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Diaphragm   /dˈaɪəfrˌæm/   Listen
Diaphragm

noun
1.
A mechanical device in a camera that controls size of aperture of the lens.  Synonym: stop.
2.
(anatomy) a muscular partition separating the abdominal and thoracic cavities; functions in respiration.  Synonym: midriff.
3.
A contraceptive device consisting of a flexible dome-shaped cup made of rubber or plastic; it is filled with spermicide and fitted over the uterine cervix.  Synonyms: contraceptive diaphragm, pessary.
4.
Electro-acoustic transducer that vibrates to receive or produce sound waves.



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"Diaphragm" Quotes from Famous Books



... as the removal of the paper allows the sand to drop in a mass. The explanation is that the pressure is transmitted laterally to the sides, and as the friction is directly proportional to the pressure, the load or effect of the blow is carried by the proportional increase in the friction, and any diaphragm which will carry the direct bottom load will not have its stresses largely increased by any greater loading ...
— Pressure, Resistance, and Stability of Earth • J. C. Meem

... pains that you feel," he said, "are from the compressing of the womb. Don't let them frighten you—everything is just as it should be. You will find that you can help at each pang by holding your breath; just as soon as you cry out, it releases the diaphragm, and the pressure stops, and the pain passes. You must bear each one just as long as you can. I don't want you to faint, of course—but the longer the pressure lasts, the sooner ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair

... 6 in., centrally placed in the side of the gallery (Fig. 1, and Figs. 1 and 2, Plate VI). The sections are held together by a lap-joint. At each lap-joint there is, on the interior of the gallery, a 2-in. circular, angle iron, on the face of which a paper diaphragm may be placed and held in position by semicircular washers, studs, and wedges. These paper diaphragms are used to assist in confining ...
— Transactions of the American Society of Civil Engineers, vol. LXX, Dec. 1910 • Herbert M. Wilson

... deep mellow laugh, starting from the bottom of his diaphragm, swelling as it passed through his chest, swelling again as it passed through throat and mouth, and bursting upon the open air in a mighty diapason that rose cheerfully above the shrieking and ...
— The Guns of Shiloh • Joseph A. Altsheler

... along." Other comic characters seem, if we approach and handle them, to resolve themselves into air, "into thin air;" but this is embodied and palpable to the grossest apprehension: it lies "three fingers deep upon the ribs," it plays about the lungs and the diaphragm with all the force of animal enjoyment. His body is like a good estate to his mind, from which he receives rents and revenues of profit and pleasure in kind, according to its extent, and the richness of the soil. Wit is often a meagre substitute for pleasurable sensation; an effusion ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin

... the 21st, in order that, by the night train, they may get to New York on the 22d, to have once a year a square meal. From 1620 down to the opening of New York to their settlement, a constantly increasing void was growing inside the Yankee diaphragm, and even now the native and imported Yankee finds the best-appointed restaurant in the world sufficient for his wants; and he has migrated to this house, that he may annually have the sensation of sufficiency in the largest ...
— Model Speeches for Practise • Grenville Kleiser

... bedroom, and Lorenzino, knowing where the Duke was laid, cried: 'Sir, are you asleep?' and therewith ran him through the back. Alessandro was sleeping, or pretending to sleep, face downwards, and the sword passed through his kidneys and diaphragm. But it did not kill him. He slipped from the bed, and seized a stool to parry the next blow. Scoronconcolo now stabbed him in the face, while Lorenzino forced him back upon the bed; and then began a hideous struggle. In order to prevent his cries, Lorenzino doubled his fist into the Duke's mouth. ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds

... there is still money to be made out of his ludicrous appearance, with an incidental dance or song on their own part. Vaguely perturbing, these negro melodies and thrummings; their reiteration of monotony awakens tremulous echoes on the human diaphragm and stirs up ...
— Fountains In The Sand - Rambles Among The Oases Of Tunisia • Norman Douglas

... sheets ought to be changed," added the physician. "Even if there is no hope left, something is due to human nature. I shall come back again, Bianchon," he said, turning to the medical student. "If he complains again, rub some laudanum over the diaphragm." ...
— Father Goriot • Honore de Balzac

