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Phosphorus   /fˈɑsfərəs/   Listen
Phosphorus

noun
(pl. phosphori)
1.
A multivalent nonmetallic element of the nitrogen family that occurs commonly in inorganic phosphate rocks and as organic phosphates in all living cells; is highly reactive and occurs in several allotropic forms.  Synonyms: atomic number 15, P.
2.
A planet (usually Venus) seen just before sunrise in the eastern sky.  Synonyms: daystar, Lucifer, morning star.






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"Phosphorus" Quotes from Famous Books



... be Will-o'-the-Wisp, and a plump, spooky sprite she made with dabs of phosphorus upon her fluttering black cambric costume, and funny peaked cap, which glowed uncannily when the room was darkened. She carried a little electric bulb lantern which unexpectedly flashed its ...
— A Dixie School Girl • Gabrielle E. Jackson

... were craning from far seats. Her bulk and her shadow effaced the man beside her. He seemed to cower a little. At eight the show began, and Mrs. Egg felt darkness as a blessing, although the shimmer from the screen ran like phosphorus over the bald head, and a flash of white between two parts of the advertisement showed the dark ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various

... not be a mine: it might just as well be a match-factory, with yellow phosphorus, phossy jaw, a large dividend, and plenty of clergymen shareholders. Or it might be a whitelead factory, or a chemical works, or a pottery, or a railway shunting yard, or a tailoring shop, or a little gin-sodden laundry, or a bakehouse, or a big shop, or any other of the places where human ...
— The Perfect Wagnerite - A Commentary on the Niblung's Ring • George Bernard Shaw

... a short, red-faced man, was tightly belted in at the waist, his red hair was cropped quite close to his head, and in certain lights he almost looked as if he had been rubbed over with phosphorus. He had lost two front teeth one night, though he could not quite remember how, and this sometimes made him speak unintelligibly, and he had a bald patch on top of his head surrounded by a fringe of curly, bright golden hair, which made ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant

... will have more fire. Next to the divine unction, the minister needs blood; and he cannot make that out of tough leather. One reason why the apostles preached so powerfully was that they had healthy food. Fish was cheap along Galilee, and this, with unbolted bread, gave them plenty of phosphorus for brain food. These early ministers were never invited out to late suppers, with chicken salad and doughnuts. Nobody ever embroidered slippers for the big foot of Simon Peter, the fisherman preacher. Tea parties, with hot waffles, at ten o'clock at night, make namby-pamby ...
— Around The Tea-Table • T. De Witt Talmage

... Russia, Norway, Sweden, and Canada, and nothing that we know in regard to iron gives us any reason to suppose that any thing of the kind ever will happen. But here, again, every thing turns upon the quality of the iron. Iron containing phosphorus is "cold-short," or brittle when cold, and will break quicker under repeated and sudden shocks in cold weather than when it is warm. With good iron, properly used, we need have no fear on this point. The securing such iron is a matter to which the utmost attention is paid ...
— Bridge Disasters in America - The Cause and the Remedy • George L. Vose

... the emerald passes rapidly into a whitish vesicular glass, and with borax it forms a fine green glass, while its sub-species, the beryl, changes into a colorless bead: with salt of phosphorus it slowly ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XI, No. 27, June, 1873 • Various

... nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, conjunctions, prepositions and pronouns, arranging them with the same free hand, the same innocent joy, the same superb skill and discretion with which the late Jahveh arranged carbon, nitrogen, sulphur, hydrogen, oxygen and phosphorus in the sublime form of the human carcass. He, too, has his jokes. He knows the arch effect of a strange touch; his elaborate pedantries correspond almost exactly to the hook noses, cock eyes, outstanding ears and undulating Adam's apples which give so ...
— The Line of Love - Dizain des Mariages • James Branch Cabell

... I'm pointing with my gun, Paul, and you can see two yellow balls shining like phosphorus. Those are his eyes and if I aim right between them ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts Snowbound - A Tour on Skates and Iceboats • George A. Warren

... glared in hideous contrast to the blue though brackish water; but now night lent its ugliness a strange disguise. All the faint twilight that remained glimmered on the gloss of its surface like phosphorus in the palm of a negro's hand; and as Nick passed on toward the town, stars shone out in its dark mirror. He could hear the thick splash of the gusher that rose and fell, like the beating of a giant's heart, and from the brightly lighted ...
— The Port of Adventure • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson

... elements; and to study these has been the joint work of chemists and physiologists, till at last every constituent of the body is known and classified. Many as these constituents are, they are all resolved into the simple elements, oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, and carbon, while a little sulphur, a little phosphorus, lime, chlorine, sodium, &c., ...
— The Easiest Way in Housekeeping and Cooking - Adapted to Domestic Use or Study in Classes • Helen Campbell

... phenomenon of phosphorescence in organic forms, whether living or dead, appears also to be due to a process of oxidation, but one that goes on much more slowly than in the case of a lighted candle. It is thus more closely analogous to what is observed in the element phosphorus itself, which owes its name (meaning "light-bearer") to the fact that when exposed to the air at ordinary temperatures it glows in the dark, in consequence of its becoming ...
— Young Folks' Library, Volume XI (of 20) - Wonders of Earth, Sea and Sky • Various

