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Tympanum   Listen
noun
Tympanum  n.  (pl. E. tympanums, L. tympana)  
1.
(Anat.)
(a)
The ear drum, or middle ear. Sometimes applied incorrectly to the tympanic membrane. See Ear.
(b)
A chamber in the anterior part of the syrinx of birds.
2.
(Zool.) One of the naked, inflatable air sacs on the neck of the prairie chicken and other species of grouse.
3.
(Arch.)
(a)
The recessed face of a pediment within the frame made by the upper and lower cornices, being usually a triangular space or table.
(b)
The space within an arch, and above a lintel or a subordinate arch, spanning the opening below the arch.
4.
(Mech.) A drum-shaped wheel with spirally curved partitions by which water is raised to the axis when the wheel revolves with the lower part of the circumference submerged, used for raising water, as for irrigation.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Tympanum" Quotes from Famous Books



... the town. It belongs mainly to the 12th century, but the Gothic central tower and the chapels were added in the 15th century by Nicolas Rolin, chancellor of Burgundy, born at Autun. The chief artistic features of the church are the group of the Last Judgment sculptured on the tympanum above the west door, and the painting by Ingres representing the martyrdom of St Symphorien, which took place at Autun in 179. In the cathedral square stands the fountain of St Lazare, a work of the Renaissance. The ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various

... outer mouldings to the inner door. They are, however, often richly ornamented and have rooms above, which rooms are wrongly called "parvises." The shallow aperture often follows the form of the arch, but is frequently square-headed, having a semi-circular tympanum of masonry filling the space between the lintel of the door and ...
— Our Homeland Churches and How to Study Them • Sidney Heath

... do we know of the actual details of the Attis mysteries? The first and most important point was a Mystic Meal, at which the food partaken of was served in the sacred vessels, the tympanum, and the cymbals. The formula of an Attis initiate was "I have eaten from the tympanum, I have drunk from the cymbals." As I have remarked above, the food thus partaken of was a Food of Life—"Die Attis-Diener ...
— From Ritual to Romance • Jessie L. Weston

... prototype in the old hospice of Santa Cruz, in Toledo, Spain, was assigned to Ralph Stackpole. He is a sculptor who delights to honor the laborer and the craftsman and has supplied the figures for niches and keystone space and the tympanum and secondary groups in the portal of Varied Industries with evident affection. He treats the subject of labor with dignity, according it respect and not sentimentality. In this secondary or crowning group, ...
— The Sculpture and Mural Decorations of the Exposition • Stella G. S. Perry

... realism, as, for instance, in the words: "The stones beoth al wete;" a realism as far removed from the coarseness of a Rubens as from the irreverence of too many religious teachers, who will repeat and repeat again the most sacred words for the merest logical ends until the tympanum of the moral ear hears without hearing the sounds that ought to be felt as well as held holiest. They bear strongly, too, upon the outcome of feeling in action, although doubtless there was the same tendency then as there ...
— England's Antiphon • George MacDonald

... there, for a short time, fortune seemed to shine upon him, you may be sure that there was no single friend whom he did not call upon to bask with him in these fleeting rays. And what a glorious laugh he had; not a loud guffaw that splits your tympanum and crushes merriment flat, but an irrepressible, helpless, irresistible infectious laugh, in which his whole body became involved. I have seen a whole roomful of strangers rolling on their chairs without in the ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, VOL. 103, November 26, 1892 • Various

... that point. It's come to me of late years that one reason we haven't any national art is because we have too much magnificence. All our capacity for admiration is used up on the splendor of palace-like railway stations and hotels. Our national tympanum is so deafened by that blare of sumptuousness that we have no ears for the still, small voice of beauty. And perhaps," he paused, looking down absently at a crumb he rolled between his thumb and finger on the table, "it's possible that the time is ripening for a wider appreciation ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield

... tailor fashion, on a raised platform, a music desk in front of her, and her musical instruments near at hand. The Japanese, like the Chinese, sing from the throat, and the effect produced on the tympanum is that of an amorous tom-cat chanting to his lady-love at midnight. The words she is singing, and has been singing for the—a friend who was with me said "the last week;" but knowing him to be a joker, I accept the statement with caution—for the last six hours, and ...
— In Eastern Seas - The Commission of H.M.S. 'Iron Duke,' flag-ship in China, 1878-83 • J. J. Smith

... of the hammer, made to leave their indelible impression. I observed a few the handles of which were mysteriously curved, as if intended to be introduced into the orifice of the ear, with a view perhaps of beating the tattoo upon the tympanum. Altogether the sight of these strange instruments recalled to mind that display of cruel-looking mother-of-pearl-handled things which one sees in their velvet-lined cases at the elbow ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville

... of by Loeseke. There is sometimes natural perforation of the tympanum in an otherwise perfect ear, which explains how some people can blow tobacco-smoke from the ear. Fournier has seen several Spaniards and Germans who could perform this feat, and knew one man who could smoke a whole cigar without losing any smoke, since he made ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould

... intense understanding, hell has a topographic reality. We wind along down those nine circles as down a volcanic crater, black, jagged, precipitous, and impinging upon the senses at every step. The sighs and shrieks jar our own tympanum; and the convulsions of the lost excite tremors in our own nerves. No wonder that the children in the streets of Florence, as they saw the sad and earnest man pass along, his face lined with passion and his brow scarred with thought, pointed at him and said: ...
— Sermons to the Natural Man • William G.T. Shedd

