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Complication   /kˌɑmpləkˈeɪʃən/   Listen
Complication

noun
1.
The act or process of complicating.
2.
A situation or condition that is complex or confused.
3.
Any disease or disorder that occurs during the course of (or because of) another disease.
4.
A development that complicates a situation.  Synonym: ramification.
5.
Puzzling complexity.  Synonyms: complicatedness, knottiness, tortuousness.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Complication" Quotes from Famous Books



... analyze the complication of the causes which influence actions, that I will not venture to ascertain whether our Antiquary's humanity to the poor horse was not in some degree aided by his desire of showing his companion a Pict's camp, or Round-about, a subject which he had ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott

... against his natural tenderness, with all the severity of jealous resentment, he saw her depart with an indifference which he did not even endeavour to conceal from her: this unexpected treatment, joined to the complication of her other misfortunes, had almost in reality plunged ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... cap and was ready. Gypsy hurried away to array herself in the complication of garments necessary to the feminine adventurer, if she so much as crosses the yard; a continual mystery of Providence, was this little necessity to Gypsy, and one against which she lived in a state of incessant ...
— Gypsy Breynton • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps

... at noon, I found myself 25 minutes to the northward of my reckoning; whether occasioned by bad steerage, a bad account, or a current, I could not determine; but was apt to judge it might be a complication of all; for I could not think it was wholly the current, the land here lying east-by-south, and west-by-north, or a little more northerly and southerly. We had kept so nigh as to see it, and at farthest had not been above twenty leagues from it, but sometimes much nearer; ...
— Early Australian Voyages • John Pinkerton

... the order of importance, we discover the well-known fact that what is seen is much more certain and trustworthy than what is heard. "It is better to see once than to hear ten times,'' says the universally-valid old maxim. No exposition, no description, no complication which the data of other senses offer, can present half as much as even a fleeting glance. Hence too, no sense can offer us such surprises as the sense of sight. If I imagine the thunder of Niagara, the voice of Lucca, the explosion of a thousand ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden

... Indeed, the wild feeling of romantic delight with which he heard the few first notes she drew from her instrument amounted almost to a sense of pain. He would not for worlds have quitted his place by her side; yet he almost longed for solitude, that he might decipher and examine at leisure the complication of emotions which now agitated ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott

... well-organized and well-drilled army of reserve, two hundred thousand strong. Appreciating, however, the circumstances of the country at the opening of the war, the gigantic magnitude of the rebellion, and the immensity and complication of the problems pressing on the Administration, they have on the whole been disposed to be patient and trustful. And as long as they believe there is an honest, earnest purpose in the Administration to extinguish the rebellion by force of arms, they will sustain it. What they would do if ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 5, November, 1863 • Various

... thoughts reverted to her. Now that he was helpless, he could secure no diversion by plunging into the tunnel, giving up his mind to his work. He could not now take down his gun and tramp the ditch. Now he was supine, and the longing to break through the mesh, wrestle free from the complication, gripped him and racked him with all its ...
— A Deal in Wheat - And Other Stories of the New and Old West • Frank Norris

... Professor Elberfeld, has told the world, in sentences of portentous length and complication, that "the petty trader's instincts which form the most typical characteristic of the British race" came notably to the fore in our treatment of the German prisoners of war who were held under military surveillance in the British ports which ...
— The Message • Alec John Dawson

... anybody to take no notice of you when you would be glad to be his friend. I did not, however, mean to let Nina meet Dennison, for I never knew whom she might like or dislike, and it would have been a most horrible complication if she had fallen a victim to Dennison's smile. So I told him that Nina would not be in Oxford for more than two or three days, and that I did not know her plans, which was true enough as far as it went, and must have been enough for him to ...
— Godfrey Marten, Undergraduate • Charles Turley

... to deal with him. Besides, there might be nothing wrong. All might yet be explained, all might yet be set to rights, all—unless, unless Gertrude—Oh, why should there arise this new and terrible complication? Gertrude with her youth and beauty and enthusiasm—why must she be drawn into ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, April, 1876. • Various

... individual, while the nation was pledged by its fundamental idea to material prosperity for the masses, popular education and the common welfare, as the supreme test of government. In this labour, subduing the new world to agriculture, trade and manufactures, the forces of the nation were spent, under the complication of maintaining the will of the people as the directing power; the subjugation of the soil and experience in popular government are the main facts of American history. In the course of this task the practice of the fine arts was hardly more than an incident. When anyone thinks of Greece, he thinks ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... of them turned round she was quietly helping Courthorne's companion; but it was a moment or two before Courthorne commenced to eat, for the waitress was certainly Ailly Blake. It was as certain that she had recognized him, which was, however, by no means astonishing, and this promised another complication, for he was commencing to realize that since Winston had gone to Silverdale it would be convenient that Courthorne as such should cease to exist. He fancied that should any of the men he was acquainted with ...
— Winston of the Prairie • Harold Bindloss

... and his devotion to his work and his extraordinary pride not only in the shipyard but in the men who worked in it had made a deep impression on Marsh and Henry. He seemed to know the most minute details of the vast complication of functions that operated throughout the works. While they were passing through one of the shops, a horn had blown, and instantly a great crowd of men and lads had poured out of the yard on their way to their dinner, and Mr. Arthurs, ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine

... their silence and Zuleika's belief that they were bound by some fearful oath gave him great uneasiness. Besides, his son had mentioned Luigi Vampa's name, and the thought that the young man was involved in some complication with the Roman bandit sent a chill to his heart. He was convinced that whatever had occurred had been merely the result of the folly and headlong disposition of youth, but this was scarcely a consolation, for he well knew to what length young ...
— Edmond Dantes • Edmund Flagg

