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Momentum   /moʊmˈɛntəm/   Listen
Momentum

noun
(pl. L. momenta, F. momentums)
1.
An impelling force or strength.  Synonym: impulse.
2.
The product of a body's mass and its velocity.



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"Momentum" Quotes from Famous Books



... he had something left for the final quarter, though his rider had not expected to draw upon that reserve so soon. The Ghost spurted, for a time maintaining his advantage. Then, annihilating incredible distances with his long, awkward strides and gathering increased momentum with every one, Elisha drew alongside. Again the Ghost was called on and responded, but the best he had left and all he had left, was barely sufficient to enable him to hold his own. Opposite the paddock inclosure, with the grand stand looming ahead, the horses were ...
— Old Man Curry - Race Track Stories • Charles E. (Charles Emmett) Van Loan

... twenties that the actual momentum of life begins to slacken, and it is a simple soul indeed to whom as many things are significant and meaningful at thirty as at ten years before. At thirty an organ-grinder is a more or less moth-eaten man who grinds an organ—and ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald

... days, a new opposition coalition formed, headed by the Mind. Fortunately, they helped. I'd hesitated on one last point. Pushed. I gambled the momentum of the initial ...
— Question of Comfort • Les Collins

... hour when a bland custode assured us firmly it was not open to visitors. But Sir William's great height and bulk, aided by his pretty companion's self-will, simply carried us through the gates by their natural momentum. Father Ehrle was sent for and came, and we spent a triumphant and delightful hour. After all, one is not an ex-British Cabinet Minister for nothing. Sir William was perfectly civil to everybody, with a blinking smile like that of the Cheshire cat; but nothing stopped him. I laugh still at the ...
— A Writer's Recollections (In Two Volumes), Volume II • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... gathering momentum, swept past him, he stared about at the snow-covered station, the guard, the ...
— The Younger Set • Robert W. Chambers

... toward the brow of the rocks. It was not quite as easily handled as the other barrel, but his strength sufficed, and it was soon bounding down the declivity after its companion. The second cask hit the same rock as the first, whence it leaped off the precipice, and, aided by its greater momentum, it was literally dashed in ...
— Oak Openings • James Fenimore Cooper

... now changed. The mighty steamer, twice as long, and nearly four times as massive as the ship, surpasses the seas now, as it were, in magnitude and momentum, as well as in power. She not only triumphs over them in the contest of strength, but she towers above and overtops them in position. The billow can now no longer toss her up so lightly to the summit of its crest; nor, when the crest ...
— Rollo on the Atlantic • Jacob Abbott

... The momentum acquired by the piston (see Fig. 27) will cause it to travel upward a little further, and this upward travel of the division D will cause a compression of air to take place at the foot of the resonator or ...
— The Recent Revolution in Organ Building - Being an Account of Modern Developments • George Laing Miller

... since others in the world about him already possess that vice, and man is an imitative animal, it is quite probable that it will speedily manifest itself in him. This vice, however, belongs to the vehicles only and not to the man inside. In these vehicles its repetition may set up a momentum which is hard to conquer; but if the ego bestirs himself to create in himself the opposite virtue, the vice is cut off at its root, and can no longer exist—neither in this life nor in all the lives that ...
— A Textbook of Theosophy • C.W. Leadbeater

... instinctively that Yellowjacket would never have time to climb it before the team was upon them, and urged him to a lope. She glanced back again, saw that the team was not running away, that they were trying to hold the wagon, and that it was gaining momentum ...
— Sawtooth Ranch • B. M. Bower

... free boulder which had been a part of the untrammeled sea and land for centuries, but this lowly occupation was infinitely less trying than the fate which was awaiting. At the time the wharf was suggested, the idea that the rock was the actual landing-place of the first colonists had gained such momentum that a party was formed in its defense. An aged man, Thomas Faunce, was produced. He was ninety-five and confined to an armchair. He had not been born until twenty-six years after the landing of the Pilgrims; his father, whom ...
— The Old Coast Road - From Boston to Plymouth • Agnes Rothery

... can never have befallen of itself. According to one theory of the Universe, the momentum of Original Impress has been tending toward this far-off, divine event ever since a scrap of fire-mist flew from the solar centre to form our planet. Not this event alone, of course; but every occurrence, past and present, from the fall of captured ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy

... American ship. Now, between these different sets of people, having different ideas of the way to accomplish a thing, nothing is done; and that situation which exists so frequently regarding so many measures will exist forever, unless there is put behind the proposition a force that gives it a momentum to carry it over such obstacles. Put force enough behind it so that the gentlemen in the Senate and House of Representatives understand that they are going to be held responsible by the American people, ...
— Latin America and the United States - Addresses by Elihu Root • Elihu Root

... forward. One of his feet slipped, and one man groaned aloud. Then the sled lurched ahead in what appeared a rapid succession of jerks, though it never really came to a dead stop again...half an inch...an inch... two inches... The jerks perceptibly diminished; as the sled gained momentum, he caught them up, till it was ...
— The Call of the Wild • Jack London

... fiery cavalry had looked irresistible. It seemed to have in it momentum, audacity, and dash enough to break a square of infantry or carry a battery of artillery. The horses fairly flew; the riders had the air of centaurs, so firm and graceful was their seat; the long lances were brandished ...
— Overland • John William De Forest

... take his place. He said, no, he wasn't hurt, and Casey would laugh at him. Aye, Casey would have laughed! .... They are men. There are thousands of them. The U. P. R. goes on. It can't be stopped. It has the momentum of a great nation pushing it on from behind.... And I, who have lost all I cared for, and you, who are a drone among the bees, and Ruby and Stanton with their kind, poor creatures sucked into the vortex; yes, and that mob of leeches, ...
— The U.P. Trail • Zane Grey

