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Diurnal   Listen
noun
Diurnal  n.  
1.
A daybook; a journal. (Obs.)
2.
(R. C. Ch.) A small volume containing the daily service for the "little hours," viz., prime, tierce, sext, nones, vespers, and compline.
3.
(Zool.) A diurnal bird or insect.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Diurnal" Quotes from Famous Books



... windy, the river rumpled and crumpled, the sky intense, distant objects strangely near; a day full of strong light, unusual; an extraordinary lightness and clearness all around the horizon, as if there were a diurnal aurora streaming up and burning through the sunlight; smoke from the first spring fires rising up in various directions,—a day that winnowed the air, and left no film in the sky. At night, how the big March bellows did work! ...
— A Year in the Fields • John Burroughs

... comes. Faith and Reputation have ever been built on Doubt and Mystery, and sometimes the Art of being unintelligible does not a little advance the Credit of a Writer. There are many Reasons why we, who take upon Us the Task of Diurnal or Weekly Lucubrations, should be like the River Nilus, sending abroad fertile Streams to every Quarter, and still keeping our Heads undiscover'd. But why should I be compell'd to give Reasons for every thing? Were Reasons as plenty as Blackberries, ...
— The Theater (1720) • Sir John Falstaffe

... case of instinct as ever I heard of, and likewise of adaptation in structure between two objects apparently so remote from each other in the scheme of nature, as a crab and a cocoa-nut tree. The Birgos is diurnal in its habits; but every night it is said to pay a visit to the sea, no doubt for the purpose of moistening its branchiae. The young are likewise hatched, and live for some time, on the coast. These crabs inhabit ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin

... self-acting machine. He cannot cease to be a machine; but, though self-acting, he may lose the powers of self-guidance, and in a wrong course his very vitalities hurry him to perdition. Young, he is an organism ripening to the set mechanic diurnal round, and while so he needs all the angels to hold watch over him that he grow straight and healthy, and fit for what machinal duties he ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

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

... travelling upon wings of steam in the seventeenth century, and newspapers being but rare visiters at Shepey. Occasionally, indeed, there did descend from the breakfast-room of Sir Robert, unto the servants' hall, a stray number or two of the "Mercurius Politicus," the "Perfect Diurnal," or the "Parliament Scout;" the contents of which were eagerly devoured by the several auditors, while one, more gifted than his fellows, drawled forth, amid ejaculations and thanks unto the Lord, the doings of the Commonwealth, and especially of him who was a master in the new ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall

... years on our shore our King Canute has sat in his royal chair forbidding the tide to rise. As long as ebb-tide lasts his authority seems to be respected, and the problem of these diurnal encroachments of the sea upon the land seems to be solved. But when the time for flood-tide comes again, Canute will have to move his chair, his mandates to the contrary notwithstanding. Already, if rumor is to be believed, a profitable business is conducted upon Puget Sound ...
— The American Missionary—Volume 39, No. 07, July, 1885 • Various

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

... afternoon is therefore not so much due to the accumulation of caloric from the sun's rays, as to the passage of a heated current of air derived from the much hotter regions to the westward. It would be interesting to know how far this N.W. diurnal tide extends; also the rate at which it gathers moisture in its progress over the damp regions of the Sunderbunds. Its excessive dryness in N.W. India approaches that of the African and Australian deserts; and I shall give an abstract of my own observations, ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker

... the year with its Seasons. To the former of these, animal life seems most directly related; to the latter, the life of the vegetal orders. It is evident that the forms of animal life on the globe are necessarily determined by the periodic law of the Earth's diurnal rotation. This accounts for the alternations of waking and sleeping, working and resting, and so forth. In like manner the more inert vitality of the vegetable kingdom is determined by the periodic law of ...
— Essays Towards a Theory of Knowledge • Alexander Philip

