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Impetus   Listen
noun
Impetus  n.  
1.
A property possessed by a moving body in virtue of its weight and its motion; the force with which any body is driven or impelled; momentum. Note: Momentum is the technical term, impetus its popular equivalent, yet differing from it as applied commonly to bodies moving or moved suddenly or violently, and indicating the origin and intensity of the motion, rather than its quantity or effectiveness.
2.
Fig.: Impulse; incentive; stimulus; vigor; force; as, the President's strong recommendation provided the impetus needed to pass the campaign reform bill.
3.
(Gun.) The altitude through which a heavy body must fall to acquire a velocity equal to that with which a ball is discharged from a piece.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Impetus" Quotes from Famous Books



... from Mr. ROOSEVELT, censuring President WILSON for the prolixity and verbosity of his Presidential messages, will, it is believed, lend a powerful impetus to the campaign on behalf ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, February 18, 1914 • Various

... was safe, the great attack had been delivered through the loophole. The kickers had receded from the door a pace or two in order to get up impetus for a combined onslaught, and Clapperton with a poker in his hand was advancing to annihilate the lock, when Percy, who was reconnoitring from the ventilating holes, gave the signal to ...
— The Cock-House at Fellsgarth • Talbot Baines Reed

... thoughts crowding out every other, and with the impetus of the resolve hot upon him, he opened his portfolio and wrote a note, informing the committee in charge of the Rochambeau picture of his sudden departure for America and the consequent impossibility of executing the commission with which ...
— Colonel Carter's Christmas and The Romance of an Old-Fashioned Gentleman • F. Hopkinson Smith

... into the scuppers. Overboard I went!—but he remained where he was. And my weight—I was weighing a good thirteen stone at that time, being a big and hefty youngster—carried me down and down into the green water, for I had been shot over the side with considerable impetus. And when I came up, a couple of boat's-lengths from the yacht, expecting to find that he was bringing her up so that I could scramble aboard, I saw with amazed and incredulous affright that he ...
— Dead Men's Money • J. S. Fletcher

... headstrong youth. Yet, when he touched the soil of Africa, a new life seemed infused into his veins. For a while, his days are said to have been full of misery and trouble, but the Brazilian slave-trade happened to receive an extraordinary impetus about that period; and, gradually, the adventurous refugee managed to profit by his skill in dealing with the natives, or by acting as broker among his countrymen. Beginning in the humblest way, he stuck to trade with the utmost tenacity till ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer

... drinking as a failing, and not as a crime. It must be a sin for any one to make himself eligible for doing all sorts of mischief and wrong, as men do who take, as they say, "a sup of drink." It is this sup of drink that gives them the impetus towards cruelty and lust, and we must insist upon it that for a man to prepare himself for wickedness is a sin against himself and his God. If this be so, the social element in drinking makes it all the more dangerous. Men and women drink often because ...
— Broken Bread - from an Evangelist's Wallet • Thomas Champness

... striving to combine in an association for the maintenance of rates by a plan which will bind them more closely together than any other ever before adopted. Thus to quote Mr. Adams again: "The Interstate Commerce law has given a new impetus to the process of gravitation and consolidation, and it is now going on much more rapidly than ever before. It is at this moment rapidly driving us forward toward ...
— Monopolies and the People • Charles Whiting Baker

... and drawing follow. It is a thing much more easily said than done, but many active teachers are really doing it, and many others are wondering how it may be done. The advantage of putting the concrete realities of thought before children at first is that they give a powerful impetus to mental life, while pure formal studies in most cases have a deadening effect and gradually put a child to sleep. One of the great problems of school work is how to get more interest and ...
— The Elements of General Method - Based on the Principles of Herbart • Charles A. McMurry

... surging mass of white that leaped high and dropped out of sight in the apparently forsaken river-bed. Then the steersman stood up, too, and Indian words passed between them. Every moment we were gaining impetus, and always heading for the highest crest of foam. Waiting for the word to paddle was even worse than waiting for the starter's gun in a sculling race. At last it came, just as we were twenty-five yards from the end of dark water. With a wild shout from the bowman we drove our paddles home. The ...
— The Drama of the Forests - Romance and Adventure • Arthur Heming

... was a pleasure to breathe the pure, balmy air, even when reclining in a carriage or a sail-boat, and as she gained strength sufficient for exercise, she soon became aware of the rich physical rewards that wait upon it. Slowly at first, but with an increasing impetus, she advanced toward health, the condition of all genuine life. She at last exchanged her carriage ...
— A Young Girl's Wooing • E. P. Roe

... to accompany him. Nothing happened to hinder, or at all interrupt their voyage. The Talismanic canoe, which held them, gllded silently down the waters of the Seneca; not a paddle was necessary to give it impetus, while it pursued the downward course of the stream till they reached the point of the lake outlet. At this point Hiawatha took his paddle and gave it impetus against the current, until they entered on the bright and calm surface of the Onondaga, cradled, as this blue sheet of water is, ...
— Legends, Traditions, and Laws of the Iroquois, or Six Nations, and History of the Tuscarora Indians • Elias Johnson

... emigrants from their native land to these shores, had vastly diminished by the year 1690, but the westward movement from the sea and the rivers in America still went forward with scarcely diminished impetus: and as the pioneers advanced and established their outposts farther and farther to the west, woman was, as she had been from the landing, their companion on the march, their ally in the presence ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler

... treat to watch Tom's magnificent physique when felling a big tree, stripped to his shirt, with sleeves rolled up, and his gleaming axe slowly raised and poised for a second above him before it fell with the gathered impetus of its own weight and his powerful stress. Biting time after time into the exact place aimed at, and at the most effective angle possible, the clean chips would fly in all directions until the necessary notch was ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory

... James paid no heed to these warnings, whether supernatural or otherwise, or perhaps was too far committed to give any heed to them, carried away by the wild and fatal stream which had caught his feet, with something of that extraordinary impetus of natural tendency long restrained which acts with tenfold force when at last yielded to. It is unnecessary either to tell the story of all the foolish fatal lingerings upon the ill-omened way: trifling with treacherous ladies for whom he cared nothing, cartels from Surrey; the abandonment ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant

... had excited some public interest in the great enterprise at Chichester, and from this an impetus was derived which helped towards its execution, after the small damage caused by the fire had been quickly repaired, for by about the year 1150 the four western bays of the nave, with its aisles, must have been complete. It should be understood that the fire in 1114 did not lead to any ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: Chichester (1901) - A Short History & Description Of Its Fabric With An Account Of The - Diocese And See • Hubert C. Corlette

... mainly the work of contemporary sociologists derives. But there persists about it a curious discursiveness that reflects upon the power and value of the initial impetus. Mr. V.V. Branford, the able secretary of the Sociological Society, recently attempted a useful work in a classification of the methods of what he calls "approach," a word that seems to me eminently judicious ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells

... situation. But always, in the midst of these plans, prevailed the thought of a subsequent return to Lincoln Island. Never would they abandon this colony, founded with so much labour and with such success, and to which a communication with America would afford a fresh impetus. Pencroft and Neb especially hoped to end their ...
— The Secret of the Island • W.H.G. Kingston (translation from Jules Verne)

... hypocrite, when every act would tell her what I thought of him. Moreover, he will have more or less influence over her until her eyes are opened to his true worth. She will not believe me, of course, but she is a woman who only needs an impetus to do a good deal of thinking and noting." "I am going to make you angry," he said. "I am going to tell you that I do not share your admiration of your brother. He has ten thousand words for every idea, and although, God knows, we have more time than anything ...
— The Doomswoman - An Historical Romance of Old California • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton

... doth not thy wrath blaze up at sight of that Arjuna in exile who, honoured with offerings of cars and vehicles of various forms and horses and elephants, forcibly took from the kings of the earth their treasures, who is the chastiser of all foes, and who at one impetus can throw full five hundred arrows? Why, O king, doth not thy wrath blaze up at sight of Nakula, in exile, who so fair and able-bodied and young, is the foremost of all swordsmen? Why, O king, dost thou pardon the foe, O Yudhishthira, at sight of Madri's ...
— Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 1 • Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa

... day, out of which it is rarely seen, it challenges admiration. Antiquaries variously contend that it was hurled through the air and that it was bowled on the edge along the ground, its equilibrium being so perfect that on a level space it will roll a great distance, falling only when its impetus is expended. ...
— The Frontiersmen • Charles Egbert Craddock

... descending with slow and firm steps; but unfortunately, from his trepidation, as he drew near the dangerous quarter, within a few steps of the gallery, his foot slipped, and the mighty burden falling from his shoulders, gained such increase of impetus at each step of the descent, that on reaching the bottom it trundled, or rather leaped, right across, with the noise of twenty devils, against the very bedroom door of the Archididascalus. My first thought was that all was lost, and that my ...
— Confessions of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas De Quincey

... resistance of Savonarola had passed away, she had lost all remembrance of the old dread lest any influence should drag her within the circle of fanaticism and sour monkish piety. But now again, the chill breath of that dread stole over her. It could have no decisive effect against the impetus her mind had just received; it was only like the closing of the grey clouds over the sunrise, which made her returning path ...
— Romola • George Eliot

... were now threatened with the ruin of their Austrian ally and the invasion of their own Silesian borders. The steam-roller, which had been moving to and fro across the Polish plains, seemed to have at last secured a solid impetus in the forward direction which might conceivably carry it to the Brandenburg Gate by Christmas. Wrttemburgers and Bavarians might afford to keep their eyes fixed on the Channel ports and their troops in Belgium; but the affections of Prussians were set on their homes in the East, and Hindenburg ...
— A Short History of the Great War • A.F. Pollard

... ten, with the slant of the floor giving him added impetus.... Then his muscles tightened convulsively. A wave of pure agony went through his body. He dropped and lay writhing on the floor, while the high-frequency currents of an induction-screen had their way with him. He was doubled ...
— Invasion • William Fitzgerald Jenkins

... backwards, cut with deadly depth downward from the shoulder. Then Ellerey rushed on again, one among hundreds seeking safety, followed by their conquerors, who showed no mercy. Suddenly an arm was outstretched from an alley and seized him. The impetus of being thus turned in his headlong flight carried him some yards down the ...
— Princess Maritza • Percy Brebner

... Alabama the Southern mountaineer was a Yankee, because the national spirit of 1776, getting fresh impetus in 1812 and new life from the Mexican War, had never died out in the hills. Most likely it would never have died out, anyway; for, the world over, any seed of character, individual or national, that is once dropped between lofty ...
— Christmas Eve on Lonesome and Other Stories • John Fox, Jr.

