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Proportional   /prəpˈɔrʃənəl/   Listen
Proportional

adjective
1.
Properly related in size or degree or other measurable characteristics; usually followed by 'to'.  Synonym: relative.  "Earnings relative to production"
2.
Having a constant ratio.



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"Proportional" Quotes from Famous Books



... observer's eye, and its base at the very limits of the system, the angle of the cone (at the eye) being 15'. Then the cubes of the perpendiculars let fall from the eye, on the plane of the bases of the various visual cones, are proportional to the solid contents of the cones themselves, or, as the stars are supposed equally scattered within all the cones, the cube roots of the numbers of stars in each of the fields express the relative lengths ...
— Sir William Herschel: His Life and Works • Edward Singleton Holden

... restorer of extended knowledge and mechanical dexterity. There is in connection with all of this a kind of law keeping pace with the necessities of the hour. If the works of art of a perishable nature become recognised as more and more valuable during the onward march of time, they receive proportional attention from upper-class or highly skilled workmen. A costly work of art in need of repair or restoration is placed in the hands of an artificer whose reputation warrants the confidence of the owner. The works of art, however, with which our subject is connected, differ ...
— The Repairing & Restoration of Violins - 'The Strad' Library, No. XII. • Horace Petherick

... myself up entirely to wine; and its maddening influence upon my hereditary temper rendered me more and more impatient of control. I began to murmur,—to hesitate,—to resist. And was it only fancy which induced me to believe that, with the increase of my own firmness, that of my tormentor underwent a proportional diminution? Be this as it may, I now began to feel the inspiration of a burning hope, and at length nurtured in my secret thoughts a stern and desperate resolution that I would submit no ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... as much as possible, whilst endeavouring to render each section independent to a considerable extent, and complete in itself. Some groups naturally present more noteworthy features than others, and will consequently seem to receive more than their proportional share of attention, but this seeming inequality could scarcely have been avoided, inasmuch as hitherto some groups have been more closely investigated than others, are more intimately associated with other questions, or are more readily and satisfactorily examined under ...
— Fungi: Their Nature and Uses • Mordecai Cubitt Cooke

... confirmed, by which the necessity of a royal conge d'elire and confirmation was superseded; all check upon appeals to Rome was removed, by the allowance granted every man to depart the kingdom at pleasure, and the fines to be imposed on the clergy, for any offence, were ordained to be proportional to their lay estates, not to ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume VI. • Various

... Catholics, that the Protestants when giving a vote in the way of Catholic representation, would return "shoneens." I am not going to take your Lordships' time up by arguing this to-day. With regard to schemes of proportional representation, as Calvin said of another study, "Excessive study of the Apocalypse either finds a man mad, or makes him so." At any rate, the Government of India doubted whether our plan would work, and we have abandoned it. I do not ...
— Indian speeches (1907-1909) • John Morley (AKA Viscount Morley)

... whole is combined with the greatest dependence of the whole on its parts; the first (namely, the dependence of the parts on the whole) being absolute; the second (namely, the dependence of the whole on its parts) being proportional to the importance of the relation which the parts have to the whole, that is, as their action extends more or less beyond themselves. For this spirit of the whole is most expressed in that part which derives its importance as an End from its importance as a Mean, relatively to all the parts under ...
— Hints towards the formation of a more comprehensive theory of life. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... machinery, viz. Abolition of the House of Lords, Payment of Members of Legislative and Administrative bodies. Payment of Official Expenses of Elections out of the Public Funds, Adult Suffrage, Proportional Representation, Triennial Parliaments, Second Ballot, Initiative, and Referendum. Foreigners to be granted rights of citizenship after two years' residence in the country, without any fees. Canvassing to be made illegal. All elections to take place on one day, such ...
— British Socialism - An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical Proposals • J. Ellis Barker

... Montcalm, under the date 19th February, 1759: "Besides increasing the dearth of provisions, it is to be feared that reinforcements, if despatched, would fall into the power of the English. The King is unable to send succours proportional to the force the English can place in the field to oppose you....You must confine yourself to the defensive, and concentrate all your forces within as narrow limits as possible. It is of the last importance to preserve some ...
— Old Quebec - The Fortress of New France • Sir Gilbert Parker and Claude Glennon Bryan

... Cotton (see p. 14.) and Cotton Mather (p. 46.) had preached the sternest Puritan theology. Nearly all of the prominent writers mentioned in this chapter adopted liberal religious views. The recoil had been violent, and in the long run recoil will usually be found proportional to the strength of the repression. Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes even called the old theology largely "diabology." The name of one of his poems is Homesick in Heaven. Had he in the early days chosen such a title, he would either, like Roger Williams, have been exiled, or, ...
— History of American Literature • Reuben Post Halleck

... meanness and dishonourable views; then the old man announced finally what he should do. He should write to Julia and offer her a smallish sum down in case the bulb proved to be of no great worth, and a promise of a proportional percentage afterwards if it proved valuable. This idea pleased him very well; it satisfied his notions of integrity and fair dealing and also his thrifty soul, which found trying the otherwise unavoidable duty of paying a long price for ...
— The Good Comrade • Una L. Silberrad

... distinguished sages of Paris or London. And this will be true in all classes. The thirty most intelligent children of the age of fourteen at Paris will be more enlightened than the thirty most intelligent children of the same age at Constantinople, and the same proportional difference will be true of the lowest classes ...
— The Idea of Progress - An Inquiry Into Its Origin And Growth • J. B. Bury

... Deshayes of Paris, already celebrated as a conchologist, had been led independently by the study of a large collection of Recent and fossil shells to very similar views respecting the possibility of arranging the Tertiary formations in chronological order, according to the proportional number of species of shells identical with living ones, which characterised each of the successive groups above mentioned. After comparing 3000 fossil species with 5000 living ones, the result arrived at was, that in the lower Tertiary ...
— The Antiquity of Man • Charles Lyell

