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Configuration   /kənfˌɪgjərˈeɪʃən/   Listen
Configuration

noun
1.
An arrangement of parts or elements.  Synonym: constellation.
2.
Any spatial attributes (especially as defined by outline).  Synonyms: conformation, contour, form, shape.






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"Configuration" Quotes from Famous Books



... this change of status is leading, is social equality—that is, equality of freedom. It is not an intellectual equality, still less is it likeness. Men and women can only be alike mentally when they are alike in physical configuration and physiological function. Even complete economic equality is not attainable. Among animals which live in herds under the guidance of a leader, this leader is nearly always a male; there are few exceptions.[51] ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis

... good as Peggy in my eye for you; by the same token, as the night's could, warm your tooth, avick; there's waker wather nor this in Lough Mecall. Sorra sup of it over I keep for my own use at all, barrin' when I take a touch o' configuration in my bowels, or, may be, when I'm too long at my prayers; for, God help me, sure I'm but sthrivin', wid the help o' one thing an' another, to work out my salvation as well as I can! Your health, any how, an' a merry Chris'mas ...
— The Hedge School; The Midnight Mass; The Donagh • William Carleton

... reason why the climate of Kamtschatka is inferior to that of other places under the same latitude, is to be found in the configuration of the country. The mountains of England, for instance, are of a very moderate height, and broken by extensive plains; here, on the contrary, intersected only by a few valleys of small extent, a single chain of mountains, its broken snow-crowned summits reaching to the clouds, and ...
— A New Voyage Round the World, in the years 1823, 24, 25, and 26, Vol. 2 • Otto von Kotzebue

... objected to a common origin for all the American nations, and even for those of Mexico, that their monuments should present so great a variety in the configuration of the head and face; a fact which forcibly impresses every one who examines the numerous effigies in baked clay in the collection of the American Philosophical Society; yet they are all made of the same material and by the same national ...
— Some Observations on the Ethnography and Archaeology of the American Aborigines • Samuel George Morton

... is virtue in FORM; and we surmise that vastly more depends on the configuration and movement of matter as one mass, than has been suspected. As perfect a whole as any of its parts, must not the universe have a definable outline or shape,—one to which nothing amorphous can possibly belong? What is its figure? It can hardly be ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II., November, 1858., No. XIII. • Various

... door that had been banged, and in their ignorance of the configuration of the place they did not realise that it was in the ...
— The Bag of Diamonds • George Manville Fenn

... be ascribed to ordinary human thought working in different places under similar conditions. In fact, the conditions of existence have not varied very greatly over the globe. There are differences of climate and soil and surface-configuration, but everywhere there have been the sky with the heavenly bodies, the sequence of day and night, sunshine and rain, hunting and fishing, trees, rivers, beasts and birds, and the cultivable soil; and as man's problem was everywhere the same—namely, how ...
— Introduction to the History of Religions - Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV • Crawford Howell Toy

... of tidal evolution in a fresh light. If the moon now departed to any considerable extent from showing the constant face to the earth, it would seem that its retreat could not have been caused by tides. Some other agent for producing the present configuration would be necessary, just as we found that some other agent than the tides has been necessary in the ...
— Time and Tide - A Romance of the Moon • Robert S. (Robert Stawell) Ball

... being kept in constant motion by the water. These pot-holes, as a geologist would call them, are common enough in torrents, where a heavy stone is borne into a whirlpool-like eddy, and goes on grinding itself a deeper and deeper bed, the configuration of the rock-walls where it lies having prevented its being swept down at the first, while every year after it deepens its bed until escape ...
— Cormorant Crag - A Tale of the Smuggling Days • George Manville Fenn

... overshadow them,—all these exert a powerful influence on their pursuits, their habits, their institutions, their sentiments, and their ideas. So that could we clearly group, and fully grasp all the characteristics of a region—its position, configuration, climate, scenery, and natural products, we could, with tolerable accuracy, determine what are the characteristics of the people who inhabit it. A comprehensive knowledge of the physical geography of any country will therefore aid us materially in elucidating the natural history, and, ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker

... those wrecked instruments you threw out of Skylark I when we built Skylark II?" Having every minute detail of the configuration of Seaton's brain engraved upon his own, Dunark spoke English in Seaton's own characteristic careless fashion. Only when thinking deeply or discussing abstruse matter did Seaton employ the carefully selected and precise ...
— Skylark Three • Edward Elmer Smith

... Rosecrans over-confident, and led him to think that he could force Bragg south as far as Rome. After the Union army passed the river and Chattanooga fell into our hands; we still kept pressing the enemy's communications, and the configuration of the country necessitated more or less isolation of the different corps. McCook's corps of three divisions had crossed two difficult ridges—Sand and Lookout mountains—to Alpine in Broomtown Valley ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan

