Word Finder - destructive

definition

Causing destruction; damaging.

definition

Causing breakdown or disassembly.

example

Catabolism is a destructive metabolism that involves the breakdown of molecules and release of energy.

definition

Lossy; causing irreversible change.

example

Blurring an image is a destructive operation, but rotating an image is not.

The district is exposed to drought and also to destructive floods.

It is useless to suppose that this destructive criticism from within can be neutralized by generously sprinkling the pages of the classical writers with interpretation clauses.

Rats and mice, especially the guayabita (Mus musculus), an extremely destructive rodent, are very abundant.

Like its Cape congener it occasionally partakes of honey, and is often destructive to poultry.

The difficulty of connecting lightships and isolated lighthouses to the mainland by submarine cables, owing to the destructive action of the tides and waves on rocky coasts on the wll- shore ends, led many inventors to look for a way out of the difficulty by the adoption of some form of inductive Smith.

A cyclone which devastated Vavau in April 1900 was the most destructive ever recorded in the group, but hurricanes are rare.

In " Some Reasons for Belief, " the author institutes a rapid destructive criticism of all possible philosophies.

In other cases the Fungus is virulent and rampant, and, instead of a local effect, exerts a general destructive action throughout the plant-e.g.

During the rest of the year the winds blow from west-north-west and north, with rain and occasional destructive hurricanes.

The Vertebrata come within the scope of our subject, chiefly as destructive agents which cause wounds or devour young shoots and foliage, &c. Rabbits and other burrowing animals injure roots, squirrels and birds snip off buds, horned cattle strip off bark, and so forth.

Probably he believed in the existence of other gods, though he does not express himself clearly on this point; in any case he held that the worship of other deities was destructive to Israel.

On the 8th of August 1899 the island was visited by the most destructive cyclone in its history, causing a loss of about 3500 lives and a property damage amounting to 36,000,000 pesos, the coffee industry suffering most.

Outflows of resinResinosisalro come under this general heading; but although some resin-fluxes are traced to the destructive action of Agaricus melleus in Conifers, others, as well as certain forms of Gummosis, are still in need of explanation.

For instance, suppose the effect of a falling temperature is to so modify the metabolism of the cells that they fill up more and more with watery sap; as the freezing-point is reached this may result in destructive changes, and death from cold may result.

Several of the elaterid larvae, however, gnaw roots and are highly destructive to farm crops.

The most destructive locust is the migratory locust (Locusta migratoria), which causes wholesale destruction in the East.

Particulars of the shales which yield oil on destructive distillation are given in the article on paraffin.

The rains are neither regular nor certain, however, and sometimes fail for a succession of years, causing destructive seccas (droughts).

Dubos, but singularly transforming it, he maintained that those invasions were not marked by the violent and destructive character usually attributed to them; that the penetration of the German barbarians into Gaul was a slow process; that the Germans submitted to the imperial administration; that the political institutions of theMerovingians had their origins in the Roman laws at least as much as, if not more than, in German usages; and, consequently, that there was no conquest of Gaul by the Germans.

Their invasions shook Indian society and institutions to the foundations, but, unlike the earlier Kushans, they do not seem to have introduced new ideas into India or have acted as other than a destructive force, although they may perhaps have kept up some communication between India and Persia.

The discovery of a single fossil creature in a geological stratum of a wrong period, the detection of a single anatomical or physiological fact irreconcilable with origin by descent with modification, would have been destructive of the theory and would have made the reputation of the observer.

Now the penalty had been paid, and the Babylonians, whose policy was less destructive than that of Assyria, contented themselves with appointing as governor a certain Gedaliah.

Rodents are numerous, the mouse (111 - us sylvaticus) is very destructive, and beavers are met with in places.

By far the most destructive insects in warm climates belong to the Hemiptera, especially to the Coccidae or scale insects.

