Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun The act or process of swelling or the condition of being swollen.
- noun A swollen organ or body part.
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun The state or process of swelling or enlarging, as with heat; expansion; tumidity.
- noun A swollen or tumid growth or mass; tumefaction.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun The act or process of swelling or enlarging; also, the state of being swollen; expansion; tumidity; especially, the swelling up of bodies under the action of heat.
- noun Anything swollen or enlarged, as a tumor.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun uncountable the process of
swelling up or the condition of beingswollen - noun countable an instance of such swelling
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun swelling up with blood or other fluids (as with congestion)
- noun the increase in volume of certain substances when they are heated (often accompanied by release of water)
Etymologies
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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British America and the north of the United States, this phenomenon is explained by the flat conformation of the territories bordering on the pole, and on which there is no intumescence of the soil to oppose any obstacle to the north winds; here, in Lincoln Island, this explanation would not suffice.
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British America and the north of the United States, this phenomenon is explained by the flat conformation of the territories bordering on the pole, and on which there is no intumescence of the soil to oppose any obstacle to the north winds; here, in Lincoln Island, this explanation would not suffice.
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Here, an intumescence which was to become a mountain, there, an abyss which was to be filled with an ocean or a sea.
The Underground City 2003
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For our present purpose hypertrophy may be considered as it affects the axile or the foliar organs, and also according to the way in which the increased size is manifested, as by increased thickness or swelling -- intumescence, or by augmented length-elongation, by expansion or flattening, or, lastly, by the formation of excrescences or outgrowths, which may be classed under the head of luxuriance or enation.
Vegetable Teratology An Account of the Principal Deviations from the Usual Construction of Plants Maxwell T. Masters
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Stilbite is characterized by its form, difficult gelatinizing, and intumescence before the blowpipe; from natrolite as mentioned under that species.
Scientific American Supplement, No. 344, August 5, 1882 Various
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We thank thee, O God, that the South has not kept pace with New York's super-estheticism -- that when our women find themselves in an "interesting condition" they seek the seclusion of the home instead of telephoning for a reporter and a chalk artist and exploiting their intumescence in the public prints.
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Here, an intumescence which was to become a mountain, there, an abyss which was to be filled with an ocean or a sea.
The Underground City 1877
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In the northern hemisphere, or at any rate in the part occupied by British America and the north of the United States, this phenomenon is explained by the flat conformation of the territories bordering on the pole, and on which there is no intumescence of the soil to oppose any obstacle to the north winds; here, in Lincoln Island, this explanation would not suffice.
The Secret of the Island Jules Verne 1866
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Here, an intumescence which was to become a mountain, there, an abyss which was to be filled with an ocean or a sea.
The Underground City, or, the Child of the Cavern Jules Verne 1866
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If in one of these points the barometer stands a few lines lower than in the other, the water will rise where it finds the least pressure of air, and this local intumescence will continue, till, from the effect of the wind, the equilibrium of the air is restored.
qroqqa commented on the word intumescence
Total and sudden transformations of a language seldom happen; conquests and migrations are now very rare: but there are other causes of change, which, though slow in their operation, and invisible in their progress, are perhaps as much superiour to human resistance, as the revolutions of the sky, or intumescence of the tide.
—Johnson, preface to his Dictionary
October 25, 2008