... have conferred just celebrity on the names of the naturalists and astronomers who have been appointed by various governments to share the dangers of those undertakings; but though these eminent men have given us precise notions of the external configuration of countries, of the natural history of the ocean, and of the productions of islands and coasts, it must be admitted that maritime expeditions are less fitted to advance the progress of geology and other parts of physical science, than travels ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt

... As they advanced, the configuration of the ground became more and more familiar to the two boys. They passed places which they had ridden over in approaching the half-hidden valley, before they fairly stumbled ...
— The Boy Ranchers - or Solving the Mystery at Diamond X • Willard F. Baker

... the canoe glided onward, he was noting down his memoranda. The trees upon the banks were in leaf—many of them in blossom—and as the little craft verged near the shore, his keen eye followed the configuration of the leaves, to discover any new species ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid

... the surface and configuration of the country. Now let us come to the climate, which is a not less important element in making South Africa what ...
— Impressions of South Africa • James Bryce

... taken in, the sloop set sail again, piloted by a fishing boat. Under its guidance the Seafowl lay off the shores of what seemed through the glasses to be an earthly paradise, a perfect scene of verdant beauty, with waving trees and cultivated fields, sheltered by a central mountain the configuration of which suggested that it must at one time have been a volcano, one side of which had been blown away so that a gigantic crater many miles across formed a lake-like harbour. Into this deep water, ...
— Hunting the Skipper - The Cruise of the "Seafowl" Sloop • George Manville Fenn

... border-land—African by geographical configuration, European politically, and assuredly Asiatic in its language, its buildings, and in the manners and customs of the natives. We gave everybody on board a holiday, and the chance of a run ashore to-day to stretch their legs after their ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey

... there can be no doubt that Lake Tahoe is a body of water in all respects adapted for the manifestation of this species of oscillation; and that, like the Swiss lakes, it is subject to Seiches. Indeed, the far greater simplicity in the configuration of the basin of Lake Tahoe than that of the Lake of Geneva must render the phenomena much less complicated in the former ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James

... places of the stars is the foundation of astronomy.[62] Their configuration lends to the skies their distinctive features, and marks out the shifting tracks of more mobile objects with relatively fixed, and generally unvarying points of light. A more detailed and accurate acquaintance with the stellar multitude, regarded from a purely uranographical point of ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke

... district to an extent which few people adequately recognise, and that until such recognition becomes more general, our views of history must necessarily be very narrow. We must see not only that something depends upon geographical configuration, not even merely that a great deal depends upon it, but that everything depends upon it. We must unlearn our purely human history, and learn a history of interaction between ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen

... successfully by a reference to the razing of that unimportant place of Hueningen than by the loss of any conquered territory which France had to suffer in 1815. I placed, therefore, no confidence in this means, especially since the geographical configuration of this advanced outpost—as I took the liberty of calling it—would have put the starting place for the French troops just as near to Stuttgart and Munich as it had always been. It was important to put ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke

... contain four star-maps. They not only serve to indicate the configuration of certain important star-groups, but they illustrate the construction of maps, such as the observer should make for himself when he wishes to obtain an accurate knowledge of particular regions ...
— Half-hours with the Telescope - Being a Popular Guide to the Use of the Telescope as a - Means of Amusement and Instruction. • Richard A. Proctor

... and haven of our desires! In all that relates to the affections, we put the will for the deed; so that the instant the pressure of unwelcome circumstances is removed, the mind recoils from their hold, recovers its elasticity, and reunites itself to that image of good which is but a reflection and configuration of its own nature. Seen in the distance, in the long perspective of waning years, the meanest incidents, enlarged and enriched by countless recollections, become interesting; the most painful, broken and softened by time, soothe. How any object that unexpectedly brings back ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt

... the surrounding plains, and passes into rolling prairies. Its length is about two hundred miles, and its general direction N. N. W. and S. S. E. Its northern termination (called Tete du Couteau in consequence of its peculiar configuration) is not more than fifteen to twenty miles across; its elevation above the level of the Big Stone Lake is eight hundred and ninety feet, and above the ocean one thousand nine hundred and sixteen feet. Starting from this extremity (that is, the head of the Coteau), ...
— Minnesota and Dacotah • C.C. Andrews

... was made on the twenty-fourth, in line-ahead (that is, one after another) because Farragut found the opening narrower than he thought it should be for two columns abreast, at night, under fire, and against the spring current. Owing to the configuration of the channel the starboard column had to weigh first, which gave the lead to the 500-ton gunboat Cayuga. This was the one weak point, because the leading vessel, drawing most fire, should have been the strongest. ...
— Captains of the Civil War - A Chronicle of the Blue and the Gray, Volume 31, The - Chronicles Of America Series • William Wood

... curiosity is extreme.... Vicente (an Indian companion) did not know the cause of thunder and lightning. I asked him who made the sun, the stars, the trees. He didn't know, and had never heard the subject mentioned in his tribe." But Mr. Bates admits that even Vicente had a theory of the configuration of the world. "The necessity of a theory of the earth and water had been felt, and a theory had been suggested." Again, Mr. Bates says about a certain Brazilian tribe, "Their sluggish minds seem unable to conceive or feel the want of a theory of the soul"; and he thinks the cause of this ...
— Myth, Ritual, and Religion, Vol. 1 • Andrew Lang

