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Germ   /dʒərm/   Listen
Germ

noun
1.
Anything that provides inspiration for later work.  Synonyms: seed, source.
2.
A small apparently simple structure (as a fertilized egg) from which new tissue can develop into a complete organism.
3.
A minute life form (especially a disease-causing bacterium); the term is not in technical use.  Synonyms: bug, microbe.



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"Germ" Quotes from Famous Books



... of filth, as also other creatures of a like description. This is said to be the second mode of birth and is inferior. Those living creatures that take birth after the lapse of some time, bursting through the earth, are said to be germ-born beings, ye foremost of regenerate persons. Creatures of two feet or of many feet and those which move crookedly, are the beings born of wombs. Among them are some that are deformed, ye best of men. The eternal womb of Brahma should be known to be of two kinds, viz., ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli

... to have begun his preliminary training for his life-work when a boy attending school at Westminster. Even then the germ of his story-telling propensity seems to have evinced itself, for he was always awarded the highest marks in ...
— The Golden Canyon - Contents: The Golden Canyon; The Stone Chest • G. A. Henty

... are pleased to jest. Yet rest assured of one thing, Socrates: if after you have put seed into the ground, you will await the instant when, while earth is being richly fed from heaven, the fresh green from the hidden seed first springs, and take and turn it back again, [12] this sprouting germ will serve as food for earth: as from manure an inborn strength will presently be added to the soil. But if you suffer earth to feed the seed of corn within it and to bring forth fruit in an endless round, at last [13] it ...
— The Economist • Xenophon

... because of not 'letting go' (by knowledge as a cause), we do not reach the end of the religious life; but by understanding nature in its involutions, then, you say, we obtain deliverance; I perceive this law of birth has also concealed in it another law as a germ; you say that the 'I' (i.e. the soul of Kapila) being rendered pure, forthwith there is true deliverance; but if we encounter a union of cause and effect, then there is a return to the trammels of birth; just as the ...
— Sacred Books of the East • Various

... Harris sought out new homestead land and Arthurs proceeded with the development of his farm. It was McCrae, whose interest in every member of the expedition was that of a father, that dropped the germ of this suggestion into Arthurs' receptive ear, and it was with paternal satisfaction he found the young couples speedily work out for themselves the arrangements which he had planned for them ...
— The Homesteaders - A Novel of the Canadian West • Robert J. C. Stead

... was the commander of the forces of the palace, and as men from the further cities of Okar—and especially Illall—were less likely to be tainted with the germ of intrigue which had for years infected the household of Salensus Oll, he was sure that we would be welcomed and few questions ...
— Warlord of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... very different sense indeed the Socialist propaganda must be the germ of the collective self-consciousness of mankind in the coming time. If the purpose of Socialism is to prevail, its scattered writings, its dispersed, indistinct and confused utterances must increase in height and breadth and range, increase in power and service, gather to themselves every ...
— New Worlds For Old - A Plain Account of Modern Socialism • Herbert George Wells

... improve living conditions in these houses. In this respect, it cannot be too strongly pointed out, the Astors were in nowise different from the general run of landlords. Is it not murder when, compelled by want, people are forced to fester in squalid, germ-filled tenements, where the sunlight never enters and where disease finds a prolific breeding-place? Untold thousands went to their deaths in these unspeakable places. Yet, so far as the Law was concerned, the rents collected ...
— History of the Great American Fortunes, Vol. I - Conditions in Settlement and Colonial Times • Myers Gustavus

... that it was begun, and some progress made in it, while Dante was yet in Florence—begun in Latin, and he quotes three lines of it—continued afterward in Italian. This is not impossible; indeed, the germ and presage of it may be traced in the Vita Nuova. The idealized saint is there, in all the grace of her pure and noble humbleness, the guide and safeguard of the poet's soul. She is already in glory with Mary the Queen of Angels. She already beholds the face of the Ever-blessed. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various

... was a heart aching for sympathy and help and love. Mrs. Snowdon felt her worser self slip from her, leaving all that was true and noble to make her worthy of the test applied. Art she could meet with equal art, but nature conquered her. For spite of her misspent life and faulty character, the germ of virtue, which lives in the worst, was there, only waiting for the fostering sun and dew of love to strengthen it, even though the harvest be a ...
— The Abbot's Ghost, Or Maurice Treherne's Temptation • A. M. Barnard

... between evil and good, joy and 246:3 sorrow, sickness and health, life and death. Life and its faculties are not measured by calendars. The perfect and immortal are the eternal 246:6 likeness of their Maker. Man is by no means a material germ rising from the imperfect and endeavoring to reach Spirit above his origin. The stream rises no higher than ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy

... little time for sanitary precautions, and so it presently happened that a shadow, like a huge black bird of ill omen, suddenly hovered above the camp, sending a shudder through its entire length. A tiny germ, so small as to pass unnoticed and unheeded by, and yet withal so deadly as to be called a plague, crept along, insinuating itself into the streamlets making their way as best they could to their father, the Yukon; and the fever laid low ...
— A Woman who went to Alaska • May Kellogg Sullivan