... industry was shorn of adventure for the common man. Adventure in industrial enterprise is the business man's great monopoly. His impetus is not due to his desire to create wealth but to exploit it, and he secures its creation by "paying men off." Commonly he is peevishly expectant that those he pays off will have a creative intention toward the work he pays them to ...
— Creative Impulse in Industry - A Proposition for Educators • Helen Marot

... his philanthropic impetus from Franklin. Girard had watched the progress of the University of Pennsylvania, and he had become convinced that it fell short of doing the good it might do. It ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 11 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Businessmen • Elbert Hubbard

... Travels are unmistakable. Again, the work has sometimes been attributed to Defoe. There is, however, no good reason to believe that either Defoe or Swift was concerned in its authorship, except in so far as both gave impetus to lesser writers in this ...
— A Voyage to Cacklogallinia - With a Description of the Religion, Policy, Customs and Manners of That Country • Captain Samuel Brunt

... war of 1812-15, a new impetus was given to everything throughout the South, and especially to education. The ambition for wealth seized upon her people, the high price of cotton favored its accumulation, and with it came new and more extravagant wants, new and more luxurious habits. The plain homespun jean ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks

... air, promptly emigrated to the Sister Nations on attaining the age of eighteen we might now, sir, be witnessing an overcrowding equal to that of the times before the Great Skirmish. The movement is receiving an added impetus with the approach of the Greater Skirmish between the Teutons and Mongolians, for it is expected that trade will boom and much wealth accrue to those countries which are privileged to look on with equanimity at this great new drama, as the editors ...
— Another Sheaf • John Galsworthy

... deeply impressed upon my mind, that, if Mr. DOUGLASS could be persuaded to consecrate his time and talents to the promotion of the anti-slavery enterprise, a powerful impetus would be given to it, and a stunning blow at the same time inflicted on northern prejudice against a colored complexion. I therefore endeavored to instil hope and courage into his mind, in order that he might dare to engage in ...
— The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass - An American Slave • Frederick Douglass

... that Lee, who wrote a folio against Locke in his lifetime, and other examiners, should have failed in detecting this. I shall expose it elsewhere; and, perhaps, one or two other exposures of the same kind will give an impetus to the descent of this falling philosophy. With respect to Paley, and the naked prudentialism of his system, it is true that in a longish note Paley disclaims that consequence. But to this we may reply, with Cicero, Non quoero quid ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey

... first astounded sight of her, in her limp nankeen sunbonnet, thrown back from her head by the impetus of her flight, he saw only too much hair, two much white teeth, too much eye-flash, and, above all,—as it appeared to him,—too much confidence in the power of these qualities. Even as she ran, it seemed to him that she ...
— Mr. Jack Hamlin's Mediation and Other Stories • Bret Harte

... the margin of the race, casting off haversack, jacket, and hat as he ran. At the foot of the torrent the little girl had been whirled out into the pool, and was just sinking as Dick flew up. With all the impetus of his run he shot out from the bank and clove the water with a long swift dive. His eyes were open, and he saw a dark mass slowly sinking in front of him. He made a swift stroke, and had a good handful of clothes in his right hand. With his left arm and his feet he struck ...
— The Wolf Patrol - A Tale of Baden-Powell's Boy Scouts • John Finnemore

... necessity to every public and private library. Many of our railway companies might do worse than contribute 500 or 1000 pounds each to encourage such an important literary undertaking. It would give an impetus to the study of railway matters and it is not at all unlikely in the course of a short time the companies would be ...
— Railway Adventures and Anecdotes - extending over more than fifty years • Various

... and partial government ownership of some large banks and industrial firms. Real growth in GDP has averaged about 8.5% a year during the past three decades. Export growth has been even faster and has provided the impetus for industrialization. Inflation and unemployment are low, and foreign reserves are the world's third largest. Agriculture contributes less than 3% to GDP, down from 35% in 1952. Traditional labor-intensive industries are steadily being moved off-shore and replaced ...
— The 1999 CIA Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... suddenly straightening, hurled the fellow sidewise. But by now Beaton, dazed and confused, was upon his feet. With the bellow of a wild bull he flung himself on the struggling men, forcing Lacy aside, and smashing into Westcott with all the strength of his body. The impetus sent all three crashing ...
— The Strange Case of Cavendish • Randall Parrish

... England and America, in behalf of the perishing millions of the East, and her history of the Burmese Mission, prepared during her visit to the United States, stirred up missionary zeal in the heart of Protestant Christendom, and gave an impetus to the cause of missions that has gone on ...
— Woman: Man's Equal • Thomas Webster

... of proud delight—the joyous maiden surprise that she was chosen by the man whom her admiration had chosen. All Dorothea's passion was transfused through a mind struggling towards an ideal life; the radiance of her transfigured girlhood fell on the first object that came within its level. The impetus with which inclination became resolution was heightened by those little events of the day which had roused her discontent with the actual conditions ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot

... Wilkinson, the way he had obtained it, and the use he made of it, gave an impetus to the separatist party in Kentucky. He was by no means the only man, however, who was at this time engaged in the river trade to Louisiana; nor were his advantages over his commercial rivals as marked ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Three - The Founding of the Trans-Alleghany Commonwealths, 1784-1790 • Theodore Roosevelt

... be broken, the little serpent is found rolled up in a spiral form. It appears motionless during some time; but if the term of its exclusion be near, it opens its jaws, inhales at several respirations the air of the atmosphere, its lungs fill, it stretches itself, and moved by this impetus it begins to crawl. ...
— Palestine or the Holy Land - From the Earliest Period to the Present Time • Michael Russell

... deficits - averaging around 5% of GDP in the last several years - could be a persistent problem. Inflation is under control. The EU put the Czech Republic just behind Poland and Hungary in preparations for accession, which will give further impetus and direction to structural reform. Moves to complete banking, telecommunications, and energy privatization will encourage additional foreign investment, while intensified restructuring among large enterprises and banks, and ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency

... frail bark. Presently a tall warrior was seen bounding from the wood towards the beach. The crowd of gesticulating Indians made way, and the warrior was seen to stoop and apply his shoulder to the canoe, one half of which was high and dry upon the sands. The heavily laden vessel obeyed the impetus with a rapidity that proved the muscular power of him who gave it. Like some wild animal, instinct with life, it lashed the foaming waters from its bows, and left a deep and gurgling furrow where it passed. As it quitted the shore, the warrior sprang lightly in, taking his station ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson

... The battle-speeches of Livy, whose glow and vigour half atone for their theatricality, have been made use of by Silius, but find only a feeble echo in his lifeless verse. Nothing stands out sharply defined; the epic lacks impetus and has no salient points; outlines are blurred in an unpoetic haze. The history of Tacitus has been described as history 'seen by lightning flashes'. Such should be the history of historical epic. In its stead Silius presents us ...
— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler

... actor in a great movement which had begun in France. The brilliant theories of Voltaire, Rousseau, Montesquieu, and Dalembert—containing much truth and many heresies—were felt in England, and had given a new impetus to English intellect; indeed, it is not strange, when we come to consider, that while Richardson's works were praised in English pulpits, Voltaire and the French atheists declared that they saw in them an advance towards human perfectibility and self-redemption, of which, if true, Richardson himself ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee

... by acquiescing in the establishment of Prussia in the Rhine provinces, she abdicated to Prussia her position as the bulwark of Germany against France, and hastened the process of her own gravitation towards the Slavonic East to which the final impetus was ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various

... cape of the Trinidad which he called Cabo Boto, because of being thick and blunt,—the one island he named El Caracol, the other El Delfin.[340-3] It is only five leagues in this strait between the Point of Paria and Cape Boto of Trinidad, and the said islands are in the middle of the strait. The impetus of the great river Yuyapari and the tempestuous waves of the sea make the entrance and exit by this strait greatly dangerous, and because the Admiral experienced this difficulty and also danger, he called that difficult entrance Boca ...
— The Northmen, Columbus and Cabot, 985-1503 • Various

... upward struggle, received a distinctly great impetus for good by the accession in 1848 of the first Lord Bishop of the colony, Dr. Charles Perry. He exhibited a rare energy in the cause of his Divine Master, and he frankly and genially sought and recognized ...
— Personal Recollections of Early Melbourne & Victoria • William Westgarth

... of the poems you sent has precisely the same pleasant blending of a sheet of second volume with a sheet of first, I think it was page 245; but I sent it and had it rectified, It gave me, in the first impetus of cutting the leaves, just such a cold squelch as going down a plausible turning and suddenly reading "No thoroughfare." Robinson's is entire; I wish you would write more criticism about Spencer, etc. I think I could say something about him myself; but, Lord bless ...
— The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb

... patient can swallow, he should have some weak wine and water; and soon afterwards an emetic of a large tablespoonful of mustard, mixed with 6 ozs. of water, to clear the stomach of the water which he has swallowed, and to restore the circulation by the impetus of vomiting. After some hours he will suffer from severe headache and fever, which must be relieved by bleeding, purgatives, &c., which will be attended to by a physician, who will be present by this time. A case is related in which life ...
— Young's Demonstrative Translation of Scientific Secrets • Daniel Young

... had held it too long and too unjustly by the hollow right of heredity. It had been distributed as evenly as might be throughout the State, and if men had only paused there, all would have been well. But our impetus carried us too far, the privileged orders goaded us on by their very opposition, and the result is the horror of which yesterday you saw no more than the beginnings. No, no," he ended. "Careers there may be for venal place-seekers, for opportunists; ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini

... bed, as he had lately taken physic. The plea was granted, but not the platform. That was withdrawn, and he was forced to climb up one of the pillars; and, as we were charitably inclined, we lent him all the impetus we could by sundry, appliances of switches and rulers, in order to excite a rapid circulation in those parts that would most expedite his up ward propulsion, upon the same principles that cause us to fire one extremity of a gun, in order to propel the ball from the other. He having been ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard

... compose themselves to the affair. But at last the visible world, the wall before him, commenced to dislimn; it shifted; it became mist, writhing and tinged with faint colors, that submerged his will and his consciousness, till they sank, gathering impetus, into a void below—the vacancy of the spirit that looses its hold on the body and is rudderless. He knew the blackness which is death, the momentary throe of entering it, the shock, the sense of chill, ...
— The Second Class Passenger • Perceval Gibbon

... would of course be far more satisfactory could one definitely place, and label, the man to whom we owe the original conception which gave birth and impetus to this immortal body of literature, yet the precise identity of the author of the earliest Grail romance is of the accident, rather than the essence, of our problem. Whether Bleheris the Welshman be, or be not, identical with Bledri ap Cadivor, Interpreter, ...
— From Ritual to Romance • Jessie L. Weston

... it; I don't deny," answered the General, coming forward from the group at the door and putting his hand in a friendly freedom on the horse's neck and looking up with some regret in Gilian's face. "One says many things in an impetus. Excuse a soldier's extravagance. I never meant it either for your ear or for unkindness. And you talk of ages: surely a man so much your senior has a ...
— Gilian The Dreamer - His Fancy, His Love and Adventure • Neil Munro

... basin of the sea as lightly and springily as the claws of a crab tip-toeing to some hiding-place. Presently he let himself down a little more, pressed his flat palms against the ground, and with the impetus thus gained made his body shoot back towards the surface feet foremost. Then bringing his body up till it was in a straight line with his feet, he swam slowly under water, curving first in this ...
— A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens

... He returns again to threatenings, and He must do so necessarily; for though men may have been terrified by the fear of punishment, yet they do not recover, and become wise for ever." "By a new impetus as it were," says Manger, "he suddenly returns to expand the same argument, and sets out again from ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions, v. 1 • Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg

... gradual displacement of galleys in favour of sailing ships. The long voyages across the Atlantic and to the East had given great impetus to the development of the sailing vessel; its increasing use, and the entrance of England and Holland into the Mediterranean, had shown the Powers of that sea its superiority over the galley; finally, slaves were becoming more difficult to obtain in sufficient ...
— Knights of Malta, 1523-1798 • R. Cohen

... attacked an Aviatik, carried away by the impetus, passed it at fifty centimeters; passenger "couic" (killed), the machine fell and was got under control again at fifty meters above ...
— Georges Guynemer - Knight of the Air • Henry Bordeaux

