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Electrify   Listen
verb
Electrify  v. t.  (past & past part. electrified; pres. part. electrifying)  
1.
To communicate electricity to; to charge with electricity; as, to electrify a jar.
2.
To cause electricity to pass through; to affect by electricity; to give an electric shock to; as, to electrify a limb, or the body.
3.
To excite suddenly and violently, esp. by something highly delightful or inspiriting; to thrill; as, this patriotic sentiment electrified the audience. "If the sovereign were now to immure a subject in defiance of the writ of habeas corpus... the whole nation would be instantly electrified by the news." "Try whether she could electrify Mr. Grandcourt by mentioning it to him at table."
4.
To equip for employment of electric power; to modify (a device) so that it uses electrical power as the main source of energy; as, to electrify a railroad.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Electrify" Quotes from Famous Books



... Atlantic, in the shadow of the Pyrenees, events had been developing themselves to the consummation that should overturn a splendid throne, shake Europe to its foundations, and electrify Spanish America with a sympathetic current of revolution, flashing from the pines of Oregon to ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 3, No. 16, February, 1859 • Various

... Red Jacket comes to this council gathering. Its bearing on his nation and race, he deeply scans, and treasures up those burning thoughts, with which he is to electrify, and set on fire the bosoms of ...
— An account of Sa-Go-Ye-Wat-Ha - Red Jacket and his people, 1750-1830 • John Niles Hubbard

... the entanglement, he probed the barbed wire carefully with his wand, watching for an ensuing spark. For the Germans more than once had been known to electrify their wires, with fatal results ...
— Bruce • Albert Payson Terhune

... dignity, and even the laws of gallantry and the national costume exerted an influence over the turns of this dance. The Polonaises are the keystone in the development of this form. They belong to the most beautiful of Chopin inspirations. With their energetic rhythm they electrify, to the point of excited demonstration, even the sleepiest indifferentism. Chopin was born too late, and left his native hearth too early, to be initiated into the original character of the Polonaise ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker

... 1.10 a.m. and found it clearing a bit, so we got under way as soon as possible, which was 2.10 a.m. About 2.35 Richards sighted depot, which seemed to be right on top of us. I suppose we camped no more than three-quarters of a mile from it. The dogs sighted it, which seemed to electrify them. They had new life and started to run, but we were so weak that we could not go more than 200 yds. and then spell. I think another day would have seen us off. Arrived at depot 3.25; found it in a dilapidated condition, cases all about the place. I don't suppose ...
— South! • Sir Ernest Shackleton

... and the alleged torpedoes, but steamed up the bay near the city where the Spaniards were sleeping. He was hunting the fleet he was ordered to remove, and found it very early in the morning. Still the thunder of his guns seems to thrill and electrify the air over the bay, and shake the city; and the echoes to ring around the world, there is no question—not so much because the Americans won a naval victory without a parallel, as that Dewey improved the occasion, showing ...
— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead

... the day for my exercises in Italian recitation and declamation. I am desirous of perfecting myself in the delicate inflections of this sweet intoxicating language, which is as deliciously soft as its native skies, and golden as its Capri vintage. I long to electrify these fervid enthusiastic yet critical Neapolitans with one of their own favourite impassioned ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson

... will carry out an order anywhere without asking questions; for the oldest journeyman is still at an age when a man has some beliefs left. What is more, the whole fraternity professes doctrines which, if unfolded never so little, are both true enough and mysterious enough to electrify all the adepts with patriotism; and the compagnons are so attached to their rules, that there have been bloody battles between different fraternities on a question of principle. Fortunately, however, for peace and public order; if a Devorant is ambitious, he takes to building houses, makes ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac

... in Paris if any other subject comes up). Only one speech was made, an impassioned torrent of gratitude by Monsieur Hanotaux directed at our distinguished host, an equally impassioned "Friend of France." I forget just when it was that a rumor began to run around the room and electrify the atmosphere that a great naval engagement had taken place in the North Sea; but it was just after coffee was served that a boy from the office of Le Figaro entered with a proof-sheet for Monsieur Reinach to correct—he contributes a daily column signed "Polybe." Whether ...
— The Living Present • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton

... electrify negatively this aluminium plate so that the leaves of the attached electroscope diverge widely, and now expose it to the rays from the arc lamp, the charge, as you see, is very rapidly dissipated. With positive electrification of the aluminium there is ...
— The Birth-Time of the World and Other Scientific Essays • J. (John) Joly

... Their attention was concentrated on the parcel which had arrived by the post. It contained a small bottle, carefully packed in shavings, and also a typewritten letter, the purport of which seemed to electrify Stephanie. ...
— For the Sake of the School • Angela Brazil

... possibility of word from her father, she stayed at home. The next morning about nine o'clock, while she was at her father's desk, the telephone-bell rang. It did that many times every morning, but this ring seemed to electrify Lenore. ...
— The Desert of Wheat • Zane Grey

... Poeeno. A vast number of people were collected on the beach to see us depart and as soon as the boat had put off Tinah desired me to fire my pocket pistol, the poopooe ete ete, as he called it: the report seemed to electrify the whole crowd but, finding no harm done, they ...
— A Voyage to the South Sea • William Bligh

... subject, which formed a sort of pendant to the Cenci, was the "Parricide of Tullia." In this again his success was complete. The stanza in which Tullia ordered her charioteer to "drive on," was given with such effect as to electrify us: and a sudden burst of approbation which caused a momentary interruption, evidently lent the poet fresh ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson

... started, if an experiment was suggested, Cecil's cheque-book came out directly, and the thing was set on foot without delay. His easy, elastic step, his bright eye, his warm, hearty handshake, seemed to electrify people—to put some of his own spirit into them. The circle of his influence was ever increasing—the very oldest fogeys, who had prophesied every kind of failure, were being ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies

... a fanciless way of thinking, to which everything appears unnatural that does not consort with its own tame insipidity. Hence an idea has been formed of simple and natural pathos, which consists in exclamations destitute of imagery and nowise elevated above everyday life. But energetical passions electrify all the mental powers, and will consequently, in highly-favored natures, give utterance to themselves in ingenious and figurative expressions. It has been often remarked that indignation makes a man witty; and as despair occasionally breaks out into laughter, it may sometimes ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke

... the primeval forest, enough rails to surround them with a fence. Little did either dream, while engaged in this work, that the day would come when the appearance of John Hanks in a public meeting with two of these rails on his shoulder, would electrify a State convention, and kindle throughout the country a contagious and passionate enthusiasm whose results would reach to ...
— The Story of Young Abraham Lincoln • Wayne Whipple

... Majesty, that is about it. It would produce a splendid effect on the populace and would electrify the soldiers. ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 152, March 21, 1917 • Various

... out loyally in the knightly faith of those early days, while the deep, contralto tones electrify her audience: "Shall we show fear of our Emperor, or fail to bring him aid in holy warfare of Crusade—we, who are ...
— The Royal Pawn of Venice - A Romance of Cyprus • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull

... protection to the slave system, by securing for it all the physical force of the North? It is not treason against the cause of liberty to cry, "Down with every slave-holding Union!" Therefore, I raise that cry. And O that I had a voice louder than a thousand thunders, that it might shake the land and electrify the dead—the dead in sin, I mean—those slain by the ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke

... seem indeed to be confronted by an emission, not of negative electrons, but of positive ions. Thus, when a wire is heated, not in vacuo, but in a gas, this wire begins to electrify neighbouring bodies positively. J.J. Thomson has measured the mass of these positive ions and finds it considerable, i.e. about 150 times that of an atom of hydrogen. Some are even larger, and constitute almost a real grain of dust. We here doubtless meet ...
— The New Physics and Its Evolution • Lucien Poincare

... in a determined tone, while his boldness seemed to electrify all around him. "I will know whether I am in lawful custody, and before a civil magistrate, ere the charter of my country shall be ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... yes!" said Mr. Montfort, abstractedly. "Pigtail—yes, by all means. And how will you and Peggy amuse yourselves, my dear? No Rita this summer to electrify us all. You ...
— Fernley House • Laura E. Richards