... coming up had for a brief space flourished on the same social level. Mr. Crenshaw's rise in life, however, had been uninterrupted, while Mr. Yancy, wrapped in a philosophic calm and deeply averse to industry, had permitted the momentum imparted by a remote ancestor to carry him where it would, which was steadily away from that tempered prosperity his family had once boasted as members of ...
— The Prodigal Judge • Vaughan Kester

... I chose one as it rose behind me, and flung myself upon it. Up and up and still higher I went, carried by resistless momentum, and suddenly like a chip in a hurricane I was flung forward at a fearsome speed, through rushing chaos of wind and water, seeing the beach dashing ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien

... way soon. Suddenly there was a rending sound; the seam of the canvas ripped open and a gaping slit appeared, through which Cook's freed arm flapped wildly. Then the arm disappeared as the body to which it was attached gathered momentum; and when Miss Ropes appeared with a length of cord she was just in time to see her retainer return to the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Nov. 14, 1917 • Various

... the train reached the river; and such was its momentum, that, notwithstanding the bridge was burned, the engine and the first car leaped over the first pier in the stream, and the cars hung suspended. While this destruction was going on, Smith's division moved ...
— Three Years in the Sixth Corps • George T. Stevens

... twang of a bow-string, Mackenzie swept low to the ground, and a bonebarbed arrow passed over him into the breast of the Bear, whose momentum carried him over his crouching foe. The next instant Mackenzie was up and about. The bear lay motionless, but across the fire was the Shaman, drawing a second arrow. Mackenzie's knife leaped short in the air. He caught the heavy blade by the point. There was a flash of light as ...
— The Son of the Wolf • Jack London

... grass, resigned to fate. At such times the crests of the waves swept past her, like vapour in the atmosphere, and one unpractised would be apt to think the ship stationary, though in truth whirling along in company with a frightful momentum. ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper

... through all the changes of the strong disunion reaction which followed—was now again in the ascendant. But from this point it soon began to recede, descending slowly along an arc of which no eye can see the end, with a momentum that permits no prediction as to ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 3 No 3, March 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... the author made a spiritual discov- ery, the scientific evidence of which has accumulated to 380:24 prove that the divine Mind produces in man health, harmony, and immortality. Gradu- ally this evidence will gather momentum and clearness, 380:27 until it reaches its culmination of scientific statement and proof. Nothing is more disheartening than to believe that there is a power opposite to God, or good, and that 380:30 God endows ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy

... chaotic condition which cannot fitly be described by a feebler word than "horrible." The whole machinery of every-day life would be disabled. Hundreds of thousands of people would be thrown out of employment, and the whole momentum of the rapidly moving enormous mass of American daily life would receive a violent shock which would strain to its elastic limit every part ...
— The Navy as a Fighting Machine • Bradley A. Fiske

... resembling a spectral outline of a human form, standing on the water. At the next moment the sail was lowered, to prevent the Ark from passing the spot where the canoe lay. This last expedient, however, was not taken in time, for the momentum of so heavy a craft, and the impulsion of the air, soon set her by, bringing Hetty directly to windward, though still visible, as the change in the positions of the two boats now placed her in that species of milky way which ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper

... circumvented the rest. But even as the obstacle was passed, the coach dropped with an ominous lurch on one side, and the off fore wheel flew off in the darkness. Bill threw the horses back on their haunches; but, before their momentum could be checked, the near hind wheel slipped away, the vehicle rocked violently, plunged backwards and ...
— The Story of a Mine • Bret Harte

... popular assemblies, under pretences of dignity, or authority, or freedom, to shake off those moral riders which reason has appointed to govern every sort of rude power. These, in appearance loading them by their weight, do by that pressure augment their essential force. The momentum is increased by the extraneous weight. It is true in moral, as it is in mechanical science. It is true, not only in the draught, but in the race. These riders of the great, in effect, hold the reins which guide them in their course, and ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke

... source high up in the mountains of God, fed by a ceaseless supply. Only so can there be the purity, and the momentum that shall keep us pure, and keep us moving down in contact with men of the earth. And we must keep closer to the source than is the Rhone at Geneva, else the streams flowing alongside will unduly influence ...
— Quiet Talks on Service • S. D. Gordon

... sufficient momentum, the lad, after reaching the point where the rings would start on their backward flight, permitted his legs to slip through the rings, catching ...
— The Circus Boys on the Flying Rings • Edgar B. P. Darlington

... it down till I got hold of a part strong enough to check the progress of the log; but the current was so swift that I was nearly dragged from it. By twining my legs around the log, I held on till its momentum was overcome; and then I had no difficulty in drawing it in till the end touched the shore. After much persuasion I induced Sim to work himself along the stick till he reached the dry land; for we had passed beyond the greatest depression in the ...
— Down The River - Buck Bradford and His Tyrants • Oliver Optic

... coming up. Of these, 25,000 men might possibly, could they have been manoeuvred in the forest, have been sent to drive Jackson back. And, undoubtedly, to those who think more of numbers than of human nature, of the momentum of the mass rather than the mental equilibrium of the general, the fact that a superior force of comparatively fresh troops was at Hooker's disposal will be sufficient to put the success of the Confederates out of court. Yet the question will always suggest itself, would not ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson

... pencil. After that, he extended a foot and meditatively rubbed Duke's back with the side of his shoe. Creation, with Penrod, did not leap, full-armed, from the brain; but finally he began to produce. He wrote very slowly at first, and then with increasing rapidity; faster and faster, gathering momentum and growing more and more fevered as he sped, till at last the true fire came, without which no lamp of real literature ...
— Penrod • Booth Tarkington