... annotations, in which, that nothing might be lost of his own notes, he has included many things not directly relating to Rabelais, is full of observations and curious remarks which are very useful additions to Le Duchat. One fault to be found with him is his further complication of the spelling. This he did in accordance with a principle that the words should be referred to their real etymology. Learned though he was, Rabelais had little care to be so etymological, and it is not his theories but those of the modern scholar ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais

... respect of composing some verses for your amusement, but I am very much indisposed, and have been ever since that time. I have a constant pain in my head, a palpitation in my flesh, and I may say I am attended with a complication of disorders, at this present writing, so that I cannot with any pleasure or delight, gratify your curiosity in that particular, at this present time, yet I say my will is good to oblige you, if I had it in my power, because you gave me good advice, and edifying language, in that ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams

... Cremonese bow of the seventeenth century. It is fluted in alternate sections, or panels, the lower third having a slight extra complication of the design "thrown in." Truly these grand old craftsmen were not afraid of work. The screw-nut is as perfect as one could wish, saving, only, in the meagre allowance of ...
— The Bow, Its History, Manufacture and Use - 'The Strad' Library, No. III. • Henry Saint-George

... some new complication is supposed to take place, and some extra machine has to be brought into use, until by the end of the school term they can handle every machine and ladder with ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 26, May 6, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various

... alarm at once. Here was a new complication. If the bear should discover the swimmer, who was now nearing the shore, it might be fatal. At all events his ...
— Bert Wilson in the Rockies • J. W. Duffield

... bounds are set to the rapacious demands of that sort of people, or that others are permitted to partake in the objects they would engross, revenge and envy soon fill up the craving void that is left in their avarice. Confounded by the complication of distempered passions, their reason is disturbed; their views become vast and perplexed,—to others inexplicable, to themselves uncertain. They find, on all sides, bounds to their unprincipled ambition in any fixed order of things; but in the ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... space in which that planet is fixed. The earth is moving relatively to Mars and is rotating. To the beings on Mars the operations, construed in this fashion, effect measurements of the greatest complication. Furthermore, according to the relativistic doctrine, the operation of time-measurement on earth will not correspond quite exactly to any time-measurement ...
— The Concept of Nature - The Tarner Lectures Delivered in Trinity College, November 1919 • Alfred North Whitehead

... by promulgating an excellent constitution and administrative reforms. But, being hampered from the outset by the factious behaviour of Paoli, he, with the consent of the Cabinet, deported him to England in the autumn of 1795. An equally serious complication was the feud between the British army and navy. These disputes, originating at Toulon, grew apace in Corsica. Elliot sided with Hood, and was therefore detested by Dundas, his successor, Sir Charles Stuart, and their coadjutor, Colonel Moore. This brilliant young officer, ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose

... had felt a pang of his old pain, the result of the agitation wrought in him by this forcing open of a new period. His old programme, his old ideal even had to be changed. Say what one would, success was a complication and recognition had to be reciprocal. The monastic life, the pious illumination of the missal in the convent cell were things of the gathered past. It didn't engender despair, but at least it required adjustment. Before I left him on that ...
— The Death of the Lion • Henry James

... the curious marmots, called prairie-dogs, from their squeaking bark. Wolves, white and gray, howled about the camp at night, and their cousin, the coyote, seated in the dusk of evening upright on the grass, with nose turned to the sky, saluted them with a complication of yelpings, as if a score of petulant voices were pouring together from the ...
— A Half-Century of Conflict, Volume II • Francis Parkman

... will be fair with me at all events. If I have the misfortune to be under that influence, so has he. If it has a little twisted me, it may have a little twisted him too. I don't say that he is not an honourable man, out of all this complication and uncertainty; I am sure he is. But it taints everybody. You know it taints everybody. You have heard him say so fifty times. Then why ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens

... arriving in London he met with a complication of sorrows, he could, without any great effort, remain on his guard against all seductions. He did so in reality; and Dallas assures us that, even when "Childe Harold" appeared, he still professed positive distaste for the society of ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli

... lacked in ability he made up for in bluster. He had an abominable temper, and a haughty, overbearing manner. He was always committing blunders which he refused to acknowledge, and he roared and bullied his way through one complication after another in a fashion which disgusted even those with whom he acted. During the discussion on the Salary Bill he shrieked and raved himself hoarse in denouncing what he called the "factious insolence" of the Opposition. Of his own factious ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent

... the President was within the control of the cabinet cabal, for they made an angry complaint against Anderson, and imperiously demanded "explanations." For two days the President wavered. An outside complication tended to open his eyes. On the 31st of December Floyd resigned the portfolio of war; and, on the same day, the President sent to the Commissioners a definite answer that, "whatever might have been his ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 4 • Various

... something more than a year and a half since I was cured of a complication of diseases through reading "Science and Health ...
— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy

... itself. In society it takes the form of custom which, when codified, is called law and when enforced is called government. Government is the political representative of a natural equilibrium, of custom, of inertia; it is by no means a representative of reason. But, like any mechanical complication, it may become rational, and many of its forms and operations may be defended on rational grounds. All natural organisms, from protoplasm to poetry, can exercise certain ideal functions and symbolise in their structure ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana

... arrived by this time, and Sally was in the store! With Sam! The situation was highly dramatic. But the old man consummately ignored this complication and directed attention to his son. For him, the molasses-tapper did not exist. The fact is he was overjoyed. Seffy, for once in his life, would be on time! ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume II. (of X.) • Various

... that it was a very hot morning and that they had a great way to drive. When she asked what was the matter with the patient they were on their way to see, she was answered abruptly that he suffered from a complication of disorders, which was the more aggravating because Nan had heard this answer laughed at as being much used by old Dr. Jackson, who was usually unwilling or unable to commit himself to a definite ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett

... this kind. This patient had also been the subject of exact clinical investigations for some time on account of a myelogenic leukaemia. During the time he was last in hospital the blood could only be examined a day before the fatal termination, the direct consequence of a septic complication. With a markedly leukaemic constitution of the blood there were found 62% polynuclear cells, 17.5% mononuclear about the size of the ordinary myelocyte, 0.75% eosinophil cells, nucleated red blood corpuscles in moderate amount. ...
— Histology of the Blood - Normal and Pathological • Paul Ehrlich

... reassuring discovery. Who or what could it be that was engaged upon the type-writer at that unholy hour, 3 A.M.? If a mortal being, why was my coming no interruption? If a supernatural being, what infernal complication might not the immediate future ...
— The Enchanted Typewriter • John Kendrick Bangs

... this mysterious complication needed to explain an oscillation of the wind veering, for instance, by the west from south-east to north-east, then suddenly returning in the same great curve from north-east to south-east, so as to make in thirty-six ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo

... first brought us together at the period of the "Study in Scarlet," up to the time of his interference in the matter of the "Naval Treaty"—an interference which had the unquestionable effect of preventing a serious international complication. It was my intention to have stopped there, and to have said nothing of that event which has created a void in my life which the lapse of two years has done little to fill. My hand has been forced, however, by the recent letters in which Colonel James Moriarty defends the memory ...
— Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

... set Mrs Jo's lively fancy in a ferment, and she imagined every known crime, affliction, and complication which could possibly have befallen Dan. He was too feeble to be worried with questions now, but she promised herself most interesting revelations when she got him safe at home; for the 'firebrand' was her most interesting boy. She begged him to come, and spent more time in composing a letter ...
— Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott

... deemed an incalculable blessing, because it released the planters from an endless complication of responsibilities, perplexities, temptations and anxieties, and because it emancipated them from ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society

... the challenge, and moved the appointment of a committee to examine the state of the Treasury Department in all its particulars. Pending action by the House, a new complication was introduced, which, though meant as a blow at Hamilton, resulted in a signal triumph for him. His enemies got hold of a discharged clerk of the Treasury Department by means of whom they now tried to counteract the effect of Hamilton's ...
— Washington and His Colleagues • Henry Jones Ford

... themselves make voyages by sea. Navigators assert that the natural advantages of this bay are scarcely surpassed in any other part of the globe; that all the navies of the world might ride there with perfect security in every weather; and that such is the complication of anchoring-places within each other that a large ship could be so hid in them as not to be found without a tedious search. At the island of Punchong kechil, on which our settlement stands, it is a common practice to moor the vessels by a hawser to a tree on shore. Timber for masts and ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden

... they can't make anything more than manslaughter out of it—I know that because I've seen them try to hang a despatcher for a passenger wreck—they can't do it, Bud, don't ever believe it. In this state ten years is the extreme limit for manslaughter, and the only complication is that if your train should happen to burn up they might soak you an extra ten years for arson; but a despatcher is usually handy around a penitentiary and can get light work in the office, so that he's thrown more with wife poisoners and ...
— The Daughter of a Magnate • Frank H. Spearman

... in small-pox is seldom marked by the same common inflammatory symptoms as that in measles; and does not seem, by its actual violence, to urge the physician to deplete with freedom, if he only have regard to the existing condition, rather than to the impending danger and complication. The diversity in the two diseases consists not so much in the greater intensity of the latter, as in the more decided gastro-enteritic derangement in the former. Experience has not yet sanctioned the benefit of copious bleeding from the arm, in incipient disease, or irritation verging ...
— North American Medical and Surgical Journal, Vol. 2, No. 3, July, 1826 • Various

... required by England must exactly pay for the cottons or other English commodities required by the United States. If, however, we substitute for this simplicity the degree of complication which really exists, the equation of international demand must be established not between the bullion wanted in England and the cottons or broadcloth wanted in the United States, but between the whole of the imports of England and the whole of her exports. The demand ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • John Stuart Mill

... Charlton's vegetarianism was noticed, all fell to denouncing it. Couldn't live in a cold climate without meat. Cadaverous Mr. Minorkey, the broad-shouldered, sad-looking man with side-whiskers, who complained incessantly of a complication of disorders, which included dyspepsia, consumption, liver-disease, organic disease of the heart, rheumatism, neuralgia, and entire nervous prostration, and who was never entirely happy except in telling over the oft-repeated catalogue of his disgusting ...
— The Mystery of Metropolisville • Edward Eggleston

... into his calculations, the fact being that in the interim his daughter had conceived an affection for a young nobleman called Walther, and had promised to marry him at an early date. Here, then, was a complication indeed, and Hans was sorely puzzled to know how to act, while the unfortunate Minna was equally perplexed, and for many weeks she endured literal torment, her heart being racked by a constant storm of emotions. ...
— Hero Tales and Legends of the Rhine • Lewis Spence

... may be some ill Consequences in that Method of punishing Felons, as well as some good ones; for in a Complication of Disorders, such as Ireland labours under, what helps the one is pernicious to the other. It is our peculiar Misery, that the Desertion of some of our People does not hurt us more, than the Sleepiness, ...
— A Dialogue Between Dean Swift and Tho. Prior, Esq. • Anonymous

... strangely urgent. He had never loved her more. His love had taken on a sacredness, out here in the night, with Beth so weary and helpless. More than anything he had ever desired in his life he wished to keep her sacred—spared from such a complication as their night out here ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels

... from Ahmadnagar. He encamped in Berar; he drank more deeply than ever; he died very suddenly the very day that Abul Fazl came up. The death of Amurath removed one complication, but it led to the question of advance. The imperial officers urged a retreat. Abul Fazl had been bred in a cloister; he was approaching his fiftieth year; he had never before been in active service, but he had the spirit of a soldier; he refused to retreat from an enemy's ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various