... numbers there is no need of all this. If the numbers 1, 2, 3, for instance, be given, every one can see that the fourth proportional is 6 much more clearly than by any demonstration, because from the ratio in which we see by one intuition that the first stands to the second we ...
— The Philosophy of Spinoza • Baruch de Spinoza

... air currents on evaporation is to increase it directly proportional with the rate of air movement. Thus, 10 cubic feet of air per hour passing through an egg chamber would remove twice as much moisture as would 5 ...
— The Dollar Hen • Milo M. Hastings

... of celestial bodies, even to their slightest perturbations. He frankly admitted his inability to determine what this force was, but by observations and calculations made with the greatest care, he ascertained that its action upon matter was proportional to its mass directly, and to the square of its distance inversely; and, with the requisite data and the principles of pure geometry, he demonstrated that this mysterious force—utterly inapproachable by human conception ...
— Life: Its True Genesis • R. W. Wright

... scale. Scotland appears on the horizon of English history only during well-defined epochs, leaving no trace of its existence in the intervals between these. It may be that the space given to Scotland in the ordinary histories of England is proportional to the importance of Scottish affairs, on the whole; but the importance assigned to Anglo-Scottish relations in the fourteenth century is quite disproportionate to the treatment of the same subject in the fifteenth century. Readers even of Mr. Green's famous book, may learn ...
— An Outline of the Relations between England and Scotland (500-1707) • Robert S. Rait

... been able to see, as regards the animals, that the more frequent and longer sustained use of any organ gradually strengthens this organ, develops it, enlarges it, and gives it a power proportional to the length of time it has been used; while the constant lack of use of such an organ insensibly weakens it, causes it to deteriorate, progressively diminishes its faculties, and tends to ...
— Lamarck, the Founder of Evolution - His Life and Work • Alpheus Spring Packard

... extraordinary benefits, here and now on the material plane, to such as believe in them. Remarkable results may follow an intense belief in such doctrines, which, whilst having no connection whatever with their accuracy, being proportional only to the intensity with which they are held, cannot do otherwise than confirm the believer in the validity of his beliefs, though these may be in every way highly fantastic and erroneous. Both the Roman Catholic, therefore, and the Buddhist ...
— Bygone Beliefs • H. Stanley Redgrove

... instance, if a city should issue twenty-year bonds for $100,000 to secure money for street improvements the entire debt would fall due in twenty years, but to avoid having such a large amount fall due in one year, a proportional sum is set aside each year as a sinking fund—that is, to sink, or reduce, or wipe out the indebtedness when the bonds mature. Bonds are not paid in ...
— Up To Date Business - Home Study Circle Library Series (Volume II.) • Various

... lawyers; yet, granting his sergeant of the law discretion and wisdom, a knowledge of cases even "from the time of King Will," and fees and perquisites quite proportional, ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee

... truer observation than is made by the Free-Traders, when they assert that goods will not be sent into a nation for nothing; and that, if our imports increase, something that goes out must have received a proportional augmentation. They forget only one circumstance, which, however, is of some little consequence, namely, that two things may go out, goods or SPECIE. We have melancholy proof, in the present state of the money market, that the latter occurrence has taken place to ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various

... comes home late, with feverish brain and weary legs. His chest and arms have had no exercise proportional to the rest of his system. What shall he do to restore the balance? If he can, let him erect in some upper room, away from furnace-heat, instead of a billiard-table, a private shrine to Apollo or Mercury. He will need but little apparatus. A set of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 19, May, 1859 • Various

... tale, which filled poor Vjera with dismay. He had never before spoken of his father and brother, except as the causes of his disasters, explaining that the powerful influence of his own friends, aided by the machinery of justice, had at last obliged them to concede him a proportional part of the fortune. Fischelowitz was accustomed to laugh at this statement, saying that if the Count were only a younger son, the law would do nothing for him and that he must continue to earn his livelihood as he could. ...
— A Cigarette-Maker's Romance • F. Marion Crawford

... where the labour is compulsory the greater the number of labourers brought together (unless, indeed, where cooperation of many hands is rendered essential by a particular kind of work, or of machinery) the less are the proportional profits, it may be doubted whether the surplus from that source merely, beyond the support of the establishment would sufficiently accumulate in five, or even more years, for the objects in view. And candor obliges ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 6, 1921 • Various

... at bay by the leucocyte cavalry, and a light attack repelled by their skirmish-line, yet when it comes to the heavy fighting of a fever-invasion, it is the slow but substantial burgher-like fixed cells of the body which form the real infantry masses of the campaign. And I believe that upon the proportional relation between these primitive and civilized cells of our body-politic will depend many of the singular differences, not only in degree but also in kind, in the immunity possessed by various individuals. While some surgeons ...
— Preventable Diseases • Woods Hutchinson

... form of the island, the two peaks, O and B, the stream, M-N, the Saddle, M, the water shed from F to H, and steep bluff at K, but they also give the slopes of the ground at all points. From this we see that the slopes are directly proportional to the nearness of the contours—that is, the nearer the contours on a map are to one another, the steeper is the slope, and the farther the contours on a map are from one another, the gentler is the ...
— Manual of Military Training - Second, Revised Edition • James A. Moss

... demonstration may be made still clearer by the following diagram which represents the length of string necessary to produce these tones. (This diagram is exact in the various proportional lengths, being about one twenty-fifth ...
— Piano Tuning - A Simple and Accurate Method for Amateurs • J. Cree Fischer