... this disappeared after a time. He lays down exact indications for the opening of the thorax, that noli me tangere of surgeons at all times, even our own, and points out the relations of the ribs and the diaphragm, so as to show just where the opening should be made in order to remove fluid of ...
— Old-Time Makers of Medicine • James J. Walsh

... right," the Colonel clapping, at the same time, his right hand over his diaphragm. "If your hearts are right your muskets will be bright." The men stared, the movement not being laid down in the Regulations, and not exactly understanding the connexion between the heart and a clean musket; but the Colonel continued, "the heart is like the mainspring of a watch, if it beats right, ...
— Red-Tape and Pigeon-Hole Generals - As Seen From the Ranks During a Campaign in the Army of the Potomac • William H. Armstrong

... that gun-play should give way, whenever possible, to a crushing "right" or "left" to the point of the jaw or the pit of the stomach. His proficiency in the manly art was polished and thorough and bespoke earnest application. The last doubting Thomas to be convinced came to five minutes after his diaphragm had been rudely and suddenly raised several inches by a low right hook, and as he groped for his bearings and got his wind back again he asked, very feebly, where "Kansas" ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Campfire Stories • Various

... a seaman gunner, I should say we'd wait till the sights came on, an' then fire. Speakin' as a torpedo-coxswain, L.T.O., T.I., M.D., etc., I presume we fall in—Number One in rear of the tube, etc., secure tube to ball or diaphragm, clear away securin'-bar, release safety-pin from lockin-levers, an' pray Heaven to look down on us. As second in command o' 267, I say wait ...
— Traffics and Discoveries • Rudyard Kipling

... tittle-tattle of two young mangy whores. By this inconvenient the cotyledons of her matrix were presently loosed, through which the child sprang up and leaped, and so, entering into the hollow vein, did climb by the diaphragm even above her shoulders, where the vein divides itself into two, and from thence taking his way towards the left side, issued forth at her left ear. As soon as he was born, he cried not as other babes use to do, Miez, miez, miez, miez, but with a high, ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais

... Induction. It should be noted here that the activity aroused in the mind of the receiving person is accomplished by the setting into vibratory motion the Chitta or Mind-substance of that person, just as the receiving diaphragm of the telephone is set vibrating at the same rate as that of the sending instrument, and thus ...
— Genuine Mediumship or The Invisible Powers • Bhakta Vishita

... used on the machine, however, is even more interesting than the quotation. Rather than a stylus and diaphragm, a jet of air under high pressure ...
— Development of the Phonograph at Alexander Graham Bell's Volta Laboratory • Leslie J. Newville

... combination with the base or heating-surface, D, the chambers, b b', and diaphragm, E, or their equivalents, substantially as arranged and described, and for ...
— Scientific American, Vol. 17, No. 26 December 28, 1867 • Various

... the arrangement shown in the annexed engravings, which is certainly a simple, strong, and substantial article. The foot of the trap is made of cast iron, the seat of the valve being of gun metal, let into the diaphragm, cast inside the hollow cylinder. The valve, D, is also of gun metal, and passing to outside through a stuffing box is connected to the central expansion pipe by a nut at E. The valve is set by two brass ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 484, April 11, 1885 • Various

... or opened by means of lids over their upper ends. These were more to Hewitt's mind, and he went about from one to another, groping under the lids, and poking down into the flues with a walking-stick. There was a wire-grating, or diaphragm, it seemed, in each of them, two or three feet down, and we could hear the end of the stick raking on this at each investigation. One after another of these ventilators Hewitt examined, till he had examined them all, in outer and inner rooms, without ...
— The Red Triangle - Being Some Further Chronicles of Martin Hewitt, Investigator • Arthur Morrison

... its noise. He says, "It is remarkable for having a sort of drum at the base of the fore wings, between the costal nervure and the subcostal. These two nervures, moreover, have a peculiar screw-like diaphragm or vessel in the interior." I find in Langsdorff's travels (in the years 1803-7 page 74) it is said, that in the island of St. Catherine's on the coast of Brazil, a butterfly called Februa Hoffmanseggi, makes a noise, when flying away, like a rattle.) Several ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin

... apparatus by a study of the mechanism of the human ear, which he knew to contain a membrane, or 'drum,' vibrating under the waves of sound, and communicating its vibrations through the hammer-bone behind it to the auditory nerve. It therefore occurred to him, that if he made a diaphragm in imitation of the drum, and caused it by vibrating to make and break the circuit of an electric current, he would be able through the magnetic power of the interrupted current to reproduce the original sounds at ...
— Heroes of the Telegraph • J. Munro

... anything with his feet; an alarming thought came to him; he would have pulled himself back, but the top of the wall was crumbling to his fingers, a mass of rotten mortar threatening each moment to break below his grasp, and he realised with a spasm of the diaphragm that now there was no retreat. What—this was his thought—what if this was the mouth of a well? Or a mediaeval trap for fools? He had seen such things in French castles. In the pitch darkness he could not guess whether ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro

... long breath and began at the beginning again. She plunged a fat hand into the market basket and aimed two hollyhock tops in the general direction of Dick's diaphragm, repeating impressively: "Wee-come, Unky Dick." She took no notice of his profound bow, but looking up at Alice, who was leaning out the side of the seat watching with amused eyes, she showered another handful upon the wheels and ...
— Chicken Little Jane on the Big John • Lily Munsell Ritchie

... a tin cylinder, B, having a slot cut in at D, in which a diaphragm, C, works, and is prevented from falling out by a stud fixed to its inside, and from falling inside by the stud above C. To use this, the bottom must be stopped with a cork, through which a piece of stout wire is bolted, the wire to come up to, but ...
— Practical Taxidermy • Montagu Browne

... buildings used by the enemy, unscrew the earphone of telephone receivers and remove the diaphragm. Electricians and telephone repair men can make poor connections and damage insulation so that cross talk and other kinds of electrical interference will make conversations hard or ...
— Simple Sabotage Field Manual • Strategic Services

... rhythmical movement. If the arteries were rigid glass tubes, and the pain quicksilver indeed, there could not be a more striking impression of ebb and flow every second against some stout elastic diaphragm whose percussion seems the pain which is felt. This is especially the case along the course of the sciatic nerve and all its branches, where the pulse of pain is so agonizing that the sufferer can not keep his ...
— The Opium Habit • Horace B. Day

... it is possible to receive wireless signals, although ordinary records are not loud enough, by using a small microphone on the repeating diaphragm and connected with a loud- speaking telephone. The chief difficulty was to get a microphone that would carry a sufficient current without burning up. There were other difficulties, but they have been surmounted and now wireless telegraph messages may be automatically ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve

... materials become sonorous when exposed to the action of an intermittent beam of sunlight, and I stated my belief that the sounds were due to molecular disturbances produced in the substance composing the diaphragm.[1] Shortly afterwards Lord Raleigh undertook a mathematical investigation of the subject and came to the conclusion that the audible effects were caused by the bending of the plates under unequal heating.[2] This explanation has recently been called in question by Mr. Preece,[3] ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 288 - July 9, 1881 • Various

... had one chance in a thousand. It flashed through my mind that a horned toad when threatened with danger will inflate itself to such an extent that a wagon may pass over it, leaving the toad uninjured. I drew a deep breath, expanded my diaphragm to its greatest capacity, and lay rigid. It was ...
— The Dude Wrangler • Caroline Lockhart

... The heart He set on the left side of the breast and made the stomach the guide and governor thereof. He appointed the lungs for a fan to the heart and stablished the liver on the right side, opposite thereto. Moreover, He made, besides this, the diaphragm and the viscera and set up the bones of the breast and latticed them with the ribs." Q "How many ventricles are there in a man's head?" "Three, which contain five faculties, styled the intrinsic senses, to wit, common sense, imagination, the ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton

... their companionship in this waltz; while the faces of the other dancers, swimming by, denoted not people but merely blurs of colour. George became conscious of strange feelings within him: an exaltation of soul, tender, but indefinite, and seemingly located in the upper part of his diaphragm. ...
— The Magnificent Ambersons • Booth Tarkington

... A was an Artery, fill'd with injection; And B was a Brick, never caught at dissection. C were some Chemicals—lithium and borax; And D was a Diaphragm, flooring the thorax. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, November 27, 1841 • Various

