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Crystallize   /krˈɪstəlˌaɪz/   Listen
Crystallize

verb
(past & past part. crystallized; pres. part. crystallizing)
1.
Cause to take on a definite and clear shape.  Synonyms: crystalise, crystalize, crystallise.
2.
Make free from confusion or ambiguity; make clear.  Synonyms: clear, clear up, crystalise, crystalize, crystallise, elucidate, enlighten, illuminate, shed light on, sort out, straighten out.  "Clear up the question of who is at fault"
3.
Cause to form crystals or assume crystalline form.  Synonyms: crystalise, crystalize, crystallise.
4.
Assume crystalline form; become crystallized.  Synonyms: crystalise, crystalize, effloresce.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Crystallize" Quotes from Famous Books



... soon become wearisome to all but the specialist actually engaged in the work. But when reasons are assigned, and classification explained, when the number of causes is reduced and the effects begin to crystallize into essential and clearly related parts of one whole, every intelligent student finds interest, and many, more fortunate, even fascination in ...
— Composition-Rhetoric • Stratton D. Brooks

... for such a change, the advent of a man of genius will accomplish it. Around him the particles crystallize and take form and beauty. Such a man was David,—a brave soldier, a great captain, a sagacious adventurer, an artist, musician, and poet, a man of profound religious experience; he was, more than all these, a statesman. By his great ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke

... of the transition. The days were growing shorter and the leaden-colored vapors, driven by the whip of that taskmaster, the wind, replaced the snow-white clouds becalmed in the tender depths of ether. Soon would the hoar frost crystallize on grass and fence, or the autumn rains descend, dripping mournfully from the water spouts and bubbling over the tubs. Already the character of the dawn was changed to an almost sullen awakening of the day, denoting a seeming uneasiness of ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham

... and whenever I said to my crowded audiences that we must give to woman the right to vote that she may purify the nation of this great sin, there went up shouts and clapping of hands of men and women. They are ready for this work. What we want is to crystallize the public opinion of all ranks of society in its favor. There is great fear that if woman is allowed to vote, she will lose something of her high and excellent character. If it is right for woman to have the suffrage, it is not right to talk of expediency. If giving woman the ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... will crystallize the discussion. First: The years up to twelve present two conditions for habit formation—plastic brain cells and action easily secured—as no ...
— The Unfolding Life • Antoinette Abernethy Lamoreaux

... wheels before it was thrown into the vats. The sturdy negresses, up to their elbows, stirred the foaming syrup after it had boiled. Then it was skimmed and boiled again to purify it. It went through a centrifugal process to crystallize it, and afterward was packed in boxes and stamped in less time than it takes to relate this. I liked to breathe the hot vapors coming from the huge tanks. What remains of the sugar is used as fuel; ...
— In the Courts of Memory 1858-1875. • L. de Hegermann-Lindencrone

... all was silent. The confused sensations gradually collected and settled. This repose and exhaustion they call meditation, but it is rather an inspection—one allows time for the mixture of thoughts to crystallize themselves according to eternal laws, and regards the process like an observing chemist; and the elements having assumed a form, we often wonder that they, as well as ourselves, are so entirely ...
— Memories • Max Muller

... no theatrical sound is heard, let him listen to the finale of "Success," or of "Spiritual Laws," or to some of the poems, "Brahma" or "Sursum Corda," for example. Of a truth his Codas often seem to crystallize in a dramatic, though serene and sustained way, the truths of his subject—they become more active and intense, but quieter ...
— Essays Before a Sonata • Charles Ives

... in the season of youth, while the character is forming, that the impulse to admire is the greatest. As we advance in life we crystallize into habit and "Nil admirari" too often becomes our motto. It is well to encourage the admiration of great characters while the nature is plastic and open to impressions; for if the good are not admired—as young men will have their heroes of some sort— most probably ...
— How to Get on in the World - A Ladder to Practical Success • Major A.R. Calhoon