... himself of the map, Mr. Bumble became possessed of a devil. There was no doubt about it. From being the most kindly of masters he became a snarling absurdity, whose endeavours simultaneously to study the canvas, observe the configuration of the country-side, and rave into the speaking-tube were consistently vain. George raised his eyes to heaven and prepared for ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates

... through the twenty-seven thousand light years of cosmic ray fields, and then more leisurely returned to the galaxy. The star maps were strangely off. They could follow them, but only with difficulty as the general configuration of the constellations that were their guides were visibly altered ...
— Invaders from the Infinite • John Wood Campbell

... bordering upon the sea. The policy has varied both with the spirit of the age and with the character and clear-sightedness of the rulers; but the history of the seaboard nations has been less determined by the shrewdness and foresight of governments than by conditions of position, extent, configuration, number and character of their people,—by what are called, in a word, natural conditions. It must however be admitted, and will be seen, that the wise or unwise action of individual men has at certain periods had a great modifying influence upon the growth of ...
— The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783 • A. T. Mahan

... on which they lived has hardened in the course of time,—or the enormous chains of mountains whose upheaval divided these periods of quiet accumulation by great convulsions,—or the changes of a different nature in the configuration of our globe, as the sinking of lands beneath the ocean, or the gradual rising of continents and islands above it,—or the wearing of great river-beds, or the filling of extensive water-basins, till marshes first and then dry land succeeded to ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various

... by a chain or ridge of mountains we do not necessarily intend a continuous elevation, the term may be conveniently used in order to express the configuration of mountains. These chains surround or border upon greater or less basins, which are each distinguished by the name of the principal stream that conveys its surface waters to the ocean, or they may, ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various

... where a cow had been put to pasture. The hillocky back of that lone ruminant grew black as ink in the glow of sunset. The creature exhibited a strange fixity of outline, as if it had been a chance configuration of rocks. Rackby in due time felt a flaming impatience shoot upward from his heels. Water soughed and chuckled at the foot of the crab-apple tree, but these eager little voices could no longer soothe or even detain him with ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... Standing in the midst of this frightful eruption from the heart of the mountains, one sees, as far as the eye can reach, a landscape utterly forbidding. North for sixty miles lie the high chains of the Mission range, and a cuplike configuration of the mountains close to the valley affords a resting-place for the deepest snows of winter and a precipitous escape for the torrents of June. Here, when the sun reaches its summer height or a sweet-grass wind blows soft or a cloudburst above the peaks strikes the ...
— Whispering Smith • Frank H. Spearman

... not and cannot express the true law and tendency of the dynamic relations of life in the face of its evident advance upon the Earth. The law of the unconstrained cell is growth on an ever increasing scale; and although we assume the organic configuration, whether somatic or reproductive, to be essentially unstable, so that continual inflow of energy is required merely to keep it in existence, this does not vitiate the fact that, when free of all external constraint, growth ...
— The Birth-Time of the World and Other Scientific Essays • J. (John) Joly

... with 305-mm. guns mounted on its summit and in the facile use of the Bocca di Cattaro as a submarine base from which to harass the Italian fleet. Italy, it was recognized, was contending with geographical disadvantages everywhere, but in the Adriatic more than elsewhere, owing to the peculiarly tame configuration of her coast line. As compared with that on the eastern side of the Adriatic the contrast ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume IV (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)

... the point of giving over his quest, when the unexpected happened. Within a few hundred yards of the break in the canyon he caught sight of Motoza and Tozer holding another consultation. They had evidently just met, and the configuration of the ground enabled Hazletine to steal near enough to catch some of the ...
— Two Boys in Wyoming - A Tale of Adventure (Northwest Series, No. 3) • Edward S. Ellis

... may be said that there exists a tendency on the part of the father to transmit the external appearance, the configuration of the head and limbs, the peculiarities of the senses and of the skin and the muscular condition; while the size of the body, and the general temperament or constitution of the child, are derived from the mother. Among animals, ...
— The Physical Life of Woman: - Advice to the Maiden, Wife and Mother • Dr. George H Napheys

... made ten Numerations, and called the Source of Spring KETHER, Corona, the Crown, in which the idea of circularity is involved, for there is no end to the out-flow of Light; and therefore He called this, like Himself, endless; for this also, like Him, has no similitude or configuration, nor hath it any vessel or receptacle wherein it may be contained, or by means whereof any possible cognizance can be ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike

... cellulose, proportionately affects the structural properties of the derived compounds, both sulphocarbonates and esters. This is at least an indication that the properties of the visible aggregates are directly related to the actual configuration of the chemical units. But it appears that we are barred from the present discussion of such a problem in absence of any theory of the solid state generally, but more particularly of those forms of matter which are grouped together ...
— Researches on Cellulose - 1895-1900 • C. F. Cross