... month of August more than one-third of the soldiers were on the sick-reports."[25] Dr. Mann quotes Dr. Lovell, another army-surgeon, who says, in the autumn of 1813: "A morning report, now before me, gives 75 sick, out of a corps of 160. The several regiments of the army, in their reports, exhibit a proportional number unfit for duty."[26] Dr. Mann states that "the troops at Burlington, Vt., in the winter of 1812-13, did not number over 1,600, and the deaths did not exceed 200, from the last of November to the last of February."[27] But Dr. Gallup says: "The whole number of deaths ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 60, October 1862 • Various

... which I could never understand and cannot approve) he was kept locked up to break him of the graceful habit. Here, it is not the similarity, it is the difference, that is worthy of remark; the clearly marked degrees of gratitude and the proportional duration of his visits. Anything further removed from instinct it were hard to fancy; and one is even stirred to a certain impatience with a character so destitute of spontaneity, so passionless in justice, and so priggishly obedient to the ...
— Memories and Portraits • Robert Louis Stevenson

... dominion, were every where planted with the colonies that divided the Roman empire. We have no exact account of the numbers, who, with a seeming concert, continued, during some ages, to invade and to seize this tempting prize. Where they expected resistance, they endeavoured to muster up a proportional force; and when they proposed to settle, entire nations removed to share in the spoil. Scattered over an extensive province, where they could not be secure, without maintaining their union, they continued to acknowledge the leader under ...
— An Essay on the History of Civil Society, Eighth Edition • Adam Ferguson, L.L.D.

... with spines, in a row along its back, sides, and legs; these were curved, and almost sharp; on the back of its neck was a thick knotty lump, with a spine at each side, by which I lifted it; its tail was armed with spines to the point, and was of proportional length to its body. The lizard was about eight inches in length. Naturalists have christened this harmless little chameleon the Moloch horridus. I put the little creature in a pouch, and intended to preserve it, but it managed to crawl out of its receptacle, ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles

... was, I own, sanguine in my expectations of the success of this work. I thought that I was the only historian that had at once neglected present power, interest, and authority, and the cry of popular prejudices; and as the subject was suited to every capacity, I expected proportional applause. But miserable was my disappointment: I was assailed by one cry of reproach, disapprobation, and even detestation; English, Scotch, and Irish, whig and tory, churchman and sectary, freethinker and religionist, patriot and courtier, united ...
— The History of England, Volume I • David Hume

... except the Cape "tiger" and the lion. They had indeed, once or twice, heard the peculiar growl or gurr of the former, but until this day none of the party had seen even the footprint of the king of beasts. Of course the interest and excitement was proportional. Of course, also, when the subject was discussed round the camp-fires that night, there was a good deal of "chaffing" among the younger men about the probability of a mistake as to the nature of the footprints ...
— The Settler and the Savage • R.M. Ballantyne

... selected were known to have crystals in certain parts. Some of them were known to be intensely acrid. In these the acridity was in every instance proportional to the number ...
— Popular Science Monthly Volume 86

... settles himself in the middle of a small carpet and locks his legs together so that his shins form an X and he sits on his feet. In this position he will ply his needle for the rest of the day at a rate inversely proportional to the distance of his mistress. When she retires for her afternoon siesta the needle will nap too. Then he will take out a little Vade Mecum, which is never absent from his waistband, and unroll it. It is many-coloured and contains little pockets, one for fragments of the ...
— Behind the Bungalow • EHA

... are not Pro-Semite in that peculiar and personal fashion; if we are lovers, we will not kill ourselves for love. After weighing and valuing all your virtues, the qualities of our own country take their due and proportional part in our esteem. Because of ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward

... largest that has ever been seen in Europe. It is equal in size to the larger breeds of our native oxen, and is of a slaty grey on the body and head; with cream-coloured legs and dewlap, the latter exceedingly long and pendulous; very short horns directed upwards and outwards; and ears of great proportional magnitude, and so flexible and obedient to the animal's will as to be moved in all directions with the greatest facility. Although a full-grown male, he is perfectly quiet, good-tempered, and submissive, and receives the caresses of ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 19, - Issue 552, June 16, 1832 • Various

... several counties from which memorials had come, but charged that there had been a signing of more than one memorial in some counties by the same persons, so that there was a doubling of names without a proportional increase of individual signers. He depreciated Stephenson's statement that these memorials had come from almost every part of the State as ill-founded; for the sixteen counties of Tennessee which had sent representatives with memorials favorable to the idea of emancipation were not from widely scattered ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 4, 1919 • Various

... sacral vertebrae vary; as does the number of the ribs, together with their relative breadth and the presence of processes. The size and shape of the apertures in the sternum are highly variable; so is the degree of divergence and relative size of the two arms of the furcula. The proportional width of the gape of mouth, the proportional length of the eyelids, of the orifice of the nostrils, of the tongue (not always in strict correlation with the length of beak), the size of the crop and of the upper part of the oesophagus; the development and abortion of ...
— On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection • Charles Darwin

... however, that inflammable air and air which extinguishes a candle may differ from one another in the mode of the combination of these two constituent principles, as well as in the proportional quantity of each; and by agitation in water, or long standing, that mode of combination may change. This we know to be the case with other substances, as with milk, from which, by standing only, cream is separated; ...
— Experiments and Observations on Different Kinds of Air • Joseph Priestley

... twenty-nine were overthrown in directions between north and east, sixteen between east and south, eighty-one between south and west, and fourteen between west and north.[11] Fig. 8 represents Professor Omori's results graphically, the line drawn from O to any point being proportional to the number of lamps which fell in directions between 7-1/2 on ...
— A Study of Recent Earthquakes • Charles Davison