... Man is not bigoted. When there is nothing better to eat than meat, he eats meat, as, for instance, when in jail or on shipboard and the nuts and fruits give out. Nor does he seem to crystallize ...
— The Cruise of the Snark • Jack London

... the Stomach.—The same as for sulphuric acid. In beer, etc., the mixture may be neutralized with carbonate of potassium, dialyzed, the fluid concentrated and allowed to crystallize, when crystals of nitrate of ...
— Aids to Forensic Medicine and Toxicology • W. G. Aitchison Robertson

... people were pleasant folks but lacked social background. So Ethel's romance had been nipped in the bud. The round-faced chap had married another girl. And now Amy at thirty and Ethel at twenty-five were crystallizing into something rather hard and brilliant, as Anne would perhaps crystallize if something didn't happen. ...
— The Gay Cockade • Temple Bailey

... natural agents now at work around us, producing results which counterfeit life, if they do not constitute it. Many substances crystallize into shapes bearing a strong resemblance to vegetable forms, as in the well known chemical experiment producing the arbor Dianae. The passage of the electric fluid leaves marks that are like the branches and foliage of a tree, and the same fluid ...
— A Theory of Creation: A Review of 'Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation' • Francis Bowen

... fondness for it is evidenced by 17th and 18th century rooms on display in various museums throughout the country and in the growing number of house museums that have been restored to original condition. Looking at a few of these will help to crystallize your own ideas. You will notice that their furnishings are by no means limited to the year in which they were built or even the century. A good example of this is to be found in a late 17th century house museum, known ...
— If You're Going to Live in the Country • Thomas H. Ormsbee and Richmond Huntley

... allowed, in the cares and interests of their few free hours: the hours when the automatic appendages of the giant machine became men and women again, with desires and passions of their own. Under Amherst's influence the mixed elements of the mill-community had begun to crystallize into social groups: his books had served as an improvised lending-library, he had organized a club, a rudimentary orchestra, and various other means of binding together the better spirits of the community. ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton

... states of matter; dwarf star, neutron star. V. be dense &c adj.; become solid, render solid &c adj.; solidify, solidate^; concrete, set, take a set, consolidate, congeal, coagulate; curd, curdle; lopper; fix, clot, cake, candy, precipitate, deposit, cohere, crystallize; petrify &c (harden) 323. condense, thicken, gel, inspissate^, incrassate^; compress, squeeze, ram down, constipate. Adj. dense, solid; solidified &c v.; caseous; pukka^; coherent, cohesive &c 46; compact, close, serried, thickset; substantial, massive, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... merely crystallize indefinite masses, but it gives to limited portions of matter the power of gathering, selectively, other elements proper to them, and binding these elements into their own peculiar ...
— Man or Matter • Ernst Lehrs

... formed, in a far greater measure than most of us care to admit, upon first impressions. Manifestly shallow and embryonic though we admit them to be, our first impressions crystallize, in nine cases out of ten, into our fixed or permanent opinions. And, after all, the reason ...
— The Gun-Brand • James B. Hendryx

... sadly, as he thinks of the loved dead; but the cheerful, happy scenes of the camp-fire he will never forget. How willingly he closes his eyes to the present to dream of those happy, careless days and nights! Around the fire crystallize the memories of the soldier's life. It was his home, his place of rest, where he met with good companionship. Who kindled the fire? Nobody had matches, there was no fire in sight, and yet scarcely was the camp determined ...
— Detailed Minutiae of Soldier life in the Army of Northern Virginia, 1861-1865 • Carlton McCarthy

... to crystallize modern knowledge and to establish in courts the right to protection against the evils of patent medicines. The national Pure Food Law, passed January 1, 1907, and now in force throughout the country, requires on the "labels ...
— Civics and Health • William H. Allen