... this end they stretch a skin very tight over the knees, and thus may be said to use the tympanum in its rudest form, this being the only instance of a musical instrument that I have seen among them. Burder says: "By the timbrels which Miriam and the other women played upon when dancing, we are to understand the tympanum of the ancient Greeks and Romans, which instrument ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 2 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell

... Tutor guvernisto. Twain du. Tweezers prenileto. Twelve dekdu. Twig brancxeto. Twilight vespera krepusko. Twin dunaskito. Twine sxnureto. Twinkle brileti. Twist tordi. Twitter pepi. Two du. Tympanum oreltamburo. Type (model) modelo. Type tipo, preslitero. Typhoid (fever) tifa febro. Typhus tifo. Typical modela. Typographist preslaboristo. Typography tipografio. Tyrannical tirana—ema. Tyranny tiraneco. Tyrant tirano. Tyro ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes

... thing at that time, which shows that Puccio had made efforts to understand the principles of his art. This work contains his name, written after this fashion: Puccio di Fiorenza me Fece. In the same church, in the tympanum above the door of S. Maria Nuova are three half-length figures,—Our Lady, with the Child on her arm, St Peter on the one side and St Francis on the other, by the same artist. In the lower church of S. Francesco at Assisi he further painted in fresco some scenes from the passion ...
— The Lives of the Painters, Sculptors & Architects, Volume 1 (of 8) • Giorgio Vasari

... terrace in front of the building are a number of cannon, trophies taken in different campaigns. Standing before the hotel is the statue of Prince Eugne. On either side of the entrance are statues of Mars and Minerva by Coustou the younger. In the tympanum of the semicircle over the center of the faade is Louis XIV. on horseback. Behind the faade is a vast courtyard surrounded by open corridors lined with frescoes of the history of France; those of the early history on the left by Bndict Masson, 1865, ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various

... shouting and yelling in corybantic chorus. They yelled and shouted, one could see it by their open mouths and glittering eyes; but not a sound from human lungs could reach our ears. The overwhelming incessant thunder of the bells drowned all. It thrilled the tympanum, ran through the marrow of the spine, vibrated in the inmost entrails. Yet the brain was only steadied and excited by this sea of brazen noise. After a few moments I knew the place and felt at home in it. Then I enjoyed ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds

... were the aids of Religion and Government. On the friezes of Greek temples, we see coloured bas-reliefs representing sacrifices, battles, processions, games—all in some sort religious. On the pediments we see painted sculptures more or less united with the tympanum, and having for subjects the triumphs of gods or heroes. Even when we come to statues that are definitely separated from the buildings to which they pertain, we still find them coloured; and only in the later periods of Greek civilisation ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer

... immersion. He went his course, struggling up the narrow channel, until he got arrested by want of passage-room. This impediment evidently enraged him, for he began with exceeding vigour, like a rabbit at a hole, to dig violently away at my tympanum. The queer sensation this amusing measure excited in me is past description. I felt inclined to act as our donkeys once did, when beset by a swarm of bees, who buzzed about their ears and stung ...
— What Led To The Discovery of the Source Of The Nile • John Hanning Speke

... of head and neck as follows: narrow stripe beginning at posterior edge of eye and extending downward and backward (across tympanum) on side of neck to shoulder (stripe wider behind than at origin); wide stripe from lower posterior corner of eye extending downward, across mandibular articulation (and below tympanum) on throat ...
— A New Subspecies of Slider Turtle (Pseudemys scripta) from Coahuila, Mexico • John M. Legler

... Todd into the trumpet, separating the sounds well, so that they should not clash on the unsusceptible tympanum of her friend's ear. ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope

... about its feet; here he is hard, narrow, materialistic, mechanical,—or, in a word, English. For—we may turn aside to say—in philosophy no nation is so straitened, illiberal, and hard of hearing as England, except, perhaps, China. Its tympanum is sadly thickened at once with materialism and conceit; and the consequence is that a thinker there is either ignored into silence, like Wilkinson, or driven to bellow, like Carlyle, or to put rapiers and poignards into his speech, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... prospect, however, of a balm in Gilead. An ingenious Yankee—a commercial traveler—has invented and patented an instrument made of gutta percha, to be fitted to the nose, and pass from that protuberance to the tympanum of the ear. As soon as the snorer begins the sound is carried so perfectly to his own ear, and all other sounds so well excluded, that he awakens in terror. The sanguine inventor believes that after a few nights' trial the wearer will become so disgusted with his own midnight serenading that ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 28. July, 1873. • Various

... not understand at one hearing the curious dislocated harmonies and splintered themes—melodies they are not—in the Pierrot Lunaire. I have been informed that the ear should play a secondary role in this "new" music; no longer through the porches of the ear must filter plangent tones, wooing the tympanum with ravishing accords. It is now the "inner ear," which is symbolic of a higher type of musical art. A complete disassociation of ideas, harmonies, rhythmic life, architectonic is demanded. To quote an admirer of the Vienna revolutionist: "The entire man ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker

... Middle Ear. At the inner end of the outer ear passage is the tympanum, known as "the drum of the ear." It is a thin, oval membrane, stretched at an angle across the deep end of the passage, which it completely closes. The tympanum is thus a partition between the passage of the outer ...
— A Practical Physiology • Albert F. Blaisdell



Words linked to "Tympanum" :   stapes, tympani, bonelet, cavum, membrane, stirrup, myringa, percussive instrument, auditory apparatus, Eustachian tube, anvil, eardrum, timpani, ear, timpanist, umbo, malleus



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