... was very thoughtful all that day, and during the days which followed, for she had found out the truth about herself, and a little germ that had been growing in her breast, but of which she had thought little till Daniel Barnett came up and spoke, and made her know she had a heart—a fact of which she became perfectly sure, when the news reached her next morning of the sad accident ...
— A Life's Eclipse • George Manville Fenn

... editor of the British Medical Journal, read an able paper upon Cholera before the American Medical Association. His argument was that the introduction of such a substance as alcohol, itself being a product of germ action, into a system already suffering from the toxic influence of a ptomaine, could not be otherwise ...
— Alcohol: A Dangerous and Unnecessary Medicine, How and Why - What Medical Writers Say • Martha M. Allen

... pretty, childish voice, intelligently giving utterance to the thoughtful philosophy that had always soothed him. It lost some of its familiarity and gained a new charm, coming from that small, round mouth which had an almost faultless instinct for pronunciation. A feeble germ of fatherly pride began to sprout beneath the soil upon which the child's intelligent reading fell ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson

... of expediency. Through all the blackness of dismal years we have laboured to preserve the twin ideas of nationality and autonomy, and the labourer is worthy of his hire. But a Home Rule assembly, functioning in Dublin, may well furnish the germ of a reorganisation of the Empire. If so, let it be remembered that it was not Mr Chamberlain but Daniel O'Connell who first in these countries gave to Imperialism a definite and articulate form. In any event Home Rule is the only remedy for ...
— The Open Secret of Ireland • T. M. Kettle

... principle of trial and error to the particular problems with which his science is confronted. Once the experimenter has discovered a way to compel mechanical power to toil for man, or to destroy the typhoid germ, or to talk across a continent without wires, the next task is to find a better way or an easier way. Far from decreasing the necessity for experiment, each new discovery in the realm of natural science opens the door to additional possibilities. To-day every ...
— The Next Step - A Plan for Economic World Federation • Scott Nearing

... Europe, which had been estranged from us." This Note seems to have irritated the Sultan. Abdul Hamid, with his small, nervous, exacting nature, has always valued Ministers in proportion to their obedience, not to their power of giving timely advice. In every independent suggestion he sees the germ of opposition, and perhaps of a palace plot. He did so now. By way of reply, he bade Midhat come to the Palace. Midhat, fearing a trap, deferred his visit, until he received the assurance that the order for the reforms had been issued. Then he obeyed the summons; at once ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose

... there was aught in the Childhood of Mary Twining remarkable or unnatural, that should be the Cause of Wonder or Admiration. But the rather that there may be evinced the Presence, even in the Germ, of certain Qualities of Soundness of Judgment and of Thoughtfulness unusual in a Female, which grew with her Growth, and which were in later Years, developed into stronger ...
— A Christmas Accident and Other Stories • Annie Eliot Trumbull

... her words with a whole battery of dimples, all the while privately resolving that no contagion of enthusiasm should inoculate her with the haymaking germ. There were factors that made it all a bit hard to withstand; the sky was so blue, the breeze was so jolly, the mown grass smelled so delicious, and the mountain air had such zest in it. But, on the other hand, the sun was hot and downright and freckling; Priscilla's tip-tilted ...
— The Camerons of Highboro • Beth B. Gilchrist

... historical criticism must hesitate to accept as conclusive the slender proof offered in support of the story.[39] It is, perhaps, safer to regard one of the simple schools instituted at an early period in connection with cathedrals and monasteries as having contained the humble germ from which the proud university was slowly developed. But, by the side of this original foundation there had doubtless grown up the schools of private instructors, and these had acquired a certain prominence ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird

... temperament does not do these things without being worried into them. I had the inspiration, however. I told Barbara (my wife), and she agreed, at the time, dutifully, that I ought to record our friend Jaffery's doings. But now, womanlike, she declares that the first suggestion, the root germ of the idea, came from her; that the "egging on" is merely the vain man's way of misdefining a woman's serene insistence; that she has given me, out of her intimate knowledge, all the facts of the story—although Jaffery ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke

... cell, which is called the ooesphere, or egg-cell, the point to be fertilized. When one of the entering antherozoids reaches this point the desired change is effected, and the canal of the archegonium closes. The empty ooesphere becomes the quickened ooesphore whose newly begotten plant germ unfolds normally by the multiplication of cells that become, in turn, root, stem, first leaf, etc., while the prothallium no longer needed to sustain ...
— The Fern Lover's Companion - A Guide for the Northeastern States and Canada • George Henry Tilton

... Graham flour and Graham bread are wheat, perhaps because of the different name and brown color. The so-called "whole-wheat" flour is often 95 per cent of the kernel only, but may be as little as 85 per cent, depending on the amount of the bran and germ removed ...
— Food Guide for War Service at Home • Katharine Blunt, Frances L. Swain, and Florence Powdermaker

... for shade instead of picking. There was much sickness in this camp, anyway. There was only one well, and it was not protected from filth. The flies were everywhere. Grandma boiled all the water, but she could not keep out the germ-laden flies. The family took turns lying miserably sick on an automobile-seat bed and wishing for the end ...
— Across the Fruited Plain • Florence Crannell Means