... called into being by his own inspired strains, he would weep tears of bitter anguish that, instead of lavishing all the stores of his mighty genius upon the fall of Ilion, it had not been his more blessed lot to crystallize in deathless song the rising glories of Duluth. (Great and continued laughter.) Yet, sir, had it not been for this map, kindly furnished me by the Legislature of Minnesota, I might have gone down to ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VIII (of X) • Various

... rut when one is middle-aged. Josephine's stricture concerning the lack of joyousness in my apparel, however, brought me up standing, as the phrase is, and served not merely to spur me to action, but to crystallize a tissue of reflections which had been churning in my brain during a considerable period. One evening a fortnight later I sauntered into the drawing-room, where my wife and four children were congregated round the family lamps, and drew attention to my appearance ...
— The Opinions of a Philosopher • Robert Grant

... one trembling now; the cool feel of the automatic which Alan thrust into my hand seemed suddenly to crystallize Babs' peril. I was here in her room, with the scent of her perfume around me, and this deadly weapon was needed! But the trembling was ...
— Beyond the Vanishing Point • Raymond King Cummings

... that the untroubled heart of a young girl is like a vessel full of the fresh spring sap of the sugar maple that is being freed by slow fire from its crudities and condensed to tangible form. When a certain point is reached, it is ready to crystallize about the first object that stirs it ever so lightly, irrespective of its quality: this is first love. But if the condensing process is lingering, no jar disturbing it prematurely until, as it reaches perfection, the vital touch suddenly reaches its depths, then comes real ...
— People of the Whirlpool • Mabel Osgood Wright

... should communicate with nature by innumerable other senses than those few which we possess. Mr. Powers gave hospitable reception to this idea, and said that it had occurred to himself; and he has evidently thought much and earnestly about such matters; but is apt to let his idea crystallize into a theory, before he can have sufficient data for it. He is a Swedenborgian ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... boiling goes on slowly, and the liquid, as it thickens, is dipped from one to another, until in the end kettle it is reduced to sirup, and is taken out to cool and settle, until enough is made to "sugar off." To "sugar off" is to boil the sirup until it is thick enough to crystallize into sugar. This is the grand event, and is done only once ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... methyl red is crystallized from toluene, it sometimes separates in the form of bright-red lumps, probably on account of too rapid crystallization. Under these conditions it is advisable to crystallize again, using a somewhat larger amount ...
— Organic Syntheses • James Bryant Conant

... blood, can in no way more surely attain to community of interest and of view than by the development of an external policy, of which the benefits and the pride may be common to all. True unity requires some common object, around which diverse interests may cling and crystallize. Nations, like families, need to look outside themselves, if they would escape, on the one hand, narrow self-satisfaction, or, on the other, pitiful internal dissensions. The far-reaching external activities fostered in Great Britain by her insular position have not only intensified ...
— Lessons of the war with Spain and other articles • Alfred T. Mahan

... prodigies do not represent the union of variations which we find in the greatest genius. Such men are often distinctly lacking in power of sustained constructive thought. Their insight is largely what is called intuitive. They have flashes of emotional experience which crystallize into single creations of art. They depend upon "inspiration"—a word which is responsible for much of the overrating of such men, and for a good many of their illusions. Not that they do not perform great feats in the several ...
— The Story of the Mind • James Mark Baldwin

... matter for two lonely women, in a little Cape Cod village, without a male relative to help them, and with only a few thousand dollars in the world, to sell their house, break up all their life-long associations, and go out into the world to find a new home. Associations crystallize around people in lonely and out of the way spots, where the days are all alike, and years follow years in an undeviating monotony. Perhaps the process might be more aptly called one of petrifaction. There are pieces ...
— Mercy Philbrick's Choice • Helen Hunt Jackson

... not awake in the mind thoughts of an elaborate manufactory with apparatus and numerous workmen. No! to crystallize this liquor, only an extremely easy operation is required. Placed on the fire in large earthen pots, it was simply subjected to evaporation, and soon a scum arose to its surface. As soon as this began to thicken, ...
— The Mysterious Island • Jules Verne