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

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

... now diurnal, from on high over the Straits of Dover, and stretching from city to city. By night Paris and London seem each as a little swarm of lights surrounded by a halo; by day as a confused glitter of white and grey. The Channel between them ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy

... which Laplace deduced results so beautiful, so unequivocal, and so useful, that he taxed with frivolousness the vague idea which Kepler entertained of attributing to the moon's attraction a certain share in the production of the diurnal and periodical movements of ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner

... appointment. Since this his manifestation of a desire for pomp and grandeur and an expensive display has drawn ridicule and odium upon him. His temper has been soured by the attacks both in Parliament and in the press; he has been stung, goaded, and tormented by the diurnal articles in the 'Times,' and he has now made himself obnoxious to universal reproach and ridicule by an act which, trifling in itself, exhibits an animus the very reverse of that which is required in the pacificator and legislator of Canada. He was engaged to dine with Bingham ...
— The Greville Memoirs (Second Part) - A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852 - (Volume 1 of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville

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

... of such as he only, who "in darkness, and with danger compassed round," soared "beyond this visible diurnal sphere," and whose song was of mercy and judgment, have men wisely resolved to dwell only on what is pure and high and cognate with their thoughts of heaven. Still, as we keep descending from height to height in the regions of song, we desire to regard ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various

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

... 26th of August 1534, is the date assigned for the trial, "befoir the Bishop of Ross, be ane commission of the Bischope of Sanctandrois," of Kirk and others. (Diurnal of Occurrents, p. 18.) Of these persons, Calderwood informs us, that Sir William Kirk, as his name denotes, was a priest; but "whether he compeared and abjured, or fled, we can find no certaintie;" that Adam Dayes, ...
— The Works of John Knox, Vol. 1 (of 6) • John Knox

... monsoon, fitful and wayward, never continuing long in one stay, and lasting but four out of the twelve months. Rare is the wind from the west, rarer from the south-west. North-easters are a pronounced feature. They work up by diurnal and easy grades from gentleness to strength, thunder coming as a climax. After a succession of calm days and days of gentle breezes from the east-south-east and east, the north-easter begins softly, and daily gathers courage and assumption, to find in the course of a week or two its haughty spirit ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield

... the conception of the "universe" was defensible on scientific grounds: the diurnal revolution of the heavenly bodies bound them together as all parts of one system, of which the earth was the centre. Round this apparent scientific fact, many human desires rallied: the wish to believe Man important in the scheme of things, the theoretical desire for a comprehensive ...
— Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays • Bertrand Russell

... they have each the same red and black colours, and are very distinct from all the other butterflies of their respective countries. There is reason to believe also that many of the brilliantly coloured and weak-flying diurnal moths, like the fine tropical Agaristidae and burnet-moths, are similarly protected, and that their conspicuous colours serve as a warning of inedibility. The common burnet-moth (Anthrocera filipendula) and the equally conspicuous ragwort-moth (Euchelia jacobeae) have ...
— Darwinism (1889) • Alfred Russel Wallace

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

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

... well they laugh'd", etc. Steele, in 'Spectator', No. 49 (for April 26, 1711) has a somewhat similar thought:—'"Eubulus" has so great an Authority in his little Diurnal Audience, that when he shakes his Head at any Piece of publick News, they all of them appear dejected; and, on the contrary, go home to their Dinners with a good Stomach and chearful Aspect, when "Eubulus" seems to ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith

... months," or one hundred and fifty days. As this description is entirely symbolic, we must consider the time symbolic also, for time certainly can be symbolized as well as anything else. It is very appropriate for days to symbolize years, for they are analagous periods of time; the diurnal revolution of the earth being taken to represent the earth's annual movement. Such a system of reckoning time was known centuries ago. When Jacob complained to Laban because he had been given Leah instead of Rachel, "Laban said, It must ...
— The Revelation Explained • F. Smith