... momentum of their rush carried them hopelessly far out, where they were again confused as to which way to go, and many were stuck in the mire which was concealed by the snow, except here and there an opening above a spring from which there issued a steaming vapor. The game scout and his valiant ...
— Indian Child Life • Charles A. Eastman

... well-considered obedience to all its varying humours. If the Sophists are partly the cause they are still more the effect of the social environment. They had discovered, had ascertained with much acuteness, the actual momentum of the society which maintained them, and they meant only, by regulating, to maintain it. Protagoras, the chief of Sophists, had avowedly applied to ethics the physics or metaphysics of Heraclitus. And now it was as if the disintegrating Heraclitean fire had taken hold on actual ...
— Plato and Platonism • Walter Horatio Pater

... a moderate degree of wisdom, will carry a man further than any amount of intellect without it. Energy makes the man of practical ability. It gives him VIS, force, MOMENTUM. It is the active motive power of character; and if combined with sagacity and self-possession, will enable a man to employ his powers to the best advantage in all ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles

... by developing three recurring motifs: the deepening mystery of Nemo's past life and future intentions, the mounting tension between Nemo and hot-tempered harpooner Ned Land, and Ned's ongoing schemes to escape from the Nautilus. These unifying threads tighten the narrative and accelerate its momentum. ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne

... earth, of given weight, moving with given momentum in a given path, and under given conditions in every respect, to find itself at any one time conditioned in all these respects as it was conditioned at some past moment; then it must move exactly in the same path as the one it took when at the beginning ...
— Unconscious Memory • Samuel Butler

... Committee and its organ would not rebuke the schismatics, he was moved to rebuke the Executive Committee and its organ for their "blind and temporizing policy." And so matters within the movement against slavery went, with increasing momentum, from bad ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke

... power of producing what it knows as motion. And when the mind does infer this, no logic on earth is able to touch the inference; the position of pure idealism is beyond the reach of argument. Nevertheless, it is opposed to the whole momentum of science. For if mind is supposed, on no matter how small a scale, to be a cause of motion, the fundamental axiom of science is impugned. This fundamental axiom is that energy can neither be created nor destroyed—that just as motion can produce nothing ...
— Mind and Motion and Monism • George John Romanes

... no women, only a few men, had ventured forth, and the sound of the enemy's horses and shouting were still in the air. Susannah rose up, folding in her arms the body of the child; the momentum of her first intention was upon her will and muscles; she moved straight on toward the place where ...
— The Mormon Prophet • Lily Dougall

... when once a play has begun to move, its movement ought to proceed continuously, and with gathering momentum; or, if it stands still for a space, the stoppage ought to be deliberate and purposeful. It is fatal when the author thinks it is moving, while in fact it is only revolving on its ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer

... shown in the following case. In the summer of 1870, a single shell, while being rowed at full speed, with the current, on one of our principal rivers, was run into to the stone abutment of a bridge. The bow struck squarely on to obstacle, and such was the momentum of the mass that the oarsman was thrown directly through the flaring bow of the cockpit into the river. Witnesses of the accident who were familiar with wooden shells declared that the boat was ruined; but, after a careful examination, ...
— Voyage of The Paper Canoe • N. H. Bishop

... go far. With its first contact with the water a great crack split the night air; and a little further, the ship split into hundreds of small pieces, all of which slid along the surface of the water until, their momentum lost, they came to a stop and slowly sank from view. A dozen figures were left threshing on the surface; but one by one they disappeared, till there were only four left. Then one of the ...
— Astounding Stories, July, 1931 • Various

... literature. He united, remarkably, simplicity of character with brilliancy of talk. For instance, with all his success, he never sought higher society than that which he found himself gradually and by a natural momentum borne into, as he advanced. He never suppressed a flash of indignant sarcasm for fear of startling the "genteel" classes and Mrs. Grundy. He never aped aristocracy in his household. He would go to a tavern for his oysters and a glass of punches simply as they did in Ben Jonson's ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various

... rustled gorgeously down the steps, followed by Frances, wearing her aunt's embroidered red flannel petticoat. Unfortunately, Frank's heels caught in this, as she too strutted worldward, and down she fell, bumping from step to step, gaining momentum as she bumped, and threatening to roll clear down to Taylor Street, and so on down, down into the canon, if she had not bumped safely at last into the twins. They, hearing her coming, had turned their backs and joined hands, and catching hold of the shaky banister ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson

... bandit's face turned a dirty white; his jaw dropped; he would have shrieked if Gale had not hit him. The blow swept him backward against his men. Then Gale's heavy body, swiftly following with the momentum of that rush, struck the little group of rebels. They went down with table and ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey

... received such momentum that it was impossible to close it on Monday. It was put in charge of brethren who were not immediately needed at the Conference, and was continued nearly ...
— Thirty Years in the Itinerancy • Wesson Gage Miller

... horse would have walked out of the door. And if such be the irresistible power of the locomotive engine when feebly walking in its new-born state, unattended or unassisted even by its tender, is it not appalling to reflect what must be its momentum when, in the full vigour of its life, it is flying down a steep gradient at the rate of 50 miles an hour, backed up by, say, 30 passenger carriages, each weighing on an average 5.5 tons? If ordinary houses could suddenly be placed in its path, it would, passengers and all, run through ...
— Railway Adventures and Anecdotes - extending over more than fifty years • Various

... him," thought Tom, grimly, as he let the airship run down the straight road a short distance on the bicycle wheels, to give it momentum enough so that ...
— Tom Swift and his Photo Telephone • Victor Appleton