... made an abortive attempt. In 1822 a free Negro, Denmark Vesey, in South Carolina, failed in a well-laid plot, and ten years after that, in 1831, Nat Turner led his insurrection in Virginia and killed fifty-one persons. The result of this insurrection was to crystallize tendencies toward harshness which the ...
— The Negro • W.E.B. Du Bois

... must be a sentiment connected with this creed, or capable of being invoked by it, sufficiently powerful to give it in fact, the authority over human conduct to which it lays claim in theory. It is a great advantage (though not absolutely indispensable) that this sentiment should crystallize, as it were, round a concrete object; if possible a really existing one, though, in all the more important cases, only ideally present. Such an object Theism and Christianity offer to the believer: but the condition may be ...
— Auguste Comte and Positivism • John-Stuart Mill

... completely superseded as the stone of the aborigines. With all its apparent potency, it has its evident weaknesses; moisture is everywhere at war with it, gases and temperature destroy its fiber and its life, continued blows or motion crystallize and rob it of its strength, and acids will devour it in a night. If it be possible to eliminate all, or even one or more, of these qualities of weakness in any metal, still preserving both quantity and quality, that metal will be the metal of ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XXI., No. 531, March 6, 1886 • Various

... this country the formation of a political labour party, because such a party would have been composed of manual workers alone, and hence would have tended further to develop economic class consciousness, to crystallize class antagonisms. Today, however, neither the Republican nor the Democratic party represents the great issue of the times; the cleavage between them is wholly artificial. The formation of a Liberal Party, with a platform avowedly based on modern social science, ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... composed of a multitude of grains of sand without cohesion; the sect is a block of marble which resists every effort. When a sentiment or an idea, having in itself a reason for existence, slips into the crowd, its members soon crystallize and form a sect. The sect is then the first crystallization of every doctrine. From the confused and amorphous state in which it manifests itself to the crowd, every idea is predestined to define itself in the more specific form of the sect, to become ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park

... you please, might with force and propriety participate in this coming exposition. The agency or organized clubs was for a time suggested as a proper method by which the assistance of womankind might be interjected into this great work, but many difficulties appeared in an effort to crystallize that thought in ...
— Final Report of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission • Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission

... placed in a much higher rank of intellect. That to every parish throughout the kingdom there is transplanted a germ of civilization; that in the remotest villages there is a nucleus, round which the capabilities of the place may crystallize and brighten; a model sufficiently superior to excite, yet sufficiently near to encourage and facilitate, imitation; this, the unobtrusive, continuous agency of a protestant church establishment, this it is, which the patriot, and the ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... have been reviewed. Others looked to London. The relations between Canada and the other parts of the Empire did not become the central issue in any political campaign. Until late in the period now under survey they aroused little systematic public discussion. There were few acute episodes to crystallize the filial sentiment for the motherland which existed in the country. Yet throughout these years that readjustment in the relations between the colonies and the mother country, which is perhaps the most significant political development of the century, was steadily proceeding. Steadily and ...
— The Day of Sir Wilfrid Laurier - A Chronicle of Our Own Time • Oscar D. Skelton

... one is sometimes inclined to doubt whether any great movement ever makes itself felt in the world, without dating first from some powerful personality or group of personalities, ROUND which the idealizing and myth-making genius of mankind tends to crystallize. But one must not even here be too certain. Something of the Apostle Paul we know, and something of 'John' the Evangelist and writer of the Epistle I John; and that the 'Christian' doctrines dated largely ...
— Pagan & Christian Creeds - Their Origin and Meaning • Edward Carpenter

... solution becomes crystallized, lower in the upper solution a crystal of acetate of soda suspended by another wire, as shown in the right of the sketch, and this will crystallize the same as ...
— The Boy Mechanic: Volume 1 - 700 Things For Boys To Do • Popular Mechanics