... anachronism, a chartered company. It was in the age of Elizabeth that the chartered company, in the modern sense of the term, had its rise. The discovery of the New World and the opening out of fresh trading routes to the Indies gave a tremendous impetus to shipping, commercial and industrial enterprises throughout western Europe and it was in order to encourage these enterprises that the British, Dutch and French governments granted charters to various trading associations. It was the Russia Company, for example, which received its first ...
— Where the Strange Trails Go Down • E. Alexander Powell

... over the hill-side and fled into the very jaws of the moraine. Down the first of this path we raced, hand in hand; but soon, finding the impetus overmastering us, we pulled up with difficulty, and descended the rest of ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes

... fire, a needlewoman or clever professional worker might be called in to help to finish it. Thus ladies might assist the art of needlework by their own original ideas, and give individual beauty to their homes, and an impetus to the occupation which helps to support so many of our struggling sisters. The frame or metier is always a pretty object in the drawing-room or boudoir. The French understand this well; and make ...
— Needlework As Art • Marian Alford

... 13. By impetus I mean that desire which at times rushes into the soul, without being preceded by prayer, and this is most frequently the case; it is a sudden remembering that the soul is away from God, or of a word it has ...
— The Life of St. Teresa of Jesus • Teresa of Avila

... tour (Ac 18). After some hesitation he had been induced to preach in Corinth, and in spite of the opposition of the Jews such great success attended his efforts that he remained there for more than eighteen months. The furious attack upon him which was frustrated by Gallio gave impetus to the new cause, so that when the Apostle left, there was a comparatively strong Church there, consisting mostly of Greeks, but including not a few Jews also. The dangers, however, arising out of the ...
— Weymouth New Testament in Modern Speech, Preface and Introductions - Third Edition 1913 • R F Weymouth

... you like the looks of it?" asked the young inventor, as he wheeled the BUTTERFLY out of the shed, and began pumping up the tires of the bicycle wheels on which it ran over the ground, to get impetus enough with which ...
— Tom Swift and his Wireless Message • Victor Appleton

... development of aviation that it is difficult to keep abreast with the times. What is new to-day becomes old to-morrow. The Great War has given a tremendous impetus to the strife between the warring nations for the mastery of the air, and one can but give a rough and general impression of the achievements of naval and military airmen ...
— The Mastery of the Air • William J. Claxton

... Bernard Palissy, the porcelainiste. He let his fancy have full sway and the criss-cross alleys and avenues were set out at their junctures with moulded ornaments, enamelled miniatures, turtles in faience and frogs in porcelain. It was this, perhaps, which gave the impetus to the French for their fondness to-day for similar effects, but Bernard Palissy doubtless never went so far as plaster cats on a ridgepole, as one may see to-day on many a pretty villa in northern France. This ...
— Royal Palaces and Parks of France • Milburg Francisco Mansfield

... Whereas, in a smaller department all divisions would center in the head, the volume of work in a large library renders necessary the appointment of an instructor in story-telling and a supervisor of reading clubs, which results in a higher specialization and a greater impetus for these phases of work than one person can accomplish. Here we have a concrete instance of the benefit that a large volume of work may confer upon the ...
— Library Work with Children • Alice I. Hazeltine

... Carolina, the proprietors of which tell me that they are making fifty per cent. annually on their whole capital, and yet cannot supply one tenth of the demand for their production. The result of only ten per cent. duties in excluding products from abroad, would give life and impetus to mechanical and manufacturing industry, throughout the entire South. Our people understand these things, and they are not afraid of results, if forced to declare Independence. Indeed I do not see why Northern ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan

... composed, as a stone thrown into a basin causes the water which it contains to splash out. This torrent of matter, in a state of fusion, has broken into several parts, which have been arrested at different distances from the sun, according to their density, or the impetus they received. They then united in spheres, by the effect of the motion of rotation, and condensing by cold, have become opaque and solid ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson

... the commander should see that enough troops are on hand to make it a success. Local reserves joining the firing line in time to participate in the charge give it a strong impetus. Too dense a mass ...
— Infantry Drill Regulations, United States Army, 1911 - Corrected to April 15, 1917 (Changes Nos. 1 to 19) • United States War Department

... impetus was given to the development of the secondary armament by the introduction of "smokeless" powder—which, however, gives a very slight smoke,—and the "quick-firing gun." By simplifying the breech mechanism, using ...
— How Britannia Came to Rule the Waves - Updated to 1900 • W.H.G. Kingston

... in town! "And what else have you got to say, mutton-heads?" he challenged, as his boat glided slowly along the shore, his moon-face beaming over the varnished stern of the Mayflower. "What else have you got to say!" That bravado gave impetus to the pointed insolence on the Breakwater. "Look at them over there? Tonet is with Dolores! Tonet is with Dolores! Lanudo! Cuckold! He's leaving a happy home to-night! But Tonet will be there! ...
— Mayflower (Flor de mayo) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... group of three with feet-foremost, and with the impetus of that great leap had knocked them sprawling to this side and that, while with a supreme effort the two kept their balance and leaped on. The cries of the three added to the din behind them as ...
— Astounding Stories, April, 1931 • Various

... behind him. Not a trip, not a stumble, not a momentary struggle to retain the balance. It was splendid! Then at last he began with the circles which he was so anxious to perfect himself in. Round he went on his right, in smaller compass than he had ever accomplished one yet, with plenty of impetus to bring him round at the end. Then round on the left, quite easily, without an effort. Again with the right, and so on, a capital eight. It was like magic, as if he had acquired the art in an instant. Or was he in bed and dreaming that he was skating? It really seemed like ...
— Dr. Jolliffe's Boys • Lewis Hough