... evolution, probably some unknowable factor. The four factors of Osborn—heredity, ontogeny, environment, selection—play upon and modify endlessly the new form when it is started, but what about the original start? Whence comes this inborn momentum, this evolutionary send-off? What or who set the whole ...
— Time and Change • John Burroughs

... of the vis inertiae, for example, seems to be identical in physics and metaphysics. It is not more true in the former, that a large body is with more difficulty set in motion than a smaller one, and that its subsequent momentum is commensurate with this difficulty, than it is, in the latter, that intellects of the vaster capacity, while more forcible, more constant, and more eventful in their movements than those of inferior grade, are yet the less readily moved, and more embarrassed and full of hesitation ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... learn the office routine without understanding the business, like all the other sons; and the firm would go on by its own momentum until the real Undershaft—probably an Italian or a German—would invent a new method and cut ...
— Major Barbara • George Bernard Shaw

... what bade fair to be a soliloquy becomes a dialogue, a dialogue between the old self that committed the murder and the new self that begins to revolt at it. The old self bids him follow the line of least resistance and go on as he has begun; the newly awakened self bids him stop at once, check the momentum of other days, take this last chance, and be a man. His better nature wins. Markheim finds that though his deeds have been uniformly evil, he can still "conceive great deeds, renunciations, martyrdoms." Though the active love of good seems too weak ...
— Short Stories Old and New • Selected and Edited by C. Alphonso Smith

... fell with increased force, and derived additional impetus from their very weight. The vessels of observation, and even the lighter kind of barks, which went out through the spaces left under the flooring, which formed a communication between the ships, were at first run down by the mere momentum and bulk of the ships of war; and afterwards they proved a hindrance to the troops appointed to keep the enemy off; for as they mixed with the ships of the enemy, they were frequently under the necessity of withholding their weapons for fear, by a misdirected effort, ...
— History of Rome, Vol III • Titus Livius

... will coil round the stick according to the direction of the swinging movement; so it is with a twining plant, a line of growth travelling round the free part of the shoot causing it to bend towards the opposite side, and this replaces the momentum of the free ...
— The Movements and Habits of Climbing Plants • Charles Darwin

... of the highest development, for the note flight produces indicates the extraordinary rapidity of the wing vibrations. Some swift-flying insects are said to make about eight hundred down strokes of the wing per second. This big fair fellow's machinery may not be equipped for such marvellous momentum, but the high key that he sounds under certain circumstances indicates rare force and speed. No library of reference is available. The specific scientific title of the insect cannot therefore be supplied. Possibly it does not yet possess ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield

... human imagination to conceive its dire reality. Suppose that we could see the huge planets and the ponderous stars whirling their terrific masses with awful, and if it might be so, clamorous velocity, and thundering through the fields of unresisting space with furious gigantic momentum, such as the mighty avalanche most feebly figures, and thus describing with chafing eccentricities and frightful deflections, their mighty centre-seeking and centre-flying circles, we should behold in the nakedness of its tremendous operations the ...
— The Education of Catholic Girls • Janet Erskine Stuart

... Spaniards and Portuguese, swelled the Grand Army to a total of 600,000 men. Nor was this all. Austria and Prussia sent their contingents, amounting in all to 50,000 men, to guard Napoleon's flanks on the side of Volhynia and Courland. And this mighty mass, driven on by Napoleon's will, gained a momentum which was to carry its main ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose

... are not fully aware of being behind the times, and probably in many respects they no longer are so; only there is that queer mental attitude giving its bias to their view of life. Although very feebly now, still the momentum derived from a forgotten cult carries ...
— Change in the Village • (AKA George Bourne) George Sturt

... absolute coercion, an interested clutch of the old woman's respectability. There was response, to Maisie's view, I may say at once, in the jump of that respectability to its feet: it was itself capable of one of the leaps, one of the bounds just mentioned, and it carried its charge, with this momentum and while Mrs. Beale popped into Sir Claude's chamber, straight away to where, at the end of the passage, pupil and governess were quartered. The greatest stride of all, for that matter, was that within a few seconds the pupil had, in another relation, been converted into a daughter. ...
— What Maisie Knew • Henry James

... were hot after the business methods of many organizers. Fear, founded on a tardy awakening to facts, declared itself, but spasmodically, for now and again the great captains of finance and industry were trying to save the situation. They successfully aided whatever of momentum there was in general business. But Congressional activity as to any combinations in restraint of trade was unabated. It called upon the President for such information as the Interstate Commerce Commission might have as ...
— A Brief History of Panics • Clement Juglar

... of a group. Such is the crowd that gathers in a moment of excitement and yields to a momentary passion to lynch a prisoner, or a revolutionary mob that loots and burns out of a sheer desire for destruction. Such a group has not even the value of a safety-valve, for its passion gathers momentum as it goes, and, like a conflagration, it cannot be stopped until it has burned itself out or met a ...
— Society - Its Origin and Development • Henry Kalloch Rowe

... the bush-cow bore down. Twenty yards from the motionless man the brute lowered its head. In that position its vision was obscured by the thick tufts of long hair. Having taken its final "sighting position" the animal relied upon its momentum to achieve the destruction of its ...
— Wilmshurst of the Frontier Force • Percy F. Westerman

... was used in connection with the propelling lever, which was provided with a pawl to fit into the teeth of the reversed ratchet wheel on its forward movement. It was thus made impossible for either dial to go by momentum beyond its limit. Learning that Doctor Laws, with the skilful aid of F. L. Pope, was already active in the same direction, Mr. Callahan, with ready wit, transformed his indicator into a "ticker" that would make a printed ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin

... off!" Jack had called as they neared the dock, and the Dixie, with trailing rope, ran up to it under her own momentum, while the other craft swung off into the darkness, the boys calling ...
— The Motor Girls on Crystal Bay - The Secret of the Red Oar • Margaret Penrose

... in the University's history, a struggle which was in every way a loss, in prestige and internal unity even more than financially. That the growth and development of the institution continued almost unabated through these years proves the fundamental strength and momentum attained by the University in less ...
— The University of Michigan • Wilfred Shaw

... in Rumania. The Russian corps arriving on the installment plan were swept away by the momentum of the advancing enemy, who could not be halted until the fortified line ...
— World's War Events, Vol. II • Various

... Clausewitz, victory can only be ensured by the creation in peace of an organisation which will bring every available man, horse, and gun (or ship and gun, if the war be on the sea) in the shortest possible time, and with the utmost possible momentum, upon the decisive field of action—which in turn leads to the final doctrine formulated by Von der Goltz in excuse for the action of the ...
— On War • Carl von Clausewitz

... GDP by more than 20%. Economic reforms, launched by the new democratic government in 1991, are aimed at developing the private sector and attracting foreign investment to diversify the economy. Prospects for 2002 depend heavily on the maintenance of aid flows, remittances, and the momentum of ...
— The 2002 CIA World Factbook • US Government

... by water what the fire has spared. It smothers, but does not deluge; the modicum of water used to give momentum to the gas is soon evaporated by the heat, doing little or no damage to what is below. This feature of the engine is of incalculable worth to ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 358, November 11, 1882 • Various

... until the chief had taken his place at the head of the procession. It now became plain that his was the task of using the mysterious nogock, over whose loss he had seemed so concerned. Even as his bidarka shot forward with its own momentum, he drew out from the forward hatch this sacred instrument and fitted to it the short harpoon. He made over the weapon some mysterious passes with one hand, and as he fitted the harpoon or heavy dart to the throwing-stick he blew three times on the ...
— The Young Alaskans • Emerson Hough

... first time, she realized how great is the momentum which centuries of intelligence and freedom give to the mind of the learner—how unconscious is the acquisition of the great bulk of that knowledge which goes to make up the Caucasian manhood of ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee

... abandoning its first aloofness, rapidly took into itself a large part of the French (originally Latin) vocabulary; and under the influence of the French it carried much farther the process of dropping its own comparatively complicated grammatical inflections—a process which had already gained much momentum even before the Conquest. This absorption of the French was most fortunate for English. To the Anglo-Saxon vocabulary—vigorous, but harsh, limited in extent, and lacking in fine discriminations and power of abstract expression, was now added nearly the ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher

... to the place; the entrance was bolted. Despair gave the miserable father the strength of ten men; he rushed against the door with such violence that it gave way before the momentum of his weight and force. The cottage was empty, but bore marks of recent habitation: there was fire on the hearth, a kettle, and some preparation for food. As he eagerly gazed around for something that might confirm his hope that his child yet lived, although in the power of those strange ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... at a walk, then trots, and only gains its great momentum within a few yards of the enemy. This cavalry started at top speed, and never lost it until it buried itself into the advancing Turks as an avalanche bursts into a forest! No human enemy could ever have withstood that charge. Many of the horses ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy

... a super-consumers' league, a super-advertising club—will converge these two ideas into a huge momentum, into a national organized drive or vision of making men see together and act together, until we work out social democracy in every man's business, in every man's store, and the daily work of every man's life. Programs which have merely been yearned at before, ...
— The Ghost in the White House • Gerald Stanley Lee

... "I'll do the talking—that's just the kind of stuff you'rre trying to put overr on President Wilson, too—tryin' to make the otherr fellerr think he's licked and then making believe you'rre willing to be generous. You got the nerrve (the R's fairly rolled and rumbled as he gathered momentum)—you got the nerrve to come herre with out any guns or sworrds and things and think you can scarre us. Do you know—shut up!" he shot at Tom by way of precaution. "Do you know wherre I think yourr sworrds and things arre? ...
— Tom Slade with the Boys Over There • Percy K. Fitzhugh

... Slender chains of brass, "And nets, and traps he form'd; so wonderous fine, "They mock'd the power of sight: for far less fine, "The smallest thread the distaff forms; or line, "Spun by the spider, pendent from the roof. "Curious he form'd it; at the lightest touch "It yielded; each momentum, slight howe'er, "Caus'd its recession: this he artful hung, "The couch enfolding. When the faithless wife, "And paramour upon the bed embrac'd, "Both in the lewd conjunction were ensnar'd; "Caught by the husband's skill, whose art the chains "In novel form had ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid

... morning, midday or sunset rambles, and often dominate the landscape in a way I never before thought of—fill the long lane, not by scores or hundreds only, but by thousands. Large and vivacious and swift, with wonderful momentum and a loud swelling, perpetual hum, varied now and then by something almost like a shriek, they dart to and fro, in rapid flashes, chasing each other, and (little things as they are,) conveying to me a new ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman

... lump of gold be thrown into the vessel—motion and disturbance of figure exactly proportional to the momentum of the gold will take place. But after a time the effects of this disturbance will subside—equilibrium will be restored, and the water will ...
— Lay Sermons, Addresses and Reviews • Thomas Henry Huxley

... impetus to a featherweight; for, instead of speeding on its way and hitting its mark with effect, it will soon fall to the ground, having expended what little energy was given to it, and possessing no mass of its own to be the vehicle of momentum. So it is with great and noble thoughts, nay, with the very masterpieces of genius, when there are none but little, weak, and perverse minds to appreciate them,—a fact which has been deplored by a chorus of ...
— The Essays Of Arthur Schopenhauer: The Wisdom of Life • Arthur Schopenhauer