... fat, carbohydrate, and vitamins, there are other elements which the body requires to maintain chemical equilibrium, and for the proper maintenance of organic functions. These are the fruit and vegetable acids and inorganic salts, especially lime, phosphorus, and iron. These substances are usually supplied, in ample amounts, in a mixed diet, containing a variety of fruits and vegetables and an adequate amount of milk and cream. Potatoes, feared by some in acid condition (such as gout), are ...
— How to Live - Rules for Healthful Living Based on Modern Science • Irving Fisher and Eugene Fisk

... material that makes the bones hard, is present in quantities ample for the needs of the body in the bread, milk, eggs and vegetables that we eat. The remaining mineral constituents of the body, among which the most conspicuous are magnesium, potassium, sulphur, and phosphorus, occur in foods which we are naturally inclined to take, so that we secure an abundance ...
— The Prospective Mother - A Handbook for Women During Pregnancy • J. Morris Slemons

... see; two of these had slipped through his fingers, so he was determined to see the third. 'Pray, Mr. Borrow, who were they?' He held up three fingers of his left hand and pointed them off with the forefinger of the right: the first Daniel O'Connell, the second Lamplighter (the sire of Phosphorus, Lord Berners's winner of the Derby), the third, Anna Gurney. The first two were dead and he had not seen them; now he had come to see Anna Gurney, and this was ...
— George Borrow and His Circle - Wherein May Be Found Many Hitherto Unpublished Letters Of - Borrow And His Friends • Clement King Shorter

... principally from vehicle and power plant emissions; nitrogen and phosphorus pollution of the North Sea; drinking and surface water becoming polluted from animal wastes ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... groundless and absurd theories were current. Of the creature discovered and described by Peron, Phipson says that it is "one of the most curious of animals. It belongs to the tribe of Tunicata. Each individual resembles a minute cylinder of glowing phosphorus. Sometimes they are seen adhering together in such prodigious numbers that the ocean appears as if covered with an enormous mass of shining phosphorus or molten lava." Professor Moseley investigated the Pyrosoma while with the Challenger expedition. ...
— Terre Napoleon - A history of French explorations and projects in Australia • Ernest Scott

... cells of plants contain numerous inorganic substances in solution. Among these, not considering oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen and carbon dioxide, there are the salts of calcium, magnesium, potassium, iron, sulphur and phosphorus. The above substances are found in the cells of every living plant. Other substances like salts of sodium and silica are also found, but these are not regarded as essential to the life and growth of plants. They appear ...
— Popular Science Monthly Volume 86

... empty moment of perfect blankness, then crowded again thicker, faster, surged and seethed and then broke again, leaving in the void of perfect blankness this time a fixed idea, a resolve, a determination, seen in the dark like a luminous point of phosphorus. ...
— Crowded Out! and Other Sketches • Susie F. Harrison

... oxidizable matter and the thick air-tube spreading into a tufty bush distributes the flow of air over it. There remains the question of the substance whereof this sheet is formed. The first suggestion was phosphorus, in the chemist's sense of the word. The Glow-worm was calcined and treated with the violent reagents that bring the simple substances to light; but no one, so far as I know, has obtained a satisfactory answer ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre

... the window and exploded with a globe of yellow flame the size of a basketball; dense clouds of phosphorus pentoxide gushed from it and the sprinkler system switched on, drenching ...
— The Adventurer • Cyril M. Kornbluth

... If we consider the knowledge positively acquired, in this short time, of the modus operandi of urari, of atropia, of physostigmin, of veratria, of casca, of strychnia, of bromide of potassium, of phosphorus, there can surely be no ground for doubting that, sooner or later, the pharmacologist will supply the physician with the means of affecting, in any desired sense, the functions of any physiological element ...
— Science & Education • Thomas H. Huxley

... intensity. It answers well to the name applied to it, as it seems remarkably similar to the light emitted by some living insects and other animal organisms, as well as to that evolved, under favourable conditions, by dead animal matter—a pale bluish light, resembling that emitted by phosphorus as seen ...
— Fungi: Their Nature and Uses • Mordecai Cubitt Cooke

... drifting fully three miles during the night. Such keen flashes of lightning accompanied by instant thunder I had never before witnessed, though the rainfall, after the first dash, was light in quantity. Several times the rain ceased entirely, when the phosphorus, like a prairie fire, appeared on every hand. Great sheets of it flickered about, the cattle and saddle stock were soon covered, while every bit of metal on our accoutrements was coated and twinkling ...
— The Outlet • Andy Adams

... occasional fasting, whether voluntary and systematic as in the cloisters, or involuntary and altogether the reverse of systematic in Grub street, helps to clear the wits, with or without the aid of phosphorus, is a fixed fact. The stomach is apt to be a stumbling-block to the brain. We are not prone to associate prolonged and productive mental effort with a fair round belly with fat capon lined. It was not the jolly ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 17, - No. 97, January, 1876 • Various

... against the soul of man. And yon four fools have sucked their allegory From these damp walls, and taken but the form. Know ye not these?' and Gareth lookt and read— In letters like to those the vexillary Hath left crag-carven o'er the streaming Gelt— 'PHOSPHORUS,' then 'MERIDIES'—'HESPERUS'— 'NOX'—'MORS,' beneath five figures, armed men, Slab after slab, their faces forward all, And running down the Soul, a Shape that fled With broken wings, torn raiment and loose hair, For help and ...
— Idylls of the King • Alfred, Lord Tennyson