... must be clear that President Kruger does more than represent the opinion of the people and execute their policy: he moulds them in the form he wills. By the force of his own strong convictions and prejudices, and of his indomitable will, he has made the Boers a people whom he regards as the germ of the Afrikander nation; a people chastened, selected, welded, and strong enough to attract and assimilate all their kindred in South Africa, and thus to realize the dream of a Dutch Republic from the Zambesi ...
— Native Races and the War • Josephine Elizabeth Butler

... not know that in the dust of the Tabernacle sprawled the germs of Dysentery, Cholera, and Tuberculosis, and a few other such mild infections. Or did the Divine Father know that even a self-respecting germ could not inhabit the filthy floor of ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks

... "intruders," and the horrible persecutions in which it expressed itself, could not but bring out more aggressively the old spiritual opposition between the two races. The antagonism between them was the first influence to foster the germ of Israel's national consciousness, the consciousness of his peculiar character, his individuality. This early intimation of a national consciousness was weak. It manifested itself only in the chosen few. But it existed, and the time was appointed when, under ...
— Jewish History • S. M. Dubnow

... Quimby at his worst but beneath it is the germ of the method and philosophy which have attained so luxurious a growth—the explaining, that is, of disease in terms of wrong belief. Inevitably in the elaboration of all this Quimby reached out to ...
— Modern Religious Cults and Movements • Gaius Glenn Atkins

... May there not be an inner heart and centre of true trust, with a nebulous environment of doubt, through which the nucleus shall gradually send its attracting and consolidating power, and turn it, too, into firm substance? May there not be a germ, infinitesimal, yet with a real life throbbing in its microscopic minuteness, and destined to be a great tree, with all the fowls of the air lodging in its branches? May there not be hid in a heart a principle of action, which is obviously ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren

... the expense of the materials contained in the yolk and the white, into a small bird, the chick, which is then hatched and grows into a fowl. The animal, therefore, is produced by the development of a germ in the same way as the plant; and, in this respect, all plants and all animals agree with one another, and differ from ...
— A Book of Natural History - Young Folks' Library Volume XIV. • Various

... quoted in the Cologne Chronicle of 1499, and Hadrian Junius, a Dutch historian of repute, who wrote in the next century. Both agree in ascribing the invention of book-printing from wooden blocks, as well as the first germ of movable wood and metallic type printing, to Haarlem; and Junius adds the name of Laurence Koster. His surname of Koster is derived from his office, which was that of custodian, sexton, or warden of the Cathedral Church of Haarlem. The story told of the accident by which ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 8 - The Later Renaissance: From Gutenberg To The Reformation • Editor-in-Chief: Rossiter Johnson

... yellow robes with, besides, the bright Kaustubha gem in thy bosom, thou art the beginning and the end of creation, and the great refuge of all. Thou art the supreme light and essence of the Universe! Thy face is directed towards every point. They call thee Supreme Germ and the depository of all treasures. Under thy protections, O lord of the gods, all evils lose their terror. As thou didst protect me before from Dussasana, do thou extricate ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli

... were luckier—I mean by birth, by possession of constitution and stamina. Why, Dick buried his three mates and two engineers at Guayaquil. Yellow fever. Why didn't the yellow fever germ, or whatever it is, kill Dick? And the same with you, Mr. Broad- shouldered Deep-chested Graham. In this last trip of yours, why didn't you die in the swamps instead of your photographer? Come. Confess. How ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London

... with a stretched sail for roof and a board between two trees whereon to rest Bible and Book of Prayer. Here, for the first time in all this wilderness, rang English axe in American forest, here was English law and an English town, here sounded English speech. Here was placed the germ of that physical, mental, and, spiritual power which is called the United ...
— Pioneers of the Old South - A Chronicle of English Colonial Beginnings, Volume 5 In - The Chronicles Of America Series • Mary Johnston

... few drops upon her shoulder. Thenceforth by silent agreement we moistened our tongues, scrupulously turn about, wringing the most from each brief sip as if testing the bouquet of exquisite wine. Came a time when we regretted this frugalness; but just now there persisted within us, I suppose, that germ of hope which seems to be ...
— Desert Dust • Edwin L. Sabin

... the latest snow. In the stiff clod below the whirling drifts, In the loose soil the springing herbage lifts, In the hot dust beneath the parching weeds, Life's withering flower shall drop its shrivelled seeds; Its germ entranced in thy unbreathing sleep Till what thou sowest ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... lay mind the amazement with which I beheld the miracle will require explanation. I had witnessed the transformation of one germ into another; a thing which is similar to a man seeing a flock of sheep on a hill-side change suddenly into a herd of cattle. For many minutes I continued to move the slide in an aimless way with trembling fingers. My temperament ...
— The Blue Germ • Martin Swayne

... occupation to ladies and gentlemen who have nothing to do. It is in distant and far different climes to our own, and in the remote antiquity of long vanished ages:—it is among the people of the East, the Arabs, the Egyptians, the Persians, and the Syrians, that the germ and origin is to be found of this species of fictitious narrative, for which the peculiar genius and poetical temperament of those nations particularly adapt them, and in which they delight to a degree scarcely to be credited. For even their ordinary discourse is interspersed with figurative ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various