... of action. Who inquires whether momentum comes from mass or velocity? But velocity has this advantage; it ...
— Autumn Leaves - Original Pieces in Prose and Verse • Various

... the eyes with a rifle-ball, pitched forward lifeless, and with the momentum of his charge slid along the ground. Fairfax came back to himself. His comrades, those that lived, had been swept far back among the trees beyond. He could hear the fierce "Hia! Hia!" of the hunters as they closed in and cut and thrust with their weapons of bone and ivory. The ...
— Children of the Frost • Jack London

... are put in truckle-carts? 'If not, any of her Southern friends could have told her.' We can tell her; 'we have lived at the South.' These white boys were sent on an errand with their cart, and to increase its momentum down hill, and, withal, to tease and worry a fellow-creature, with a skin not colored like their own, they made this poor slave-boy get in. She should have seen the poor creature trudging home, up hill, under a Southern sun, after ...
— The Sable Cloud - A Southern Tale With Northern Comments (1861) • Nehemiah Adams

... them, over the barricades—the momentum of their charge, the mere machine-strength of their combined action, swept them on. Our thin line could fight, but it had not weight enough to oppose to this momentum. It was pushed behind the guns. Right on came the Rebels. ...
— Three Years in the Federal Cavalry • Willard Glazier

... obeyed, clinging tightly to the knotted rope. She saw him give the sled a violent push and jump aboard. It started down the incline, gathering momentum at a dreadful rate. In twenty seconds it was rushing onward like a cannon-ball raising the snow and shrieking as it went.... The speed eventually decreased. They passed the frozen lake and made for Linderman, Jim dragging the sled and Angela pushing ...
— Colorado Jim • George Goodchild

... the state of the case: Matter attracts matter directly as the mass, and inversely as the squares of the distances. This law is derived from the planetary motions; space is, consequently, a void; and, therefore, the power which gives mechanical momentum to matter, is transferred from one end of creation to the other, without any physical medium to convey the impulse. At the present day the doctrines of Descartes are considered absurd; yet here is an absurdity of a far deeper dye, without we resort to the miraculous, which at once obliterates the ...
— Outlines of a Mechanical Theory of Storms - Containing the True Law of Lunar Influence • T. Bassnett

... vaster area of struggle—into which a brigade had marched, held its own, been beaten back, recovered its ground, and pursuing, had passed out of it forever, leaving only its dead behind, and knowing nothing more of that struggle than its own impact and momentum—even this wild excitement had long since evaporated with the stinging smoke of gunpowder, the acrid smell of burning rags from the clothing of a dead soldier fired by a bursting shell, or the heated reek of sweat and leather. ...
— Clarence • Bret Harte

... plea that all tribes and races have their infancy, youth, age, and decay, with extinction as their final lot, but it has been repeated so often in the history of the human race that one may assume it to be almost, if not quite, universal. The momentum of racial power gained by biological heredity and social achievement, reaches its limit when it can no longer adapt itself to new conditions, with the final end ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar

... the young man had given way and been fought down. This time he stood his ground. As his opponent rushed in he met him with a tremendous straight hit from his left hand, delivered with the full force of his body, and doubled in effect by the momentum of the charge. So stunning was the concussion that the pugilist himself recoiled from it across the grassy ring. The amateur staggered back and leaned his shoulder on a tree-trunk, his hand ...
— The Last Galley Impressions and Tales - Impressions and Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle

... The momentum had carried the boat to the far edge of the pool, and Henry sprang out. His muscles were so stiff and sore that, for a moment or two, he reeled, but he seized a bough and held fast. Then Tom tossed him a rope from the locker and in a minute the boat was ...
— The Border Watch - A Story of the Great Chief's Last Stand • Joseph A. Altsheler

... a brief swing on the frail strip of canvas. As it finally tore free in his hand, Andy dropped it. He had got his momentum, however. It was to swing sideways and down. The next instant Andy was at the side of Thacher. One hand caught and held to a rope of the trapeze. There Andy anchored, resting one knee on the ...
— Andy the Acrobat • Peter T. Harkness

... no idea how the weight of this sack assists me in escaping, by increasing my momentum," said the one who carried the plunder; ...
— Cobwebs From an Empty Skull • Ambrose Bierce (AKA: Dod Grile)

... that time, had produced no positive result. And here, for the sake of younger inquirers, if not for the sake of us all, it is worth while to dwell for a moment on a power which Faraday possessed in an extraordinary degree. He united vast strength with perfect flexibility. His momentum was that of a river, which combines weight and directness with the ability to yield to the flexures of its bed. The intentness of his vision in any direction did not apparently diminish his power of perception in other ...
— Faraday As A Discoverer • John Tyndall

... she fluffed up her bang with her hat-pin. She drew up a second cosey rocking-chair near her aunt's, drew out her needle and crochet-work, and as the steel hook flashed in and out, her tongue soon acquired its accustomed momentum. ...
— Other Things Being Equal • Emma Wolf

... be, it was not often the formidable brute was so quickly dispatched; for he would sometimes seize the spear in his powerful teeth, and nip it off like a reed, or, coming full tilt on his enemy, by his momentum and weight bear him to the earth, ripping up, with a horrid gash, his leg or side, and before the writhing hunter could draw his knife, the infuriated beast would plunge his snout in the wound, and rip, with savage teeth, ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton

... this profound principle really is. Were I to give it the old name I should call it the law of the conservation of areas; the more modern writers, however, speak of it as the conservation of moment of momentum, an expression which exhibits the nature of the principle in ...
— Time and Tide - A Romance of the Moon • Robert S. (Robert Stawell) Ball

... The wind sang in their ears and sharp particles of snow flew up to sting their faces. Zip! they had taken one hill, and the gallant bobsled gathered momentum. Betty clung tightly ...
— Betty Gordon at Boarding School - The Treasure of Indian Chasm • Alice Emerson

... a huge boulder on the slope. The stone rocked but did not fall. Again the lad exerted himself until his muscles cracked under the strain. The boulder tottered for a moment and then rolled down the slope, gathering momentum as it rolled. It was deflected from the direct line of the female's attack, but a smaller stone it dislodged struck her on the shoulder and knocked ...
— B. C. 30,000 • Sterner St. Paul Meek

... comings-to that betoken the tranquil mind after a good rest, but a return to consciousness with every warlike tendency in his being aroused to the highest pitch. Jack had passed the ball with considerable momentum on to the mantel-piece, which sent it backward on the rebound to no less a feature than the ...
— The Booming of Acre Hill - And Other Reminiscences of Urban and Suburban Life • John Kendrick Bangs

... had been then in power, the history of the civil revolt might have been different. But the force that will arrest the first slow revolution of a wheel cannot stand before it when, by unchecked velocity, it has acquired a destructive momentum. The measures which might have secured repression in November would only ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine

... thing had started. It was as when a man idly throws a pebble into a chasm, or shoves a bit of ice with the toe of his boot, and starts a snow-slide that grows as it goes. He had started this avalanche of money, and now it rushed on of its own momentum, plunging, rolling, leaping, crashing, and as it swept on it gathered rocks, trees, stones, houses, everything that lay in its way. It was beyond the power of human hand to stop this tumbling, roaring slide. In the midst of it sat Nathan Haynes, deafened, ...
— Fanny Herself • Edna Ferber

... the Red River Ox-Cart. It was a vehicle made of wood, save for the linch-pins. The wheels were enormous, some being ten feet in diameter. It was Kittson's theory that if you could make your wheel high enough it would eliminate friction and run of its own momentum. The wheels were made by boring and pinning plank on plank, criss-cross, and then chalking off with a string from the center. Then you sawed out your ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 11 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Businessmen • Elbert Hubbard

... to a physical or to a mental agent, and is either aimless or directed. If directed, it shows tendency. The tendency may or may not be resisted. If not, we call the activity immanent, as when a body moves in empty space by its momentum, or our thoughts wander at their own sweet will. If resistance is met, its agent complicates the situation. If now, in spite of resistance, the original tendency continues, effort makes its appearance, and along with effort, strain or ...
— A Pluralistic Universe - Hibbert Lectures at Manchester College on the - Present Situation in Philosophy • William James

... momentum, energy, mass are not mere abstract expressions of the results of scientific inquiry. They are words of power, which stir their souls like ...
— Five of Maxwell's Papers • James Clerk Maxwell

... this great institution that it ran smoothly and without apparent loss of momentum for the nine months out of the twelve, during the greater part of which he was obliged to be absent raising the funds with which to keep it going. The Institute is in continuous session throughout the twelve ...
— Booker T. Washington - Builder of a Civilization • Emmett J. Scott and Lyman Beecher Stowe

... no stronger than tens of thousands who have, by this practice, been overthrown. No young man in our cities can escape being tempted. Beware of the first beginnings! This road is a down-grade, and every instant increases the momentum. Launch not upon this treacherous sea. Split hulks strew the beach. Everlasting storms howl up and down, tossing the unwary crafts into the Hell-gate. I speak of what I have seen with my own eyes. I have looked off into the abyss ...
— The Abominations of Modern Society • Rev. T. De Witt Talmage

... into the laws of nature and into the arts of civilized life, and we have the further satisfaction of remembering that as year after year flows by, and your population increases, all those beneficial influences will acquire additional strength and momentum. I hope you are duly grateful to him to whom, under Providence, you are indebted for all these benefits, and that when you contrast your own condition, the peace in which you live, the comforts that surround you, the decency of your habitation, when you see your ...
— Metlakahtla and the North Pacific Mission • Eugene Stock

... is understood by him as something which fulfills itself. He calls his country, not only the Land of Promise, but the Land of Destiny. It is fairly launched on a brilliant and successful career, the continued prosperity of which is prophesied by the very momentum of its advance. As Mr. H.G. Wells says in "The Future in America," "When one talks to an American of his national purpose, he seems a little at a loss; if one speaks of his national destiny, he responds with alacrity." The great majority of Americans would expect a book written about "The ...
— The Promise Of American Life • Herbert David Croly

... began to pass from the Asiatic to the European. During that time Europe produced no generals or conquerors able to stand comparison with Selim and Solyman, Baber and Akbar. Then the European advance gathered momentum; until at the present time peoples of European blood hold dominion over all America and Australia and the islands of the sea, over most of Africa, and the major half of Asia. Much of this world conquest is merely political, and such a conquest ...
— African and European Addresses • Theodore Roosevelt

... stronger grows the wish to live. And why not? When the circle is almost ended, and all the momentum of threescore-and-ten is gained, why not pass the line and enter into second childhood? What more beautiful truth in Nature's I Am, than ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 44, June, 1861 • Various

... when the train bearing Black Bruin's van pulled out. One by one the cars bumped over the switch and the long train got under way. At first the locomotive puffed and panted as though the load were too great for it, but finally the train got up momentum and the car-wheels sang their old song of rat-a-clat-rat-a-clat-rat-a-tat-tat, while the engine assumed its ...
— Black Bruin - The Biography of a Bear • Clarence Hawkes