... be only so many methods of obtaining it in its pure state, and free of fixed air. The first of these is the separation of the alkali from an acid, merely by heat; an instance of which we have from Mr. Margraaf.[9] He prepared from urine an ammoniacal salt, the acid of which is the basis of the phosphorus, and is of such a peculiar nature, that it endures a red heat without being dissipated. Sixteen ounces of the neutral salt were subjected by him to distillation. The acid remained in the retort, and he found in the ...
— Experiments upon magnesia alba, Quicklime, and some other Alcaline Substances • Joseph Black

... frankly must confess A secret unforgivingness, And shudder at the saving chrism Whose best New Birth is Pessimism; My soul—I mean the bit of phosphorus That fills the place of what that was for us— Can't bid its inward bores defiance With the new nursery-tales of science. What profits me, though doubt by doubt, As nail by nail, be driven out, 170 When every new one, like the last, Still holds my coffin-lid as fast? Would ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell

... the pushcarts... Now all have gone save an old man with mirrors— Little oval mirrors like tiny pools. He shuffles up a darkened street And the moon burnishes his mirrors till they shine like phosphorus... The moon like a skull, Staring out of eyeless sockets at the old men ...
— The Ghetto and Other Poems • Lola Ridge

... vainglorious bathos. Of all the creeds that have debased mankind, the new creed that would centre itself in man seems to me the poorest and the most baseless of all. If humanity be but a vibrion, a conglomeration of gases, a mere mould holding chemicals, a mere bundle of phosphorus and carbon, how can it contain the elements of worship? what matter when or how each bubble of it bursts? This is the weakness of all materialism when it attempts to ally itself with duty. It becomes ridiculous. The carpi diem of the classic sensualists, the morality ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida

... literary historian, though his poems are of little value. Palmblad, besides being a critic, is the author of several novels and translations from the Greek. These three writers belonged to the Phosphoric School, so called from a periodical called "The Phosphorus," ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta

... chemicals, to the boy's delight. Unfortunately a sudden change came, fraught with disaster. The train, running one day at thirty miles an hour over a piece of poorly laid track, was thrown suddenly out of the perpendicular with a violent lurch, and, before Edison could catch it, a stick of phosphorus was jarred from its shelf, fell to the floor, and burst into flame. The car took fire, and the boy, in dismay, was still trying to quench the blaze when the conductor, a quick-tempered Scotchman, who acted also as baggage-master, hastened to the scene with water and saved his car. On the ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin

... called by that name. It is caused by decaying vegetable matter, and exhibits itself in the form of gases of phosphorus, which appears to burn, but does not, like the vapor which is produced by rubbing certain ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: Exploring the Island • Roger Thompson Finlay

... them, and wondered what they had to do with her. There was one of an untidy woman sitting in a garden of lilies—evidently forced—talking to an anaemic-looking man with uncut hair and a phosphorescent head. Hazel did not know about phosphorus or haloes, but she remembered how she had gone into the kitchen one night in the dark and screamed at sight of a sheep's head on the table, shining with a strange greenish light. This picture reminded her of it. She hastily looked at the others. She liked the one with sheep in ...
— Gone to Earth • Mary Webb

... after several weeks of happiness in his moving laboratory, he was 'dead to the world' in an experiment. Suddenly the car gave a lurch and jolted the bottle of phosphorus off its shelf. It broke, flamed up, set fire to the floor and endangered the whole train. While the boy was frantically fighting the fire, the Scotch conductor, red-headed and wrathy, rushed in and helped him ...
— Radio Boys Cronies • Wayne Whipple and S. F. Aaron

... to find again in living beings the same substances of which the minerals are composed! Nevertheless they experienced a sort of humiliation at the idea that their own personality contained phosphorus, like matches; albumen, like the whites of eggs; and ...
— Bouvard and Pecuchet - A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life • Gustave Flaubert

... the employed; the article to be made is generally the only object considered. They do not care if a man spends the whole of his life upon the head of a pin, or in making a screw in a watch factory. They take no notice of the occupations that ruin, or the phosphorus, the dust, the arsenic that destroys the health, that shortens the lives of many workers; of the cramped condition of the body ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden

... in public spout, Spread phosphorus of zeal on scraps of fustian, And go like walking "Lucifers" about Mere living ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood

... upon the chemical constituents of glass, porcelain and paper, imparting to them a violet tinge; changes white phosphorus to yellow, oxygen to ozone, affects photograph plates and produces many other ...
— The Boy Mechanic: Volume 1 - 700 Things For Boys To Do • Popular Mechanics

... thousand unfortunate individuals of the softer sex now occupy that mansion: they bake, as we find in the guide-books, the bread of all the other prisons; they mend and wash the shirts and stockings of all the other prisoners; they make hooks-and-eyes and phosphorus-boxes, and they attend chapel every Sunday:—if occupation can help them, sure they have enough of it. Was it not a great stroke of the legislature to superintend the morals and linen at once, and thus keep these poor creatures continually mending?—But we ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray

... "if you want to signal, wet your hands and rub the phosphorus off the matches. Turn your hands, palms in our direction, so no one can see from the other ...
— The Call of the Beaver Patrol - or, A Break in the Glacier • V. T. Sherman

... beckoning. In the watches of the night fear is a panther across the chest, sucking the breath; but his eyes cannot bear the light of day, and by dawn he has shrunk to cat size. The ghastly dreams of Orestes perished with the light; phosphorus is yellowish and waxlike ...
— Every Soul Hath Its Song • Fannie Hurst

... rails, which often give contradictory results with the tensile test, were comparatively pure manganese steels, low in silicon, only exceptionally up to 0.2 per cent., but generally below 0.1 per cent., and with less than 0.1 per cent. of phosphorus and sulphur. On the other hand, rails with a tendency to break or split are low in carbon, with variable proportions of manganese, but contain much silicon, 0.3 to 0.9 per cent., and often above 0.1 per cent. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 492, June 6, 1885 • Various

... of many kinds of fish, when it is supposed to have undergone a beginning putrefaction, becomes luminous in the dark. This seems to shew a tendency in the phosphorus to escape, and combine with the oxygen of the atmosphere; and would hence shew, that this kind of flesh is not so perfectly animalized as those before mentioned. This light, as it is frequently seen on rotten wood, and ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin

... article which, to look at, seems only something black tipped with red. The labour required to produce this small box of lights, as it is called, is wonderful—the chemist, the wood merchant, the mechanician (and I am sorry to say, also the surgeon, from the deleterious effects of the phosphorus on the human frame), have all to bring their work to bear on the production of this most useful article. Yet, after all, it is sold and bought for one penny a box. Messrs. Bryant & May profess to save your houses from fire for this sum by using their matches, and I think they are ...
— Lectures on Popular and Scientific Subjects • John Sutherland Sinclair, Earl of Caithness

... sea-mist driven were the shapes that strove With the strength of greed and hate and the greater strength of love. I saw their eyes like phosphorus, blue fog about them wove. I saw the limbs glimmer and I heard the sighing come From this side and from that, as our host ran dumb Over a silver shining plain, to some strange end, to some— Was it goal or heaven or city?—some agonizing gleam That broke the heart for ...
— Perpetual Light • William Rose Benet

... be?" I asked eagerly. "I have taken arsenic and gold, phosphorus, exercise, nux vomica, hydrotherapeutic baths, rest, excitement, codein, and aromatic spirits of ammonia. Is there anything ...
— Sixes and Sevens • O. Henry

... oversee the details executed by the Secretaries of State. The public fully appreciate this dazzling Minister. He is nothing more than a 'petit-maitre', without talents or information, who has a little phosphorus in his mind. There is a thing well worthy of remark, Sire; that is, the open war carried on against religion. Henceforward there can spring up no new sects, because the general belief has been shaken, that no one feels inclined to occupy himself with difference of sentiment upon some of ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XV. and XVI., Volume 1 • Madame du Hausset, and of an Unknown English Girl and the Princess Lamballe

... This cause, though trivial, is often overlooked. It will be obviated whenever the plant is intelligently designed. As the phosphoric anhydride, or pentoxide, which is produced when a gas containing phosphorus burns, is a solid body, it may be deposited at the burner jets. This cause may be removed, or at least minimised, by proper purification of the acetylene, which means the removal of phosphorus compounds. Should the gas contain hydrogen silicide siliciuretted hydrogen), solid silica will ...
— Acetylene, The Principles Of Its Generation And Use • F. H. Leeds and W. J. Atkinson Butterfield

... lost in the night of time. But do not let us rejoice too much; let us, in effect, see if we have the happiness to possess a specimen of this curious affection. It would be doubly desirable, for I have wished for a long time to test the internal use of phosphorus—yes, gentlemen," repeated the doctor, on hearing a kind of murmur of curiosity among his auditory, "yes, gentlemen, phosphorus; it is a very curious experiment which I wish to make—it is bold! but audaces fortuna juvant—and ...
— Mysteries of Paris, V3 • Eugene Sue

... us phosphorus We learned to like the fire By playing glaciers when a boy And tinder ...
— Adventures in the Arts - Informal Chapters on Painters, Vaudeville, and Poets • Marsden Hartley

... bacteria, to be set free in the body. Sulphate of copper, for instance, is essentially a mineral poison which acts on the human system in such a way as to produce death, and certain other mineral substances may be mentioned, such as phosphorus, arsenic, and mercury, which are well-known poisons. There are also many vegetable products, not bacterial, which are poisonous in their nature, that is, distributing to the blood and lymphatics certain substances in solution ...
— Rural Hygiene • Henry N. Ogden

... direct effect of the war, however, was the intensive use of mineral resources without careful regard to cost, grade, or many other factors which determine their use in peace times. For instance, in ordinary times considerable quantities of high-phosphorus iron ores are mined; but, because of the fact that such ores require more time for conversion into steel, war-time practice concentrated on the higher-grade, low-phosphorus ores, resulting in an unbalanced production ...
— The Economic Aspect of Geology • C. K. Leith