... a machine. The king, he said, must do his work himself, and not shrink from trouble. He was perpetually in harness. He was like a madman in his vehemence and his crudity of speech. But there was method in his fury, and calculating design and even practical wisdom. He gave an impetus as powerful as that of the Tsar Peter; but he was superior to him in knowledge of detail as well as in point of character. He was a hard taskmaster, but he knew what he was about; and it does not ...
— Lectures on Modern history • Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton

... inventor of famous "vernis Martin," flourished at this time, and the glow of his beautiful amber-colored finish decorated many a piece of furniture from sewing boxes to sedan chairs. In England the vogue of painted furniture was given impetus by the genius of the Adam Brothers and the beautiful work of Angelica Kaufmann, Cipriani, and Pergolesi. In both France and England there was at this time the comprehension and appreciation of beauty and good taste combined ...
— Furnishing the Home of Good Taste • Lucy Abbot Throop

... be said that the activity of the government and private investors together has given a great impetus to the settlement of these arid lands, and the population is rapidly increasing, being made up of a miscellaneous assortment of Uncle Sam's energetic, wideawake, industrious citizens, building homes and making fortunes more ...
— A Review of the Resources and Industries of the State of Washington, 1909 • Ithamar Howell

... energy in the movement of the Vortex. In nineteen-thirteen his primal energies were spent, and he was trusting to the movement of the Vortex to carry him a little farther than he could have gone by his own impetus. He was attracted to the young men of the Vortex because they were not of the generation that had rejected him, and because he hoped thus to prolong indefinitely his own youth. They were attracted to him because ...
— The Tree of Heaven • May Sinclair

... to ten years ago there was so little change that it might be said that there was none; since then the difference can be seen by everyone. Should the price of wool rise in the near future the change that has been suggested might be checked, but it has received such an impetus that the Navaho will always henceforth pay much more attention to horticulture than they have in the past, and this means necessarily a modification in the present methods of house building. The average Navaho farm, and almost every adult male now has a small garden ...
— Navaho Houses, pages 469-518 • Cosmos Mindeleff

... stood forth tightly accoutred, with short coat, and clinging cap, and gaitered legs for the toboggan. Off we started in line, with but brief interval between, at first slowly, then glidingly, and when the impetus was gained, with darting, bounding, almost savage swiftness—sweeping round corners, cutting the hard snow-path with keen runners, avoiding the deep ruts, trusting to chance, taking advantage of smooth places, till the rush and swing and downward ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds

... missile. The moment of launching it was shrewdly chosen. The pirates, still in compact formation as led by Ned Rackham, were directly abreast of this forward gun of the main deck battery. The deck inclined at a steep and giddy pitch. With a grinding roar the gun rolled from its station. It gathered impetus and lunged across the ship as an instrument of fell destruction. It was more to be feared than ...
— Blackbeard: Buccaneer • Ralph D. Paine

... kickoff. The ball rose, spinning like a top and with enough impetus to send it far down ...
— Over the Line • Harold M. Sherman

... that mistress of the world, that sword of man in the combat of life, in vain do we brandish it over our heads in wrath, in vain do we seek to ward off with it a blow which threatens us; an invisible power turns aside the point, and all the impetus of our effort, deflected into space, serves only ...
— The Confession of a Child of The Century • Alfred de Musset

... so as soon as the ray was shut off, which was almost instantly, I phoned the crew to jump, and we leaped out through the hole in the hull. The air rushing out gave us an impetus that carried us many miles out into space, and it required many hours for the slight attraction of the mass here to draw us back to it. We just got back a few minutes ago. That air-blast is probably what saved us, as they destroyed our vessel with atomic ...
— Skylark Three • Edward Elmer Smith

... church, easily distinguished by its walls and tower. When I had arranged matters for the night, I passed through the doorway of this little church, under whose vault the same human story that begins with the christening, receives a new impetus from marriage, and is brought to an end by the funeral, had been repeated by so many sons after their fathers. The air was heavy with the fragrance of roses from the Lady Chapel, where a little lamp gleamed on the ground beside the altar. As the sun went down, the roses and leaves began to brighten ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker

... added yet another laurel to his crown, for he excelled all his predecessors, both by the ample volume of his descriptions and by the logical arrangement of the geographical data which he supplied. The impetus which he gave to cartographical ...
— The Makers of Canada: Champlain • N. E. Dionne

... used on real occasions. A deep, strong bass sound is produced which resembles the distant whistle of a big ocean steamer. The men at the rear would join in with wild shouts like those made by American cowboys, most of them rising in their prahus to be able to give more impetus to the paddles. The powerful strokes of our enthusiastic crew made my prahu jump with jerky movements, and we progressed rapidly, arriving early in the afternoon at Tandjong Selor. This time I was made comfortable in a government's pasang-grahan that had just been completed, and which was far enough ...
— Through Central Borneo: - An Account of Two Years' Travel in the Land of Head-Hunters - Between the Years 1913 and 1917 • Carl Lumholtz

... and attractive suburbs. What the last ten years have accomplished in introducing rapid and reliable communication, and building up and improving the country about New York, will probably be repeated several times over in the next decade. An impetus has been given to rural life, that will increase with every facility that is offered, and it will not be many years before the suburbs of New York will compare with any city in the world; and we question, ...
— Woodward's Country Homes • George E. Woodward

... supplicater deprecamur, ut... has cereas formas, innocentissimi agni imagine figuritas, benedicere... digneris, ut per ejus tactum et visum fideles invitentur as laudes, fragor grandinum, procella turbinum, impetus tempestatum, ventorum rabies, infesta tonitrua temperentur, fugiant atque tremiscant maligni spiritus ante Sanctae Crucis vexillum, quod in illis exculptum est...."(Sacr. Cer. Rom. Eccl., as above). If any are curious as to the extent to which this consecrated wax was a specific ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White