... a complication that he had not foreseen. For the first time in his life his wit and cunning had been ...
— The Hippodrome • Rachel Hayward

... intervening time which there is no means of measuring, but during which we know that the progress of change in the animals then living never ceased. When such a break is reached, the course of phylogeny is like picking up an interrupted trail, with the additional complication that the one we find is never quite like the one we left, and it is in such conditions that the systematist must apply his knowledge of the general progressive tendencies through the ages of change, to ...
— American Big Game in Its Haunts • Various

... Accordingly we find several of the largest ecclesiastical edifices, the site and contour of which would otherwise entitle them to distinction, disfigured by some overpowering frontispizio, and presenting a complication of decorative details which distort the outline, and, in spite of toilsome and finished sculpture, mar the truth and ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 365 • Various

... claims to belief. I therefore lean but very slightly on the extravagance and extreme apparent singularity of their pretensions. I might have omitted them, but on the whole it seemed more just to the claims of my argument to suggest the vast complication of improbabilities involved in the statements enumerated. Every one must of course judge for himself as to the weight of these objections, which are by no means brought forward as a proof of the extravagance ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... suffered in Walpole's hands, for he won victories by the firmness of his policy and the skill of his negotiations as effectual as any that are won by arms. But up to the very end of his Ministry, when the frenzy of the nation at last forced his hand, in spite of every varying complication of foreign affairs, and a never-ceasing pressure alike from the Opposition and the Court, it is the glory of Walpole that he resolutely kept England at peace. And as he was the first of our Peace Ministers, so he was the first of our Financiers. He was far ...
— History of the English People, Volume VII (of 8) - The Revolution, 1683-1760; Modern England, 1760-1767 • John Richard Green

... passes in him, are effects of the energy that is common to him with the other beings known to us. But, before a true and comprehensive idea of the unity of nature was possible to him, he was so seized by the variety and complication of his organism and its movements that it never came into his mind to realise that they existed in a chain of material necessity, binding him fast to all other forces and modes of being. Men think that they remedy ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley

... the public will very soon awake to a sense of the importance of investigating this matter for themselves. Their Boards of Health will then find that with a very small outlay they can obtain the truth; and that a vast amount of unnecessary complication and expense can be saved in plumbing and, at the same time greater ...
— The American Architect and Building News, Vol. 27, Jan-Mar, 1890 • Various

... child is suffering with an affection of the lungs or throat, it never cries loudly or continuously. A distress in breathing causes a sort of subdued cry and low moaning. If there is a slight cough it is generally a sign that there is some complication with the ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis

... dear, and put her round!" A moment later he added, under his breath, "Hillo! here is a complication; a couple of naked savages in her! I wonder whether ...
— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood

... of mankind, he thinks, has become drugged and lethargic; our minds are fixed upon sensual pleasures, and our conduct regulated by a blind struggle for the maximum of luxurious enjoyment. The period in his eyes is a period of growing corruption; modern society suffers under a complication of mortal diseases, so widely spread and deeply seated that at present there is no hope of regeneration. The best hope is that its decay may provide the soil in which seed may be sown of a far-distant growth of happier augury. Such dismal forebodings are no novelty. Every age produces ...
— Social Rights and Duties, Volume I (of 2) - Addresses to Ethical Societies • Sir Leslie Stephen

... complication. It was now the turn of Charras's bullies to bluster. They declared that Charras was the man called Vincent, displayed passports and papers, swore and protested. The ...
— The History of a Crime - The Testimony of an Eye-Witness • Victor Hugo

... allegation explains why the company could only sell the piping "subject to whatever rights the city of St. Louis may be entitled to in certain underground pipes, sewers, and conduits in Forest Park." It can be stated that this complication of title to the piping applied to two-thirds if not three-fourths of all of the piping which had been laid at the expense ...
— Final Report of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission • Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission

... in the Confederate army had been productive of most disastrous consequences. The rivalry between O'Neill, Preston, and Owen Roe, increased the complication; but the Nuncio managed to reconcile the two O'Neills, and active preparations were made by Owen Roe for his famous northern campaign. The Irish troops intended for Charles had remained in their own country; the unfortunate monarch had committed his last fatal error by confiding himself to his ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack

... sky and down upon the flags. Harry had foreseen that this complication was likely to occur, he had not wished that Ethne should wait. Sutch imagined him at this very moment, lost somewhere under the burning sun, and compared that picture with the one before his eyes—the ...
— The Four Feathers • A. E. W. Mason

... big bluff. I took hold of the lapel of her waist, intending to undo just one button. I let go in fright when I found there was no button,—only an awful complication of hooks or some other feminine method for keeping things together,—and I grew red and trembled, thinking what might have happened had I, by bad luck, made anything come undone. If Miss Cullen had been noticing me, she would have seen a ...
— The Great K. & A. Robbery • Paul Liechester Ford

... his wife, Norbert went and locked himself up in his own private apartment. He had need to be alone, in order to look this fresh complication more fully in the face, and the more he reflected, the more convinced was he that he had been the dupe of a guilty woman. He had begun by doubting, and he ended by being convinced that the child was not his. Was he to accept this degraded position, and rear up ...
— The Champdoce Mystery • Emile Gaboriau

... is indeed a rigid system, how comes it, one may plausibly object, that no two people speak alike? The answer is simple. All that part of speech which falls out of the rigid articulatory framework is not speech in idea, but is merely a superadded, more or less instinctively determined vocal complication inseparable from speech in practice. All the individual color of speech—personal emphasis, speed, personal cadence, personal pitch—is a non-linguistic fact, just as the incidental expression of desire and emotion are, for the most part, alien to linguistic expression. Speech, like all ...
— Language - An Introduction to the Study of Speech • Edward Sapir