... which the system of representative government is susceptible; an improvement which, in the most felicitous manner, exactly meets and cures the grand, and what before seemed the inherent, defect of the representative system; that of giving to a numerical majority all power, instead of only a power proportional to its numbers, and enabling the strongest party to exclude all weaker parties from making their opinions heard in the assembly of the nation, except through such opportunity as may be given to them by the accidentally unequal distribution of ...
— Autobiography • John Stuart Mill

... without thereby constituting himself a partner of the fisherman, to the extent of such advance, proportionately to the value of the boat, drift of nets, etc. possessed by the fisherman and used in the fishing, and becoming liable as such partner for a proportional share of the charges of the fisherman's adventure, and (2) that the custom of fixing the price 'by general terms' be abolished; the trade would, it is thought, soon revert to legitimate methods of dealing. The real capitalist would share the risks and generally engross ...
— Second Shetland Truck System Report • William Guthrie

... proportion between the quantity of money in a nation, be that quantity what it may, and the greatest quantity of taxes that can be raised upon it. People have other uses for money besides paying taxes; and it is only a proportional part of the money they can spare for taxes, as it is only a proportional part they can spare for house-rent, for clothing, or for any other particular use. These proportions find out and establish themselves; and that with such exactness, that if any one part exceeds its proportion, ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine

... air-vessels is spread over these. Now, in the vertebrated creature, the chest is merely the grand air-receptacle into which the blood is sent to be aerated; while in the insect, the chest contains but its own proportional share of the great air-system. In the latter case, therefore, there is a great deal of available space, which would have been, under other circumstances, filled with the respiratory apparatus, but is now left free to be otherwise employed. The thoracic cavity of the insect ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 437 - Volume 17, New Series, May 15, 1852 • Various

... increasing tendency to view this part of the compromise, not merely as a concession of the large to the small States, but also of the largely slaveholding, to the free, or slightly slaveholding States. The two questions of slave representation with a proportional increase of direct taxes, and of perfect equality in the Senate, were always connected together; and a large committee of compromise, consisting of one member from each State, expressly recommended that both provisions ...
— An Appeal in Favor of that Class of Americans Called Africans • Lydia Maria Child

... second factor of good organization. A cursory study of a well-organized chapter or merely passing attention to a well-organized lecture reveals at once a distinct difference in the emphasis on the various parts or elements of the subject. The proportional allotment of time or space, the number of illustrations, the number of questions asked on a given point, the force of language—these are all means of bringing out the relative importance of constituent topics or principles. In retrospect, a well-organized ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper

... will generally be welcomed as opportune. Proportional Representation has made very rapid, almost startling advances in recent years. In one shape or another it has been adopted in many countries in Northern Europe, and there is a prospect of a most important extension of this adoption in the reform of the parliamentary institutions ...
— Proportional Representation - A Study in Methods of Election • John H. Humphreys

... traffic which have often been apparently the sole motives in city improvement. The conservation of historic buildings, whenever possible, the planting of trees along our streets, the laying out of gardens, the insistence upon a proportional amount of air and open space to new buildings would go a long way towards making our bricks-and-mortar joyless wildernesses into ...
— Civics: as Applied Sociology • Patrick Geddes

... whether for all this footsoreness, this thirst and this exertion, I would be rewarded by proportional pleasure. My father did not reply. He evidently had need of all his energies ...
— The Bride of Dreams • Frederik van Eeden

... Corn.—Fresh, soft, green, sweet corn contains about 75 per cent of water. The dry matter is half starch and one quarter sugar. The protein content makes up nearly 5 per cent, a larger proportional amount than is found in the ripened corn, due to the fact that the proteids are deposited in the early stages of growth and the carbohydrates mainly in the last stages. Sweet corn is a vegetable of high nutritive value ...
— Human Foods and Their Nutritive Value • Harry Snyder

... transposition from left to right in the sense of the equation. But this number will be the same under the same external conditions, and the greater the more numerous the collisions; in fact a direct ratio must exist between the two. Bearing in mind now, that the number of collisions must be proportional to each of the concentrations of the bodies A1, A2, ..., and therefore, on the whole, to the product of all these concentrations, we arrive at the conclusion that the velocity v of the transposition from left to right in the sense of the reaction equation is v ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 1 - "Chtelet" to "Chicago" • Various

... their life does not seem to have been affected by speculations about the world beyond. Of age indeed and of death they had a horror proportional to their acute and sensitive enjoyment of life; but their natural impulse was to turn for consolation to the interests and achievements of the world they knew, and to endeavour to soothe, by memories and hopes of deeds future and past, the ...
— The Greek View of Life • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson

... such rising dangers as total prohibition, and the female franchise, the daylight saving, and eugenic marriage, together with proportional representation, the initiative and the referendum, and the duty of the citizen to take an intelligent interest in politics—and I admit that I shall not be sorry ...
— Frenzied Fiction • Stephen Leacock

... can, by a series of questions like the above, be led to see by their own reasoning, that time, as denoted by the clock, must differ in every two places, not upon the same meridian, and that the difference must be exactly proportional to the difference of longitude. So that a watch, which is right in one place, cannot, strictly speaking, be right in any other place, east or west of the first: and that, if the time of day, at two places, can be compared, either by taking a chronometer ...
— The Teacher - Or, Moral Influences Employed in the Instruction and - Government of the Young • Jacob Abbott

... possible for any party to propose an amendment to the state constitution, since it can not be expected under any ordinary conditions to control two-thirds of the popular vote. But inasmuch as the successful party often secures under our system much more than its proportional share of representation in the legislature, it is by no means unusual for a party to have a two-thirds majority in both houses of a state legislature. This would appear to give the numerical majority under such conditions the power to propose and adopt amendments. Such would be the case ...
— The Spirit of American Government - A Study Of The Constitution: Its Origin, Influence And - Relation To Democracy • J. Allen Smith

