WordWealth: viscous

vis·cous , adj.

The pivotal moment in Spufford's reading life occurred when he caught the mumps at 6 and hunkered down with ''The Hobbit.'' His description of his transformation from nonreader into reader is as good as any I know on this rite of passage: by book's end, ''writing had softened, and lost the outlines of the printed alphabet, and become a transparent liquid, first viscous and sluggish, like a jelly of meaning, then ever thinner and more mobile, flowing faster and faster, until it reached me at the speed of thinking and I could not entirely distinguish the suggestions it was making from my own thoughts. I had undergone the acceleration into the written word that you also experience as a change in the medium.'' —— James Shapiro; Confessions of a Literary Mind; The New York Times; Feb 2, 2003

So why did the gyros fail? No one knows for sure, but Weiler admits, in hindsight NASA should have replaced them during the last Hubble house-call in 1997. They were changed out on the first servicing mission in 1993 and those old mechanical gyros -- with their rotors spinning in a viscous fluid -- are generally considered good for four to five years. —— 'An Idea that Helped Spin Us into the Space Age'; CNN; March 16, 1999

The last time we had been in this part of the Big Island of Hawaii was in 1995. Then the viscous pahoehoe from Kilauea's Puu Oo vent was advancing slowly across the road and we could walk right up to its leading edge, something that is rarely possible. Seeping out of the slopes of Kilauea, widely considered the world's most active volcano, the lava assumed a variety of shapes, forming hundreds of rivulets and what looked like red eyes peering out of the night. —— Jocelyn Fujii; Winter in the Sun; Earth's Beautiful Fury, Up Close; The New York Times; Jan 12, 2003

Twenty-three government-run Country and Marine Parks preserve 40 percent of Hong Kong in its natural state. Many of these parks, established since the late 1970's, lurk in darkness beyond the viscous pools of neon city light that outline the shoreline. Precipitous mountains hem in all those slender skyscrapers that, from a high trail, make Hong Kong look like a giant pincushion. The parks sprawl over Hong Kong Island, outlying islands, the Kowloon peninsula and New Territories. With close to 100 hiking trails altogether -- more than 50 on the main island alone -- there are enough to keep a visitor outdoors for weeks. —— Dyan Zaslowsky; From City Center To Pastoral Vistas; The New York Times; Feb 2, 2003

Look at Thesaurus in depth

Back index, 'V'

Back index, 'U' | Next index, 'W'

> WordWealth, HOME