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

... cit.) the last seven lines of the quotation read as follows—'judgement-seat in the interim, I should, year after year, quarter after quarter, month after month (not to mention sundry petty periodicals of still quicker revolution, 'or weekly or diurnal') have been for at least seventeen years consecutively dragged forth by these into the foremost rank of the proscribed, and forced to abide the brunt of abuse, for faults directly opposite, and which I certainly had not. How ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... live confession came, like rich perfume From crimson petals bursting into bloom! And still my heart at the remembrance skips Like a young lion, and my tongue, too, trips As drunk with joy! while every object seen In life's diurnal round wears in its mien A clear assurance that no doubts eclipse. And if the common things of nature now Are like old faces flushed with new delight, Much more the consciousness of that rich vow Deepens ...
— An Anthology of Australian Verse • Bertram Stevens

... do not know, but can imagine, for here is the Diurnal Record, made up in bed:—"December 29th, Saturday.—Dreamed Victoria Villa turned into a hydropathic establishment—that I was being frozen, thawed, and suffocated; did wake, this day, with ...
— Christmas Comes but Once A Year - Showing What Mr. Brown Did, Thought, and Intended to Do, - during that Festive Season. • Luke Limner

... the sun's diurnal course; which rising in the east, and by revolution lowering, or setting in the west, becomes the opposite of itself. WARB.] This is an obscure passage. The explanation which Dr. Warburton has offered is such, that I can add nothing to it; yet perhaps ...
— Notes to Shakespeare, Volume III: The Tragedies • Samuel Johnson

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

... appears to be spoken of as being "turned" to the sun, the dayspring; and this, we know, takes place, morning by morning, in consequence of the diurnal rotation. But the last two lines are better rendered ...
— The Astronomy of the Bible - An Elementary Commentary on the Astronomical References - of Holy Scripture • E. Walter Maunder

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

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

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

... times faster than a twenty-four-pound cannon-ball flies, which goes one hundred and ninety-five fathoms a second. It moves, then, seven leagues and six tenths per second; you see it is very different from the diurnal ...
— The Voyages and Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne

... sphere for his wit, learning and loyalty. Here he began a paper war with the opposite party, and wrote some smart satires against the Rebels, especially the Scots. His poem called the Mixt Assembly; his character of a London Diurnal, and a Committee-man, are thought to contain the true spirit of satire, and a just representation of the general confusion of the times. From Oxford he went to the garrison of Newark, where he acted as judge advocate till that garrison was surrendered, and by an excellent ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume II • Theophilus Cibber

... vertical components as well as the absolute value of the total force are important, and the determination of these "elements" is the work of the magnetician. Affecting the average values of the "magnetic elements" at any one spot on the Earth's surface are regular diurnal oscillations, apparent only by the application of very delicate methods of observation: also there are sudden large irregular movements referred to as magnetic storms; the latter are always specially noticeable when unusually bright ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson

... much more nice than wise, as to govern themselves by any such ideas. The session for the day, at whatever hour it commences, or at whatever hour it breaks up, is the legislative day. Every thing has reference to the commencement of that diurnal session. For instance, this is the 14th day of January; we assembled here to-day at twelve o'clock; our journal is dated January 14th, and if we should remain here until five o'clock to-morrow morning (and the Senate has sometimes sat so late), our proceedings would still bear date of ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster

... 1887, after a protracted performance of charades in the house of Luke Doyle, Kimmage, he had awaited with patience the apparition of the diurnal phenomenon, seated on a wall, his gaze turned in the direction of ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce

... growing into the roof in unbroken curves, the massive stone rood-screen, the sorrowful faces in the holy pictures, when a little procession filed into the church; four girls carrying a flower-bedecked coffin, half a dozen elders, and a pack of children carrying candles—a sight at once terrible and diurnal, a child's funeral. ...
— A Tramp's Sketches • Stephen Graham

