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Crux   /krəks/   Listen
Crux

noun
(pl. E. cruxes, L. cruces)
1.
A small conspicuous constellation in the southern hemisphere in the Milky Way near Centaurus.  Synonyms: Crux Australis, Southern Cross.
2.
The most important point.  Synonym: crux of the matter.



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"Crux" Quotes from Famous Books



... but a moment, for she saw how little simple was the crux of her destiny. The two of them had been set apart by the fates; each had salvation to work out alone; no facile union would ever join them. For him there was the shaping of a man's path; for her the illumination which only sorrows and ...
— The Half-Hearted • John Buchan

... the crux of the whole matter! To look at him was to feel that whatever his faults they were not despicable ones. He was alive, so very much alive, and the look of him was that which an honest man should have. Had he proved his innocence and been released? Or had he broken ...
— The Highgrader • William MacLeod Raine

... made up at Oxford; here it goes over this wall, and we'd better carry the coat and belt before we meet a real officer. I got them once for a fancy ball—ostensibly—and thereby hangs a yarn. I always thought they might come in useful a second time. My chief crux to-night was getting rid of the hansom that brought me back. I sent him off to Scotland Yard with ten bob and a special message to good old Mackenzie. The whole detective department will be at Rosenthall's in about half an hour. Of ...
— The Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung

... road to Montpont. It was a sad and silent land over which I passed, with frequent crosses by the wayside, telling of the influence of the monks. The words, 'O crux, ave!' met me amidst the heather and on the margin of lonely pools. I was now in the most forlorn part of the Double, where all around the eye rested upon forest, swamp, and moor. Not that I found it ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker

... of 1828 writes: "I well remember that my invitation to attend the meeting of the Med. Fac. Soc. was written in barbarous Latin, commencing 'Domine Crux,' and I think I passed so good an examination that I was made Professor longis extremitatibus, or Professor with long shanks. It was a society for purposes of mere fun and burlesque, meeting secretly, and ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall

... an interesting experiment," said the minister. "An interesting experiment, McNish, and you are not to grunt like that. The human element, of course, is the crux here. If we had the right sort of foreman he might be trusted to be a member of the union, but a man cannot direct and be directed at the same time. But that union of yours, Maitland, with both parties represented ...
— To Him That Hath - A Novel Of The West Of Today • Ralph Connor

... The great crux in Hume is thus seen to be illusory. Immediate experience does not require 'synthesis': it calls for 'analysis.' It is not a jigsaw puzzle, to be pieced together without glue: it is a confused whole which has to be divided and set in order for clear thinking. Hume's mistake was to have started from ...
— Pragmatism • D.L. Murray

... Where is the crux of the problem? In what provision of the coming Bill will the difference between Federal Home Rule and Colonial Home Rule arise? The answer is clear: in the retention or exclusion of Irish Members at Westminster. No Colony ...
— The Framework of Home Rule • Erskine Childers

... with dark holes and furrowed by dusky lanes. Such interruptions recur perpetually in the Milky Way. They are exemplified on the largest scale in the great rift dividing it into two branches all the way from Cygnus to Crux; and they are reproduced in miniature ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke

... the altar. Then bring them back before sunset to the place where they were at first. Now make four crosses of aspen and write on the end of each Matheus and Marcus and Lucas and Johannes. Lay the crosses on the bottom of each hole and then say: 25 Crux Matheus, crux Marcus, crux Lucas, crux Sanctus Johannes. Then take the sods and lay them on top and say nine times the word Crescite, and the Pater Noster as often. Turn then to the east and bow humbly nine times ...
— Old English Poems - Translated into the Original Meter Together with Short Selections from Old English Prose • Various

... that crux of critics, that quicksand upon which even the acumen of Bentley was shipwrecked, seems to prove beyond a doubt, that the pronunciation of the Greek language had undergone a considerable change. Now it is certainly difficult to suppose that the Homeric poems could have suffered ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer, translated by Alexander Pope

... of the machine—its engines—are the crux of man's mechanical wisdom and skill. Their marvelous reliability and intricacy are almost as awesome as the human anatomy. When both engines are going well, and synchronized to the same speed, the roar of the exhausts develops into ...
— Around the World in Ten Days • Chelsea Curtis Fraser