... considered a settled fact, that the atmosphere was limited to the height of about forty-five miles, that being estimated as the limit at which the earth's attraction would be balanced by the expansive force of the particles of air. But in this problem there is an element of complication in the rotation of the atmosphere with the earth on its axis. Near the surface, and for a great distance upward, the air is but a part of the solid globe, or rather an appendage to it, moving with it in all respects like the denser fluid which constitutes the mighty ocean. But there must be a point ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol IV, Issue VI, December 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various

... different for children of different ages. The one thing to do, in general, however, from the psychologist's point of view, is in some way to bring about greater complications in the motor processes which the child uses most habitually, and with this complication to get greater inhibition along the undesirable lines of his activity. Inhibition is the damming up of the processes for a period, causing some kind of a "setback" of the energies of movement into the sensory centres, ...
— The Story of the Mind • James Mark Baldwin

... Twinklers, in spite of a year in England, still dealt in their heads with money before they could get a clear idea of it, there would have been two hundred marks; and as it took, roughly, four marks to make a dollar, the two hundred marks would have to be divided by four; which, leaving aside that extra complication of variations in the exchange, and regarding the exchange for a moment and for purposes of simplification as keeping quiet for a bit and resting, should produce, also roughly, said Anna-Rose a little out ...
— Christopher and Columbus • Countess Elizabeth Von Arnim

... and H.C. Watson's objection about the infinite number of species and the general rise in organisation. But there is a directly opposite objection to yours which is very difficult to answer—viz. how at the first start of life, when there were only the simplest organisms, how did any complication of organisation profit them? I can only answer that we have not facts enough to guide any speculation ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin

... to assail it, is "homme plus grand par l'intelligence que par le coeur." Of Metternich he writes—"A lover of repose from selfishness, he sought it also from incapacity. He wished to enjoy a reputation easily usurped, the falsehood of which the least complication of events would have exposed." And the picture he gives throughout of Casimir Perier is that of an "illustrious charlatan," in whom nothing was genuine but his pride, his hate, and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various

... he asked for an addition to his pay. [Footnote: La Barre a Seignelay, 1682.] He then immediately made alliances with certain merchants of Quebec for carrying on an extensive illicit trade, backed by all the power of his office. Now ensued a strange and miserable complication. Questions of war mingled with questions of personal gain. There was a commercial revolution in the colony. The merchants whom Frontenac excluded from his ring now had their turn. It was they who, jointly with the intendant and the ecclesiastics, had procured ...
— Count Frontenac and New France under Louis XIV • Francis Parkman

... miserable, sick desire to shut her ears to this sound of laughter which was like ribald applause for the death-blow she had dealt. Yes, she had dealt a death-blow, and to one most dear. But how could she have known? How could she have foreseen such a wretched complication as this? Who would have dreamed that gay, careless, laughing 'Poleon Doret was like other men? Rouletta felt the desire to bend her head and release those scalding tears that trembled ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach

... made away with himself. But that catastrophe was the result of a totally different malady, which, as it were, projected itself upon the disease which was established. His case was in the distinctive manner a complication, and the complaint under which he really succumbed, was hereditary suicidal mania. Poor Mr. Jennings I cannot call a patient of mine, for I had not even begun to treat his case, and he had not yet given me, I am convinced, his full and unreserved confidence. ...
— Green Tea; Mr. Justice Harbottle • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

... not exact, yet it is not often that solecisms can be found; and whoever depends on his authority may generally conclude himself safe. His sentences are never too much dilated or contracted; and it will not be easy to find any embarrassment in the complication of his clauses, any inconsequence in his connections, or abruptness in his transitions. His style was well suited to his thoughts, which are never subtilised by nice disquisitions, decorated by sparkling conceits, elevated by ambitious ...
— Lives of the Poets: Addison, Savage, and Swift • Samuel Johnson

... Darwin's work, which has placed them before us with remarkable clearness; and I must endeavour, as far as I can in my own fashion, to give you some notion of how they work. We shall find it easiest to take a simple case, and one as free as possible from every kind of complication. ...
— Darwiniana • Thomas Henry Huxley

... industries, has called forth a considerable amount of ingenuity and skill on the part of those engaged in it. We cannot help thinking, however, that much of this ingenuity has been misplaced, and that instead of striving after new forms involving considerable complication and weight, it would have been better and more profitable if manufacturers had moderated their aspirations, and aimed at greater simplicity of design; for it must be remembered that cyclists are, as a rule, without the slightest mechanical knowledge, while ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 433, April 19, 1884 • Various

... disclosure of the facts in the case would send warships to Asuncion. He believed that an international complication might breed open war unless he succeeded in getting Lyman away without open conflict with the authorities of ...
— Boy Scouts in an Airship • G. Harvey Ralphson

... who claim themselves to be immunes from that dreaded disease of Negrophobia is, that the industrial education of the Negro will inevitably inspire a similar movement for the industrial training of the poor whites, and the resultant competition means a further complication of the race problem, which will only be solved by the ultimate separation of the races. This theory is as unique as it is original, and bids fair to revolutionize the laws of economics. But to the contrary the laws of trade and labor are as imperious ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various

... that they assume a mysterious fascination to catch the eye of the passerby. In his fictions he has sometimes cultivated a more hectic style, but that in itself constitutes one of the bases of its richness. Scarcely a word but evokes an image, a strange, bizarre image, often a complication of images. He is never afraid of the colloquial, never afraid of slang even, and he often weaves lovely patterns with obsolete or technical words. These lines, in which Saltus paid tribute to Gautier, he might, with equal justice, have applied to himself: "No ...
— The Merry-Go-Round • Carl Van Vechten