... his nose, and whether in a morning he wore hussar boots, or shoes. This little circumstance could not fail of proving pleasant to an englishman. They informed me, that throughout the war, they regularly read in their own diurnal prints, our parliamentary debates, and the general outline of most of our political schemes, which were furnished by people in the pay of the french government, who resided in England notwithstanding the severity of the legislative, and the vigilance of the executive ...
— The Stranger in France • John Carr

... his diurnal course all over the world, may be, for aught we know, photographing mankind, and registering us, too; and, if we are to judge from the specimens we do see, the collection cannot be very flattering. Who dares call the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844 • Various

... lines. The reflector and conical heater are sustained by a flat hub and eight radial spokes bent upward toward the ends at an angle of 45 deg.. The hub and spokes are supported by a vertical pivot, by means of which the operator is enabled to follow the diurnal motion of the sun, while a horizontal axle, secured to the upper end of the pivot, and held by appropriate bearings under the hub, enables him to regulate the inclination to correspond with the altitude of the luminary. The heater is composed of rolled plate iron 0.017 inch thick, and provided ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 458, October 11, 1884 • Various

... trace on papyrus or granite the direction of the celestial ocean, which goes from the east to the west; they have summed up the number of stars strewn over the blue robe of the Goddess Neith, and make the sun travel in the lower or the superior hemisphere with the twelve diurnal and the twelve nocturnal baris under the conduct of the hawk-headed pilot and of Neb Wa, the Lady of the Bark; they know that in the second half of the month of Tobi, Orion influences the left ear, and Sirius the heart; but they are absolutely ...
— The Works of Theophile Gautier, Volume 5 - The Romance of a Mummy and Egypt • Theophile Gautier

... after street looked down upon his solitary figure, house after house echoed upon his passage with a ghostly jar, shop after shop displayed its shuttered front and its commercial legend; and meanwhile he steered his course, under day's effulgent dome and through this encampment of diurnal sleepers, ...
— The Dynamiter • Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny van de Grift Stevenson

... move was to disinter Kosinski, whom I felt pretty certain of finding at a certain coffee-stall where, at that advanced hour, he was in the habit of making his one and only diurnal, or rather nocturnal repast. This coffee-stall was situated at the corner of Tottenham Court Road and a side street, and there, sure enough, stood Kosinski, munching sardines on toast, and buns, and drinking coffee, surrounded by a motley group of cabmen and loose women. These had ...
— A Girl Among the Anarchists • Isabel Meredith

... point of starting. This is used by Fromundus with great effect. It appears never to have occurred to him to test the matter by dropping a stone from the topmast of a ship. Bezenburg has mathematically demonstrated just such an aberration in falling bodies, as is mathematically required by the diurnal motion of the earth. See Jevons, Principles of Science, pp. 388, 389, second ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White

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

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

... more Ruth turned to the mongrel dog who bore the name of Rollo unflinchingly—the dog that adored her openly, shamelessly, who now without a whimper took his diurnal tubbing. Upon this grateful animal she lavished that affection which was subtly repelled ...
— The Ragged Edge • Harold MacGrath

... greatest grace lending grace. Ere twice the horses of the sun shall bring Their fiery torcher his diurnal ring; Ere twice in murk and occidental damp Moist Hesperus hath quench'd his sleepy lamp; Or four-and-twenty times the pilot's glass Hath told the thievish minutes how they pass; What is infirm from your sound parts shall ...
— All's Well That Ends Well • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]

... tainted!" said her father to himself, but added, "—from her mother's side;" and his attacks upon her after this were at least diurnal. It was a relief to his feeling of having wronged her, to abuse her with justice. For a while she tried hard to convince him now that this now that that notion of her conduct, or of Gibbie's or Donal's, was mistaken: he would ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald

... priest to joint recitation of an Hour, and the priest have not the preceding canonical Hours recited, he is justified in accepting the invitation and in inverting the order of the Hours. Or if a person have a Diurnal only at hand, he may read the day Hours, although he have not Matins for the day read. Again, a priest may not have the lessons for Matins at hand, but he may recite the psalms for Matins, Lauds, and add the ...
— The Divine Office • Rev. E. J. Quigley