... touchy and jealous of its right to an independent judgement. It is often assumed by Russophobe writers that Russia wished and intended to make a Russian province of Bulgaria, but this is very unlikely; the geographical configuration of the Balkan peninsula would not lend itself to its incorporation in the Russian Empire, the existence between the two of the compact and vigorous national block of Rumania, a Latin race and then already an independent state, was an insurmountable obstacle, ...
— The Balkans - A History Of Bulgaria—Serbia—Greece—Rumania—Turkey • Nevill Forbes, Arnold J. Toynbee, D. Mitrany, D.G. Hogarth

... as it is developed in connection with a variety of external influences,—as it comes successively under the action of the sun, rain, dew, soil,—it expands in a particular manner, and in that only. It exhibits a certain configuration of parts, a certain form of leaf, a certain color, fragrance, and no other. We do not doubt, on the one hand, that without the "skyey influences" these things would never have been; nor, on the other; that the flower assumes this form of development, and this alone, in virtue ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers

... on a strong foundation of granite and other igneous rocks, which are exposed in many places in the shape of massive blocks; otherwise the hill-range is covered in the upper part with sandstone, and in the bottoms with alluvial clay. This is the superficial configuration of the land as it strikes the eye; but, knowing the elevation of the interior plateau to be only 2500 feet above the sea immediately on the western flank of these hills, whilst the breath of the chain is 100 miles, the mean slope of incline of the basal surface must be on a gradual rise of twenty ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke

... was aware that if he followed the Tehua he was risking his own life. But it was not the first time he had attempted such dangerous undertakings, and so far he had never failed. With the configuration of the ground and the landmarks in vegetation and scenery he was far better acquainted than the Tehua. Furthermore, he enjoyed the material advantage that the latter could not have noticed him. Everything depended on ascertaining unseen as much as ...
— The Delight Makers • Adolf Bandelier

... out the beard, in the manner of the other Indians of North America; but a few of the old men only suffer a tuft to grow upon their chins. On arriving among them we were exceedingly surprised to see that they had almost all flattened heads. This configuration is not a natural deformity, but an effect of art, caused by compression of the skull in infancy. It shocks strangers extremely, especially at first sight; nevertheless, among these barbarians it is an indispensable ornament: ...
— Narrative of a Voyage to the Northwest Coast of America in the years 1811, 1812, 1813, and 1814 or the First American Settlement on the Pacific • Gabriel Franchere

... Reply Obj. 1: Configuration is a certain boundary of quantity. Wherefore, properly speaking, it is only in corporeal things; and of spiritual things is said metaphorically. Now that which decides the genus or species of a thing must needs be predicated of ...
— Summa Theologica, Part III (Tertia Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas

... 7]); and that, from the attentive study of the geological map of Mr. Bain and other materials, some of which were furnished by the discoveries of Mr. Oswell and myself, he had not only clearly enunciated the peculiar configuration as an hypothesis in his discourse before the Geographical Society in 1852, but had even the assurance to send me out a copy for my information! There was not much use in nursing my chagrin at being thus fairly "cut out" by the man ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone

... that it looks as though Providence had just planned the configuration of the country to suit ...
— Pillars of Society • Henrik Ibsen

... if we may use the expression, natural capitals and capitals that are artificial. The sites of the first are determined by the configuration of the earth. When they perish it is but a temporary death, to be followed by a life often more full and brilliant than the first. The second owe their prosperity to the caprice of a sovereign, or to political combinations that pass away and ...
— A History of Art in Chaldaea & Assyria, v. 1 • Georges Perrot

... off, stared all about, studying the configuration of the meadow, crossed it to the redwood trees ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London

... shape is the strongest. Now these two nests require an exceptional power of resistance. Without protection of any kind, they have to brave the weather, one on its pebble, the other on its bough. Their spherical configuration is therefore very practical. ...
— Bramble-bees and Others • J. Henri Fabre

... declare they would have had a very cheap bargain, but for the intervention of the troublesome English. And certainly, if the Spaniards and Portuguese had been left to themselves, although, favoured by the mountainous configuration of the country, they might long have kept up a desultory contest, they would never have succeeded in expelling the invaders; for the simple reason that they were wholly unable to meet them in the plain. Most true it is that, during the war of independence, the people ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various

... modifying his organism, in shaping his social development, in moulding his character. To enumerate all the external factors operating upon individual and social life is outside our present purpose, but they may be briefly summed up as climate, moisture, soil, the configuration of the earth's surface, and the nature of its products. These natural phenomena, either singly or in varying degrees of combination, have unquestionably played a most prominent part in making the different races of mankind what they at present are. We have only to ...
— Crime and Its Causes • William Douglas Morrison