... hook (FIG. XIV.), so as to catch and tear them. In cases which resist the instrument used in both of these ways, Mr. Streatfeild has used very fine canula-scissors to cut the adhesions.[90] Such a further complication of the operation practically alters its character into an operation ...
— A Manual of the Operations of Surgery - For the Use of Senior Students, House Surgeons, and Junior Practitioners • Joseph Bell

... another complication which had arisen within the last few days and which had startled Mr Melmotte very much indeed. On a certain morning he had sent for Marie to the study and had told her that he should require her signature ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope

... hold good; that the present theory of valency is not supported by chemical facts, and that its elimination would be no small gain for chemistry in freeing it of an element full of mystery, uncertainty, and complication; that the distinction between atoms and molecules will no longer be necessary; that the facts of specific heat do not lend any support to the theory of valency. The paper concludes as follows: "The cause of chemical action is undoubtedly ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 275 • Various

... irritation; above all, there was in my brain some strange insistent compulsion, as though some one were forcing me to remember something that I had forgotten, or as though again some one were fore-warning me of some peril or complication. I had, very distinctly, that impression, so familiar to all of us, of passing through some experience already known: I had seen already the dim lamp, the square patch of evening sky, Nikitin, Andrey Vassilievitch.... ...
— The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole

... corresponding with the minimum expenditure of force. To admit of the exit of the whole series, if the string consists of n cells, there are originally n partitions to be perforated. There might even be one more, owing to a complication which I disregard. There are, I say, at least n partitions to be perforated. Whether each Osmia pierces her own, or whether the same Osmia pierces several, thus relieving her neighbours, does not matter to us: the sum-total of the force expended ...
— Bramble-bees and Others • J. Henri Fabre

... was almost entirely original. The last-mentioned play was produced at Court some time before 1590, and we cannot doubt, was attended by our greatest dramatist. At any rate the lessons which Shakespeare learnt from Lyly in the matter of plot complication are visible in the Midsummer Night's Dream, which was produced in 1595[130]. The intricate mechanism of this play, reminding us with its four plots (the Duke and Hippolyta, the lovers, the mechanics, and the fairies) of the miracle with its imposing but unimportant ...
— John Lyly • John Dover Wilson

... proved. This fact was clearly seen by Bonaparte when he hastily made the treaty ceding it to the United States. That England did not at once attempt to seize it, in disregard of Bonaparte's cession, has been a source of surprise to many historians. The obvious reason is that she dreaded the complication of a war in America when she was about to assume so heavy a burden in the impending European conflict. The inhabitants of the Union in 1803 were six millions in number, of great energy and confidence. A large proportion of them were accustomed to the sea and could send swarms of privateers ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine

... a complication arose. Scuffy, who until the moment of starting had for prudential reasons—that is, to avoid being eaten up—remained in obscurity, joined the hunters. Every one in turn tried to drive him back, ...
— The Mountain Divide • Frank H. Spearman

... though very briefly, described the whole of this mounting. As a carefully thought out and elaborated piece of elegant mechanical complication Herr Gruson's muzzle-pivoting carriage attracted much attention at Paris, in 1867, and its merits were regarded as great by those whose thoughts went little further perhaps. We should have been glad had it been in our power to have joined in ...
— Scientific American, Vol.22, No. 1, January 1, 1870 • Various

... curious complication resulted from two provisions in the constitution. In section 5 of the schedule it was provided that "All territorial officers, civil and military, now holding their offices under the authority of the United States or of the Territory of Minnesota shall continue to hold and exercise their ...
— The History of Minnesota and Tales of the Frontier • Charles E. Flandrau

... gales, and it is only now and then that there appears on the face of facts a sinister violence of intention—that indefinable something which forces it upon the mind and the heart of a man, that this complication of accidents or these elemental furies are coming at him with a purpose of malice, with a strength beyond control, with an unbridled cruelty that means to tear out of him his hope and his fear, the pain ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad

... to that. Craven would give him away, perhaps . . . he would, at any rate, drive him away from Margaret. But he would almost certainly feel it his duty to expose him. He would feel that that would end the complication with his sister once and for all—-the easiest way. He would feel it his duty—-these ...
— The Prelude to Adventure • Hugh Walpole

... foreshadowed a complication, as among the possibilities, from which a diversion might be created in favor of little Mabel Ashbridge; but the possibility was so remote that the missionary did not deem it right to awaken false hopes in the hearts ...
— The Phantom of the River • Edward S. Ellis

... at sea, as given by an Oriental, is usually the most deplorable of narratives—filled with exaggerated fears, the horrors of sea-sickness, and endless lamentations of the evil fate of the writer, in being exposed to such a complication of miseries. Of the wailing of Mirza Abu-Talib we have already given a specimen: and the Persian princes, even in the luxurious comfort of an English Mediterranean steamer, seem to have fared but little better, in their own estimation at least, than the Mirza in his dirty and disorderly ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various

... weapon makes things any clearer to Walt, but rather add to their complication. With ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid

... to hide some struggling intention. Her head, he fancied, had made an imperceptible affirmative movement. Why? What reason could she have? Was it the prompting of some obscure instinct? Or was it simply a delusion of his own senses? But in this strange complication invading the quietude of his life, in his state of doubt and disdain and almost of despair with which he looked at himself, he would let even a delusive appearance guide him through a darkness so dense ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad

... that Western life had got into a confusion and complication from which nothing could deliver it. The principles now incorporated with the very existence of the most influential men in it seemed to me to be radically erroneous, and the disposition of the Western mind is of a kind which augments with ...
— Memoirs of Arthur Hamilton, B. A. Of Trinity College, Cambridge • Arthur Christopher Benson