... and Moorea was still shrouded in the shadows of the expiring night. As we walked down the beach, the day was opening with the "morning bank," the masses of white clouds that gather upon the horizon before the tradewind begins its diurnal sweep, to shift and mold them ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien

... come in its turn; come round, come round again; beat, pulsate; alternate; intermit. Adj. periodic, periodical; serial, recurrent, cyclical, rhythmical; recurring &c. v.; intermittent, remittent; alternate, every other. hourly; diurnal, daily; quotidian, tertian, weekly; hebdomadal|, hebdomadary|; biweekly, fortnightly; bimonthly; catamenial|; monthly, menstrual; yearly, annual; biennial, triennial, &c.; centennial, secular; paschal, lenten, &c. regular, steady, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... While in private we're always embracing the knees Of some twopenny editor over the seas, And licking his critical shoes, for you know 'tis The whole aim of our lives to get one English notice; My American puffs I would willingly burn all (They're all from one source, monthly, weekly, diurnal) To get but a kick from ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell

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

... crystalliser of the world's diurnal Experience, why plunge my soul in gloom With tidings that are ghastly and infernal? Why dim my morning eye with tales of doom, Of flood and fire, of pestilence and drouth— Leaving me down, distinctly, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, January 28, 1914 • Various

... which are driven by an eternal stream, and which must turn and turn for ever, until they fall to pieces. To inquire, then, what would happen if labour ceased to exert itself is like inquiring what would happen if the earth were to retard its diurnal motion, or if some natural force—for example, that of gravitation—were to strike work for the sake of intimidating the cause of all things. Such suppositions are for practical purposes meaningless. But with the directive ability of the few, as opposed to the directed labour of the ...
— A Critical Examination of Socialism • William Hurrell Mallock

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

... "this visible diurnal sphere" There floats a World that girds us like the space; On wandering clouds and gliding beams career Its ever-moving murmurous Populace. There, all the lovelier thoughts conceived below Ascending live, and in celestial shapes. ...
— The Pilgrims Of The Rhine • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

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

... the elements, which yesterday kept the heavens and earth in such hideous commotion, was over and gone. Though it was as cold as in the depths of winter, the sky was almost cloudless; and the sun, already far on his diurnal circuit, was glimmering brightly over the dreary wastes of the snow-covered wilderness. By common consent, they then packed up, and immediately commenced beating their slow and toilsome way towards the ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson

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

... on me, From Thy throne eternal; Make pure unto Thee This my hymn diurnal. I my grateful voice would blend, With ...
— Gladys, the Reaper • Anne Beale

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

... where there is no idea of bringing them "within the visible diurnal sphere" to the vulgarity of practical application. The instance of the novel before-mentioned, proves, that we may be extremely affected by what we know to be merely ideal incidents and beings. By much thinking or talking of ...
— A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Middle and Higher Classes in this Country, Contrasted with Real Christianity. • William Wilberforce

... diurnal round alike, therefore, does mother Nature sympathize with man, and picture forth his fate, in type of autumnal decay, and wintry darkness, and night buried seed, in sign of vernal bud, and summer ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger

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

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

... sleep the organism responds to the Earth's axial periodicity, for in the interval of night a period of impoverishment has to be endured. Thus the diurnal waves of energy also meet a response in the organism. These tides and waves of activity would appear as larger ...
— The Birth-Time of the World and Other Scientific Essays • J. (John) Joly

... excitement of the part he plays, and I observe a want of steadiness in his opinions and a disposition to waver in his views from day to day; whereas it does not appear to me as if the state of Spain depended upon diurnal circumstances and events, but more upon the workings of great causes interwoven with, and deeply seated in, the positive state of society and the moral and political condition of ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville

... also another species of money-lender, not inaptly termed the Female Banker. These accommodate Barrow-women and others, who sell fruit, vegetables, &c. in the public streets, with five shillings a day (the usual diurnal stock in such cases;) for the use of which for twelve hours they obtain the moderate premium of sixpence when the money is returned in the evening, receiving at this rate about seven pounds ten shillings per year ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan

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

... Fludd or Flud (1574-1637) was a physician with a large London practice. He denied the diurnal rotation of the earth, and was attacked by Kepler and Mersenne, and accused of magic by Gassendi. His Apologia Compendiania, Fraternitatem de Rosea Cruce suspicionis ... maculis aspersam, veritatis quasi Fluctibus ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan

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

... action during those ensuing days fell on Larcher. Besides regular semi-diurnal calls on the young ladies and at Mrs. Haze's house, and regular consultations of police records, he made visits to every place he had ever known Davenport to frequent, and to every person he had ever known Davenport to be acquainted with. Only, for a time Mr. Bagley ...
— The Mystery of Murray Davenport - A Story of New York at the Present Day • Robert Neilson Stephens

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

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

... not understand. Although some of the Dunces knew their classics well and although all of them, we may presume, read the Roman satirists, one did not, typically, in Grub Street consult one's Horace with diurnal hand; one consulted the public. Literature to them was sold. They were not deeply concerned about absolute standards of right and wrong, about works of imagination which justify an entire civilization, about the problem of tradition ...
— Two Poems Against Pope - One Epistle to Mr. A. Pope and the Blatant Beast • Leonard Welsted

... the family—ammonites, belemnites, and nautili—from amid the shales of Eathie or the mud-stones of Shandwick, the incident of the loligo has enabled me to conceive of them, not as mere dead remains, but as the living inhabitants of primaeval seas, stirred by the diurnal tides, and ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller

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

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

... girl who "came in by the day"; though, oddly enough, she was incessantly harassed by the suspicion that one or another "good-for-nothing nigger was getting ready to quit." Her time was about equally devoted to tending her canary, Bill Bryan, and to furthering an apparently diurnal desire to have supper served a quarter of an hour earlier to-night, "so that the servants ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al

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

... age, generation, epoch, era. Associated Words: metemptosis, proemptosis, daily, diurnal, quotidian, ephemeral, sine die, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming

... enabled M. Werl to make many experiments which firms with less space at their command would find it difficult to carry out on the same satisfactory scale. Such, for instance, is the system of racks in which the bottles repose while the wine undergoes its diurnal shaking. Instead of these racks being, as they commonly are, at almost upright angles, they are perfectly horizontal, which, in M. Werl's opinion, offers a material advantage, inasmuch as the bottles are all in readiness for ...
— Facts About Champagne and Other Sparkling Wines • Henry Vizetelly

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

... orb, with respect to the sun and earth, she puts on different aspects or phases, as new, horned, full, &c. And since, at the same distance from the sun, she never appears of a different face, it is evident that she has a diurnal motion round her own axis, which is completed in the same time as her periodical revolution is about the earth. So that the Lunarians, or people of the moon, (if there are such) have their days and months perpetually of ...
— A Museum for Young Gentlemen and Ladies - A Private Tutor for Little Masters and Misses • Unknown

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

... heart that vivifying freshness that characterizes the air near a lake of cool water; the sweet serenity of my father's soul exhaled as a perfume from the dusty leaves I was unfolding. The journal of his life lay open before me; I could count the diurnal throbbings of that noble heart. I began to yield to the influence of a dream that was both sweet and profound, and in spite of the serious firmness of his character, I discovered an ineffable grace, the ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... easterly and westerly movements—so clearly shown by philosophers to be the consequences of cold polar currents of air—warm equatorial currents—and diurnal rotation of the earth;[30] are grand ruling phenomena of meteorology—to which storms, and all local changes, occurring but occasionally, are subordinate and exceptional. Further investigations into electrical and ...
— Barometer and Weather Guide • Robert Fitzroy

