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Parabolical   Listen
adjective
Parabolical, Parabolic  adj.  
1.
Of the nature of a parable; expressed by a parable or figure; allegorical; as, parabolical instruction.
2.
(Geom.)
(a)
Having the form or nature of a parabola; pertaining to, or resembling, a parabola; as, a parabolic curve.
(b)
Having a form like that generated by the revolution of a parabola, or by a line that moves on a parabola as a directing curve; as, a parabolic conoid; a parabolic reflector; a parabolic antenna.
Parabolic conoid, a paraboloid; a conoid whose directing curve is a parabola. See Conoid.
Parabolic mirror (Opt.), a mirror having a paraboloidal surface which gives for parallel rays (as those from very distant objects) images free from aberration. It is used in reflecting telescopes.
Parabolic spindle, the solid generated by revolving the portion of a parabola cut off by a line drawn at right angles to the axis of the curve, about that line as an axis.
Parabolic spiral, a spiral curve conceived to be formed by the periphery of a semiparabola when its axis is wrapped about a circle; also, any other spiral curve having an analogy to the parabola.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Parabolical" Quotes from Famous Books



... Jesus is to the effect that at the beginning of his reign the nations and peoples shall be gathered before him in the sense that they will be instructed concerning his reign. In parabolic phrase he pictures them being separated as sheep are separated from goats. A goat is an animal that is unruly, disobedient. It refuses to stay in the pasture where it is placed, but insists on getting outside and destroying ...
— The Harp of God • J. F. Rutherford

... cave, where he was nourished with honey and goat's milk by the nymph Amaltheia until the time was ripe for his vengeance upon his father. (It has been suggested that in this somewhat grotesque legend we have a parabolic representation of one of the great religious facts of that ancient world—the supersession by the new anthropomorphic faith of the older cult, whose objects of adoration, made without hands, and devoid of human likeness, were sacred stones or trees. Kronos, the representative of the old ...
— The Sea-Kings of Crete • James Baikie

... MICAIAH AND AHAB.—The parabolic representation of Micaiah is held as proving not the bare permission of an event, but the actual deception of Ahab. The matter is recorded in 1 Kings xxii. Jehoshaphat had paid a visit to his neighbour, the King of Israel, Ahab. The latter ...
— The Doctrines of Predestination, Reprobation, and Election • Robert Wallace

... circumstances of the country. The leading feature of our age is the institution of joint-stock societies. We have taken up very lately the views which AEsop hinted at some thousands of years ago, in his quaint parabolic manner, and which Defoe, who lived a century and a half before his time, most clearly enunciated and described. We have found the way, at last, to make small capitals effect the most gigantic results, by encircling ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various

... thing long before. Every astronomer knew it, but none had been able to imitate or to reproduce this miracle of nature. When a comet approaches the sun, the orbit in which it travels indicates that it is moving under the impulse of the sun's gravitation. It is in reality falling in a great parabolic or elliptical curve through space. But, while a comet approaches the sun it begins to display—stretching out for millions, and sometimes hundreds of millions of miles on the side away from the ...
— Edison's Conquest of Mars • Garrett Putman Serviss

... days' coy inspection of our planet from different points of view, they fly to other remote parts of the universe, and do not condescend to show themselves again for a hundred years or so. Such is the erratic conduct of a heavenly body whose course is regulated by a parabolic curve. ...
— The Romance of Mathematics • P. Hampson

... sparkled like a million jewels, and in places they could see the silver ribbon of the Nile. Rick turned and looked at the radio telescope at Sahara Wells, its great parabolic reflector gleaming ...
— The Egyptian Cat Mystery • Harold Leland Goodwin

... up to the silly Globule and look an unpremeditated Swipe. The Stroke rang sweet and vibrant. The ball rose in parabolic Splendor above the highest branches ...
— Ade's Fables • George Ade

