is close and nervous; Asinius more open and harmonious; Caesar is distinguished [b] by the splendour of his diction; Caelius by a caustic severity; and gravity is the characteristic of Brutus. Cicero is more luxuriant in amplification, and he has strength and vehemence. They all, however, agree in this: their eloquence is manly, sound, and vigorous. Examine their works, and you will see the energy of congenial minds, a family-likeness ...
— A Dialogue Concerning Oratory, Or The Causes Of Corrupt Eloquence • Cornelius Tacitus

... that he is correct to half an inch—that's no matter. The public will, in all probability, believe you, because you are the last writer, and because you have decreased the dimensions. Travellers are notorious for amplification, and if the public do not believe you, let them go and measure ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)

... authority (it ran) for the important statement which follows, but we have every reason to believe that it is perfectly true. We give it without any comment or amplification, in the very words of the communication, which reached us at a late hour last night. "The King has taken the opportunity of Lord Spencer's death to turn out the Ministry, and there is every reason to believe the Duke of Wellington has been ...
— Lady John Russell • Desmond MacCarthy and Agatha Russell

... content to pass the matter by. You quote an isolated sentence from my lecture, and appear to have some difficulty in understanding it. I should have thought that only a sub-human intelligence could have failed to grasp the point, but if it really needs amplification I shall consent to see you at the hour named, though visits and visitors of every sort are exceeding distasteful to me. As to your suggestion that I may modify my opinion, I would have you know that it is not my habit to do so after ...
— The Lost World • Arthur Conan Doyle

... termed "the argument from the good effects of self-government," the other deduces from the necessity for Coercion Acts the conclusion that England cannot maintain order in Ireland: this I have termed "the argument from the necessity for Coercion Acts." These two lines of reasoning are simply an amplification of points suggested by the Home Rule argument from Irish history, and are of necessity therefore open to the same criticisms to which that argument is obnoxious. They have, however, each a certain value of their own, and have made an impression on the ...
— England's Case Against Home Rule • Albert Venn Dicey

... Oliver's story, and it needed little amplification. If it had, the only boy who could have added to it was in no position to do so. For four weeks after that night Loman lay ill with rheumatic fever, so ill that more than once those who watched him despaired of his recovery. But he ...
— The Fifth Form at Saint Dominic's - A School Story • Talbot Baines Reed

... treatise, carry us through the five next books. They are the most technical in the work, and not adapted for general reading. The eighth begins the interesting topic of style, which is continued in the ninth, where trope, metaphor, amplification, and other figurae orationis are illustrated at length. Throughout these books there are a large number of quotations, and continual references to the practice of celebrated masters in the art, besides frequent introduction ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell

... introduces a ghost—never a ghoul; but he makes up for it by describing human beings with sentiments which would probably make the ghoul feel ashamed to associate with them. The utmost extent of human profligacy is depicted, but still the profligacy is human; it is only an amplification—very clever and very horrid—of a real character; but never borrows any additional horrors from the other world. A French author knows very well that the wickedness of this world is quite enough to set one's hair on end—for we suspect that the Life in ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various

... days ago this article appeared in the "Gazette," an amplification of the little paragraph in that diminutive newspaper "The Manchuria Daily News" of which I wrote you. Said the "Gazette," under a bold ...
— Peking Dust • Ellen N. La Motte

... figures. Nor is it as thorough in handling the figures as its predecessors. It utilizes, however, the customary Greek and Latin terms and supplies a definition, but here the similarity with contemporaries and ancients ends. It is weak in amplification of examples during an age when amplification was practiced. Sherry economizes by selecting usually one example in support of a figure while contemporary cataloguers, and ancients for that matter, are ...
— A Treatise of Schemes and Tropes • Richard Sherry

... old and general amplification of totally, recently borrowed from sea diction to mark a class who ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth

... use of the jet drilling for mining is another, and worthy of amplification. Missiles are already working the economically unminable taconite ore of the Mesabi Range, have helped build the St. Lawrence Seaway, and are bringing down ...
— The Practical Values of Space Exploration • Committee on Science and Astronautics

... a simplification and amplification of the Range Finder, q. v. In practice the observers may be placed far from the forts, and may telephone their observations thereto. It has been found accurate within one-third of ...
— The Standard Electrical Dictionary - A Popular Dictionary of Words and Terms Used in the Practice - of Electrical Engineering • T. O'Conor Slone

... Calvin, in the shape of a commentary, has interwoven with the treatise of Seneca is a production not unworthy a literator of the revival; it is an amplification, which one would have supposed to have been written in the cell of a Benedictine monk, so numerous are the citations, so great is the display of erudition, so replete is it with the names, Greek and Latin, of poets, historians, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various

