noun
definition
(physical) Matter, material.
definition
A large quantity; a sum.
verb
definition
To form or collect into a mass; to form into a collective body; to bring together into masses; to assemble.
definition
To have a certain mass.
example
I mass 70 kilograms.
adjective
definition
Involving a mass of things; concerning a large quantity or number.
example
There is evidence of mass extinctions in the distant past.
definition
Involving a mass of people; of, for, or by the masses.
example
Mass unemployment resulted from the financial collapse.
Examples of mass in a Sentence
There grew up a mass of controversial matter which it is amusing to read now.
The materials mixed with the iron borings cause them to rust into a solid mass, and in doing so a slight expansion takes place.
Mass spectrometry was applied to patient samples.
This cement mass is heightened at many places so as to make platforms and supports for huts.
The critical mass is traveling between various climates.
At the beginning I was only a little mass of possibilities.
His eyes were soft in the candlelight as he surveyed her jumbled mass of curls.
They saw a mass of tough green vines all matted together and writhing and twisting around like a nest of great snakes.
He was climbing now, hand over hand, over a mass of boulders, his flashlight re-hooked to his waist.
The mass food industry of today cannot make this claim.
There were mass graves in the old moat.
The whole bank, which is from twenty to forty feet high, is sometimes overlaid with a mass of this kind of foliage, or sandy rupture, for a quarter of a mile on one or both sides, the produce of one spring day.
She avoided turning around to see what must have been a hulking grey mass of metal spaceship.
Mass communication means we no longer read a number like "a million dead"—we actually see them, see pictures of them.
In military affairs the strength of an army is the product of its mass and some unknown x.
Then, in the glow of yet another rocket, he saw it—a nearly unrecognizable mass of twisted red metal.
Dean gritted his teeth and dropped once more, just as a block of frozen mass as large as his head struck a glancing blow to his already aching shoulder.
The commander-in-chief never takes direct part in the action itself, but only gives general orders concerning the movement of the mass of the troops.
The various varieties of rolled plate-glass are now produced for some purposes with a reinforcement of wire netting which is embedded in the mass of the glass.
Avanturine glass, that in which numerous small particles of copper are diffused through a transparent yellowish or brownish mass, was not invented until about 1600.
This deflecting force is directly proportional to the velocity and the mass of the particle and also to the sine of the latitude; hence it is zero at the equator and comes to a maximum at the poles.
He published History and Present State of the Town of Newburyport, Mass.
The body is continually losing mass by the loss of individual molecules in this way, and this explains the process of evaporation.
This was his last public celebration of mass.
The service of the Mass was modified, and the laity were to receive the elements in both kinds.
The two definitions are identical, provided that the thermal capacity of unit mass of water, at a standard temperature, is taken as the unit of heat.
The Method of Mixture consists in imparting the quantity of heat to be measured to a known mass of water, or some other standard substance, contained in a vessel or calorimeter of known thermal capacity, and in observing the rise of temperature produced, from which data the quantity of heat may be found as explained in all elementary text-books.
It is best to make this correction as small as possible by using a large calorimeter, so that the mass of water is large in proportion to that of metal.
For the French retreating along the old Smolensk road, the final goal-- their native land--was too remote, and their immediate goal was Smolensk, toward which all their desires and hopes, enormously intensified in the mass, urged them on.
The French, retreating in 1812--though according to tactics they should have separated into detachments to defend themselves--congregated into a mass because the spirit of the army had so fallen that only the mass held the army together.
The municipality owns and operates the gas and electric-lighting plants and the water works (the watersupply being derived from natural ponds, some of which are outside the city limits), and owns and leases (to the New York, New Haven & Hartford railroad) a railway extending (10.3 m.) to Westfield, Mass.
To the north of the walls the site of old Herat was indicated by a vast mass of debris - mounds of bricks and pottery intersected by a network of shallow trenches, where the only semblance of a protective wall was the irregular line of the Tal-i-Bangi.
In the numerical expression of absolute densities it is necessary to specify the units of mass and volume employed; while in the case of relative densities, it is only necessary to specify the standard substance, since the result is a mere number.
The reason for this is readily seen; if a mass M of any gas occupies a volume V at a temperature T (on the absolute scale) and a pressure P, then its absolute density under these conditions is O = M/V; if now the temperature and pressure be changed to l and P,, the volume V l under these conditions is VPT/PIT1, and the absolute density is MP,T/VPT I.
The separate determination of the volume and mass of such substances as gunpowder, cotton-wool, soluble substances, &c., supplies the only means of determining their densities.
The stereometer of Say, which was greatly improved by Regnault and further modified by Kopp, permits an accurate determination of the volume of a given mass of any such substance.
The Canon of the Mass strictly ends with No.
As the Arctic Basin is shut off from the North Atlantic by ridges rising to within 300 fathoms of the surface and from the Pacific by the shallow shelf of the Bering Sea, and as the ice-laden East Greenland and Labrador currents consist of fresh surface water which cannot appreciably influence the underlying mass, the Arctic region has no practical effect upon the bottom temperature of the three great oceans, which is entirely dominated by the influence of the Antarctic. The existence of deep-lying and extensive rises or ridges in high southern latitudes has been indicated by the deep-sea temperature observations of Antarctic expeditions.
When the wind acts on the surface of the sea it drives before it the particles of the surface layer of water, and, as these cannot be parted from those immediately beneath, the internal friction of the fluid causes the propelling impulse to act through a considerable depth, and if the wind continued long enough it would ultimately set the whole mass of the ocean in motion 'right down to the bottom.
Ekman shows further that in a pure drift current the mean direction of the whole mass of the current is perpendicular to the direction of the wind which sets it in motion.
Underneath is the true floor of the cave, a mass of homogeneous yellow clay, one metre in thickness.
There is generally a tendency in coals towards cleaving into cubical or prismatic blocks, but sometimes the cohesion between the particles is so feeble that the mass breaks up into dust when struck.
These peculiarities of structure may vary very considerably within small areas; and the position of the divisional planes or cleats with reference to the mass, and the proportion of small coal or slack to the larger fragments when the coal is broken up by cutting-tools, are points of great importance in the working of coal on a large scale.
We might therefore expect to find coal wherever strata of estuarine origin are developed in great mass.
The commencement of the Carboniferous period is marked by a mass of limestones known as the Carboniferous or Sequences Mountain Limestone,which contains a large assemblage of carbon- of marine fossils, and has a maximum thickness in iferous S.W.
These are also called the Upper Limestone Shale, a similar group being found in places below the limestone, and called the Lower Limestone Shale, or, in the north of England, the Tuedian group. Going northward the beds of limestone diminish in thickness, with a proportional increase in the intercalated sandstones and shales, until in Scotland they are entirely subordinate to a mass of coal-bearing strata, which forms the most productive members of the Scotch coalfields.
The next member of the series is a mass of coarse sandstones, with some slates and a few thin coals, known as the Millstone Grit, which is about equally developed in England and in Scotland.
To secure the perpendicularity of the shaft, it is necessary to leave a large mass or pillar of the seam untouched around the pit bottom.
In some anthracite collieries in America the small coal or culm and other waste are washed into the exhausted workings by water which gives a compact mass filling the excavation when the water has drained away.
When the coal has been under-cut for a sufficient length, the struts are withdrawn, and the overhanging mass is allowed to fall during the time that the workmen are out of the pit, or it may be brought down by driving wedges, or if it be of a compact character a blast in a borehole near the roof may be required.