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

... home— waited, ageless, tireless, acquiescent, her history a blank, while the petulant moods of youth gave place to imperial purpose, stern yet beneficent—waited whilst the interminable procession of annual, lunar and diurnal alternations lapsed unrecorded into a dead Past, bequeathing no register of good or evil endeavour to the ever-living Present. The mind retires from such speculation, ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy

... with it. It appears that it is higher than the rest of the surface, for it is more bulky. Water will always seek its level. It has thus a tendency to flow towards the colder and lower water of the poles, feeling at the same time the effect of the diurnal motion of the globe; while the water of the poles, to supply its place, flows towards the equator, subject to the same disturbing cause. Thus the water of the globe is set in motion. These being hot, tropical waters, remain on the surface, and a portion of ...
— A Voyage round the World - A book for boys • W.H.G. Kingston

... up in their cocoons. The gay ornament of summer is not seemly in his aurelia state. This mutability is allowed to a foreign negotiator; but when a great politician condescends publicly to instruct his own countrymen on a matter which may fix their fate forever, his opinions ought not to be diurnal, or even weekly. These ephemerides of politics are not made for our slow and coarse understandings. Our appetite demands a piece of resistance. We require some food that will stick to the ribs. We call for sentiments to which we can attach ourselves,—sentiments ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

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

... there is no physiological response given by the most highly organised animal tissue that is not also to be met with in the plant. He carried on "Researches on Diurnal Sleep" and showed that the plant is not equally sensitive to an external stimulus during day and night, and that there is a fundamental identity of life-reaction in plant and animal, as seen in a similar periodic insensibility in both, corresponding to what ...
— Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose - His Life and Speeches • Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose

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

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

... likeness and the sense of unlikeness plays a decisive role in the diurnal schedule of the individual. His sense of resemblance to his father and mother, his kin and clan, mark him and them off against the cosmos as an alliance of defense and offense. Yet no matter how closely he is like them and they like him, ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.

... greatest difficulty that one ever sees them at all outside of the bounds of the Park. Bears, as well as deer, adapt themselves to the exigencies of the situation; the grizzly, since the white man stole from him and the Indian the whole face of the earth, has become a night-ranging instead of a diurnal creature. The deer, we may safely rest assured, makes quite as close a study of humans as man does of the deer. It is a question of life and death with them that they should understand him and his methods. Both the deer and the hunters would profit ...
— American Big Game in Its Haunts • Various

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

... leagues; but as, in my opinion, each degree is exactly seventeen leagues, the circuit will then be only 6120 leagues. However this may be, the whole circuit of the globe has been discovered and sailed over, from east to west, even almost as it is encompassed and visited by the sun in its diurnal course. It is quite otherwise, however, in respect to the northern, and southern parts of the earth. For, towards the north pole, there has only been discovered hitherto to the latitude of 77 deg. or 78 deg., which make an extent of 1347 leagues; ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. II • Robert Kerr

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

... accepted definition, a day is local; it is limited to a single meridian. At some point on the earth's surface one day is always at its commencement and another always ending. Thus, while the earth makes one diurnal revolution, we have continually many days in different stages ...
— International Conference Held at Washington for the Purpose of Fixing a Prime Meridian and a Universal Day. October, 1884. • Various

... atmosphere is disturbed by a variety of actions;—the diurnal motion of the sun, whose rays penetrate the air at various points; absorption and radiation, which varies according to the nature of the soil and the hour of the day; the inequality of the solar heat, according to seasons and latitude; the formation and ...
— Willis the Pilot • Paul Adrien

... of spirits, and a consequent sadness of demeanour, that rendered her very interesting to Mr Glowry; who, duly considering the improbability of accomplishing his wishes with respect to Miss Toobad (which improbability naturally increased in the diurnal ratio of that young lady's absence), began to reconcile himself by degrees to the idea of Marionetta being ...
— Nightmare Abbey • Thomas Love Peacock