... particular mind. His criticism looks to the representation of "the internal movements of the mind warmed by imagination," yet "exposed in the happiest and most agreeable attitudes" (p. xxxv). The relation between the empirical and the ideal is a crux common to Ogilvie and neoclassic theory, not entirely resolved here by the practical and referential method of citing Horace's shorter odes. But it is a subject which comes in for more extended treatment in his second ...
— An Essay on the Lyric Poetry of the Ancients • John Ogilvie

... last we are coming to the crux of the matter. Since you have proofs for your statements, you ...
— Counsel for the Defense • Leroy Scott

... list of missing stage properties. They had nothing to do but to wait, and people in the very crux and maelstrom of ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy

... been man," he droned emphatically. "That's not original with friend Mundson, of course; yet it is a theory that has not received sufficient investigation." He indicated another marked paragraph. "Read this thoughtfully, John. It's the crux of ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science February 1930 • Various

... the sixth, seventh, and eighth games are the crux of every close set. These games may mean 4-2 or 3-all, 5-2 or 4-3, the most vital advantage in the match, or 5-3 or 4-all, a matter of extreme moment to a tiring player. If ahead, you should strive to hold and increase your lead. If behind, your one hope of victory rests in cutting down the advantage ...
— The Art of Lawn Tennis • William T. Tilden, 2D

... attacked the little inefficient batteries of Santa Crux, in Teneriffe, with eight vessels carrying four hundred guns. But notwithstanding his great superiority in numbers, skill, and bravery, he was repelled with the loss of two hundred and fifty men, while the garrison received little or no damage. A single ball from the land battery, ...
— Elements of Military Art and Science • Henry Wager Halleck

... suggested the Governor, after a half-hour of absorbed listening. "There is one point you have overlooked. Since in the end the whole thing comes back to the exercise of the pardoning power, it is after all the crux of the situation. You may be able to render such services as those for which you volunteer. Let us for the moment assume that to be true. You have not yet told me a very important thing. Did you or did you ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck

... son John and his wife.' In our women's clubs and lectures, magazines and sermons, we've had a steady dose all winter of hard times, and economy, and I've tried to make my friends see that their efforts at economy are responsible for the very hardest crux ...
— Michael O'Halloran • Gene Stratton-Porter

... in 1640, and was buried in St. Crux Church, York. This church was demolished about the year 1885, as it was considered structurally unsafe, but there does not appear to have been any memorial erected to him in the church. The manuscript Registers of the Parish of St. Crux are in the College of Arms: the manuscript extracts ...
— Spadacrene Anglica - The English Spa Fountain • Edmund Deane

... Revolution had not been provoked by oppression, violence, and massacre. The 'chains and slavery' of revolutionary orators was only a figure of speech. The real causes were constitutional and personal; and the actual crux of the question was one of payment for defence. Of course there were many other causes at work. The social, religious, and political grudges with which so many emigrants had left the mother country had not been forgotten and were now revived. Commercial restrictions, ...
— The Father of British Canada: A Chronicle of Carleton • William Wood

... realness. Prof. Serviss thinks that what Schroeter saw was the "round" shadow of a mountain—in the region that had become lighted. He assumes that Schroeter never looked again to see whether the shadow could be attributed to a mountain. That's the crux: conceivably a mountain could cast a round—and that means detached—shadow, in the lighted part of the moon. Prof. Serviss could, of course, explain why he disregards the light in the first place—maybe it had always been there "in the first place." If he couldn't ...
— The Book of the Damned • Charles Fort

... were frozen in her stare of suspense at the breach. Her heart seemed straining with the effort of the living, who heard nothing, thought nothing, in the crux of their effort. War's own mesmerism had made her forget Feller and everything except the gamble, the turn of the card, while the gray figures kept stumbling on over their fallen. Then her heart leaped, ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer

... Corelli published his first collection of pieces for the violin, and in these are found what are practically about the first examples of a well-developed lyric melody, of the kind we now mean when we speak of "bel canto"—the type of melody made the very crux of the art of Italian singing. This impassioned, sustained, and expressive melody took with wonderful rapidity and was almost immediately adopted into opera, the ideal of which in the beginning had been that of an artistic ...
— The Masters and their Music - A series of illustrative programs with biographical, - esthetical, and critical annotations • W. S. B. Mathews



Words linked to "Crux" :   Beta Crucis, Milky Way Galaxy, alpha and omega, Alpha Crucis, point, Milky Way, Milky Way System, constellation



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