... would perish. It draws from the ocean a current of wind laden with moisture which blows steadily for two months toward the northwest and causes what is called the rainy season. That wind is called the southwest monsoon. The quantity of rain that falls depends upon the configuration of the land. Any cause which cools the winds from the sea and leads to the condensation of the vapor they carry—any obstacle which blocks their course—causes precipitation. Through all the northern part of India there is a heavy rainfall during April, May and ...
— Modern India • William Eleroy Curtis

... following the shore line, which could have given shelter for any one to stalk me practically from the start. At another I noticed a farm close by, and from this an assailant could easily have slipped down to the beach and run back again. At a third the configuration of the rocks was such that it would have been simple for him to have waited below the bank till he heard us coming, made a noise to bring me down, and then gone up above without exposing himself against the sky. In fact one could draw ...
— The Man From the Clouds • J. Storer Clouston

... gorge. Scoff, jeer, gibe, fleer, sneer, mock, taunt. Secret, covert, surreptitious, furtive, clandestine, underhand, stealthy. Seep, ooze, infiltrate, percolate, transude, exude. Sell, barter, vend, trade. Shape, form, figure, outline, conformation, configuration, contour, profile. Share, partake, participate, divide. Sharp, keen, acute, cutting, trenchant, incisive. Shore, coast, littoral, beach, strand, bank. Shorten, abridge, abbreviate, curtail, truncate, syncopate. Show (noun), display, ostentation, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor

... a plan of the cavern showing its internal configuration, the situation of the lagoon, the lay of the Beehive, Ker Karraje's habitation, my cell, and Thomas ...
— Facing the Flag • Jules Verne

... connect them with the coast, I have no doubt are the bottoms of ancient inlets and deep bays, such as at the present day intersect every part of Tierra del Fuego and the western coast. Chile must formerly have resembled the latter country in the configuration of its land and water. The resemblance was occasionally shown strikingly when a level fog-bank covered, as with a mantle, all the lower parts of the country: the white vapour curling into the ravines, beautifully represented little coves and bays; and here and there a solitary hillock ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin

... cried, pointing to it, "this is evidently water, and all this land. Do you notice the general configuration of the two areas? Where the oceans are upon the outer crust, is land here. These relatively small areas of ocean follow the general lines of the continents of the ...
— At the Earth's Core • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... human relations generally, in shackles which do not exist in these days of individualism and broad horizons. To-day we see the Grand Canyon with profound astonishment but without prejudice. Its amazing size, its bewildering configuration, its unprecedented combinations of color affect the freed and elated consciousness of our times as another and perhaps an ultimate revelation in nature of law, ...
— The Book of the National Parks • Robert Sterling Yard

... jump—that's the way to beat the Reds," the colonel had said a thousand times. His well-worn expression had nothing to do with quantum mechanics—the actual change in atomic configuration due to the application of sufficient energy. Rather, it was a slang expression referring to a major advance in inter-planetary travel due to a maximum scientific and ...
— The Quantum Jump • Robert Wicks

... on shore, running yards beyond the usual marks, and threatening to sweep across the isthmus. Masses of tangled kelp, torn from the outlying rocks, washed backwards and forwards in the surf or were carried high up among the tussocks. The configuration of the shingly beach changed while one looked at it. The tops of the waves could be seen flying over Anchor Rock, seventy feet high, and spray was blowing right ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson

... the captain of her, my friend Obediah, as I had no difficulty in guessing, from his very out of the way configuration, dark as it was, called out, "I says, Paul, who have you got in the ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott

... be the bones of an old pagan, or a Goth, or a brigand, can hardly believe, one should suppose, his own tale. If the Pope believes in his own relics, what conceptions must he have of Peter? What a strange configuration of body must he believe the apostle to have had! Peter must have been a man with some dozen of heads; with a score of arms, and a hundred fingers or so on each arm; in short, a perfect realization of the old pagan fable of the giant Briareus. The Pope must ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie

... putting down after a maximum velocity flight, you feed a set of landing coordinates into the computer, and you wait for the computer to punch out a landing configuration and the controls set themselves and lock into pattern. Then you just sit there. I haven't yet met a pilot who didn't begin to sweat at that moment, and sweat all the way down. We weren't geared for that kind of flying. We still aren't, for that matter. We had always done it ourselves, (even ...
— What Need of Man? • Harold Calin

... now fully demonstrated that in his scientific delineation of character the professional phrenologist depends upon something more than mere configuration of skull. The great modifying conditions of health, quality and temperament in every case give us the foundation of the character. It will be seen, some medical authorities to the contrary, notwithstanding, that the science of Phrenology has a firm basis on ...
— How to Become Rich - A Treatise on Phrenology, Choice of Professions and Matrimony • William Windsor

... marked every striking feature of the coast, the bearing of the headlands and the configuration of the many islands which stud these rock-bound and inhospitable shores. He spent a night on one of these islands, and the men found great quantities of ducks' eggs. The next day, still sailing to the west, he reached so fine an anchorage ...
— The Mariner of St. Malo: A Chronicle of the Voyages of Jacques Cartier • Stephen Leacock