... entire column there was not one case without its complication, either in the shape of argument for increased liability or claim for compensation. It was makeshift everywhere, and Dick could not but ask himself whether any tenant on the estate really knew how far he was hopelessly in debt or a solvent man? It only needed Peter ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever

... might have chanced to knock at his door when some serious complication had vexed him—a day when the cogs and pulleys upon which he had depended for certain demonstration had become so tangled up in his busy brain that he had thoughts for nothing else. Then, had he pushed pack his green door to receive you, his greeting might have been as cordial and his welcome as ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith

... preaching, but never was the same again; and the renewed troubles into which Scotland and Edinburgh were plunged found the old leader of the Church unequal to the task of making head against them. The curious complication of affairs which had already existed on several occasions in the capital when the castle and its garrison were hostile to the city at their feet, ready to discharge a gun into the midst of the crowded streets or threaten a sally from the gates which opened directly upon ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant

... constitution and original tendencies of the human soul, but to look at the phenomena of mental and moral action in a plain and practical way, as they present themselves to the observation of mothers in the every-day walks of life. And in order the better to avoid any complication with these theories, we will take first an extremely simple case, namely, the fault of making too much noise in opening and shutting the door in going in and out of a room. Georgie and Charlie are two boys, both about five years old, and both prone ...
— Gentle Measures in the Management and Training of the Young • Jacob Abbott

... attention to another complication? To botanists who are not particularly nut growers, there is another tree which is known as the little shellbark,—that is the microcarpa, with a nut about one-half to three-quarters of ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Second Annual Meeting - Ithaca, New York, December 14 and 15, 1911 • Northern Nut Growers Association

... of this singular equanimity was that he always had the full command of all the resources of one of the most fertile minds that ever existed. Accordingly no complication of perils and embarrassments could perplex him. For every difficulty he had a contrivance ready; and, whatever may be thought of the justice and humanity of some of his contrivances, it is certain that they seldom failed to serve ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... regained consciousness after being inanimate for a long time, but he still seemed to be so weak and sick that the physician feared some dangerous complication. He asked: ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant

... It was a complication not to be borne with any restraint. I hastened to stand before the shut door of the sanctuary. It slept in an unpromising stillness. Invincibly reticent it seemed, even when the anguished face of Jimmie Time, under that incredible ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson

... floor-disposition of a Greek building was always simple however great its extent, was well judged for effect, and capable of being understood at once. The grandest results were obtained by simple means, and all confusion, uncertainty, or complication were scrupulously avoided. Refined precision, order, symmetry, and exactness mark the plan as well as ...
— Architecture - Classic and Early Christian • Thomas Roger Smith

... which is always wrestling with "superstition"—the type that sprinkles holy water upon its dagger—because such a type is the inevitable product of the presence among us of the Christian Ideal. The Christian Ideal has made a certain complication of "wickedness" possible, ...
— Visions and Revisions - A Book of Literary Devotions • John Cowper Powys

... arrival at Nassau Hall, then serving as barracks for the force centred there, a fresh complication arose, for Colonel Harcourt learned that Lord Cornwallis, having seen his force safely in winter quarters at Princeton, Trenton, and Burlington, had departed the day previous for New York, while General Grant, who succeeded him, was still at Trenton. Taking the night to consider what was ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford

... to the younger novelist to compare her work with his. Tolsto[i] is always introspective; he deals rather with character than with the incidents which develop character. 'Narka' portrays an involved and ingenious complication of events which hold the interest of the absorbed reader until the end is reached. Tolsto[i]'s stories, even when he has a story to tell, are simply the intuitive outgrowth of the thoughts and actions of the real men and women he draws. His dramatis personae ...
— A War-Time Wooing - A Story • Charles King

... John de Walton seemed at first scarcely to comprehend the numerous ill consequences which might probably follow this unhappy complication of mistakes. He took the paper from the minstrel's hand, and while his eye, assisted by the lamp, wandered over the characters without apparently their conveying any distinct impression to his understanding, De Valence even became ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott

... for photographing the signals would be regulated by clockwork. The experiments that have been made have not given results that are absolutely satisfactory, by reason of the length of the signals received and the mechanical complication of the device. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 508, September 26, 1885 • Various

... than an address of dutiful subjects; that their pretension to inquire into all state affairs, without exception, was such a plenipotence as none of their ancestors, even during the reign of the weakest princes, had ever pretended to; that public transactions depended on a complication of views and intelligence, with which they were entirely unacquainted; that they could not better show their wisdom, as well as duty, than by keeping within their proper sphere;[*] and that in any business which depended on his prerogative, they had no title to interpose with their advice, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part D. - From Elizabeth to James I. • David Hume

... from a short range, as the patient was one of those wounded in the early part of the day at the battle of Magersfontein. It was complicated by a wound of the spleen and an injury to the spinal cord producing incomplete paraplegia accompanied by retention of urine. The last complication was responsible for the death of the patient, since ascending infection from the bladder led to the development of pyo-nephrosis ...
— Surgical Experiences in South Africa, 1899-1900 • George Henry Makins

... whose return the bulk of the members stayed in the Great Chamber. I was informed that this was one trick among others concerted to ruin me, and, telling the Duc d'Orleans of it, he said that if the old buffoon, the Keeper of the Seals, was concerned in such a complication of folly and knavery, he deserved to be hanged by the side of Mazarin. But the sequel showed that I was not out ...
— The Memoirs of Cardinal de Retz, Complete • Jean Francois Paul de Gondi, Cardinal de Retz

... decades, the advance of science and the complication of industry have demanded a wholly broader basis of scientific and general training for its leaders. Executive heads are demanded who have technical training. This has resulted in the establishment of special technical colleges, and compelled a place for engineering in the great universities. ...
— Principles of Mining - Valuation, Organization and Administration • Herbert C. Hoover