... of a pen on paper would have proved too great a drag on so delicate an instrument, and so a tiny jet of ink from the siphon was substituted. The ink is made to pass through the siphon with sufficient force to mark down the message by a delightfully ingenious method. Thomson simply arranged to electrify the ink, and it rushes through the tiny opening on to the paper just as lightning ...
— Masters of Space - Morse, Thompson, Bell, Marconi, Carty • Walter Kellogg Towers

... no. Never put your best foot foremost. The proverb is a false one—as many proverbs are. We will dynamite them afterwards, and electrify them last of all. ...
— The Giant of the North - Pokings Round the Pole • R.M. Ballantyne

... mouth of a clean, dry glass bottle. By a fine silken thread from the ceiling, right over the mouth of the bottle, suspend a small cork ball about the bigness of a marble, the thread of such a length as that the cork ball may rest against the side of the shot. Electrify the shot, and the ball will be repelled to the distance of four or five inches, more or less, according to the quantity of electricity. When in this state, if you present to the shot the point of a long, slender, sharp bodkin, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various

... opened her eyes; the fire in his bent upon her seemed to electrify and thrill her into life, and with a little murmur of delight she stretched up ...
— Six Women • Victoria Cross

... an energetic rhythm, galvanize and electrify the torpor of indifference. The most noble traditional feelings of ancient Poland are embodied in them. The firm resolve and calm gravity of its men of other days, breathe through these compositions. Generally of a martial character, courage and daring are rendered with that simplicity ...
— Life of Chopin • Franz Liszt

... disease there is the same abnormal structural change as in other local diseases; but for these sick mind-centres there is no rest. There must be still thinking and feeling, no matter how chaotic, to tax them, and there is no cheer to electrify the stomach into easy display of power. We may well marvel that powers so wonderful as the power to think, love, admire, see, hear, and feel are located in structures so fragile as the brain; and we may well marvel at the provision of the turret ...
— The No Breakfast Plan and the Fasting-Cure • Edward Hooker Dewey

... a feeling," Cleopatra was saying, "that I don't love Denis sufficiently to go mad about him. You know what I mean: he may be the best specimen of manhood who has ever crossed this threshold, but he does not electrify me." ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici

... clerk cleared his throat. When he spoke, there was a trace of disappointment in his tone. To have been able to electrify his audience with the news of some startling discovery would have been pure ...
— Cy Whittaker's Place • Joseph C. Lincoln

... years of unimpeachable integrity, all those civil rights which they had forfeited, of becoming once more privileged to act as jurymen, magistrates, and legislators? Such a possibility would quickly revive the latent sparks of virtue wherever they were not quite extinct, and electrify the mind when all other applications would fail to rouse it from its despondence and lethargy. And shall not this sole efficacious remedy be administered, because a set of interlopers, persons ...
— Statistical, Historical and Political Description of the Colony of New South Wales and its Dependent Settlements in Van Diemen's Land • William Charles Wentworth

... the mouse-mill that me must look both for the electricity which is used to electrify the ink and for the motive power which drives the paper. This unique and interesting little motor owes its somewhat epigrammatic title to the resemblance of the drum to one of those sparred wheels turned by white ...
— Heroes of the Telegraph • J. Munro

... which meant that if the editor of the Monetary Afternoon or Financial Sunday had been able to know what was happening with the two wizards, he could have written up a news story calculated to electrify all America. ...
— Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich • Stephen Leacock

... time he joined another eccentric character named Tom Lolar, an Indian of the Seneca tribe, whose lands in the long ago of Indian history bordered the blue waters of Lake Seneca in central New York. This peculiar pair proceeded to electrify certain rural communities in their immediate neighborhood with huge posters, announcing that ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens

... their faces flushed, their eyes filled with tears ... that sight maddened me!... I have been in many fights before, I have lain beside the dead in Flanders and among the Balkan highlands, I have seen blood flowing by me like a river,—and the thought of all these seemed to electrify my soul and fill my veins with steel.... I tore madly right and left.... I never struck such herculean blows before ...
— Rescuing the Czar - Two authentic Diaries arranged and translated • James P. Smythe

... places;" [43] and many waxing confident by his bonds were much more bold to speak the word without fear. Let us not be misled by assuming a wrong explanation of these words, or by adopting the Middle Age traditions which made St. Paul convert some of the immediate favourites of the Emperor, and electrify with his eloquence an admiring Senate. The word here rendered "palace" [44] may indeed have that meaning, for we know that among the early converts were "they of Caesar's household;" [45] but these were in all probability—if not certainly—Jews of the lowest rank, ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar

... Mr. Damon's home in Waterfield, Tom got quickly to work on the little job he had come to do for his old friend. Of course, Tom might have sent two of his mechanics from the works down here to electrify the barbed wire entanglements that Mr. Damon had erected around his chicken run. But the young inventor knew that his eccentric friend would not consider the job done right unless ...
— Tom Swift and his Electric Locomotive - or, Two Miles a Minute on the Rails • Victor Appleton

... mustn't get angry with me, child—I tell you nobody does, not even your grave escort. At least not for anything I do to him. Well I'll go down and electrify people with the news that you're coming." And the crimson dress floated off to the tune of a light step and a merry voice. And more slowly and more doubtfully the black dress and winterberries followed her. Perhaps in very truth Faith would have been willing that Mr. Stoutenburgh ...
— Say and Seal, Volume II • Susan Warner

... looked at him with eyes unlit by glory. In his turn, he looked at them, indignant at their indifference, seeking for some word that could make a grand impression, electrify this placid country and make good his mission. The inspiration come, and turning to Pommel, he said: "Lieutenant, go and get the bust of the ex-Emperor, which is in the Council Hall, and bring it to me with ...
— Selected Writings of Guy de Maupassant • Guy de Maupassant

... the fowl-run, professor," I broke in, with a moist, tingling feeling across my forehead and up my spine. I saw the professor stiffen as he walked, while his face deepened in colour. Ukridge's breezy way of expressing himself is apt to electrify the stranger. ...
— Love Among the Chickens • P. G. Wodehouse

... criticism can be but petty and fruitless which confines itself to attacks upon certain excesses and eccentricities in the treatment, or upon the more frequent obscurities of expression and ambiguity of thought. Moreover, what seemed to electrify and scandalise those who were most bitter in their criticism was not so much the language as the spirit of the Wagnerian operas—that is to say, his whole manner of feeling and suffering. It were well to wait until these very critics have ...
— Thoughts out of Season (Part One) • Friedrich Nietzsche

... hoping that his side would be defeated, so that Miss Harman might see him for once as a loser; but the knowledge of our presence seemed to electrify him, and by the spark of his own magnetism he fired his fellows until they commenced to play like madmen; I have no doubt they were precisely that. His spirit was like some galvanic current, and he ...
— Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories • Rex Beach

... well as ever, though, on the whole, played far too slowly, and with so much "suppressed force," that the celebrated "Monsieur! a vos ordres!" when Orloff suddenly breaks out into "the language of diplomacy," did not electrify the house. On the contrary, the audience took it very quietly, awaiting with some curiosity the interference of Henry Beauclerc. And it was at this point that the services of Mr. JOHN HARE in this character were invaluable. Never had his crisp incisive style produced ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 104, March 4, 1893 • Various

... them, indignant at their indifference, thinking of what he could say or do in order to make an impression to electrify this calm peasantry, to fulfill his ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant

... first discerns treason in every danger; the second, always placed between the necessity of conquest and the image of the scaffold, dares not raise himself to bold conception, and those heights of courage which electrify an army and insure victory. Turenne, in our time, would have carried his head to the scaffold; for he was sometimes beat: but the reason why he more frequently conquered was, that his discipline was severe; it was, that his soldiers, ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. V. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... this did not electrify me. I did not believe it. But at the end of that half-hour the tuna came clear to the surface, about one hundred feet from us, and there he rode the swells. Doubt folded his sable wings! Bronze and blue and green and silver flashes illumined the swells. I plainly saw that not only was the tuna ...
— Tales of Fishes • Zane Grey

... judicial contract. The analysis (of the jurist) leads to vicious results. Man is governed by imagination only; without imagination he is a brute. It is not for five cents a day, simply to distinguish himself, that a man consents to be killed; if you want to electrify him touch his heart. A notary, who is paid a fee of twelve francs for his services, cannot do that. It requires some other process, a legislative act. Adoption, what is that? An imitation by which society tries to counterfeit nature. It is a new kind of sacrament.... Society ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 5 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 1 (of 2)(Napoleon I.) • Hippolyte A. Taine