... Y.—"Please give the ingredients of the composition used for tipping matches." Different manufacturers employ different materials and in varying proportions; the mixture of phosphorus melted and stirred up with thin glue is sufficient, although some add a quantity of powdered glass, niter, chlorate of potash, sulphur, etc. The phosphorus, however ...
— Scientific American, Vol. 17, No. 26 December 28, 1867 • Various

... bole of the first big gum tree. Five paces from this tree Frank Muller's tent was pitched. There was a light in it which caused the wet tent to glow in the mist, as though it had been rubbed with phosphorus, and on this lurid canvas the shadow of Frank Muller was gigantically limned. He was so placed that the lamp cast a magnified reflection of his every feature and even of his expression upon the screen before them. The attitude in ...
— Jess • H. Rider Haggard

... the Plata on one very dark night,' says Mr Darwin, 'the sea presented a wonderful and most beautiful spectacle. There was a fresh breeze; and every part of the surface, which during the day is seen as foam, now glowed with a pale light. The vessel drove before her bows two billows of liquid phosphorus, and in her wake she was followed by a milky train. As far as the eye reached, the crest of every wave was bright; and the sky above the, horizon, from the reflected glare of these livid flames, was not so ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal - Volume XVII., No 423, New Series. February 7th, 1852 • Various

... arsenic, bismuth, boron, nitrogen (vacuum tube), caesium, gold, iridium, mercury, phosphorus, rubidium, selenium, ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke

... would shrink amazingly. So much energy is wasted in the production of heat-waves and ultra-violet waves which we do not want, that 90 per cent. or more of the power used in illumination is wasted. Would that the glow-worm, or even the dead herring, would yield us its secret! Phosphorus is the one thing we know as yet that suits the purpose, and—it smells! Indeed, our artificial light is not only extravagant in cost, but often poor in colour. The unwary person often buys a garment by artificial ...
— The Outline of Science, Vol. 1 (of 4) - A Plain Story Simply Told • J. Arthur Thomson

... confessed to Mr. Browning that during Mr. Home's stay at their house they once forbade his putting his hand under the table, and the spirits wouldn't rap, and Home burst into tears, and confessed that on that occasion only he had deceived them; that on one other occasion he had put phosphorus on the tips of wires and stretched them from the roof of their house to represent certain spiritual apparitions. 'And what did you say, how did you act, upon the discovery?' asked Mr. Browning. 'Oh,' replied the lady, 'I rebuked him severely; told ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No. 6, December 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... never of the destructive kind; what he does in that way is suggestive only,—not breaking bubbles with Thor's hammer, but puffing them away with the breath of a Clown, or shivering them with the light laugh of a genial cynic. Men go about to prove the existence of a God! Was it a bit of phosphorus, that brain whose creations are so real, that, mixing with them, we feel as if we ourselves ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell

... raising" effect may be produced by painting the entire body of one of the male guests with phosphorus. As this glowing nude stalks uncannily through the darkened rooms you may easily imagine the ghastly effect—especially ...
— Perfect Behavior - A Guide for Ladies and Gentlemen in all Social Crises • Donald Ogden Stewart

... school), and declares that her questions are so suggestive (another new word) that she might become a second Pauline Lavosier. She puts her new knowledge to practical effect by writing with a piece of phosphorus on her bedroom wall, 'Molly, beware!' with the result that Molly is frightened out of her wits, the young experimenter burns her hand, and the house is nearly set on fire. The eccentric Dermody turns up again, now a smart young ensign, having temporarily forsaken letters, and obtained ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston

... become loose and fall out. The tongue may share in the swelling—mercurial glossitis. There is also profuse salivation, and the breath has a characteristically offensive odour. In severe cases the alveolar margin of the jaw undergoes necrosis. A similar condition occurs in lead and in phosphorus poisoning, and ...
— Manual of Surgery Volume Second: Extremities—Head—Neck. Sixth Edition. • Alexander Miles

... devices of the smugglers in the old days, when it was very desirable to have the roads quiet at night in order to carry about contraband goods. It would be quite easy to fake a demon dog. You take a black retriever, fasten two cardboard circles smeared with phosphorus round his eyes, give him a kick, and send him running down a dark road, and every one who met him would have hysterics. As for the headless horseman, that's also a well-known smugglers' dodge —false shoulders can be made ...
— Monitress Merle • Angela Brazil

... esoteric combinations are not at all necessary for the postulation of wildly variant life forms. Earth itself was prolific in its variations; Earthlike planets were equally inventive. Carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen, plus varying proportions of phosphorus, potassium, iodine, nitrogen, sulfur, calcium, iron, magnesium, manganese, and strontium, plus a smattering of trace elements, seem to be able to cook up all kinds of life under the strangest ...
— Cum Grano Salis • Gordon Randall Garrett

... breathless wonder they cautiously approached the bizarre structure. No dampness or phosphorus impaired the clarity of its walls. The material composing them felt vibrantly warm to the touch. It was not glass, yet it was possible to look without difficulty into the interior of the building, which appeared ...
— The Heads of Apex • Francis Flagg