... is a splendid instance of sound answering to sense, which the older critics made so much of; the additional syllable which breaks the measure, and necessitates an increased rapidity of utterance, seeming to express to the ear the rush of the sword up its parabolic curve. And with what lavish richness of presentative power is the boreal aurora, the collision, the crash, and the thunder of the meeting icebergs, brought before the eye. An inferior artist would have shouted through a page, and emptied a whole pallet of colour, without any result but interrupting ...
— Selections from Wordsworth and Tennyson • William Wordsworth and Alfred Lord Tennyson

... accident of fire, it has exploded? A hapless air-navigator, plunging amid torn parachutes, sand-bags, and confused wreck, fast enough into the jaws of the Devil! Suffice it to know that Teufelsdroeckh rose into the highest regions of the Empyrean, by a natural parabolic track, and returned thence in a quick perpendicular one. For the rest, let any feeling reader, who has been unhappy enough to do the like, paint it out for himself: considering only that if he, for his perhaps ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle

... Order exactly the same in kind, only much more complex; and an abstract beauty of surface rendered definite by increase and decline of light—(for every curve of surface has its own luminous law, and the light and shade on a parabolic solid differs, specifically, from that on an elliptical or spherical one)—it is the essential business of the sculptor to obtain; as it is the essential business of a painter to get good colour, whether he imitates anything or not. At a distance from the picture, or carving, ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin

... a vinedresser needs is a knife. The chief secret of culture is merciless pruning. And so says my text, 'The Father is the Husbandman.' Our Lord assumes that office in other of His parables. But here the exigencies of the parabolic form require that the office of Cultivator should be assigned only to the Father; although we are not to forget that the Father, in that office, works through and ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI • Alexander Maclaren

... on the second attempt. It did not go far, it is true, but it went gracefully, describing a parabolic curve considerably to the right of ...
— John Henry Smith - A Humorous Romance of Outdoor Life • Frederick Upham Adams

... distinctly to the symbolic, the parabolic, allegoric, dreamy and mystical—to treatment of the world as an array of weird or half-fanciful existences, witnessing only to certain dim spiritual facts or abstract moralities, occasionally inverted moralities—"tail ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp

... letter written by him to Lord Haddington, three months before, on the 20th of February. "I have lately," he said, "submitted to the consideration of Sir George Cockburn an axiom for the uniform delineation of consecutive parabolic curves, forming a series of lines presenting the least resistance in the submerged portion of ships and vessels—an axiom never before so applied in naval architecture, as is manifest from the discrepant forms of our ships of war. I also offered to Sir George's attention a new ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, Vol. II • Thomas Lord Cochrane

... Spencer's Trunnion Microscope, as combining the greatest number of improvements with an almost perfect freedom from tremor. Along with this I purchased every possible accessory—draw-tubes, micrometers, a camera lucida, lever-stage, achromatic condensers, white cloud illuminators, prisms, parabolic condensers, polarizing apparatus, forceps, aquatic boxes, fishing-tubes, with a host of other articles, all of which would have been useful in the hands of an experienced microscopist, but, as I afterward discovered, were not of the slightest present value to me. It takes ...
— The Diamond Lens • Fitz-James O'brien

... comet's tail being an electric phenomenon, but he seemed to think little was known on the subject. He said this comet had never been seen before, and might never return again, as its path seemed parabolic, and not elliptical; but he said that what was peculiarly remarkable about it was the extreme agitation observed in the tail, and even in the nucleus, the motion appearing to be vibratory. With regard to meteoric stones, he said the one we saw ...
— First Impressions of the New World - On Two Travellers from the Old in the Autumn of 1858 • Isabella Strange Trotter

... and saw how few of them were bringing 'an honest and good heart' for the soil of His word. Just because He saw the shallowness of the momentary enthusiasm, He spoke this pregnant parable from a heavy heart, and as He tells us in His explanation of it to the disciples (ver. 10), uses the parabolic garb as a means of hiding the truth from the unsusceptible, and of bringing it home to those who were prepared to receive it. Every parable has that double purpose of obscuring and revealing. The obscuring ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... Telescopes.—I shall feel obliged if any of your correspondents can inform me where I can find a paper, called "Directions for making the best Composition for the Metals of reflecting Telescopes, and the Method of grinding, polishing, and giving the great Speculum the true parabolic figure," by the Rev. ...
— Notes & Queries 1850.01.12 • Various