... to give automatic working, which are scarcely capable of classification among their peers, may be diagrammatically shown in Fig. 3. The first of these (D) depends upon the movements of a flexible diaphragm. A vessel (a) of any convenient size and shape is divided into two portions by a thin sheet of metal, leather, caoutchouc, or the like. At its centre the diaphragm is attached by some air-tight joint to the rod c, which, held in position by suitable guides, is free to move longitudinally ...
— Acetylene, The Principles Of Its Generation And Use • F. H. Leeds and W. J. Atkinson Butterfield

... 57. Put a blank cylinder on the dictaphone, adjust the recording (cutting) needle and diaphragm at the end of the tube, start the motor, and talk into the dictaphone. Shut off the motor, remove the cutting needle, and put on the reproducing needle (the cutting needle, being sharp, would spoil the cylinder). Start the reproducing needle where the ...
— Common Science • Carleton W. Washburne

... a poster A programme which "features" CHARLIE CHAPLIN and other Delectable creatures, I feel just as if Someone hit me a slam Or a strenuous biff On the mid diaphragm. ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 152, Feb. 7, 1917 • Various

... until after he was taken sick, when he related the incident to me. I shall never forget the expression of alarm in his eyes when I last saw him alive in the third or fourth day of his illness. The spasmodic contractions of his diaphragm indicated that black vomit was impending, and he fully appreciated their significance. The dreaded vomit soon appeared. I was too weak to see him again in that condition, and there was nothing that I ...
— Insects and Diseases - A Popular Account of the Way in Which Insects may Spread - or Cause some of our Common Diseases • Rennie W. Doane

... purposes. One of the most important derivatives of hypochlorous acid is bleaching powder. Sodium hypochlorite can be prepared by the electrolysis of brine solution in the presence of carbon electrodes, having no diaphragm in the electrolytic cell, and mixing the anode and cathode products by agitating the liquid. The temperature should be kept at about 15 deg. C., and the concentration of the hypochlorite produced must not be allowed ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various

... have the imaginative temper in excess. Sad to think that had he lived reason must have deserted that so worthy abode of it! I was struck by the great beauty of the organic developments, in the strictly anatomic sense; those of the throat and diaphragm in particular might have been modelled for a teacher of normal physiology, or a professor of design. The flesh was still almost as firm as that of a living person; as happens when, as in this case, death comes to all intents ...
— Miscellaneous Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater

... heel into his spine I jam, To beat his mouth until he pouts at fate, To punch him sternly in the diaphragm Is rapture great. ...
— Cap and Gown - A Treasury of College Verse • Selected by Frederic Knowles

... consists of brownish, thick, and remarkably elastic tissue, formed, apparently, of transverse little pillars, becoming fibrous on the outside, and with their inner ends appearing like hyaline points. The mouth of the acoustic sack (removed in the drawing) is closed by a tender diaphragm, through which I saw what I believe was a moderately-sized nerve enter; I have not yet succeeded in tracing this nerve. The first pair of cirri seem, to a certain extent, to serve as antennae, and therefore the position of an acoustic organ ...
— A Monograph on the Sub-class Cirripedia (Volume 1 of 2) - The Lepadidae; or, Pedunculated Cirripedes • Charles Darwin

... F, to the reservoir, D; the remaining oil passes along through the armature spindle, oils the bearings, B, and drains into the reservoir, D, from which the oil is again drawn along the pipe, G, into the stand pipe, H, by the suction of the fan, K. The suction of the fan is also connected to the diaphragm, L, and forms, with it and the spring, M, the principal part of the governor which actuates the throttle valve, V. Fig. 4 is the electrical control governor, which will be further described in connection with the dynamo. It acts directly upon the controlling diaphragm, L, by admitting or closing ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 633, February 18, 1888 • Various

... kind-hearted affections, which had lain perdue, slily peeping out of the loopholes of the heart, finding this Cerberus asleep, do pluck up their spirits, turn out one and all in their holiday suits, and gambol up and down the diaphragm—disposing their possessor to laughter, good humor, and a thousand ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving



Words linked to "Diaphragm" :   iris, trunk, prophylactic device, midriff, photographic camera, birth control device, contraceptive device, tissue layer, general anatomy, stop, contraceptive, body, disc, camera, electro-acoustic transducer, pessary, mechanical device, torso, muscular structure, musculature, preventive, anatomy, preventative, muscle system, disk, membrane



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