... Carlyle, from the fact that he has made us awake to our social duties. He has let loose the confusion upon us, and it is only natural that we should at first be overcome by a sense of bewildered helplessness. But this very sense contains the germ of hope, and England is struggling to its feet to wrestle with its wrongs. Carlyle has brought us within sight of our future, and we are now taking a step into it. He has been our guide in the wilderness; but he died there, and was denied the view ...
— Browning as a Philosophical and Religious Teacher • Henry Jones

... really civil war in France. In the Netherlands it had become essentially a struggle for independence against a foreign monarch; although the germ out of which both conflicts had grown to their enormous proportions was an effort of the multitude to check the growth of papacy. In France, accordingly, civil war, attended by that gaunt sisterhood, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... by one disappeared, while prodigious streaks of foam became apparent where none had been seen before. These streaks, at length, spreading out to a great distance, and entering into combination, took unto themselves the gyratory motion of the subsided vortices, and seemed to form the germ of another more vast. Suddenly—very suddenly—this assumed a distinct and definite existence in a circle of a colossal and seemingly all-embracing diameter. The edge of the whirl was represented by a broad belt of gleaming, turbid slime—cumbered ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 104, January 28, 1893 • Various

... test of the strength that was in them; while those who would not wait attained what they wanted, and on the whole, as to other matters, got on just as well as their stronger-minded neighbours. This germ of thought, it may be supposed, was stimulated into very warm life by the reflection that Lucy would have to leave Carlingford with her sister, without any definite prospect of returning again; and a certain flush of impatience came over the young man, not unnatural in the circumstances. ...
— The Perpetual Curate • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant

... e. In the story of the drama; for in the original "History of Amleth the Dane," from which Shakspeare drew his materials, there is a woman introduced who is employed as an instrument to seduce Amleth, but not even the germ of the character ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson

... describes the preparations and processes for erecting the buildings of the new city. The whole took place under the direction of two officers, in whom we have the germ probably of the Six Heads of the Boards or Departments, whose functions are described in the Sh and the Official Book of Ku. The materials of the buildings were earth and lime pounded together in frames, as is still ...
— The Shih King • James Legge

... sayings connected with their Divine Master naturally assumed a particular shape from repetition, though it was simply a rudimental one. They were not compactly linked in regular or systematic sequence. They were the oral germ and essence of a Gospel, rather than a proper Gospel itself, at least, according to our modern ideas of it. But the Aramaean language was soon laid aside. When Hellenists evinced a disposition to receive ...
— The Freethinker's Text Book, Part II. - Christianity: Its Evidences, Its Origin, Its Morality, Its History • Annie Besant

... "a slip of the tongue; I was thinking of Fitzgerald. Well, I believe that crime to have been premeditated, and that the man who committed it was mad. He is, no doubt, at large now, walking about and conducting himself as sanely as you or I, yet the germ of insanity is there, and sooner or later he ...
— The Mystery of a Hansom Cab • Fergus Hume

... 'Emilius', which had cost me twenty years' meditation, and three years' labor. But I paid dearly for the pecuniary ease I received from the piece, by the infinite vexations it brought upon me. It was the germ of the secret jealousies which did not appear until a long time afterwards. After its success I did not remark, either in Grimm, Diderot, or any of the men of letters, with whom I was acquainted, the same cordiality and ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau

... this portion that the germ is found, which will not be eaten by the larva, and will remain capable of developing into a plant, in spite of the large aperture made by the emergence of the adult insect. Why is this particular portion left untouched? What are the ...
— A Book of Exposition • Homer Heath Nugent

... despise their own order. One of the first symptoms they discover of a selfish and mischievous ambition is a profligate disregard of a dignity which they partake with others. To be attached to the subdivision, to love the little platoon we belong to in society, is the first principle (the germ, as it were) of public affections. It is the first link in the series by which we proceed towards a love to our country and to mankind. The interest of that portion of social arrangement is a trust in the hands of all those who compose it; and as none but bad men would justify it in ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... family we must understand not only the head of the house with his wife, children, and slaves, but also the divine beings who dwelt there. As the State comprised both human and divine inhabitants, so also did the house, which was indeed the germ and type of the State. Thus the house was in those early times not less but even more than a house is for us, for in it was concentrated all that was dear to the family, all that was essential to its life, both ...
— Social life at Rome in the Age of Cicero • W. Warde Fowler

... only two classes present themselves to view,—the nobility and the clergy on the one hand, and the serfs on the other. This was the character of society in the ninth century. In the tenth century we see the beginnings of an intermediate class, the germ of "the third estate." This change appears in the cities, where the burghers begin to increase in intelligence, and to manifest a spirit of independence. From this time, for several centuries, their power and ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher

... denied the possibility of a through animal in perfect health giving a disease to wintered Southerners or domestic cattle, also robust and healthy. Time has demonstrated the truth, yet the manner in which the germ is transmitted between healthy animals remains a mystery to this day, although there has been no lack of theories advanced. Even the theorists differed as to the manner of germ transmission, the sporule, tick, and ship fever being the leading theories, and each having its advocates. ...
— The Outlet • Andy Adams

... her soul, Owen too had gained something which his character had hitherto lacked; and in his new humility and comprehension there was the germ, also, of a new content for ...
— The Making of a Soul • Kathlyn Rhodes

... Catti were a German tribe who inhabited the present countries of Hesse or Baden. Tacitus, De Mor. Germ., informs us that the Germans placed great confidence in the prophetical inspirations which they ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus

... claimed they had become a free and independent people, standing alone in the world. Their attempt to establish a new white state on the coast was a matter of serious concern, because it might affect trade with the interior, and plant in a region which Britain deemed her own the germ of what might become a new maritime power. And as the colonial government considered itself the general protector of the natives, and interested in maintaining the Kafirs between the Boer state and Cape Colony, the attacks of the Boers on the Kafirs who lived to the west of ...
— Impressions of South Africa • James Bryce

... germ which we can cultivate— To grace and perfume sweeter than the rose, Or leave neglected while our heart soil grows Rank with that vile and ...
— Yesterdays • Ella Wheeler Wilcox

... itself a remarkable and apparently anomalous circumstance. That it is remarkable under a physiological point of view is clear, for the male element not only affects, in accordance with its proper function, the germ, but the surrounding tissues of the mother-plant. That the action is anomalous in appearance is true, but hardly so in reality, for apparently it plays the same part in the ordinary fertilisation of many flowers. Gaertner has shown,[947] by gradually increasing ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Vol. I. • Charles Darwin

... clothing of persons suffering with diphtheria, tuberculosis, and other germ diseases should always be boiled and hung to dry in the bright sunlight. Heat and sunshine are two of ...
— General Science • Bertha M. Clark

... is very unlikely that the veteran sea-captains on his council of war would have assented to its adoption. At any rate we may assert that the idea of ships attacking in succession so as to support one another without masking each other's broadside fire (which is the essential germ of the true line ahead) was in the air, and it is clearly on the principle that underlay Baskerville's tactics that Ralegh's fighting instructions were based twenty ...
— Fighting Instructions, 1530-1816 - Publications Of The Navy Records Society Vol. XXIX. • Julian S. Corbett

... so obtained; but the terrible agency of the parasitic fungi and of the infinitesimally minute microbes, which work far greater havoc among plants and animals, has been brought to light. The 'particulate' or 'germ' theory of disease, as it is called, long since suggested, has obtained a firm foundation, in so far as it has been proved to be true in respect of sundry epidemic disorders. Moreover, it has theoretically justified prophylactic measures, such as vaccination, which formerly ...
— The Advance of Science in the Last Half-Century • T.H. (Thomas Henry) Huxley

... suited to other times, or finds sympathy to-day with other races. With all this, there is a great depth of truth and eloquence in its pages,—and its moral, which at first sight would seem to be, that the blossom of vice necessarily contains the germ of virtue, proves to be this wiser one, that you can tell the tree only by its fruits, which slowly ripen with length of life. As a novel, it is out of fashion,—for novels have fashion; as a development of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 49, November, 1861 • Various

... insects, and (2) diseases. The former are of two kinds, (a) insects which chew or eat the leaves or fruit; (b) insects which suck the juices therefrom. The diseases also are of two kinds—(a) those which result from the attack of some fungus, or germ; (b) those which attack the whole organism of the plant and are termed "constitutional." Concerning these ...
— Home Vegetable Gardening • F. F. Rockwell

... God has given us liberty to take it." There, at that moment, in Hartford, American democracy was born; and in the republican union of the three towns of the Connecticut colony, Hartford, Windsor, and Wethersfield, was the germ of the American federal system, which was adopted into the federal constitution and known at the time as ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... early realization of the conspicuous part he was to play in the history of his time that made the youthful Bonaparte reserved of manner, gloomy, and taciturn, and prone to irritability. He felt within him the germ of future greatness, and so became impatient of restraint. He completely dominated the household. Joseph, his elder brother, became entirely subject to the imperious will of the future Emperor; and when ...
— Mr. Bonaparte of Corsica • John Kendrick Bangs

... found—well—what I might have found, oh! he should have had the stick or the dog-whip without stint. But one doesn't practise devil-worship with flowers. It seemed to me some craving after beauty was there, as if the poor germ of a soul groped out of the darkness towards what is fair and sweet. I dared not hound it back into the darkness, close down any dim aspiration after God it might have. So I left its pitiful joss-house inviolate, the moan of the wind and sighing of the great reed-beds ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet

... want you to persist in a veritable conquest by force of your will, whose strength you hardly realize, against Mary Ewold's sensibilities? And if you broke down her will, if you won, would there be happiness for you and for her? Jack, wait! If she cares for you, if there is any germ of love for you in her, it will grow of itself. You cannot force it into blossom. Come, Jack, am ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer

... topics. In 1834 he lectured on Michael Angelo, Milton, Luther, George Fox, and Edmund Burke. The first two of these lectures, though not included in his collected works, may be found in the "North American Review" for 1837 and 1838. The germ of many of the thoughts which he has expanded in prose and verse may ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... has the flying machine germ in his system will be long satisfied with his first moderate price machine, no matter how well it may work. It's the old story of the automobile "bug" over again. The man who starts in with a modest $1,000 automobile invariably progresses ...
— Flying Machines - Construction and Operation • W.J. Jackman and Thos. H. Russell

... thought to buy off an epidemic. Many times this has been tried. Never yet has it succeeded. It embodies one of the most dangerous of popular hygienic fallacies, that the dollar can overtake and swallow the germ. ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams

... another chapter in the history of the west. Previous to his time, each pioneer depended only on himself for defence—his sole protection, against the wild beast and the savage, was his rifle—self-dependence was his peculiar characteristic. The idea of a fighting establishment—the germ of standing armies—had never occurred to him: even the rudest form of civil government was strange to him—taxes, salaries, assessments, were all ...
— Western Characters - or Types of Border Life in the Western States • J. L. McConnel

... the germ of this ideal may not be found in other religions. I do not say that they are against it. I do not ask any man to accept my theology (which grows shorter and simpler as I grow older), unless his heart leads ...
— Sinking of the Titanic - and Great Sea Disasters • Various

... air seems filled with the 'speed germ.' Automobiles whiz here and there, and many a hen which now tries to cross the country road never gets more than half way. We who live in town have to keep a sharp lookout or we are apt to share the ...
— Crayon and Character: Truth Made Clear Through Eye and Ear - Or, Ten-Minute Talks with Colored Chalks • B.J. Griswold

... God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob." "He is not the God of the dead, but of the living." St. Paul has described the clothing of the spirit in a new and glorious body, taking the analogy from the living germ in the seed of the plant, which is not quickened till after apparent death; and the catastrophe of our planet, which, it is revealed, is to be destroyed and purified by fire before it is fitted for the habitation ...
— Consolations in Travel - or, the Last Days of a Philosopher • Humphrey Davy

... of ancient crime, and, having wandered over all places of the upper and under world, and seen and known all things at one time or other, is by association out of one thing capable of recovering all. For nature is of one kindred; and every soul has a seed or germ which may be developed into all knowledge. The existence of this latent knowledge is further proved by the interrogation of one of Meno's slaves, who, in the skilful hands of Socrates, is made to acknowledge some elementary relations of geometrical ...
— Meno • Plato

... definition, which seems to me the less questionable from the fact that, however much they may dispute over the word, all agree upon the thing, because it contains the germ of the greatest revolution yet to be accomplished in the world,—I mean the subordination of the unproductive functions to the productive functions, in a word, the effective submission, always asked and never obtained, ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon

... of bacteriology a micro-organism is to blame for appendicitis. If this were true it would relieve humanity of all responsibility. There is a disposition on the part of man to shirk responsibility and the germ theory is not the first theory of vicarious atonement that he has spun. Those who wish to shirk all kinds of responsibility by adopting the germ theory and by making micro-organisms the scape-goat may do so, but ...
— Appendicitis: The Etiology, Hygenic and Dietetic Treatment • John H. Tilden, M.D.

... rice or similar materials. The maize and rice preparations mostly used in England are practically starch pure and simple, substantially the whole of the oil, water, and other subsidiary constituents of the grain being removed. The germ of maize contains a considerable proportion of an oil of somewhat unpleasant flavour, which has to be eliminated before the material is fit for use in the mash-tun. After degerming, the maize is unhusked, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various

... soul lived upon and thought only of self and its escape. Through ages of suffering and loneliness and blackness, my only thought was a constant prayer for absolute non-existence. Within the heart of my tiny soul there began to grow a germ-like conception and reverence for God. With this thought the soul seemed to take unto itself strength to make feeble efforts to tear a way through its coffin of flinty skin and in feeble flight bounded and pounded incessantly on its case of parchment, as a drummer on his ...
— Chit-Chat; Nirvana; The Searchlight • Mathew Joseph Holt

... and there was a very significant "Good-bye," from the Yarl of Broch. He had kept our Viking-boy very much with him throughout the day, and had quite enchanted him by suggesting a scheme which contained the germ of much exciting adventure, although there was no enemy to meet or circumvent. And this scheme must have been on Viking lines, if we may judge from old Hoskald Halsen's farewell words ...
— Viking Boys • Jessie Margaret Edmondston Saxby

... to observe the germ of any of our own institutions existing in the culture of a lower race. Nevertheless it is trying to be hauled out of one's sleep in the middle of the night, and plunged into this study. Evidently this was a trace of an early form of the Bankruptcy Court; the court which clears ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley

... colds; we had them too, contracted at Shanghai. And let me tell you that a Chinese cold is something out of the ordinary. Whatever happens here happens on a grand scale, and these colds, whatever the germ that causes them, are more venomous than anything you've ever known. No wonder the railway station looked good to us; no wonder we were glad to be welcomed back to the old hotel, at the end of such ...
— Peking Dust • Ellen N. La Motte