... of the practices of a virile race of some five hundred millions of people who have an unimpaired inheritance moving with the momentum acquired through four thousand years; a people morally and intellectually strong, mechanically capable, who are awakening to a utilization of all the possibilities which science and invention during recent ...
— Farmers of Forty Centuries - or, Permanent Agriculture in China, Korea and Japan • F. H. King

... chosen peace; it had been thrust upon them. The Hirlaji had been at the height of their power, their growth still gathering momentum ... and they had to stifle it. The end in view didn't really matter: it had not been what they would have chosen. And, having had peace forced upon them before they had been ready for it, they had been unable to enjoy it; and the ...
— Warlord of Kor • Terry Gene Carr

... expanded to a considerable height, might then contract its balloons and let the air into its frame, and by an adjustment of its weights slide down the air in any desired direction. As it fell it would accumulate velocity and at the same time lose weight, and the momentum accumulated by its down-rush could be utilised by means of a shifting of its weights to drive it up in the air again as the balloons expanded. This conception, which is still the structural conception of all ...
— Twelve Stories and a Dream • H. G. Wells

... have just described is the great river of Odd-Fellowship, and flows into the vast ocean of eternal peace, and such is the momentum and indestructibility of Odd-Fellowship, that, like a great river fed from inexhaustible sources, men may come and men may go, but it goes on forever ...
— The Jericho Road • W. Bion Adkins

... cruelties in Ireland, or his impatient slurring over of the most sinister riddle in the morality of Frederick the Great—these passages are, one must frankly say, disingenuous. But it is, so to speak, a generous disingenuousness; the heat and momentum of sincere admirations, not the shuffling fear and flattery of the constitutional or patriotic historian. It bears most resemblance to the incurable prejudices ...
— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton

... two wood jetties. Inside a small square harbour showed, but there was no room to round up properly and no time to lower sails. Davies just threw the kedge over, and it just got a grip in time to check our momentum and save our bowsprit from the quayside. A man threw us a rope and we brought up alongside, ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers

... raises a chant which all the army takes up in unison. Then they advance. With rapid and measured step, to the sound of the flute, with lance couched and buckler before the body, they meet the enemy in dense array, overwhelm him by their mass and momentum, throw him into rout, and only check themselves to avoid breaking the phalanx. So long as they remain together each is protected by his neighbor and all form an impenetrable mass on which the enemy could secure no hold. These were rude tactics, but sufficient to overcome ...
— History Of Ancient Civilization • Charles Seignobos

... where it belongs. Don't go trying to touch that switch. Aw, be sensible! What would you do if the car did stop? I could blackjack you both before this swell-elegant vehickle lost momentum, savvy? I don't want to pay out my good money to a lawyer on a charge of—murder. Get me? Better take it easy and not worry." His hand was constantly on the wheel. He had driven cars before. He was steering as much as she. ...
— Free Air • Sinclair Lewis

... wind on the mesa, a sliding current of cooler air going down the face of the mountain of its own momentum, but not to disturb the silence of great space. Passing the wide mouths of canons, one gets the effect of whatever is doing in them, openly or behind a screen of cloud,—thunder of falls, wind in the ...
— The Land Of Little Rain • Mary Hunter Austin

... life to one who had reached sixty years of age, and cared only to reap in peace such harvest as these sixty years had yielded. He had reason to be more than content with it. Since 1864 he had felt no such sense of power and momentum, and had seen no such number of personal friends wielding it. The sense of solidarity counts for much in one's contentment, but the sense of winning one's game counts for more; and in London, in 1898, the scene was singularly interesting ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams

... we were scarcely ever overmatched, and he was the better man of the two. He rolled a slow, insinuating ball. It appeared to amble aimlessly down the alley, threatening to stop or to sidle off into the gutter for repose. But it generally had enough momentum and direction to reach the centre pin quartering, which thereupon, with its nine brothers, seemed suddenly smitten with the panic so dear to the bowler's heart. I never knew another bowler so quick to discover the tricks and peculiarities of an alley or so crafty to master and ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson

... his wife's summons in time to meet the convict Lewis, still manacled, as he rushed into the passage at the back of the house and dashed out again at the front. Browne attempted to arrest his flight, crying out, as he made an effort to seize him, "Stop, you old villain, or I'll kill you!" But the momentum of the flying figure rendered Browne's grasp ineffectual, and in a moment he was out of doors, just as Bob and Jocko and the other servants entered the passage in ...
— Duffels • Edward Eggleston

... once, if nature had wanted that only; she might have blown the feathers up with the hot air of the breath, till the bird rose in air like a cork in water. But it has to be, not a buoyant cork, but a buoyant bullet. And therefore that it may have momentum for pace, it must have weight to carry; and to carry that weight, the wings must deliver their blow with effective vertical, as ...
— Love's Meinie - Three Lectures on Greek and English Birds • John Ruskin

... engines of a transatlantic liner, and with one spring I rose smoothly and swiftly, and as straight as an arrow, surmounting the giant's foot, passing his knee and attaining nearly to the level of his hip. Then I felt that the momentum of my leap was exhausted, and despite my efforts I slowly turned head downward, glancing in affright at the ground a quarter of a mile below me, on which I expected to be dashed to pieces. But a moment's thought convinced me that I should get no hurt, for with so slight a force of gravity ...
— Other Worlds - Their Nature, Possibilities and Habitability in the Light of the Latest Discoveries • Garrett P. Serviss



Words linked to "Momentum" :   forcefulness, impulse, strength, force, physical property



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