... ills of life come seldom singly, yet how much greater is the might that can rise above and conquer a complication of sorrows. There was strength for Kittie in the contemplation of the serene face that was before her—so free from every shadow that had darkened it when animate. There were exhortations to patience in its hallowed expression, and lessons upon the nothingness of our ...
— The Elm Tree Tales • F. Irene Burge Smith

... was to pass a weary time. Many will say that this was a good opportunity for obtaining an insight into the customs and behaviour of these people; but I would gladly have declined the opportunity, for it requires an almost angelic patience to bear such a complication of evils with equanimity. Among the Arabs and the lower class of Greeks, moreover, every thing possessed by one member of the community is looked upon as public property. A knife, a pair of scissors, a drinking-glass, or any other small article, is taken from its owner without permission, and ...
— A Visit to the Holy Land • Ida Pfeiffer

... are the minds, far more powerful than that of Mr. Wheelwright, which have sunk under its chilling influence. And my wonder was, how the doctor had borne up as well as he seemed to have done, under the complication of calamities which ...
— Ups and Downs in the Life of a Distressed Gentleman • William L. Stone

... technique the play is simple and effective. Out of masses of detail and historical incident the dramatist has shaped a symmetrical and well-defined plot marked by (1) the exposition, or introduction, (2) the complication, or rising action, (3) the climax, or turning point, (4) the resolution, or falling action, and (5) the catastrophe, or conclusion. It is almost a commonplace of criticism that the opening scene of a Shakespeare play strikes the keynote of the action. It certainly ...
— The New Hudson Shakespeare: Julius Caesar • William Shakespeare

... entreated, waving both hands. "I'm very sorry to hear of this unhappy complication," he went on to Edward Henry, with the most adorable and winning politeness. "It pains me." (His martyred expression said, "And really I ought not to be pained!") "I'm quite convinced that you are here in absolute good faith—the most ...
— The Regent • E. Arnold Bennett

... to make of all that vast structure, of the elaboration and complication of which the Constantinopolitan Creed which we miscall Nicene and even the so-called Athanasian Creed give very little idea to those who do not also know something of the Councils, the Fathers, and the Schoolmen? Has it all a modern meaning? ...
— Philosophy and Religion - Six Lectures Delivered at Cambridge • Hastings Rashdall

... nor sign of encouragement, and he continued. "Since I saw you, another complication has arisen in this matter, which makes our game doubly safe and secure. In order to explain this complication thoroughly, I must ask you to let me put you through a kind of catechism. Have I your permission, ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon

... the last act. You will be relieved to hear that there will be no war, that the Right Honourable Trelawney Hope will suffer no setback in his brilliant career, that the indiscreet Sovereign will receive no punishment for his indiscretion, that the Prime Minister will have no European complication to deal with, and that with a little tact and management upon our part nobody will be a penny the worse for what might have been a ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes • Arthur Conan Doyle

... skirting the truth, to say nothing of plump falsehoods. These last cost her conscience some unpleasant twinges. To avoid narrating in full what had happened was a work of art. A downright lie was a stroke of heavy business, unsuited to her airy genius—and when the Aylett-Chilton complication was upon the tapis, it was difficult to avoid ...
— At Last • Marion Harland

... involved in a curious complication. When he was at Venice he had fallen in love with a pretty woman, either a Greek or a Neapolitan. The husband, by birth a native of Turin, and by profession a good-for-nothing, placed no obstacle in Acton's way, as the Englishman was generous ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt

... vain! It was closed with a catastrophe, exceeding all that he had feared, or that the most penetrating foresight could have suggested. To Mr. Falkland disgrace was worse than death. The slightest breath of dishonour would have stung him to the very soul. What must it have been with this complication of ignominy, base, humiliating, and public? Could Mr. Tyrrel have understood the evil he inflicted, even he, under all his circumstances of provocation, could scarcely have perpetrated it. Mr. Falkland's mind was full of uproar like the war ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin

... schemed and intrigued to come to Paris in the first place. He thought of the white marble building and the officers with shiny puttees going in and out, and the typewriters clicking in every room, and the understanding of his helplessness before all that complication ...
— Three Soldiers • John Dos Passos

... to these special worlds, it is to these private or group, or class, or provincial, or occupational, or national, or sectarian artifacts, that the political adjustment of mankind in the Great Society takes place. Their variety and complication are impossible to describe. Yet these fictions determine a very great part of men's political behavior. We must think of perhaps fifty sovereign parliaments consisting of at least a hundred legislative bodies. With them belong at least fifty hierarchies ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann

... lowest division of the Animal Kingdom, representing, as it were, a border-land between animal and vegetable life. But since the modern improvements in the microscope, Ehrenberg, the great master in microscopic investigation, has shown that many of these little globules have an extraordinary complication of structure. Subsequent investigations have proved that they include a great variety of beings: some of them belonging to the type of Mollusks; others to the type of Articulates, being in fact little Shrimps; while many others are the locomotive germs of plants, and so far from forming ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 52, February, 1862 • Various

... so far she was rather enjoying herself. There had been a little argument with the van driver who, it turned out, had ideas of his own about modifying Trigger's plans—a complication she'd run into frequently in her school days too. As usual, it didn't develop into a very serious argument. Truckers who dealt with the Colonial School knew, or learned in one or two briefly horrid lessons, that Mihul's commando-trained charges were prone to ungirlish methods ...
— Legacy • James H Schmitz



Words linked to "Complication" :   complicate, development, situation, hinderance, complexity, hindrance, complicatedness, state of affairs, ramification, interference, complexness, disease, tortuousness



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