... his life Daylight lost his nerve. He was badly and avowedly frightened. Women were terrible creatures, and the love-germ was especially ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London

... GERM THEORY, the doctrine that certain diseases are due to fermentation caused by the presence of germs in the system in the form of ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood

... made over somewhat, and is now used as an office by the Registrar of Vital Statistics. This is the place where Dante Gabriel and a young man named Holman Hunt had a studio, and where another young artist by the name of William Morris came to visit them; and here was born "The Germ," that queer little chipmunk magazine in which first appeared "Hand and Soul" and "The Blessed Damozel," written by Dante Gabriel when eighteen, the same age at which Bryant wrote "Thanatopsis." William Bell Scott ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 2 of 14 - Little Journeys To the Homes of Famous Women • Elbert Hubbard

... confirmatory of her strength? Will this terrible lesson have no influence on the regulation of her future conduct? Will not this dear bought experience teach her wisdom? Or has she yet to learn that the reign of injustice and tyranny involves in its very constitution the germ of its duration and punishment? Let her ask herself, "what would have been the consequence if, during the late war with America, the ports of this colony had been open to the vessels of that nation?" How many hundreds of the ...
— Statistical, Historical and Political Description of the Colony of New South Wales and its Dependent Settlements in Van Diemen's Land • William Charles Wentworth

... God is more powerful than that of science.—HE often strikes down the strong, and preserves the weak, so that none here can tell when to expect his blows. I can, however, assure you on my honor, that your daughter, delicate as she is, at this time has not even a germ of the terrible malady which has ravaged your hearth. This germ is always in the blood of members of the same family. Art establishes this, though it can provide no remedy.—This secret enemy, however," said the physician, with a kind of pride, "before which ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various

... for truth is dangerous; apathy is safer; then the soul does not come directly into contact with God and learn of him, but has to learn from, and unconvincedly submit to, some external authority. This is the germ of Romanism: its legitimate ...
— Phases of Faith - Passages from the History of My Creed • Francis William Newman

... cannot go with this, for I have not proved it.' He thus chose his sling, his staff, shepherd's bag and stones, because he was used to them, and could recollect what he had heretofore done with them." The modern germ or bacilli theory of disease, now generally accepted by learned physicians, was not unknown or even new in his time. He speaks of it as an "insect" theory, based on the belief that diseases were produced by an invisible insect, floating in the air, taken in with the breath, ...
— Slavery and Four Years of War, Vol. 1-2 • Joseph Warren Keifer

... colonial state, as the Patricians of Rome did for one hundred and fifty years after the expulsion of the kings. Those petty wars with Volscians and Acquians brought out the Roman character, and are the germ of subsequent greatness. They took place in the infancy of the republic, under the rule of Patricians, who were not then great nobles, but brave and poor citizens, animated with patriotic zeal and characterized, like the Puritans, for stern and lofty ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord

... Thus the first germ of the great musical societies gave a marked impulse to the culture of stringed music in England. Attention was turned to the subject; its humanising effects were recognised, and parties met in several places for the practice of chamber music. Our progress in Violin-playing at this date ...
— The Violin - Its Famous Makers and Their Imitators • George Hart

... the lesson of nature—the strong must bear the burdens of the weak. To this end were great men born. Nature constantly exhibits this principle. The shell of the peach shelters the inner seed; the outer petals of the bud the tender germ; the breast of the mother-bird protects the helpless birdlets; the eagle flies under her young and gently eases them to the ground; above the babe's helplessness rise the parents' shield and armor. God appoints strong ...
— The Investment of Influence - A Study of Social Sympathy and Service • Newell Dwight Hillis

... inclined to think it one of the plagues that usually follow in the track of war, due to privation and depression. This theory, however, did not explain why American troops, well fed and victorious, should be affected. Most believed it to be caused by some deadly germ, hitherto unknown, and every effort was being made by the medical corps to isolate the germ and find a remedy for the disease. But the Army Boys were to know more of the source of this strange scourge and make a most ...
— Army Boys on German Soil • Homer Randall

... the beaters who were sent in advance to surround the forest. My troops must not be allowed to disturb this sacred retreat, and irritate its pious inhabitants. Know that within the calm and cold recluse Lurks unperceived a germ of smothered flame, All-potent to destroy; a latent fire That rashly kindled bursts with fury forth:— As in the disc of crystal that remains Cool to the touch, until the solar ray Falls on its polished surface, and excites The burning heat that ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson

... blind germ of days to be, Ah me! ah me! (Sweet Venus, mother!) What wail of smitten strings hear we? (Ah me! ...
— A Nonsense Anthology • Collected by Carolyn Wells

... the people are willing to trust implicitly, and who can in some sense control events by the prestige of a great name. Carlyle and others have for years been laying to the charge of representative and parliamentary government the same evils whose germ certain British critics, as ignorant of our national character as of our geography, are so kindly ready to find in our democracy. Mr. Stuart Mill, in his essay on "Liberty," has convinced us that even the tyranny of Public Opinion is ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various