... reacting to the irritation caused by injury or disease. The cells of the damaged tissues, under the influence of this irritation, undergo certain proliferative changes, which are designed to restore the normal structure and configuration of the part. The process by which this restoration is effected is essentially the same in all tissues, but the extent to which different tissues can carry the recuperative process varies. Simple structures, such as skin, cartilage, bone, periosteum, and tendon, for example, ...
— Manual of Surgery - Volume First: General Surgery. Sixth Edition. • Alexis Thomson and Alexander Miles

... present period,—the modern times of the geologist,—that period to which man himself belongs, and since the beginning of which, though its duration be counted by hundreds of thousands of years, there has been no alteration in the general configuration of the earth, consequently no important modification of its climatic conditions, and no change in the animals and plants ...
— Young Folks' Library, Volume XI (of 20) - Wonders of Earth, Sea and Sky • Various

... RIVERS.—From the mountainous configuration of the country and the abundance of the rains, the rivers are large and numerous in the south of the island—ten of considerable magnitude flowing into the sea on the west coast, between Point-de-Galle ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent

... to place the black on the side of Sandag, whence he should head my uncle towards the house; Rorie in the west, I on the east, were to complete the cordon, as best we might. It seemed to me, the more I recalled the configuration of the island, that it should be possible, though hard, to force him down upon the low ground along Aros Bay; and once there, even with the strength of his madness, ultimate escape was hardly to be feared. It was on his terror of the black that I relied; for ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XXI • Robert Louis Stevenson

... uncreated, it has a claim to the same honors as God, since it must be of equal rank with Him. Is this not the summit of wickedness that utter chaos, without quality, without form or shape, ugliness without configuration, to use their own expression, should enjoy the same prerogatives as He who is wisdom, power, and beauty itself, the Creator and the Demiurge of the universe enjoys? This is not all. If the matter is so great as to be ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Volume I - Basil to Calvin • Various

... conversation of its mangrove-swamp region; and every truly important West African river has its mangrove-swamp belt, which extends inland as far as the tide waters make it brackish, and which has a depth and extent from the banks depending on the configuration of the country. Above this belt comes uniformly a region of high forest, having towards the river frontage clay cliffs, sometimes high, as in the case of the Old Calabar at Adiabo, more frequently dwarf cliffs, as in the Forcados up at Warree, and in the Ogowe,—for ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley

... of almost any other nation in Europe—where should the ballad draw pith and sap and colour if not on such a soil and among such a people? If Mr. Buckle was able to trace the complexion and form of Scottish religion in the climate and configuration of Scotland, much more easily should we be able to find the atmosphere and scenery of ...
— The Balladists - Famous Scots Series • John Geddie

... of weird and ghostly appearances. Glowing with its own splendour, that mountain looks resplendent as the morning sun. And no creature with his natural eyes made of flesh, can ever ascertain its shape or configuration, and neither heat nor cold prevails there, nor doth the sun shine nor do the winds blow. And, O king, neither doth senility nor hunger, nor thirst, nor death, nor fear afflict any one at that place. And, O foremost of conquerors, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli

... were then so much aggrandized, that in order to sketch a plan of warfare, it was no longer necessary to study the configuration of a province, or of a chain of mountains, or the course of a river. When monarchs, such as Alexander and Napoleon, were contending for the dominion of Europe, it was necessary to regard the general and relative position of every state with a universal ...
— History of the Expedition to Russia - Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812 • Count Philip de Segur

... according to some definite function of the distance, we cannot avoid the question of impacts, and of vibrations and rotations of the molecules resulting from impacts, and we must look distinctly on each molecule as being either a little elastic solid or a configuration of motion in a continuous all-pervading liquid. I do not myself see how we can ever permanently rest anywhere short of this last view; but it would be a very pleasant temporary resting-place on the way to it if we could, as it were, make a ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 460, October 25, 1884 • Various

... away from her in glittering interminable vistas: clocks of all sizes and voices, from the bell-throated giant of the hallway to the chirping dressing-table toy; tall clocks of mahogany and brass with cathedral chimes; clocks of bronze, glass, porcelain, of every possible size, voice and configuration; and between their serried ranks, along the polished floor of the aisles, moved the languid forms of other gentlemanly floor-walkers, waiting for their ...
— Bunner Sisters • Edith Wharton

... Socialist consciousness is rather the folk, and this folk is in no case mere individual aggregation, i.e., collectivity as sum of the individuals, but as a unity with a peculiar two-sidedness, at the same time "essential totality" (M.H. Boehm). The folk is both a living creature and a spiritual configuration, in which the individuals are included through common racial conditioning, in blood and spirit. It is that force which works on the individual directly "from within or from the side like a common degree of temperature" (Kjellen) and which ...
— Readings on Fascism and National Socialism • Various