... little house that appears tired of standing up. But to and from this abode Abraham passes daily, with a face as serene as a May morning. In that weary old hovel I am satisfied that he and his swarming little brood have found what no architect can build—a home. Thither he carries his diurnal dollar, when he can get it, and on it they all manage to live and grow fat. He loses time occasionally, it is true, through illness, but no such trifling misfortune can induce him, seemingly, to take a long, anxious look into the future. Only once—it was last winter—have I seen him dismayed ...
— Success With Small Fruits • E. P. Roe

... needle is to the east of the true meridian, and vice versa. Declination is different for different places; it is at present west in Europe and Africa, and east in Asia and the greater part of North and South America. The declination is subject to (a) secular, (b) annual and (c) diurnal variations. These are classed as regular; others due to magnetic storms are transitory and are classed as irregular, (a) Secular variations. The following table shows the secular variations during some three hundred years at Paris. These changes are termed secular, ...
— The Standard Electrical Dictionary - A Popular Dictionary of Words and Terms Used in the Practice - of Electrical Engineering • T. O'Conor Slone

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

... nebulae," says Arago, "and a fortiori, groups of nebulae, contain generally few stars. Herschel found this rule to be invariable. Thus every time that during a short interval no star approached in virtue of the diurnal motion, to place itself in the field of his motionless telescope, he was accustomed to say to the secretary who assisted him,—'Prepare to write; nebulae are ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer

... Have I wrought, pondered, planned; no one thing asking blame or praise, Since the pale corpse-like birth Of this diurnal unit, bearing blanks in all its rays - Dullest of ...
— Poems of the Past and the Present • Thomas Hardy

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

... private possession of the English, safe from Spanish interference; and he listened reverently to Sir Humphrey's quaint proofs, half true, half fantastic, of such a passage, which Raleigh detailed to him—of the Primum Mobile, and its diurnal motion from east to west, in obedience to which the sea-current flowed westward ever round the Cape of Good Hope, and being unable to pass through the narrow strait between South America and the Antarctic Continent, rushed ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley

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

... Scotland, Va. Rise and Progress of the Revolution, Trial of Aaron Burr, Diurnal Rotation ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly

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

... as far as is at present known, by any artificial or natural circumstances to which the dog has been subjected. Naturalists, therefore, have seized upon this character as the ground for a division of animals of the dog kind, the great genus Canis of Linnaeus, into two groups, the diurnal and nocturnal; not to imply that these habits necessarily belong to all the individuals composing either of these divisions, for that would be untrue, but simply that the figure of the pupils corresponds with that frequently distinguishing day-roaming animals ...
— Anecdotes of Dogs • Edward Jesse

... in its turn, was based on what Eirenaeus Philalethes himself says he has written in the preface to Ripley Revived. He there says, after naming other works: "Two English Poems I wrote, declaring the whole secret, which are lost. Also an Enchiridion of Experiments, together with a Diurnal of Meditations, in which were many Philosophical receipts, declaring the whole secret, with an Aenigma annexed; which also fell into such hands which I conceive will never restore it. This last was written in English." Can this Enchiridion and Diurnal be Sl. MS. 1741? I find no "Aenigma." ...
— Poems of Henry Vaughan, Silurist, Volume II • Henry Vaughan

... existence. Every thing that the Almighty has formed is practically useful; and is arranged in such a manner as to give the clearest indications, that it was designed to be turned to some useful purpose by man. The annual and diurnal motions of the earth in its orbit; the obliquity of its axis; the inequality of its surface, and the disposition and disruption of its strata, all shew the most consummate wisdom, and are severally a call to intelligent man to turn them to use. On these, and ...
— A Practical Enquiry into the Philosophy of Education • James Gall

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



Words linked to "Diurnal" :   biology, periodical, biological science



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