... which has lain upon me throughout this paper only to touch upon those points in the life of Burns where correction or amplification seemed desirable, leaves me little opportunity to speak of the works which have made his name so famous. Yet, even here, a few observations ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson

... laconic, non-committal man of business who answered. A pause, then a significant amplification. "This is the age of the trolley. There are a hundred miles of suburban lines contracted for as well. No one will recognize this country as it is now ...
— The Dominant Dollar • Will Lillibridge

... frenzy of love from the attendant symptoms, from actuality, and first selected and then closely combined those which were conspicuous and intense.[30] This intensity which is characteristic of the poet he contrasts with the amplification of the orators, which strengthens the fabric of an argument by insistence and is especially "appropriate in perorations and digressions, and in all passages written for the style and for display, in writings of historical and scientific nature." Yet Demosthenes when ...
— Rhetoric and Poetry in the Renaissance - A Study of Rhetorical Terms in English Renaissance Literary Criticism • Donald Lemen Clark

... modern times; but her writings are often obscure, and some have doubted whether she always clearly conceived what she meant to express. She had a warm sympathy with all forms of suffering and distress. "He Giveth his Beloved Sleep" is one of the most beautiful of her minor poems. The thought is an amplification of verse 2d ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey

... an amplification of his likeness to a crane; certainly "a long snipe nose" "upon his spindle neck" is the most important detail. Next the author gives another ...
— English: Composition and Literature • W. F. (William Franklin) Webster

... of satirical humour—to "the truth of a song,"—not Dryasdust himself would call upon him to swear. And may not all his rhapsodies upon his "sword-in-hand" Puritans be little more than an amplification of this one passage? And, if we insist upon it, that a reform by the pen, or even by speech-making, is better than one by pike and musket—if we should suggest that matters of civil government are better decided by civil and political ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various

... resemblances between the plumage of the young and the old, in both sexes or in one sex alone, may be grouped. Rules of this kind were first enounced by Cuvier; but with the progress of knowledge they require some modification and amplification. This I have attempted to do, as far as the extreme complexity of the subject permits, from information derived from various sources; but a full essay on this subject by some competent ornithologist is much needed. In order to ascertain to ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin

... submit also to the more impartial judgment of time. Of the two innovations which gave him relief against the general background, one was the amplification of the crude but vigorous satire of Lucilius into a more perfect literary character, and the other was the persuasion of the Greek lyric forms into Roman service. Both examples had their important effects within the hundred years that ...
— Horace and His Influence • Grant Showerman

... He wrote a piquant article on the glories of the Comedie de l'Art, and its resurrection by the improvising troupe of the great mime Florimond Binet. Binet's name was not Florimond; it was just Pierre. But Andre-Louis had a great sense of the theatre. That article was an amplification of the stimulating matter contained in the playbills; and he persuaded Basque, who had relations in Nantes, to use all the influence he could command, and all the bribery they could afford, to get that article printed in the "Courrier Nantais" a couple of days before the arrival ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini

... marvelous amplification, the story with which the letter of his agent had already made him familiar. This time he had received a genuine wound, with poison upon the barb of the arrow that had pierced him. He crushed the paper in his hand ...
— Sevenoaks • J. G. Holland

... had been set up and Dr. Shalt had Crawford test Spud's voice while a technician in the control booth measured it acoustically. After an exact tone had been determined for the amplification unit, Dr. Shalt briefed him on some details, patted him on the back and disappeared into the control ...
— The Second Voice • Mann Rubin

... admired; in other words, the moral element of the beautiful not only has a place, but is in the right place,—the right place, I mean, to act the most surely and the most effectively on the springs of life, or as an inspiration of good thoughts and desires. And in the further explication or amplification of the matter I shall take for granted that the old sophism of holding Shakespeare responsible for all that is said and done by his characters is thoroughly exploded; though it is not many years since a grave writer set him ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson

... of his lecture on Pope and Dryden remarks that poetry had "declined by successive gradations from the poetry of imagination in the age of Elizabeth to the poetry of fancy in the time of Charles I," and Lowell repeats this with some amplification. In the same connection he characterizes Shakespeare, Chaucer, Spenser, and Milton in the sharp epigrammatic manner reminding one of Hazlitt. In the concluding pages of the essay on Spenser we are also kept in a reminiscent mood, till Lowell tells ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin

... had left the theme of gardens for another's singing. Columella takes him at his word. The tenth book is manifestly intended as the crown and conclusion of his work. But later he changed his plan. Another friend, Claudius Augustalis,[369] demanded a paraphrase, or rather an amplification in prose. This resulted in an eleventh book, in which the care of the garden and the duties of the villicus are described, while the work was finally concluded in a twelfth book setting forth the duties ...
— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler

... passed rapidly through my mind. A considerable portion of time and amplification of phrase are necessary to exhibit, verbally, ideas contemplated in a space of incalculable brevity. With the same rapidity I conceived the resolution of determining the truth of my suspicions. All the family, but myself, were at rest. Winding passages would conduct me, without danger ...
— Edgar Huntley • Charles Brockden Brown

... pleased at your letter, though I dare say you will think by my delaying so long to write to you that I am so drowned in the intoxication of good fortune as to be indifferent to old, and once dear connexions. The truth is, I was determined to write a good letter, full of argument, amplification, erudition, and, as Bayes says, all that. I thought of it, and thought of it, and, by my soul, I could not; and, lest you should mistake the cause of my silence, I just sit down to tell you so. Don't give yourself credit, though, that the strength ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham

... knew no bounds, and he was conscious of a desire, too poignant almost to be borne, in some way to circumvent the arch-traitor. For here in the craters of the Moon Dalis was working out a strange amplification of the scheme which he had, centuries before, proposed to Sarka the First. He was subjecting the people of his ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, August 1930 • Various

... change which came over Buddhism was partly due to foreign influences and no doubt they affected most Indian creeds. But the prodigious amplification of Hinduism was mainly due to the absorption of beliefs prevalent in Indian districts other than the homes of the ancient Brahmans. Thus south Indian religion is characterized when we first know it by its emotional tone ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot

... inhabitants of the kitchen came out of the kitchen, and stood upon the stairs. These, and similar expressions, show how much the Irish are disposed to metaphor and amplification. ...
— Castle Rackrent • Maria Edgeworth

... man in a somber uniform stepped out on the balcony. He held up his hand for attention, although the prisoners were already watching him fixedly. Then, though he had no visible means of amplification, his voice boomed hollowly ...
— The Status Civilization • Robert Sheckley

... people, were honoured but with the | titles of Worthies or Demigods, inventors | were ever consecrated amongst the Gods | themselves. And if the ordinary ambitions | of men lead them to seek the amplification | of their own power in their countries, and | a better ambition than that hath moved men | to seek the amplification of the power of | their own countries amongst other nations, | better again and more worthy must that | aspiring be which seeketh the | ...
— Valerius Terminus: of the Interpretation of Nature • Sir Francis Bacon

... besides increasing respect for the teacher's education. There is nothing more deadening to the recitation than a mechanical plodding through the questions and answers of a textbook without any explanation or amplification, and often without much comprehension on the part of the class. The teacher who has nothing of his own to add is incapable of teaching in the true sense of the word. At best he can only test as to the ...
— The Recitation • George Herbert Betts

... readily to rich adornment. It became at once an integral element of the architectural scheme, to which it gave breadth as well as variety. It was accepted instantly as a welcome modification of the tradition,—as an amplification not to be wantonly disregarded by any architect hereafter called upon to ...
— Inquiries and Opinions • Brander Matthews

... of American mythology have been greatly fostered by the delight the more developed nations took in rhetorical figures, in metaphor and simile, and in expressions of amplification and hyperbole. Those who imagine that there was a poverty of resources in these languages, or that their concrete form hemmed in the mind from the study of the abstract, speak without knowledge. One ...
— American Hero-Myths - A Study in the Native Religions of the Western Continent • Daniel G. Brinton

... especially against heretics, e.g. in the canons of the council of Trent and those of the Vatican council of 1870. See EXCOMMUNICATION; PENANCE. The expression maranatha ("the Lord cometh''), which follows anathema in 1 Cor. xvi. 22, is often erroneously quoted as though it were an amplification ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... are disposed of in three ways in training grapes; shoots upright, shoots drooping, and shoots horizontal. The terms explain themselves, but the three methods need amplification since their adoption is not optional with growers but ...
— Manual of American Grape-Growing • U. P. Hedrick

... present law contemplating consolidations ore not, sufficiently effective in producing expeditious action and need amplification of the authority of the Interstate Commerce Commission, particularly in affording a period for voluntary proposals to the commission and in supplying Government pressure to secure action after the expiration of ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... late at night, when poor 'Jost' is tired to death, and bids him pick up every grain in the same way as in the old story Venus vents her malice on Psyche. The most important German version was that by Widmann—an amplification of the old Faust-book. There also appeared a life of Faust's Famulus (assistant), Christopher Wagner, whom the devil attends in the form of an ape. Of one of these versions (I think Widmann's) there appeared about 1590 an English ...
— The Faust-Legend and Goethe's 'Faust' • H. B. Cotterill

... white with the same snow that had powdered that of her sister. Aunt Ruey had a face much resembling the kind of one you may see, reader, by looking at yourself in the convex side of a silver milk-pitcher. If you try the experiment, this description will need no further amplification. ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe



Words linked to "Amplification" :   expansion, expanding upon, increase, increment, step-up



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