... sparks during the day, which must be then invisible. This curious subject deserves further investigation. See Dictamnus. The ceasing to shine of this plant after twilight might induce one to conceive, that it absorbed and emitted light, like the Bolognian Phosphorus, or calcined oyster-shells, so well explained by Mr. B. Wilson, and by T. B. Beccari. Exper. on Phosphori, by B. Wilson. Dodsley. The light of the evening, at the same distance from noon, is much greater, as I have repeatedly observed, than the light ...
— The Botanic Garden. Part II. - Containing The Loves of the Plants. A Poem. - With Philosophical Notes. • Erasmus Darwin

... consist, and on which Berzelius has thrown so much light, are the same as those distributed throughout the earth's crust, and are fifteen in number, namely, iron, nickel, cobalt, manganese, chromium, copper, arsenic, zinc, potash, soda, sulphur, phosphorus, and carbon, constituting altogether nearly one third of all the known simple bodies. Notwithstanding this similarity with the primary elements into which inorganic bodies are chemically reducible, the aspect of a‘rolites, owing to the mode in which their constituent ...
— COSMOS: A Sketch of the Physical Description of the Universe, Vol. 1 • Alexander von Humboldt

... an acrid volatile oil, sulphur, phosphorus, alkaline earthy salts, phosphoric and acetic acids, with phosphate and citrate of lime, starch, free uncrystallized sugar, and lignine. The fresh juice is colourless, but by exposure to the air becomes red. A syrup made from the juice with honey is an excellent medicine for old phlegmatic ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie

... many of the soils on which pecans have been set in orchard form, require to be fertilized to secure the best results. The three important plant foods required by plants and most frequently deficient in soils are nitrogen, phosphorus and potash. One or two or all three of these substances may ...
— The Pecan and its Culture • H. Harold Hume

... lighted by one light: a full moon, like a subdued sunshine over earth and water. A world of light, that shone on a world of darkness, tinging the air, gilding the mountain-tops, and making the sea run like melted phosphorus. And what a silence abroad! not the perilous cessation of sound which so often only anticipates the storm; nor the sultry stillness of an exhausting noon; but a mighty and godlike display, as it were, of the first full moon after creation ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various

... masses, streaming with much rapidity in different directions, varying continually, in shape and interest, and extending themselves from north, by the east, to north. The usual pale light of the aurora strongly resembled that produced by the combustion of phosphorus; a very slight tinge of red was noticed when the aurora was most vivid, but no other colours were visible."—Sir E. Parry's ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron

... Smith's well-known frivolousness, was a great recommendation. Her short-sighted eyes would swim with pity for a poor mouse in a trap, and she had been seen once by some boys on her knees in the wet grass helping a toad in difficulties. If it's true, as some German fellow has said, that without phosphorus there is no thought, it is still more true that there is no kindness of heart without a certain amount of imagination. She had some. She had even more than is necessary to understand suffering and to be moved by pity. She fell in love under circumstances that ...
— Amy Foster • Joseph Conrad

... few minutes later, as she was trying to light the lamp, an approaching step on the sidewalk seemed to pause. Her heart stood still. She softly laid the phosphorus-box out of her hands. A shoe grated softly on the stone step, and Madame Delphine, her heart beating in great thuds, without waiting for a knock, opened the door, bowed low, and exclaimed in a ...
— Old Creole Days • George Washington Cable

... freezing.[A] The ordinary benzene of commerce contains thiophene (C{4}H{4}S), from which it may be freed by shaking with sulphuric acid. Its boiling point is 79 deg. C.; specific gravity at 0 deg. equals 0.9. It burns with a luminous smoky flame, and is a good solvent for fats, resins, sulphur, phosphorus, &c. Toluene was discovered in 1837, and is prepared from coal-tar. It boils at 110 deg. C., and is still liquid ...
— Nitro-Explosives: A Practical Treatise • P. Gerald Sanford

... fire to the ocean, and any object moving through it can plainly be seen. It was so with the Advance. The motion she made in shooting forward, and the undulations caused by her submersion, seemed to start into activity the dormant phosphorus, and the submarine was afloat in a sea ...
— Tom Swift and his Submarine Boat - or, Under the Ocean for Sunken Treasure • Victor Appleton

... mushrooms: it is phosphorescent. On the lower surface and there only, it sheds a soft, white gleam, similar to that of the glowworm. It lights up to celebrate its nuptials and the emission of its spores. There is no question of chemist's phosphorus here. This is a slow combustion, a sort of more active respiration than usual. The luminous emission is extinguished in the unbreathable gases, nitrogen and carbonic acid; it continues in aerated water; it ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre

... case of Mary Ansell, the domestic servant, who, at Hertford Assizes in June 1899, was found guilty of the murder of her sister, Caroline, by the administration of phosphorus contained in a cake. Here the motive for the murder was the insurance made by Ansell upon the life of her sister, a young woman of weak intellect confined in Leavesden Asylum, Watford. The sum assured ...
— She Stands Accused • Victor MacClure

... in the valley of Cariaco, as in the Campagna of Rome; but the hot climate of the tropics increases their deleterious energy. These miasms are probably ternary or quaternary combinations of azote, phosphorus, hydrogen, carbon, ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt

... Phosphorus it must be done with. If you leave a bit of codfish for instance. I could see the bluey silver over it. Night I went down to the pantry in the kitchen. Don't like all the smells in it waiting to rush out. What was it she wanted? ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce

... composite and umbelliferous flowers at all hours of the day, and are as active as wasps during the full glare of noon. Birds do not feed on them, owing to the disagreeable odour, resembling that of phosphorus, they emit, and probably because they are to be uneatable; but their insect enemies are not so squeamish, and devour them readily, just as they also do the blister-fly, which one would imagine a morsel fitted to disagree with any stomach. One of their enemies is the Monedula ...
— The Naturalist in La Plata • W. H. Hudson

... squirt so high, but produce only clouds of spray. Individuals of classical knowledge propose catapults. Santerre, the sonorous brewer of the suburb Saint Antoine, advises rather that the place be fired, by a 'mixture of phosphorus and oil of turpentine, spouted up through forcing pumps.' O Spinola Santerre, hast thou the mixture ready? Every man his own engineer! And still the fire-deluge abates not: even women are firing, and Turks; at least one woman (with her sweetheart) and one ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various

... active as phosphorus, biting everything that came near into the form that suited it, how could Mrs. Cadwallader feel that the Miss Brookes and their matrimonial prospects were alien to her? especially as it had been the habit of years for her to scold Mr. Brooke with ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot

... from which it sprung. Perhaps they do not understand the sudden recoil of a strong nature long compressed. Perhaps they have not studied the mystery of allotropism in the emotions of the human heart. Go to the nearest chemist and ask him to show you some of the dark-red phosphorus which will not burn without fierce heating, but at 500 deg. Fahrenheit, changes back again to the inflammable substance we know so well. Grief seems more like ashes than like fire; but as grief has been love once, so it may become love ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... creature—highly gifted, doubtless, but hardly comfortable. He was too "thick" with ghosts. One scarcely knew whether he spent most of his time "on earth or in hell," as Saul crudely phrased it. The faint smell of phosphorus that he carried about with him, which was only due to his imperfect ablutions after his seances, impressed Saul's imagination as going to show that Bott was a little too intimate with the under-ground powers. He stood chewing a shaving ...
— The Bread-winners - A Social Study • John Hay

... Cromer, Holt, Lynn and Wisbech, he called upon Anna Gurney. {423b} His reason for doing so was that she was one of the three celebrities of the world he desired to see. The other two were Daniel O'Connell {423c} and Lamplighter (the sire of Phosphorus), Lord Berners winner of the Derby. Two of the world's notabilities had slipped through his fingers by reason of their deaths, but he was determined that Anna Gurney, who lived at North Repps, should not ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins

... myself the Lady of the Lake, Or an Oriental one (within limits) on the Bosphorus; We left a trail of glory in our wake, Which the intelligent boatman ascribed to phosphorus. ...
— Poison Island • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)

... aid digestion either directly or indirectly. The juicy ones act as dilutents, and their free use lessens the desire for alcohol and other stimulants. According to German analysts, the apple contains a larger percentage of phosphorus than any other fruit, or than any vegetable. In warm weather and in warm climates, when foods are not needed for a heat-producing purpose, the diet may well consist largely of fruits and succulent vegetables, eaten in ...
— Science in the Kitchen. • Mrs. E. E. Kellogg

... all things in the world! He seemed to be harking back to Mr. Dowson's arguments, to some of the stories the Home Secretary had told of those wretched people who apparently enjoy dying of overwork and phosphorus, and white-lead, who positively will die of them, unless the inspectors are always harrying them. He still held her hand, but she saw he was not thinking of her; and a sudden pique rose in her small mind. Generally, she accepted his love-making very ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. I • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... the pipe, K. The acetylene traverses a purifying column, I, filled with pumice stone saturated with a solution of sulphate of copper and surmounted by a thin layer of carbide of calcium. The object of the sulphate of copper is to free the gas from phosphorus and arseniuret of hydrogen. The layer of carbide serves to ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 1082, September 26, 1896 • Various

... atmosphere of the Sierra foot-hills,—that air pungent with balsamic odor, that ethereal cordial at once bracing and exhilarating—he may have found food and nourishment, or a subtle chemistry that transmuted ass's milk to lime and phosphorus. Stumpy inclined to the belief that it was the latter and good nursing. "Me and that ass," he would say, "has been father and mother to him! Don't you," he would add, apostrophizing [Footnote: Apostrophizing: using a special form of ...
— Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools • Emilie Kip Baker

... Phosphorus paste, kept for roach poison or in parlor matches, is sometimes eaten by children and has been willfully taken for the purpose of suicide. It is a powerful irritant. The first thing to be done is to give freely of magnesia and water; then to give mucilaginous drinks as ...
— The Handy Cyclopedia of Things Worth Knowing - A Manual of Ready Reference • Joseph Triemens

... shadow on every man Who at last attains his lifted mark— Nursing through night the ethereal spark. Elate he never can be; He feels that spirit which glad had hailed his worth, Sleep in oblivion.—The shark Glides white through the phosphorus sea. ...
— John Marr and Other Poems • Herman Melville