The various species of rapacious animals are disappearing, together with the colonies of marmots; the insectivores are also becoming scarce in consequence of the destruction of insects; while vermin, such as the suslik, or pouched marmot (Spermophilus), and the destructive insects which are a scourge to agriculture, become a real plague.

As for Gramont, he had "no conception of the exigencies of this regime; he remained an ambassador accustomed to obey the orders of his sovereign; in all good faith he had no idea that this was not correct, and that, himself a parliamentary minister, he had associated himself with an act destructive of the authority of parliament."

He would submit all minor questions to the reason of the individual member, but he set certain limits to toleration, excluding "whatsoever is against the foundation of faith, or contrary to good life and the laws of obedience, or destructive to human society, and the public and just interests of bodies politic."

He was sparring with another warrior, his fluid, destructive movements far from the gentle ones he used with her.

It was almost entirely rebuilt after a destructive fire in 1834, and ranks among the handsomest provincial towns in Austria.

The problems of geography had been lightened by the destructive criticism of the French cartographer D'Anville (who had purged the map of the world of the last remnants of traditional fact unverified by modern observations) and rendered richer by the dawn of the new era of scientific travel, when Kant brought his logical powers to bear upon them.

Destructive fires laid it waste in 1 4 80, 1644, 1656, 1687 and 1789.

It is also produced during the putrefaction of organic substances containing sulphur and is found among the products obtained in the destructive distillation of coal.

Further, while the genius of Aquinas was constructive, that of Duns Scotus was destructive; Aquinas was a philosopher, Duns a critic. The latter has been said to stand to the former in the relation of Kant to Leibnitz.

Such tenets were destructive not only of Catholicism but of Christianity of any kind and of civil society itself; and for this reason so unecclesiastical a person as the emperor Frederick II.

But he was no merely destructive critic. He was determined to find a solid foundation for both morality and law, and to raise upon it an edifice, no stone of which should be laid except in accordance with the deductions of the severest logic. This foundation is "the greatest happiness of the greatest number," a formula adopted from Priestly or perhaps first from Beccaria.

Notably destructive ones occurred in 1768, 1774, 1842, 1844, 1846, 1865, 1870, 1876, 1885 and 1894.

Its critics, however, accuse it of lack of stability, and assert that the use of large leading wheels as drivers results in rigidity and produces destructive strains on the machinery and permanent way.

Despite the capture of the ark after the disastrous battle of Shiloh, Yahweh had in the end shown himself through a destructive plague superior in might to the Philistine Dagon.

The misfortunes of 1892 proved to be merely a preparation for the disasters of 1893, in which year occurred the most destructive drought within living memory.

The boll worm is most destructive in the south-western states, where the damage done is said to vary from 2 to 60% of the crop. Taking a low average of 4%, the annual loss due to the pest is estimated at about 1 - 2,500,000, and it occupies second place amongst the serious cotton pests of the U.S.A. The boll worm is widely spread through the tropical and temperate zones.

The destructive power of sunlight is only exercised on those organisms actually at the surface.

Tobacco, like other cultivated plants, is subject to attack by various pests and diseases, but fortunately these are less destructive than with many crops.

Alphonso retaliated by a destructive raid.

A volatile product obtained by the destructive distillation of rubber.

The young tigers are far more destructive than the old.

Fire is one of the most feared destructive forces in nature.

They are superstitious, and worship with hearty veneration any being or thing whose destructive agency they fear.

If our view is correct that, broadly speaking, the two ways of regarding economic questions are complementary rather than mutually exclusive, there does not seem to be any reason why the growth of the historical school should have been destructive of the " old Political Economy " if it had been well founded.

Those of 1776, 1842 and 1852 were particularly destructive, and of earlier ones those of 1551 and 1624 at Bayamo and of 1578 and 1678 at Santiago.

The termites, or " white ants," are exceptionally destructive because of their habit of tunnelling through the softer woods of habitations and furniture, while some species of ants, like the sadba, are equally destructive to plantations because of the rapidity with which they strip a tree of its foliage.