... accounts from Syrchester banks to David's. The callow Hopkins had fledged and developed into a competent all-'round man, able to do anything in the office, and there was a new "skeezicks" discharging Peleg's former functions. Considerable impetus had been given to the business of the town by the new road whose rails had been laid the previous summer. There had been a strong and acrimonious controversy over the route which the road should take into ...
— David Harum - A Story of American Life • Edward Noyes Westcott

... mourning for their child, for the young man cut off in the flower of his days; and besides this, there is always a pleasure in unravelling a mystery, in catching at the gossamer clue which will guide to certainty. This feeling, I am sure, gives much impetus to the police. Their senses are ever and always on the qui-vive, and they enjoy the collecting and collating evidence, and the life of adventure they experience: a continual unwinding of Jack Sheppard romances, always interesting to the vulgar and uneducated mind, to which the outward signs ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell

... in Rome, Florence, Genoa and Padua. It is generally admitted that the ramifications of Gothic architecture had reached their utmost limit, and the style was getting out of hand, as is seen by the flamboyant buildings on the continent. The revival of classical literature in western Europe gave an impetus to the movement which was largely intended to enfold art within the shelter of an enlightened taste, and protect it from the licence of unordered enthusiasm. How far it succeeded is not a question that can ...
— Our Homeland Churches and How to Study Them • Sidney Heath

... upon a continual change from the worse to the better, or from the simpler to the more complex. It would be unfair to attribute to Hegel any scientific motive or foundation, but all the other evolutionists, including Hegel's modern disciples, have derived their impetus very largely from the history of biological development. To a philosophy which derives a law of universal progress from this history there are two objections. First, that this history itself is concerned ...
— Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays • Bertrand Russell

... sunk down on the shoulders, with no neck whatever between, so as to give nearly the aspect of a conical rifle bullet to the entire front of the body; and, indeed, the bird moves more like a bullet than an arrow—dependent on a certain impetus of weight rather than on sharp penetration of the air. I say dependent on, but I have not yet been able to trace distinct relation between the shapes of birds and their powers of flight. I suppose the form of the body is first determined ...
— Love's Meinie - Three Lectures on Greek and English Birds • John Ruskin

... and mortgages increases. The current account deficit has declined to around 3% of GDP as demand for Czech products in the European Union has increased. Inflation is under control. Recent accession to the EU gives further impetus and direction to structural reform. In early 2004 the government passed increases in the Value Added Tax (VAT) and tightened eligibility for social benefits with the intention to bring the public finance gap down to 4% of GDP by 2006, ...
— The 2007 CIA World Factbook • United States

... a gigantic door of palm-wood which was set in an old brick arch. This door upon the outside was sheeted with iron. When it opened, I left behind me the world I knew, the world that belongs to us of to-day, with its animation, its impetus, its flashing changes, its sweeping hurry and "go." I stepped at once into, surely, some moldering century long hidden in the dark womb of the forgotten past. The door of palm-wood closed, and I found myself in a sort ...
— The Spell of Egypt • Robert Hichens

... there are a few precise notes, sufficient to suggest the increasing horror. The narrative grows quicker; the reader is aware of the pulse and the impetus of action, the imperious summons of duty; the young sergeant is in charge of men, and has to execute terrible tasks. But ever across the tumult and the slaughter, there are moments of recollection and of compassion; and, in the evening of a day of battle, ...
— Letters of a Soldier - 1914-1915 • Anonymous

... seven knights and their followers dashed at the French. The latter were also mounted, unlike the majority of their companions, who before attacking had dismounted, and handed their horses to their pages. The party were fully double the strength of the English, but the impetus of the charge broke their line, and in a moment a fierce melee began. Edgar and Albert fought side by side. The former, as no missiles were flying, had thrown up his vizor, the better to be able to see ...
— A March on London • G. A. Henty

... people being in this inflammable condition, it was clear that only disunion and jealousy amongst their Chiefs prevented their combining against us, and that if any impetus could be given to their religious sentiment strong enough to unite the discordant elements in a common cause, a powerful movement would be initiated, having for its object our annihilation or expulsion from ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts

... straight from the minister to his wife—with the impetus of Mr. Ancrum's shove, as it were, fresh upon him. Sitting opposite to her in the back kitchen, while she peeled her potatoes with a fierce competence and energy which made his heart sick within him, Reuben told her, with incoherent repetitions of every phrase, ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... along shore. On our port beam we might hear the explosions of the surf; a few birds flew fishing under the prow; there was no other sound or mark of life, whether of man or beast, in all that quarter of the island. Winged by her own impetus and the dying breeze, the Casco skimmed under cliffs, opened out a cove, showed us a beach and some green trees, and flitted by again, bowing to the swell. The trees, from our distance, might have been hazel; the beach might have been in ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... considered a good deal, and had expected something different, though perhaps not altogether good, from this interview; but Aglaya had been carried away by her own outburst, just as a rolling stone gathers impetus as it careers downhill, and could not restrain herself in the satisfaction ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... on tiptoe," Paredes smiled. "I suspected there was at least one spy in the house. So I gave the doctor's ghost talk all the impetus I could. I was like Howells, as I've told you, in believing the case couldn't be complete without the discovery of the secret entrance of the room of death. My belief in the existence of such a thing made me lean from the first to Silas Blackburn rather than Robert. It's a tradition in many families ...
— The Abandoned Room • Wadsworth Camp