... wandered back to the mysterious well, and he began to wonder if the closed door at the bottom connected with the unaccounted-for space behind this wall. His curiosity grew as he brooded upon this possibility—a possibility which he now conceded to be a certainty as he marked the configuration of the building. The blank wall was beneath his bedroom. The well descended directly into it, or upon one side of it, and communicated with it through the door mentioned. There was nothing to be learned by inquiry, and Henley determined to make another ...
— The Ghost of Guir House • Charles Willing Beale

... possessed, might as well think of taking the moon as of entering San Sebastian. They would have a formidable fire from well-planted cannon to face; stockades, and strong earthworks, and more than one blockhouse cunningly pierced with loopholes, to carry. Even if San Sebastian was entered, the configuration of the streets was such as to give every aid to disciplined men as opposed to mere guerrilleros. The city is built in blocks, on the American system; the wide thoroughfares cross each other at right-angles, and all of them could be swept as with a besom by a few guns en barbette ...
— Romantic Spain - A Record of Personal Experiences (Vol. II) • John Augustus O'Shea

... be off again. Every hour—every minute, indeed—was precious to him, and, as the two rode back, the advance was resumed without a moment's delay. Instead of proceeding back in a direct line, however, over the path traveled by the scout, they made a detour to the northward, the configuration of the country being such that a much nearer approach, undiscovered, could be made from this direction than ...
— Through Apache Lands • R. H. Jayne

... through the forest. Each, as he arrives at his station, or "stand," as it is called, dismounts, ties his horse in a thicket, and takes his stand, "covering" himself behind a log or tree. The stands are selected with reference to the configuration of the ground, or by paths which the deer are accustomed to take; and as soon as all have so arranged themselves, the dogs at a distant point are set ...
— The Hunters' Feast - Conversations Around the Camp Fire • Mayne Reid

... engaged in shipping their human cargoes. And truly, as seen from the boats, the ingenuity of man could scarcely have devised a more perfect spot whereat to conduct the infamous traffic; for the configuration of the land was such that boats, entering the river merely on an exploring expedition, without having first obtained, like ourselves, special information, would never have suspected the existence of the creek, or of ...
— A Middy of the Slave Squadron - A West African Story • Harry Collingwood

... and original impression being formed in marble or other material, or any new and useful pattern, or print, or picture, to be either worked into or worked on, or printed, or painted, or cast, or otherwise fixed on any article of manufacture, or any new and original shape or configuration of any article of manufacture not known or used by ...
— Scientific American, Vol.22, No. 1, January 1, 1870 • Various

... and wave. You wonder at first if the road was made merely to gladden the tourist, for it does not seem likely that there could be much traffic other than that of pleasure-seekers thus along the margin of the sea. The configuration of this part of the County Antrim, however, explains the position of the road, and justifies the engineer who was so happily enabled to combine the utilitarian with the romantic. A series of deep cut gorges, locally known as "The Glens," intersect the country, running at right angles to the coast-line ...
— A Child of the Glens - or, Elsie's Fortune • Edward Newenham Hoare

... internally by reflection; all these are nothing but modifications of that one, simple, and necessarily existent being, and are not possest of any separate or distinct existence. Every passion of the soul; every configuration of matter, however different and various, inhere in the same substance, and preserve in themselves their characters of distinction, without communicating them to that subject, in which they inhere. The same substratum, if I may so speak, supports the most different ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume

... instructed that our instincts and consciousness dwell in the "sensory ganglia," that "an idea is a contradiction, a motion, a configuration of the intermediate organ of sense," that "memory is the organic registration of their effects of impressions," and that the "cerebrum" is the seat of ideas, the home of thought and reason. But when "grey-matter" that composes this thinking mechanism ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson

... my father, that very brave and kindly gentleman from whom I got what daring I ever had, I suppose. He was a clean-cut man, five-eleven in his stockings, and few men in all that country had a handsomer body. His shoulders sloped—an excellent configuration for strength—as a study of no less a man than George Washington will prove—his arms were round, his skin white as milk, his hair, like my own, a sandy red, and his eyes blue and very quiet. There ...
— The Way of a Man • Emerson Hough

... the hand of fancy. It was perhaps easier at the end of the sixteenth century than it is now, to admit the possibility of a practical path to China and India across the pole; for delusions as to climate and geographical configuration then prevalent have long since been dispelled. While, therefore, at least as much heroism was required then as now to launch into those unknown seas, in hope to solve the dread mystery of the North; there was even a firmer hope than can ever be cherished again of deriving an immediate and tangible ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... N. form, figure, shape; conformation, configuration; make, formation, frame, construction, cut, set, build, trim, cut of one's jib; stamp, type, cast, mold; fashion; contour &c (outline) 230; structure &c 329; plasmature^. feature, lineament, turn; phase &c (aspect) 448; posture, attitude, pose. [Science of form] morphism. [Similarity ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... the primary elements had any sensible qualities whatever. He conceived of all things as being composed of invisible, intangible, and indivisible particles or atoms, which, by reason of variation in their configuration, combination, or position, give rise to the varieties of forms: to the atom he imputed self-existence and eternal duration. His doctrine, therefore, explains how it is that the many can arise from the ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper

... the town itself we now pass to what would seem to have been the extent of territory dependent upon her. The strongest argument of this discussion is based upon the natural configuration of the land. To the west, the domain of Praeneste certainly followed those long fertile ridges accessible only from Praeneste. First, and most important, it extended along the very wide ridge known as Le Tende and Le Colonnelle ...
— A Study Of The Topography And Municipal History Of Praeneste • Ralph Van Deman Magoffin

... not far-fetched. They had reached a part of the glacier where the slope and the configuration of the valley had caused severe strains on the ice in various directions, so that there were not only transverse crevasses but longitudinal cracks, which unitedly had cut up the ice into blocks ...
— Rivers of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne

... which those disorders, anger and lust, have their seat, and which he whom he is opposing, when he argues thus, imagines to be distinct and separate from the mind. Now this resemblance is more remarkable in beasts, whose souls are void of reason. But the likeness in men consists more in the configuration of the bodies: and it is of no little consequence in what bodies the soul is lodged; for there are many things which depend on the body that give an edge to the soul, many which blunt it. Aristotle, indeed, says that all men of great genius ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero

... everything by electricity. A singular mortality at this time prevailed amongst the cats of Vienna, Basle, Copenhagen, and other places. Cats being so eminently an electric animal, of course he attributed this epizootic to electricity. During the same period, he persuaded himself that a peculiar configuration of clouds prevailed; this he took as a collateral proof of his electrical hypothesis. His own headaches, too, which in all probability were a mere remote effect of old age, and a direct one of an inability [Footnote: Mr. Wasianski ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey

... crude ornamentation—ungraceful arabesques of vine leaves which wreathe about broken columns, a rising sun caught in a spider's web of rays—all that configuration begins to spread and distend until it fills the room. The vine leaves tremble in a morning wind; a soft blowing shakes the columns, and higher and higher mounts the sun. Like a dance of flickering ...
— The Indian Lily and Other Stories • Hermann Sudermann

... kite (Milvus govinda) is found on the Nilgiris. This useful bird usually sails in graceful circles high overhead, looking for food. Its cry is not heard so frequently on those hills as in the Himalayas, the reason being the different configuration of the two ranges. The Nilgiris are undulating and downlike, hence the kites are able, while hovering higher than the summits of the hills, to see what is happening in the valleys. In the Himalayas they cannot do this, because the ...
— Birds of the Indian Hills • Douglas Dewar

... our journey we met two Bedouins, who greeted us with much ceremony. Here too, scattered about, we found specimens of Caucalis. Our course then lay through drearily uniform sandy ground, of somewhat broken configuration, and covered with bushy vegetation, where we passed a telegraph post bearing the notice that it was half-way between Bir el Abd and Bir el Magara. Here we overtook our camels, which, as usual, had preceded us; but we sent them on again, as we decided ...
— The Caravan Route between Egypt and Syria • Ludwig Salvator

... black-brown and auburn, and were now streaked with grey. The forehead was large, round, without protuberances, and very gently receding to where thin black curls, that had once been redundant, began to tumble down to the ears. The entire configuration of the head and face seemed to me singularly noble, and from the eyes upwards, full of beauty. He wore a pair of spectacles, and, in reading, a second pair over the first: but these took little ...
— Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti - 1883 • T. Hall Caine

... of the cabin's fittings were not remarkable. By the configuration of the ship I guessed that two of the staterooms must be rather large. I ...
— The Mystery • Stewart Edward White and Samuel Hopkins Adams

... Creation, and ages of momentous development are shrouded from our eyes. The land and the people are the two foundations of English history; but before history began, the land had received the insular configuration which has largely determined its fortune; and the various peoples, who were to mould and be moulded by the land, had differentiated from the other races of the world. Several of these peoples had occupied the land before its conquest by the Anglo-Saxons, ...
— The History of England - A Study in Political Evolution • A. F. Pollard

... now hasten to carry into execution the plans which he had originally formed only with the view to aggrandizement. He had delayed too long, either because the favourable configuration of the stars had not yet presented itself, or, as he used to say, to check the impatience of his friends, because THE TIME WAS NOT YET COME. The time, even now, was not come: but the pressure of circumstances no longer allowed him to await the favour ...
— The History of the Thirty Years' War • Friedrich Schiller, Translated by Rev. A. J. W. Morrison, M.A.



Words linked to "Configuration" :   narrowing, design, stratification, concaveness, unitisation, topology, constellation, roundness, bluntness, convexness, spatial property, sharpness, topography, spatiality, crooked, straightness, keenness, conformation, lobularity, convexity, straight, chunking, dullness, crookedness, configure, concavity, unitization, curve, plan, network topology, form, redundancy, angularity, curvature



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