... along a beam of sunshine 830 feet long. The apparatus consisted of a transmitter with a mouthpiece, conveying the sound of the voice to a silvered diaphragm or mirror, which reflected the vibratory beam through a lens towards the selenium receiver, which was simply a parabolic reflector, in the focus of which was placed the selenium cells connected in circuit with a battery and a pair of telephones, one for each ear. The transmitter was placed in the top of the Franklin schoolhouse, ...
— Heroes of the Telegraph • J. Munro

... elevation and plan of one of the experimental carriages. Along the under side of each of the carriages a straight turbine, L L, extends the whole length, and water at high pressure impinges on the blades of this turbine from a jet, M, and by this means the carriage is moved along. A parabolic guide, which can be moved in and out of gear by a lever, is placed under the tender, and this on passing strikes the tappet, S, and opens the valve which discharges the water from the jet, M, and this process is repeated every few yards along the whole line. The jets, M, must be placed at such ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 717, September 28, 1889 • Various

... distinguished. You feel that Mr. Parker considers his sentences, not letting his bolts fly at a venture, but aiming at his effects deliberately. It is the trick of promising youth to shoot high and send its phrases in parabolic curves over the target. But a slight wildness of aim is easily corrected, and to see the target at all is a more conspicuous merit than the public imagines. Now Mr. Parker sees his target steadily; he has a thoroughly good notion of what a short story ought to be: and more than ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... It is also very interesting to note that Clement almost nowhere illustrates the parabolic character of the Holy Scriptures by quoting the Epistles, but in this connection employs the Old Testament and the Gospels, just as he almost never allegorises passages from other writings. 1 Cor. III. 2 is once quoted thus in Paed. I. 6. 49: [Greek: to ...
— History of Dogma, Volume 2 (of 7) • Adolph Harnack

... United States, of this character, is formed to so large an extent of iron. Its uses, too, are altogether novel, at least in this country, and ingenious. For instance, the truss beams, supporting the principal weight of the roof, are constructed of cast iron pipes, in a parabolic form, on the same plan as the iron bridges in France and other parts of Europe, with a view to secure lightness and strength. The Library Hall, which occupies the second floor, is one hundred feet high, and sixty wide, in the clear. The ascent from the front is by a single line of thirty-eight ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various

... take one more discovery of Halley, furnishing directly a new triumph for the theory. He noticed that Newton ascribed parabolic orbits to the comets which he studied, so that they come from infinity, sweep round the sun, and go off to infinity for ever, after having been visible a few weeks or months. He collected all the reliable observations of comets he could find, to the number of ...
— History of Astronomy • George Forbes

... is based upon the natural things given in the parable. The other line is spiritual, and follows the natural line, as a shadow follows its substance. My text is not properly a parable, but it is in the parabolic form, and ...
— Life and Labors of Elder John Kline, the Martyr Missionary - Collated from his Diary by Benjamin Funk • John Kline

... less distances from the sun than the planets do. It must not be imagined, however, that all comets revolve about the sun even in the most lengthened ellipses. Three at least—the comets of 1723, 1771, and 1818—are known to have moved along hyperbolic paths instead of parabolic or elliptical ones. These comets, therefore, can make but one appearance in our skies. Having once shewn themselves there, and vanished, they are lost to us for ever. They are but stray and chance visitors to the domains of our sun, and refuse to ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 450 - Volume 18, New Series, August 14, 1852 • Various

... door, had put up the shutters, and simultaneously with the last word stood in the half-opened door and, all unseen by his employer, waved his hand to some one at the corner of the court. He then walked as quickly as his little, bent legs—parabolic were they in outline, but, as this is not a geometric treatise, it is of no particular consequence—would permit him up the long aisle in the centre of the room, and sent off timid little echoes ...
— In the Yule-Log Glow, Book I - Christmas Tales from 'Round the World • Various