... self-evident, as in the case of 2, 4, 3, 6; here it is evident that if the second number be multiplied by the third, and the product divided by the first, the quotient is 6; when they see that by this process the number is produced which they knew beforehand to be the proportional, they infer that the process always holds good for finding a fourth number ...
— On the Improvement of the Understanding • Baruch Spinoza [Benedict de Spinoza]

... modestly interposed in this incipient quarrel between husband and wife. "Nay, the matter is of no importance. Kazuma is grateful for such kindness, but aid is not needed. His arm is long." He held it out, almost simian in proportion and slenderness, the one proportional defect of this handsome body. The quarrel of Cho[u]bei and O'Taki lapsed before his ...
— The Yotsuya Kwaidan or O'Iwa Inari - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 1 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville

... point is the proportional increase of the double-flowering seeds with age. If seed is kept for two or three years, the greater part of the grains will gradually die, and among the remainder there is found on sowing, a higher percentage of double ones. Hence we may infer that the single-flowered ...
— Species and Varieties, Their Origin by Mutation • Hugo DeVries

... was impossible to get rid of this defect, and therefore turned his attention to the construction of reflectors. But the discovery that the dispersive powers of different glasses are not proportional to their reflective powers, supplied opticians with the means of remedying the defect. Let us clearly understand what is the discovery referred to. If with a glass prism of a certain form we produce a spectrum of ...
— Half-hours with the Telescope - Being a Popular Guide to the Use of the Telescope as a - Means of Amusement and Instruction. • Richard A. Proctor

... to prove and confirm by material examples and sensible instruments, certain geometrical conclusions, where of a man cannot find out the conceivable demonstrations by enforced reasons and proofs. As that conclusion which instructeth one to search out two lines mean proportional, which cannot be proved by reason demonstrative, and yet notwithstanding is a principle and an accepted ground for many things which are contained in the art of portraiture. Both of them have fashioned it to the workmanship of certain ...
— A History of Science, Volume 1(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams

... These words should cause society to change resulting in a leveling of incomes through proportional taxation and aids of all kinds throughout the industrialized world. Nobody could ever imagine the immense wealth which was to be produced by the efficient industry ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 3 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 2 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine

... the wishes of the minority-which may amount to nearly half the community. [Footnote: Cf. Unpopular Review, vol. 1, p. 22.] Strong parties may go for many years without any representation, or with representation quite disproportionate to their numbers. By the method of proportional representation, every man's vote counts, and every considerable body of opinion can send its representative to council. Men of marked personality, who have aroused too great hostility to make them safe candidates as we vote today, because they ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake

... varying numbers of amylin (original starch or dextrin) groups in conjunction with a proportional number of maltose groups. They are not separable into maltose and dextrin by any of the ordinary means, but exhibit the properties of mixtures of these substances. As the process of hydrolysis proceeds, the amyloins become gradually poorer in amylin and relatively richer in maltose-groups. ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various

... say what peculiarities their writing possessed. For example, how many could say off-hand how they dotted an i—whether with a round dot, a tick or a dash—whether the tick was vertical, horizontal or sloping; what was the proportional distance of the dot from the top of the i. Again, ask a practised writer how he crosses the letter t—whether with a horizontal, up or down stroke? It is safe to assume that not one in a thousand could give an accurate answer, for the reason that the dotting of an ...
— The Detection of Forgery • Douglas Blackburn

... the electron which does not agree with experience. Guided by purely formal points of view, H. A. Lorentz was the first to introduce the hypothesis that the form of the electron experiences a contraction in the direction of motion in consequence of that motion. the contracted length being proportional to ...
— Relativity: The Special and General Theory • Albert Einstein

... bodies, moveable with the agitation of the waves, gives to the sea the power of undermining farther and farther into the solid basis of our land. This is the operation which is to be measured; this is the mean proportional by which we are to estimate the age of worlds that have terminated, and the duration of ...
— Theory of the Earth, Volume 1 (of 4) • James Hutton

... stars, the long ship probed the ever-shifting currents in the four-dimensional universe. The long ship found a low-density flaw, where space could hardly be said to exist at all. The long ship, described mathematically, was half as long as the continuum—the length being inversely proportional and related only to mass. Time was but a moth's wing between twin ...
— General Max Shorter • Kris Ottman Neville

... bore almost tangentially, traversed a thickness of matter of about 399,000 kilometres, (248,000 English miles,) whilst the visual rays near the head of the comet did not meet above 80,000 kilometres (50,000 miles) of it. As the brightness must be proportional to the quantity of matter traversed, there could not fail to be an appearance around the comet, of a semi-ring five times more luminous than the central regions. This semi-ring, then, was an effect of projection, and it has revealed a circumstance to us truly remarkable ...
— Biographies of Distinguished Scientific Men • Francois Arago

... souls are of many and very different natures, living in territories which are to them vast continents, and rivers, and seas, but which are yet only the bodies of our other component souls; coral reefs and sponge-beds within us; the animal itself being a kind of mean proportional between its house and its soul, and none being able to say where house ends and animal begins, more than they can say where animal ends and soul begins. For our bones within us are but inside walls and buttresses, that is ...
— Life and Habit • Samuel Butler

... has been already described as an attraction which every particle of matter, however small, exerts on every other particle. With gravity there is no selection; no particular atoms choose, by preference, other particular atoms as objects of attraction; the attraction of gravitation is proportional simply to the quantity of the attracting matter, regardless of its quality. But in the molecular world which we have now entered matters are otherwise arranged. Here we have atoms between which a strong attraction is exercised, and also atoms between which ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall

... experiment, and the more familiar they are to the student, the more thoroughly is he likely to acquire the idea which it is meant to illustrate. The educational value of such experiments is often inversely proportional to the complexity of the apparatus. The student who uses home-made apparatus, which is always going wrong, often learns more than one who has the use of carefully adjusted instruments, to which he is apt to trust, and which he ...
— Five of Maxwell's Papers • James Clerk Maxwell

... entailed in the attempt to ascertain the proportional number of inverts compare the work of M. Hirschfeld in the Jahrbuch fuer sexuelle Zwischenstufen, 1904. Cf. also Brill, The Conception of Homosexuality, Journal of the ...
— Three Contributions to the Theory of Sex • Sigmund Freud

... character. If industry, frugality, and disinterested integrity were alike the virtues of all, there would, apparently, be more of the social spirit, in making all property a common stock, and giving to each individual a proportional title to the wealth of the whole. Such is the basis upon which Plato forbids, in his Republic, the division of property. Such is the system upon which Rousseau pronounces the first man who inclosed a field with a fence, ...
— Orations • John Quincy Adams

... Serpent, by him first 930 Made common and unhallowd: ere one tastes; Nor yet on him found deadly; he yet lives, Lives, as thou saidst, and gaines to live as Man Higher degree of Life, inducement strong To us, as likely tasting to attaine Proportional ascent, which cannot be But to be Gods, or Angels Demi-gods. Nor can I think that God, Creator wise, Though threatning, will in earnest so destroy Us his prime Creatures, dignifi'd so high, 940 Set over all his Works, ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton

... of Acheen made an attempt to gain possession of Malacca, against which he sent a fleet of 250 sail, with 20,000 soldiers and a great train of artillery. In this great fleet there were 47 gallies of extraordinary strength, beauty, and size, all near 100 feet long and of proportional breadth. The king embarked with his wife, children, and treasure; but upon some ill omen the fleet and army sailed without him, and came before Malacca in the beginning of July 1629, the former under ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VII • Robert Kerr

... conceded to the Generality about half of the remissions that Turgot had solicited. A greater operation was the re-adjustment of the burden, thus lightened, within the province. The people were so irritated by the disorders which had been introduced by the imperfect operation of the proportional taille, that with the characteristic impatience of a rude and unintelligent population, they were heedlessly crying out for a return to the more familiar, and therefore more comfortable, disorders of the arbitrary taille. Turgot, as was natural, resisted this slovenly reaction, ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 2 of 3) - Turgot • John Morley

... divisions, suppose it be required to find a fourth proportional which shall stand to the third of three numbers as the second does to the first. The merchant's clerk knows his rule; he multiplies the second into the third and divides by the first. He neither knows nor cares to know why the result is the number which he seeks, but he has learnt ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude

... In "An Englishman Looks at the World," a companion volume to the present one, which was first published by Messrs. Cassell early in 1914, and is now obtainable in a shilling edition, the reader will find a full discussion of the probable benefit of proportional representation in eliminating the party hack from political life. Proportional representation would probably break up party organisations altogether, and it would considerably enhance the importance and responsibility of the Press. It would do much to accelerate the development of the state ...
— What is Coming? • H. G. Wells

... details. It is the expression caught from a glimpse of the soul of nature by the soul of man; the mirror of a mood, passing, perhaps, in fact, but perpetuated thus to fancy. Being an emotion, its intensity is directly proportional to the singleness with which it possesses the thoughts. The Far Oriental fully realizes the power of simplicity. This principle is his fundamental canon of pictorial art. To understand his paintings, it is from this standpoint they must be regarded; not as soulless ...
— The Soul of the Far East • Percival Lowell

... a 120-member constituent assembly based on proportional representation within each province was established following the UN-supervised election in May 1993; the constituent assembly was transformed into a legislature in September 1993 after delegates ...
— The 1995 CIA World Factbook • United States Central Intelligence Agency

... sewers were carried out between 1900 and 1904 by Mr. D. E. Lloyd-Davies, M.Inst.C. E., the results of which are published in Vol. CLXIV., Min Proc. Inst.C.E. He showed that the quantity reaching the sewer at any point was proportional to the time of concentration at that point and the percentage of impermeable area in the district. The time of concentration was arrived at by calculating the time which the rain-water would take to flow through ...
— The Sewerage of Sea Coast Towns • Henry C. Adams

... statue, said to be the dog of Alcibiades, and valued at 1000l. Burke said that the representation of no animal could be worth so much. Johnson, whose taste for art was a vanishing quantity, said that the value was proportional to the difficulty. A statue, as he argued on another occasion, would be worth nothing if it were cut out of a carrot. Everything, he now said, was valuable which "enlarged the sphere of human powers." The first man who balanced a straw upon his nose, or rode upon three horses at once, ...
— Samuel Johnson • Leslie Stephen

... respiration is the final result. If the temperature of the animal be tested from time to time during the exposure, it will be found to rise steadily, and the severity of the symptoms will be directly, and in any one species constantly, proportional to the intensity of ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 86, February, 1875 • Various

... This would cause, in practice, the centre portion of the envelope to sag downwards, while the ends would have a tendency to rise. The principle which has been found to be most satisfactory is to fix the points of suspension distributed over the greatest length of envelope possible proportional to the lift of gas at each section thus formed. From these points the wires are led to the car. If the car is placed close to the envelope it will be seen that the suspensions of necessity lie at a very flat angle and exert a serious longitudinal compression. This ...
— British Airships, Past, Present, and Future • George Whale

... fighting general once remarked, "These fellows are in luck since the telegraph and the correspondents have been at work. We weren't so fortunate in my day. I went through the Crimea and the Mutiny, and there was yet another affair in 1863 that was hotter than either, so far as close fighting and proportional losses of troops were concerned. A force of three thousand was sent against the Afghans, and they never gave us much rest night or day. They seemed determined to give their lives away, and they wouldn't be denied. I've seen them come on and grab at the muzzles ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman

... over pulleys. Each pulley corresponds to one of the "tides," and there are about a dozen altogether, some of which exercise but little effect. Of course if the centres of the pulleys were all fixed the pen could not move, but the centre of each pulley describes a circle with a radius proportional to the amplitude of the corresponding tide, and in a time proportional to the period of that tide. When these pulleys are all set so as to start at the proper phases, the motion is produced by turning round a handle which makes the drum rotate, and sets all the pulleys ...
— Time and Tide - A Romance of the Moon • Robert S. (Robert Stawell) Ball

... have something in the shape of Captain King's undescribed plants to make me recollect it.' Could a better reason be given, if I had been asked, by me, for not giving the plants to the British Museum?") and the Zoologists so little; the proportional number of specimens in the two branches should have had a very different appearance. I am out of patience with the Zoologists, not because they are overworked, but for their mean, quarrelsome spirit. ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin

... down to the bridge at Fochabers, and threw them into the Spey. We may congratulate ourselves on the fact that it is no longer incumbent on wedding guests to drink the health of the newly married couple so fervently, and that a proportional saving in table fittings can thus ...
— The Days Before Yesterday • Lord Frederick Hamilton

... on which the whole theory of the celestial motions is grounded, were generalized by Kepler from direct comparison of observations; that the quantitative law of the condensation of gases by pressure, the law of Boyle and Mariotte, was arrived at by direct experiment; that the proportional quantities in which every known substance combines chemically with every other, were ascertained by innumerable experiments, from which the general law of chemical equivalents, now the ground of the ...
— Auguste Comte and Positivism • John-Stuart Mill

... from part of the taxes. Before long the officials had secured the liberation of the whole of their land from the chief taxes. In the second place, the taxation system was simplified by making the amount of tax proportional to the amount of land owned. The lowest bracket, however, in this new system of taxation comprised more land than a poor peasant would actually own, and this was a heavy blow to the small peasant-owners, who in the past had paid a proportion of their produce. Most of them had so ...
— A history of China., [3d ed. rev. and enl.] • Wolfram Eberhard

... pleasures of a good table, found that, on the present occasion, he was a mere novice. Both his companions, but Smith in especial, seemed to consider that they were now engaged in the only true business of life; and weighed all its minutiae with a proportional degree of accuracy. To carve the morsel in the most delicate manner—and to apportion the proper seasoning with the accuracy of the chemist,—to be aware, exactly, of the order in which one dish should ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott

... of the time of revolution (or year) of each planet is proportional to the cube of its mean distance from ...
— Pioneers of Science • Oliver Lodge

... inflammable vapor. A light is applied at a touch hole, and the explosion drives up the piston, which, working on a lever, forces down the piston of a pump for pumping water. Robt. Street adds to his description a note: "The quantity of spirits of tar or turpentine to be made use of is always proportional to the confined space, in general about 10 drops to a cubic foot." This engine is quite a workable one, although the arrangements described are ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 484, April 11, 1885 • Various

... If we find ten grains in a square foot, we know that the number of square feet in the whole field is one-tenth that of the number of grains sown. So it is with the universe of stars. If the latter are sown equally through space, the extent of the space occupied must be proportional to the number of stars which ...
— Side-lights on Astronomy and Kindred Fields of Popular Science • Simon Newcomb

... of the Archbishops and the twelve Bishops present voted for the bill. Our clause was carried by 134 votes to 71, and Women's Suffrage was, therefore, supported in the Lords by nearly two to one. The Lords inserted in it among other things Proportional Representation. It was on this and not on women's suffrage that the final contest took place when it was returned to the Commons, but at last the long struggle of women for free citizenship was ended, having continued a little over fifty years. ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume VI • Various

... Proportion of the Forces.—Newton proved that the attraction is proportional to the product of the masses of ...
— Aether and Gravitation • William George Hooper

... adversaria, is unconscious of their parental dignity, and by no means to be confounded with the referees in astronomical or pharmaceutical cases, or with ordinary omphalopsychites. Whatever be or not be the result of these investigations and calculations, it is consolatory to the student of proportional hemispheres to remark that, whichever way the sophist may turn, he must invariably rely on the softer impeachments of a ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 24, September 10, 1870 • Various

... development of muscle, the only safe thing to do is so to dress that every muscle has free and unrestrained motion. Walking to be beneficial should be out of doors, with some pleasant motive, and taken with some degree of energy. The length of the walk should be proportional to the strength of the girl—short at first, and increasing as strength increases. The erect attitude should be maintained, and the ...
— What a Young Woman Ought to Know • Mary Wood-Allen

... inevitable effect of the state of society, the public debt had greatly accumulated in the middle and northern states, whose inhabitants had derived, from its rapid appreciation, a proportional augmentation of their wealth. This circumstance could not fail to contribute to the complacency with which the plans of the secretary were viewed by those who had felt their benefit, nor to the irritation with which they were contemplated by ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 4 (of 5) • John Marshall

... whom he had acknowledged for the only sovereign of nature, without even having any distinct idea on the subject: such is the true genealogy of those inferior gods whom the uninformed place as, a proportional means between themselves and the first of all other causes. In consequence, among the Greeks and the Romans, we see the deities divided into two classes, the one were called great gods, because the whole world ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 2 • Baron D'Holbach

... reimbursement assumed by the agent of their nation, I deemed that the indulgence would have a propitious effect in the moment of returning friendship. The sum of $870.83 was accordingly furnished them for the five months of past captivity and a proportional ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 4) of Volume 1: Thomas Jefferson • Edited by James D. Richardson