... Chatterton's Rowley Poems, which in many places seem almost inconceivably banal and artificial to us to-day, caught their accent from the episcopal editor as much as from the ballads themselves. None the less, whatever its fault, Percy's collection gave its impetus to one half of the romantic movement; it was eagerly read in Germany, and when it came to influence Scott and Coleridge it did so not only directly, but through Burger's imitation of it; it began the modern study and love of the ballad which has given us Sister Helen, the White Ship and ...
— English Literature: Modern - Home University Library Of Modern Knowledge • G. H. Mair

... most important part of his audience disappeared, but having started talking the impetus carried him along, he held Vic Gregg with his ...
— The Seventh Man • Max Brand

... account of the destruction of their castles and of their independent military power. For these retainers there was now nothing left but to find work in the medieval workshops. All these events gave impetus to the triumphal chariot of the middle class. All these events, and many more which might be enumerated, combined to produce this one effect. By the opening of wider markets and the accompanying reduction ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke

... inspiring effect of her mother's letter remained with Grace. Her already deep interest in her house and her charges received new impetus, and when evening came, she felt, as she entered the big living room where the thirty-four girls were assembled, that she would willingly do anything that lay within her power to forward the prosperity and ...
— Grace Harlowe's Problem • Jessie Graham Flower

... wheeled Kit. But as the little mare turned and faced the tossing heads and threatening horns, she knew, as did Wilbur instantaneously, that with the force behind them, no single man could stop the impetus of the herd, although only traveling slowly. Indeed, if he tried, he could see that the rear by pressure onwards would force the outside ranks midway down the herd over the edge of the cliff. Kit spun round again almost on one hoof, all but ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Foresters • Francis Rolt-Wheeler

... floor, his literal headlong tumble and rattle of dismay down a steep staircase occupying the centre of the stage, on his discovery of the rifling of his chest. Long was I to have in my ears the repeated shriek of his alarm, followed by a panting babble of wonder and rage as his impetus hurled him, a prostrate scrap of despair (he was a tiny figure, yet "so held the stage" that in his company you could see nobody else) half way across the room. I associate a little uncertainly with ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James

... attitude of France, our national sense of honor compelled us, in my opinion, to go to war; and if we did not act according to the demands of this feeling, we should lose, when on the way to its completion, the entire impetus towards our national development won in 1866 while the German national feeling south of the Main, aroused by our military successes in 1866, and shown by the readiness of the southern states to enter ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke

... made him tea with her samovar, and she talked to him about Parisian journalism and the Parisian stage in a way that made her a further discovery to him; and his mind, hitherto wholly devoted to the service of the Illustrated Age, received an impetus in a new direction. When he had gone Elfrida laughed a little, silently, thinking first of this, for it was quite plain to her. Then, contrasting what the Age wanted her to write with her ideal of journalistic literature, she stated to Buddha that ...
— A Daughter of To-Day • Sara Jeannette Duncan (aka Mrs. Everard Cotes)

... the flux is equal to the reflux; that to interrupt with unlawful recurrences, out of time, is to weaken the impulse of onset and retreat; the sweep and impetus of movement. To live in constant efforts after an equal life, whether the equality be sought in mental production, or in spiritual sweetness, or in the joy of the senses, is to live without either ...
— The Rhythm of Life • Alice Meynell

... the first hermit, gave such an impetus to the ascetic life and did so much to bring about some union of ascetics that he has been popularly regarded as the founder of monasticism. He died 356, at the age of one hundred and five. His Life, by St. Athanasius, although formerly attacked, is a genuine, ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.

... hand, and the only thing that had to be done was to convene them. On having the facts presented to them, its members would have passed without difficulty from a hazardous theory to common-sense practice, and the aristocracy which had enthusiastically given an impetus to reform in its saloons would, in all probability, have carried it out effectively and with moderation in ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 2 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 1 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine

... of memory on the part of the organism, which in the embryonic stages, infancy, youth, and early manhood, leans upon the memory of what it did when it was in the persons of its ancestors; in middle life, carries its action onward by means of the impetus, already received, and by the force of habit; and in old age becomes puzzled, having no experience of any past existence at seventy-five, we will say, to guide it, and therefore forgetting itself more and more completely ...
— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler

... of laughter. "I will catch her," he volunteered, and made a plunge in the direction of the lodge; but I caught him by the hood of his blanket coat, and let his own impetus choke him. ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith

... and delicate and trenchant than the originals because done with a pen under perfected mastery, without losing anything of the earlier simplicity and sympathy. In this work, Banneker found relief; and in Io's delight in it, a reflected joy that lent fresh impetus to his special genius. The Great Gaines enthusiastically accepted the new ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams

... still powerful to control conduct and determine character in later childhood. The impetus given by the parents in this way is only gradually replaced by the driving power of his own self-respect—a self-respect based upon self-analysis in the light of the greater experience he ...
— The Nervous Child • Hector Charles Cameron

... fresh individual inquiry. Education and custom use it as an unexamined but trusted foundation to build on by common assumptions. And so the historic impetus is not yet spent. But it certainly has diminished; and it will diminish more. When faced with dauntless eyes and approached by skeptical methods, it of course cannot have the silencing, all sufficient authority, now that ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger

... of six or seven minutes, when the enemy returned the fire, and we all got well down. It was as well to keep as hard up against the parapet as possible, and to keep out of all dug-outs, for into them the forward impetus of bursting shrapnel was likely to throw a lot of splinters. Again silence, comrades and pals passing a few remarks in anticipation of what everybody knew was coming. The officers with us were one with us, and at their words, "Well, come on, lads," there was never a laggard in ...
— A Soldier's Sketches Under Fire • Harold Harvey

... twining his two hands around the rascal's throat there was a certain primitive pleasure that added impetus to the passage of the Desert Rat up the lonely canyon. The thought lent new strength to the man. Dying though he knew himself to be, yet would he square accounts with the man who had ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne



Words linked to "Impetus" :   driving force, drive, thrust, force, impulse, impulsion, drift



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