... embankment, without throwing it. Then, disregarding the influence of the air resistance, I see the stone descend in a straight line. A pedestrian who observes the misdeed from the footpath notices that the stone falls to earth in a parabolic curve. I now ask: Do the "positions" traversed by the stone lie "in reality" on a straight line or on a parabola? Moreover, what is meant here by motion "in space" ? From the considerations of the previous section the answer is self-evident. ...
— Relativity: The Special and General Theory • Albert Einstein

... the religious ideals of people and are symbols of what they think they should be as religionists. They are symbolic, emblematic, parabolic, allegoric devices of the imagination, and contain nothing but the ideal, imaginary things which are put into them by people for themselves, and they do nothing except what the people perform through them ...
— Communism and Christianism - Analyzed and Contrasted from the Marxian and Darwinian Points of View • William Montgomery Brown

... to the outer boundaries of the vortex, to congregate at leisure, and, after the lapse of a thousand years, to again face the radial stream in a more condensed mass, and to force a passage to the very centre of the vortex, in an almost parabolic curve. That space is filled with isolated atoms or planetary dust, is rendered very probable by a fact discovered by Struve, that there is a gradual extinction in the light of the stars, amounting to a loss of 1/107 of the whole, in the distance ...
— Outlines of a Mechanical Theory of Storms - Containing the True Law of Lunar Influence • T. Bassnett

... burst on the percussion—dirt in all directions. And even if a shell hit on the front of the canal bank, and one were on the back of the bank, five, eight, or ten seconds later one would hear a belated WHIRR, and curved pieces of shell would light—probably parabolic curves or boomerangs. These shells have a great back kick; from the field gun shrapnel we got nothing BEHIND the shell—all the pieces go forward. From the howitzers, the danger is almost as great behind as in front if they burst on percussion. Then the large shrapnel—air-burst—have ...
— In Flanders Fields and Other Poems - With an Essay in Character, by Sir Andrew Macphail • John McCrae

... have a letter dated January 14, 1775, only a few months before he attested the sincerity of his patriotism, in his own blood, on Bunker Hill. His handwriting has many ungraceful flourishes. All the small d's spout upward in parabolic curves, and descend at a considerable distance. His pen seems to have had nothing but hair-lines in it; and the whole letter, though perfectly legible, has a look of thin and unpleasant irregularity. The subject is a plan for securing to the colonial party the services of Colonel Gridley ...
— A Book of Autographs - (From: "The Doliver Romance and Other Pieces: Tales and Sketches") • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... where the top remains perfect at Gizeh, the side ends in a parabolic curve which turns over into the top surface without any cornice or moulding; the tops of walls in the courts of ...
— Manual Of Egyptian Archaeology And Guide To The Study Of Antiquities In Egypt • Gaston Camille Charles Maspero

... "Malcom Porter made good his threat to take a spaceship of his own devising to the Moon. Ham radios all over North America picked up his speech, which was made by spreading the beam from an eighty-foot diameter parabolic reflector and aiming it at Earth from a hundred thousand miles out. It was a collapsible reflector, made of thin foil, like the ones used on ...
— By Proxy • Gordon Randall Garrett

... planets, all go round the sun in the same direction, and do not keep within the general plane of the planetary system, but traverse it sometimes from above and sometimes from below. Other comets, including most of the "great'' ones, appear to travel in parabolic or, in a few cases, hyperbolic orbits, which, not being closed curves, never bring them back again. But it is not certain that these orbits may not be extremely eccentric ellipses, and that after the lapse of hundreds, ...
— Curiosities of the Sky • Garrett Serviss

... mathematical knowledge to bear on the subject, I had devised a method of testing and measuring my work which, I am happy to say, has been fairly successful, and has enabled me to produce the spherical, elliptic, parabolic, or hyperbolic curve in my mirrors, with almost unvarying success. The study of the practical working of specula and lenses has also absorbed a good deal of my spare time during the last two years, and the work ...
— Men of Invention and Industry • Samuel Smiles



Words linked to "Parabolical" :   parable, rounded, parabolic, parabola



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