... was opened with the presentation by the Virginia delegation of a series of resolutions providing for radical changes in the machinery of the Confederation. The principal features were the organization of a legislature of two houses proportional to population and with increased powers, the establishment of a separate executive, and the creation of an independent judiciary. This was in reality providing for a new government and was probably quite beyond the ideas of most of the members of the Convention, who had come there under instructions ...
— The Fathers of the Constitution - Volume 13 in The Chronicles Of America Series • Max Farrand

... color in visual sensation. Pitch ranges from the lowest notes, produced by the longest audible waves, to the highest, produced by the shortest audible waves. It is customary, in the case of sound waves, to speak of vibration rate instead of wave-length, the two quantities being inversely proportional to each other (in the same conducting medium). The lowest audible sound is one of about sixteen vibrations per second, and the highest one of about 30,000 per second, while the waves to which the ear is most sensitive have a vibration rate of about 1,000 to 4,000 per second. ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth

... long labours of the loom have ceased. Cloth-work, crape-work, chenille-work, ribbon-work, wafer-work, with a long train of etceteras, have all passed away in our own memory; yet these conferred much evanescent fame, and a proportional quantity of vain emulation. A taste for drawing, or music, cannot be classed with any of these trifling performances; but there are many faded drawings of the present generations, which cannot stand in competition with the glowing and faithful colours of the silk and worsted of former times; and ...
— Practical Education, Volume II • Maria Edgeworth

... whose diameter is AB, the major axis. Since DTO is a right angle, T lies upon the circumference of the circle whose center is C, and diameter DO; this circle cuts the asymptote SCS at M and N. The semi-conjugate axis is a mean proportional between D A and AO; now drawing TM and TN, it is seen that Tt is that mean proportional; and a circle described about C with that radius will be tangent to TO. DT, then, is the radius of the circle to be described about the focus of the conjugate ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 803, May 23, 1891 • Various

... brought home to all capable of realising an economic truth the fact that the economic collapse of any large mass of population which had in the past entered into the totality of international trade is a condition of proportional impoverishment to all the others concerned. He who sees this as to Russia cannot conceivably miss seeing it as to Germany; even tariffist hallucinations about a "losing trade" under German tariffs cannot shut out the fact that our trade ...
— Essays in Liberalism - Being the Lectures and Papers Which Were Delivered at the - Liberal Summer School at Oxford, 1922 • Various

... one of the axioms of the Aristotelian mechanics, that the heavier of two falling bodies would reach the ground sooner than the other, and that their velocities would be proportional to their weights. Galileo attacked the arguments by which this opinion was supported; and when he found his reasoning ineffectual, he appealed to direct experiment. He maintained, that all bodies would fall through the same height in the ...
— The Martyrs of Science, or, The lives of Galileo, Tycho Brahe, and Kepler • David Brewster

... and three hundred pounds a year, the author received at first but L10, which was afterwards increased by an additional sum, and by the profits of a quarto edition of the work. By a subsequent act of the legislature, extending the term of copyright, it reverted again to the author; but with no proportional increase of profit. Campbell's pecuniary circumstances are said to have been by no means easy at this time and a pleasant anecdote is recorded of him, in allusion to the hardships of an author's case, somewhat similar to his own: he was desired to give a toast at a festive moment ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 407, December 24, 1829. • Various

... such thoughts for a minute or two, I enter the mansion, which is said to have been the gatehouse only of the original building, and find one being on whom time seems to have made little impression; for the Aunt Margaret of to-day bears the same proportional ago to the Aunt Margaret of my early youth, that the boy of ten years old does to the man of (by'r Lady!) some fifty-six years. The old lady's invariable costume has doubtless some share in confirming one in the opinion, that time has stood ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott

... reader's imagination need not be entirely excluded from an occupation with lords; and the petty sums which any bankrupt of high standing would be sorry to retire upon, may be lifted to the level of high commercial transactions by the inexpensive addition of proportional ciphers. ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot

... prime mover;—any more than water in the boiler of a locomotive is the prime mover in the generation of the steam. Without the fuel in the furnace the steam would not be produced; and the amount of steam generated will be proportional to the quantity and heat of the fuel in the furnace and the quantity of water in the boiler. In the case of Krakatoa, both these elements were enormous and inexhaustible. The volcanic chimney (or system ...
— Volcanoes: Past and Present • Edward Hull

... to give a distinct view of the migrations of commerce and of wealth in general. For a very accurate view, there are no materials in existence; neither would it lead to any very different conclusion, if the proportional values were ascertained ...
— An Inquiry into the Permanent Causes of the Decline and Fall of Powerful and Wealthy Nations. • William Playfair

... surrendered. Later the Assembly adopted a "Declaration of Rights of Man and of the Citizen" (R. 253), much like the American Declaration of Independence. This declared, among other things, that all men were born free and have equal rights, that taxes should be proportional to wealth, that all citizens were equal before the law and have a right to help make the laws, and that the people of the nation were sovereign. These principles struck at the very foundations ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY

... assume a fruticose habit, there is one plant in the vicinity of the Colony of Port Jackson, remarkable for its gigantic, arborescent growth; many specimens having been remarked from fifteen to twenty feet in height, of proportional robust habit, ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia] [Volume 2 of 2] • Phillip Parker King

... service academies graduated just fifty-one black officers, an impressive statistic only in the light of the record of a total of sixty black graduates in the preceding eighty-six years. Furthermore, there were only 116 black cadets in 1968, a vast proportional increase over former years but also an indication of the small number of black officers that could be expected from that source during the next four years (Table 26). Since cadets were primarily chosen by congressional nomination and from ...
— Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 • Morris J. MacGregor Jr.



Words linked to "Proportional" :   quantity, proportional counter, proportionate, proportion



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