... for English persistence to accomplish what France, with such appalling violence, had done in as many years. It had been a furious outburst of pent-up force; but the work had been thorough. Not a germ of tyranny remained. The incrustations of a thousand years were not alone broken, but pulverized; the privileged classes were swept away, and their vast estates, two-thirds of the territory of France, ready to be distributed among the rightful owners of ...
— A Short History of France • Mary Platt Parmele

... eggs are all alike, and the subsequent treatment makes either workers, drones, or queens, and look to analogy for support, we shall find much against, as well as for it. For instance, we find in almost every department of animated nature, that the sex of the germ of a future being is decided before being separated from the parent, as the eggs of fowls, &c. Another fact, some queens (averaging one in sixty or eighty) deposit eggs that produce only drones,[8] whether in worker or drone-cells, ...
— Mysteries of Bee-keeping Explained • M. Quinby

... the sauce is wanted, one yolk of egg will be better than two. Separate the yolks very carefully, allowing not a speck of white to remain; remove also the germ which is attached to the yolk. Stir the yolk at least a minute before beginning to add oil; then arrange your bottle or a sharp-spouted pitcher in your left hand so that it rests on the edge of the bowl, and you can keep up a pretty steady drop, drop, into ...
— Choice Cookery • Catherine Owen

... The germ is to be found in the despatch already mentioned which Drake wrote from Plymouth at the end of March in 1588. His arguments were not purely naval, for it was a combined problem, a problem of defence against invasion, that had to ...
— Some Principles of Maritime Strategy • Julian Stafford Corbett

... W. C. T. U. fail to cover the ground we occupy, quite a respectable number seem determined to hold on in their own way, trying little by little to better the condition of all, and particularly to increase and strengthen the feeble germ of independent thought in women, so often smothered and destroyed by too much theology. What we need for women is not more spirituality but more hard common-sense, applied to reform as well as religion. One ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various

... similar way musical expression keeps step with musical ideas. In the beginning musical ideas were short, simple, fragmentary, monosyllabic, mere germs of melody (adherents of the germ theory will make a note of this). The Arab with his rudimentary fiddle will repeat this fragment of melody by the hour, while a company of his unlaundered brethren dance, until exhausted, in dust to their ankles, ...
— The Head Voice and Other Problems - Practical Talks on Singing • D. A. Clippinger

... something which the producer has had the use of and can part with. A man instinctively tries to get rid of his thought in conversation or in print so soon as it is matured; but it is hard to get at it as it lies imbedded, a mere potentiality, the germ of a ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... and mysterious trials they must undergo; how many souls and spirits come to this world without returning to the palace of the divine king. The souls must re-enter the absolute substance whence they have emerged. But to accomplish this end they must develop all the perfections; the germ of which is planted in them; and if they have not fulfilled this condition during one life, they must commence another, a third, and so on, until they have acquired the condition which fits them ...
— Reincarnation and the Law of Karma - A Study of the Old-New World-Doctrine of Rebirth, and Spiritual Cause and Effect • William Walker Atkinson

... the rapture of that hour, None but a parent's heart can know When first thy intellectual power Began the germ of life ...
— The Poets and Poetry of Cecil County, Maryland • Various

... wound, In strangest forms of death unnumbered fall. Tyrrhenian Aulus, bearer of a flag, Trod on a Dipsas; quick with head reversed The serpent struck; no mark betrayed the tooth: The aspect of the wound nor threatened death, Nor any evil; but the poison germ In silence working as consuming fire Absorbed the moisture of his inward frame, Draining the natural juices that were spread Around his vitals; in his arid jaws Set flame upon his tongue: his wearied limbs No sweat bedewed; dried up, the fount ...
— Pharsalia; Dramatic Episodes of the Civil Wars • Lucan

... this list, new figures were constantly added. They were the sums of money being subscribed at that very moment for the Exposition. Applause and cheers greeted each additional sum. That was the financial germ from which grew the wonderful Arabian Nights city by the bay. It was typically Californian—that scene—and typically Californian the spirit back of it. And four years later, when the outbreak of the war brought temporary panic, there was no diminution in that spirit. Whether it was a "Buying-Day," ...
— The Californiacs • Inez Haynes Irwin

... last the sense of the amplitude of her exposition sustained and floated her. Joining her, however, on the landing above, where she had already touched a metallic point into light, he found she had done perhaps even more to create than to extinguish in him the germ of a curiosity. He held her a minute longer—there was another plum in the pie. "What did you mean some minutes ago by his not caring ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James

... and hatred in the minds of the Southern people; had they found in Gen. Jackson the weak and pliant instrument of treason which James Buchanan afterward became in the hands of Davis and his coadjutors, the present rebellion might have been anticipated, and the germ of secession wholly extirpated and destroyed, in the contest which would then have ensued. The Union would doubtless have been maintained, and, in the end, strengthened; the fatal element of discord would scarcely have survived to work and plot in secret for more than a quarter of ...
— The Continental Monthly , Vol. 2 No. 5, November 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various



Words linked to "Germ" :   bodily structure, muse, structure, microorganism, inspiration, taproot, body structure, germ theory, complex body part, micro-organism, anatomical structure, germinal



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