[ad. L. flexūra, f. flectĕre to bend: see -URE.]
1. The action of flexing or bending; curvature; an instance of this.
1592. Nobody & Someb., 1062, in Simpson, Sch. Shaks. (1878), I. 318.
| There’s those are made | |
| For flexure, let them stoope. |
1599. B. Jonson, Ev. Man out of Hum., ‘Grex,’ 26.
| I feare no courtiers frowne, should I applaud | |
| The easie flexure of his supple hammes. |
c. 1611. Chapman, Iliad, XXIII. 409.
| Eumelus made most pace | |
| With his fleet mares, and he began the flexure as we thought. |
1764. Reid, Inquiry, v. § 6. He has here a new sensation, which accompanies the flexure of joints, and the swelling of muscles.
1775. Johnson, West. Islands, Wks. X. 351. The way makes a flexure, and the mountains, covered with trees, rise at once on the left hand and in the front.
1827. Faraday, Chem. Manip., ii. 25. Large quantities, if weighed in balances competent to shew minute differences in small weights, would infallibly injure or even destroy them, by flexure of the beam or change in the points of support.
1870. Ruskin, Lect. Art, vi. 165. They give life by flexure of surface, not by quantity of detail; for sculpture is indeed only light and shade drawing in stone.
fig. 1649. Jer. Taylor, Gt. Exemp., Ep. Ded., 1. That proposition which complies with, and bends in all the flexures of its temporall ends.
2. Flexed or bent condition; ‘the form or direction in which anything is bent’ (J.), bent figure or posture; bending, or winding form.
1628. Earle, Microcosm., xxx (1811), 86. No antick screws men’s bodies into such strange flexures, and you would think them here senseless, to speak sense to their bowl, and put their trust in intreaties for a good cast.
1658. Evelyn, Fr. Gard. (1675), 14–5. Make an hedge of Poles, and Lathes equally cancelled and well bound, which, being of greater strength then the former, will oblige the trees to what flexure and forme you please.
1691. Ray, Creation, II. (1692), 5. That Argument taken from the contrary flexure of the Joints of our Arms and Legs to that of Quadrupeds.
1794. G. Adams, Nat. & Exp. Philos., I. v. 200. Muscles, by which he [man] can give to his mouth any degree of aperture and curvature; and to his tongue, any kind of flexure he pleases.
1836. Good, Bk. Nat. (1834), I. 1. Without having laboured in the details of arranging the ground, of cultivating the soil, of planting the woods, of giving flexure to the rivers, of enriching the scenery with flocks, herds, bridges, and buildings, points out the general connection of part with part, and the harmony which flows from the combined effect.
1875. Blackmore, Alice Lorraine, II. xxiii. 323. They were noble examples of the best Spanish type, tall, and pure, yet rich of tint, with most bewitching eyes, and classic flexure of luxuriant hair, grace in every turn and gesture, and melody in every tone.
† 3. A tendency to bend or be bent; a strain. Obs.
1652. Abp. Sancroft, Mod. Pol., in D’Oyly, Life (1821), II. 254. Because there is no such equilibrious virtue, but has some flexure to one of the extremes, he is very careful to publish the extreme alone, and to silence the virtue.
1665. Hooke, Microgr., 42. The parts of the Glass are under a kind of tension or flexure, out of which they indeavour to extricate and free themselves.
† 4. a. Power of bending. Const. of. b. Capability of being bent; flexibility. Obs.
1651–3. Jer. Taylor, Serm. for Year (1880), 154. Stiff as icicles, and without flexure as the legs of elephants.
1779. Phil. Trans., LXIX. 10. He could raise it from his body more than could be well supposed, and had the perfect flexure and use of his fore arm.
1802. Paley, Nat. Theol., i. (1819), 2. A flexible chain (artificially wrought for the sake of flexure,) communicating the action of the spring from the box to the fusee.
5. concr. A thing of bent shape; the bent part of anything (e.g., a limb, river, road); a bend, curve, turn, winding.
1607. Topsell, Serpents (1658), 674. An angle or flexure of sixteen ribs.
1652. F. Kirkman, Clerio & Lozia, 91. Her Coif … with flexures in it for her hair to pass out most compleatly curled.
c. 1730. Gibson, Farrier’s Guide, I. v. (1738), 56. [They] lose their fleshy Substance, and degenerate into a nervous and round Tendon, as they approach the Flexure of the lower Jaw-bone.
1773. Hist. Brit. Dom. N. Amer., II. v. § 2. 295. Cape Cod Harbour, of safe and deep water; but from the hook or flexure, and consequently different courses, vessels get out to sea with difficulty; nor is it a seaport, or place of trade.
1800. Med. Jrnl., III. 23. A hard strangulated mass in the lowest part of the sigmoid flexure of the colon.
1814. Cary, Dante, Purg., XXV. 104. Now the last flexure of our way we reach’d.
1839. Stonehouse, Axholme, 152. There is nothing remarkable about it but the arched entrance to the north Porch, which is richly ornamented by trefoil flexures; and within, on the west side, are the arms of Sheffield, and on the east those of Mowbray.
1868. Browning, Ring & Bk., IX. 57.
| Yea and her babe—that flexure of soft limbs, | |
| That budding face imbued with dewy sleep, | |
| Contribute each an excellence to Christ. |
1874. Coues, Birds N. W., 688. The wing, from the flexure, differs among the several specimens before me almost or quite an inch.
6. Math. The bending or curving of a line or surface. In the theory of elasticity, the bending of a surface or solid. Flexure of a curve: its bending towards or from a straight line. Point of contrary flexure: see CONTRARY A. 5 d.
1672. Wallis, in Rigaud, Corr. Sci. Men (1841), II. 538. That the figure of tangents applied to the arch stretched out into a straight line, hath no contrary flexure, I am well satisfied, and can demonstrate it.
1831. Brewster, Optics, vi. 63–4. By varying the size of the spring, and bending it into curves of different shapes, all the variety of caustics, with their cusps and points of contrary flexure, will be finely exhibited.
1856. Denison, Lect. Ch. Building, iii. 93. Hogarth’s line of beauty, which is in fact the ogee curve, or in mathematical language, a curve of contrary flexure, is a very good one to have deduced from natural objects which present it almost universally, and very fit for materials like metals, which admit of bending; but I believe it is entirely wrong for stone.
1857. Whewell, Hist. Induct. Sc., I. 79. This flexure is different at different angles from the perpendicular.
1879. Thomson & Tait, Nat. Philos., § 141. Flexure stretches one side and condenses the other temporarily; and, to a less extent, permanently.
7. Geol. A bending of strata under pressure, chiefly from below.
1833. Lyell, Princ. Geol., III. 316. We have only to imagine that the great flexure of the secondary and tertiary beds … extended to the fresh-water formations, in order to comprehend how a very simple series of movements may have brought the whole of the Isle of Wight groups into their present position.
1845. Darwin, Voy. Nat., ix. (1879), 196. The quartz rock must have been quite pasty when it underwent such remarkable flexures without being shattered into fragments.
1882. Geikie, Text-bk. Geol., VII. 913. Various types of flexure may be noticed.
Hence Flexured ppl. a. [-ED2], having a flexure or flexures.
1881. Blackmore, Christowell, II. xiv. 276. The finish of every part was perfect, like a sculptor’s dream (but happily quite unlike his deeds), from the tapering finger-tips, and nails, resembling the aforesaid filbert, to the carven curves, and flexured tracery of soft little ears, that had never been bored.