... of youth, while the character is forming, that the impulse to admire is the greatest. As we advance in life, we crystallize into habit; and "NIL ADMIRARI" too often becomes our motto. It is well to encourage the admiration of great characters while the nature is plastic and open to impressions; for if the good are not ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles

... or Friends, as they called themselves, formed much the larger part of the inhabitants of Nantucket, and thus were enabled to crystallize, as it were, their own ideas of what family and social life should be; and although in course of time many "world's people" swooped down and helped to swell the number of islanders, they still continued ...
— Maria Mitchell: Life, Letters, and Journals • Maria Mitchell

... Liverpool shipowner, in the first class, had promised work to the young man on landing; the mother was to be sent to a sanatorium; the children cared for during her absence. The family made a kind of nucleus round which whatever humanity—or whatever imitation of it—there was on board might gather and crystallize. There were other mournful cases indeed to be studied on the steerage deck, but none in which ...
— Marriage a la mode • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... plan of life, embodying the great yet simple virtues, is beautiful. "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" does not explain the Scriptures. The book, as an attempt to explain and crystallize truth, is a failure. It ranks with that great mass of literature, written and copied at such vast pains and expense, bearing the high-sounding title, "Writings of ...
— Little Journeys To The Homes Of Great Teachers • Elbert Hubbard

... student of that fascinating if elusive subject is aware, dates from the closing years of the first half of the nineteenth century. But the celebrated Fox sisters, whose revelations at that time served to crystallize into an organized religious system the idea of the possibility of communication between this world and the world beyond, were by no means the first of spiritistic mediums. Long before their day there were those ...
— Historic Ghosts and Ghost Hunters • H. Addington Bruce

... philosophers, or wisdom-lovers, ought to read it,—which we do not and cannot now, any more than a Hindoo can read the "Gayatri" as a fair man and lover of truth should do. When society has once fairly dissolved the New Testament, which it never has done yet, it will perhaps crystallize it over again in new ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various

... that makes common salt crystallize in the form of cubes, and saltpetre in the shape of six-sided prisms? We see no reason why it should not have been just the other way, salt in prisms and saltpetre in cubes, or why either should take an exact geometrical outline, any more than ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... to be) should be forwarded to her; and where the Baron von Blitzenberg came into the story—these, among a dozen other questions, flickered chaotically through her mind for some minutes. Again and again she studied the cryptogram, till at last a few definite conclusions began to crystallize out of the confusion. That the "tenderer plant" symbolized the lady herself, that she was a person to be regarded with extreme suspicion, and that emphatically the bouquet was never originally intended ...
— Count Bunker • J. Storer Clouston

... of lake and stream, The silver glint in frost portrayed Of the bright cascade; They bear the moisture of marshes dank, The dew of the lawn, or river bank, The river itself by sunlight drank; All these in frigid air, That strange alembic, crystallize In odd, fantastic shape and size Like gems ...
— Poems - Vol. IV • Hattie Howard

... words of this man Pitt—his last large words, As I may prophesy—that ring to-night In their first mintage to the feasters here, Will spread with ageing, lodge, and crystallize, And stand embedded in the English tongue Till it grow thin, outworn, and cease to be.— So is't ordained by That Which all ordains; For words were never winged with apter grace. Or blent with happier choice of time and place, To ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy

... who is warmed at one remove—if at all—by the breath of the spirit, will want to have exact definitions in the beliefs he accepts. Not having had a vision to go by, he needs plain commandments. He will always try to crystallize creeds. And that, plainly, is fatal. For as time goes on, new and remoter aspects of truth are discovered, which can seldom or never be fitted into creeds ...
— This Simian World • Clarence Day



Words linked to "Crystallize" :   enlighten, crystallization, shed light on, solidify, shape, form, crystallizing, crystal, devitrify, clarify, natural philosophy, physics, change integrity



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