... mollusc so maternally that rude yawning is forbidden. It may lisp only and in smooth phrases, such as "prunes" and "prisms"; and, moreover, the host further insures it against molestation by the diffusion of an exceptionally powerful odour, which, though to my sense of smell resembles phosphorus, is, I am informed on indubitable authority, derivable from the active form of oxygen known as ozone. Experimentally I have placed these molluscs in fresh water, to find it quickly dyed to a rich amber colour while acquiring ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield

... no easy matter to hit a tiger even at a short distance on a dark night like this, when you can scarce make him out, and can't see the barrel of your rifle. I ought to have told you to rub a little phosphorus off the head of a match onto the sight. I am so accustomed to do it myself as a matter of course that I did not think of telling you. Well, I am heartily glad we have killed it, for by all accounts it has done an ...
— Rujub, the Juggler • G. A. Henty

... Food Scientist tells us: "A deficiency of iron, phosphorus, potassium, calcium and the other mineral salts, colloids and vitamines of vegetable origin leads to ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various

... Analysis" and had become so much interested in chemistry, that alongside his printing-press he had fitted up a small laboratory with a chance-medley apparatus for experiments, and one day a bottle of phosphorus was upset, and the car taking fire was only saved by the energy of the conductor, who promptly pitched the whole apparatus, with the printing-press to boot, out at the door, and then gave the young Fresenius-Franklin ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 6 of 8 • Various

... a great broad, seething river of fire,— white like strong moonshine: the glow is bright enough to read by. At its centre the trail is brightest;—towards either edge it pales off cloudily,—curling like smoke of phosphorus. Great sharp lights burst up momentarily through it like meteors. Weirder than this strange wake are the long slow fires that keep burning at a distance, out in the dark. Nebulous incandescences mount up from the depths, ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn

... itself is of special soft steel, to secure high conductivity. Its composition, as shown by tests, is as follows: Carbon, .08 to .15; silicon, .05; phosphorus, .10; manganese, .50 to .70; and sulphur, .05. Its resistance is not more than eight times the resistance of pure copper of equal cross-section. The section chosen weighs 75 pounds per yard. The length used in general is 60 feet, but in some cases 40 ...
— The New York Subway - Its Construction and Equipment • Anonymous

... dark. The wind held me back. But I knew thou wert here—my heart led me; my heart found thee as birds find grass in the mountains. Ootah! Ootah! I fear I shall die!" She collapsed in his arms. The wind shrieked! In the distance two icebergs exploded—there was a flash of phosphorus on the sea ...
— The Eternal Maiden • T. Everett Harre

... to be entirely impractical for the purpose, because, you see, phosphorus must at intervals be placed where it can absorb the light in order to retain its brilliancy. Now as a man's watch stays most of the time in his pocket, a watch dial treated with phosphorus would have ...
— Christopher and the Clockmakers • Sara Ware Bassett

... the cane was so wet that it would not burn. In order to procure firewood to cook the rice, thick branches were got out of the wood, and their comparatively dry pith extracted with great labor. The lucifer-matches, too, were so damp that the phosphorus was rubbed away in friction; but, being collected on blotting-paper, and kneaded together with the sulphurous end of the match-wood, it became dry and was kindled by friction. Not a trace of solid rock was to be seen. All was obstructed by a thick overgrowth from where the path ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.

... as it passed. But there lay Levy with his heavy head between my shins in the stern-sheets, with his waistcoat open, and his white shirt catching what light there was as greedily as the other; and his white face as conspicuous to my guilty mind as though we had rubbed it with phosphorus. Nor was I the only one to lay this last peril to heart. Raffles sat silent for several minutes on his thwart; and when he did dip his sculls it was to muffle his strokes so that even I could scarcely hear them, and to keep peering behind him ...
— Mr. Justice Raffles • E. W. Hornung

... falls, it must appear from the coast of Spain, the smuggling bark, bringing the very prohibited phosphorus. And, without its touching the shore, they must go to get that merchandise, by advancing on foot in the bed of the river, with long, pointed sticks in their hands, in order to assume, if perchance they were caught, airs of people fishing innocently ...
— Ramuntcho • Pierre Loti

... you can take it out of the water and so have bottled oxygen. A lighted candle put into a jar of oxygen blazes up directly, and is consumed before you can say Jack Robinson. Charcoal burns away in it as fast, with beautiful bright sparks—phosphorus with a light that dazzles you to look at—and a piece of iron or steel just made red-hot at the end first, is burnt in oxygen quicker than a stick would be in common air. The experiment of burning things in oxygen ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Volume I. No. 9. - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 26, 1850 • Various

... following minerals and mineral ores, which may accordingly be taken as existing in the country: Gold, silver, copper, lead, tin, hematite, antimony, quicksilver, zinc, iron, manganese and arsenic, plumbago, coal, kerosene, sulphur, bismuth, phosphorus, peat. ...
— The Empire of the East • H. B. Montgomery

... hog's-lard in a bottle plunged in water, heated to about 150 degrees of Fahrenheit; introduce into it half an ounce of phosphorus for every pound of lard; then add a pint of proof spirit, or whisky; cork the bottle firmly after its contents have been heated to 150 degrees, taking it at the same time out of the water, and agitate smartly till the phosphorus becomes ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous



Words linked to "Phosphorus" :   chemical element, P, major planet, phosphorous, element, planet, daystar, apatite, phosphoric, atomic number 15



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