... electrify you, Pa. Who do you think has'—she was confused here in spite of her merry way of beginning 'has made an ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens

... thanks, Herr Count. When a woman tries to prevent a quarrel between two men, she does so, believe me, out of pure self-love. The emotions which electrify your nerves torment ours. I could not have continued to live here had a tragic occurrence made the place memorable. That is why I prevented an encounter between you and the colonel; so you need not thank me. However, the evening before the regiment ...
— The Nameless Castle • Maurus Jokai

... Napoleonic eye had seen in J. Brabazon the seeds of domestic greatness. Before they parted, he had come to terms with him. Nor had the latter failed to justify his intuition. He made an admirable editor. It was not Mr. Renshaw's fault that the new paper had failed to electrify America. It was the public on whom the responsibility for the failure must be laid. They spoiled the whole thing. Certain of the faithful subscribed, it is true, and continued to subscribe, but the great heart of ...
— The Prince and Betty - (American edition) • P. G. Wodehouse

... in hiding after such a debut; you'll electrify society!" she said; and when she had gone, I wore away the day wondering what she meant, until I could send ...
— The Bacillus of Beauty - A Romance of To-day • Harriet Stark

... of the whole number of the letters was all that Borrow used for The Bible in Spain. In addition he had his Journal, and from these two sources he obtained all the material he required for the book that was to electrify the religious reading-public and make ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins

... at our elbow has been importuning us with whispered specimens of his very rickety elegiacs, and trying to settle an early appointment for us to hear him read the first six books of the great Epic with which he means to electrify the literary circles. We reach the Fabrician bridge, meditating as we go the repartees with which we might have turned the tables on those scurrilous followers of the great man, but did not. Suddenly we run up against a gentleman, who, raising ...
— Horace • Theodore Martin

... of front was not wholly confined to the realm of actual politics. The eminent chocolate magnate, Sadbury, whose antipathy to the Turf and everything connected with it was a matter of general knowledge, had evidently been replaced by an Angel-Sadbury, who proceeded to electrify the public by blossoming forth as an owner of race-horses, giving as a reason his matured conviction that the sport was, after all, one which gave healthy open-air recreation to large numbers of people drawn from all classes of the community, and incidentally ...
— The Chronicles of Clovis • Saki

... materialism. A machine only is a machine because it cannot think. But he was a thinking man, and a plain man at the same time. All his wonderful successes, that looked like conjuring, had been gained by plodding logic, by clear and commonplace French thought. The French electrify the world not by starting any paradox, they electrify it by carrying out a truism. They carry a truism so far—as in the French Revolution. But exactly because Valentin understood reason, he understood the limits of reason. Only a man who knows nothing of motors talks of motoring without petrol; ...
— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton

... noise, he had none of the fundamental qualities of a statesman. By the inspiration of his genius, he could seize the right moment for making a telling speech, or he could promulgate in a pamphlet a striking truth, calculated to electrify and convince. But he could not be calmly deliberate. Always enthusiastic, he was never temperate. He was the slave of his partialities and prejudices. Harriet Martineau, who for keen analysis and nice discrimination of character has few equals among historians, characterizes him as "the wordy ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... a battle, he would electrify his soldiers by a motion of his sword. He would climb the walls of a citadel with a knotted rope, at night, rocked by the storm, while sparks of fire clung to his cuirass, and molten lead and boiling tar ...
— Three short works - The Dance of Death, The Legend of Saint Julian the Hospitaller, A Simple Soul. • Gustave Flaubert

... it seemed as if there would be little time left in which to entertain in return. In earlier days the girls had delighted to discuss gorgeous and bizarre ideas, smacking more of the Arabian Nights than of an English country house, by the execution of which they hoped to electrify the county and prove their own skill as hostesses; but of late these schemes had been unmentioned. Ruth was too much crushed by her disappointment to have spirit for frivolities, and the shadow of the universal depression at home, ...
— The Fortunes of the Farrells • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey



Words linked to "Electrify" :   make full, fill, commove, physics, rouse, turn on, fill up, wire, accommodate, natural philosophy



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