Flux sb.

Forms: α. (sense 1 only) 4–7 flix(e, flyx(e, (6 flyckes); β. 5–7 fluxe, (5 flokes), 4– flux. [a. Fr. flux, = Pr. flux, Sp. fluxo (now flujo in senses 1 and 4, flux from Fr.), It. flusso:—L. fluxus (u stem), f. fluĕre (Lat. root *flugv-) to flow. The early form flix proceeds from the Fr. pronunciation with ü.] A flowing, flow.

  I.  spec. in physiological sense.

  1.  An abnormally copious flowing of blood, excrement, etc., from the bowels or other organs; a morbid or excessive discharge. spec. An early name for dysentery; also † red flux, † flux of blood, bloody flux (cf. BLOODY C. 2).

  α.  1382.  Wyclif, Matt. ix. 20. A womman þat suffride þe [1388, blodi] flix, or rennynge, of blood twelue ȝeer, cam to byhynde, and touchide þe hemme of his cloþe.

1447.  Bokenham, Seyntys (Roxb.), 32.

1577.  B. Googe, Heresbach’s Husb., IV. (1586), 187. At their [bees’] first comming abroade, entysed with these newe flowres, being almost hungerstaruen with the winter passed, they feede so greedily, as they fall into a Flix, whereof yf they be not quickly remedied, they dye.

1600.  Holland, Livy, III. xiii. (1609), 1367, note. Hee [Trajane] in his returne from the Persians, died by the way at Seleucia a cittie in Syria, of a flixe of blood.

1665.  Manley, Grotius’ Low C. Warres, 317. Afterwards, the Cold that follow’d, added to their misery of Want, and both of them bred a sad Disease among them, with a great Flix.

  β.  1377.  Langl., P. Pl., B. XX. 79.

c. 1450.  Life of St. Cuthbert (Surtees), 3547.

1597.  Gerard, Herball (1636), 713. Agrimony boiled in wine and drunke, helpes inueterate hepaticke fluxes in old people.

1708.  Swift, Predictions, 1708, Wks. 1755, II. I. 153. It [his death] seems to be an effect of the Gout in his Stomach, followed by a Flux.

1777.  Watson, Philip II. (1839), 103. Many were worn out with the fatigues which they had undergone, and others rendered unfit for action by a bloody flux, which for several weeks had raged amongst them.

1807.  Vancouver, Agric. Devon (1813), 337. A flux or scowering is the complaint to which these animals are by far the most liable; but this is not stated generally to produce very serious consequences.

1854.  Jones & Siev., Pathol. Anat. (1874), 65. Fluxes will be active or passive according to the kind of hyperæmia which occasions them.

  b.  transf. A ‘running’ from the eyes or mouth.

1377.  Langl., P. Pl., B. V. 178.

1711.  Steele, Spect., No. 95, 19 June, ¶ 3. The natural History of our Bodies will teach us, that this Flux of the Eyes, this Faculty of weeping is peculiar only to some Constitutions.

  2.  A flowing out, issue, discharge (of humours, etc.).

1447.  Bokenham, Seyntys (Roxb.), 9.

1563.  T. Gale, Antidotarie, I. i. 2. Among compoundes these are numbred whiche doe dryue backe and staye the fluxe of humours.

1650.  Bulwer, Anthropomet., Pref. Here Females … do by Art that monethly Flux prevent.

1754–64.  Smellie, Midwif., I. 105. Several ingenious theories have been erected, to account for the flux of the Menses.

1877.  F. Roberts, Handbk. Med., I. 27. In connection with mucous surfaces the same condition leads to a watery flux.

  † b.  That which flows or is discharged. Obs.

1382.  Wyclif, Ezek. xxiii. 20. As fluxis, or rennyngis, of horsis [ben] the fluxis of hem.

1600.  Shaks., As You Like It, III. ii. 70. Ciuet is of a baser birth than Tarre, the verie vncleanly fluxe of a Cat.

1654.  Trapp, Comm. Job v. 10. Raine is the flux of a moist cloud, which being dissolved by little and little by the heat of the sun, lets down rain by drops out of the middle region of the air: this is God’s gift.

  II.  gen.

  3.  The action of flowing. Now rare in lit. sense.

c. 1600.  Norden, Spec. Brit., Cornw. (1728), 64. At the heade of this baye, within the flowing of the sea, is a poole of fresh water, notwithstanding the often fluxe of the sea into it.

1638.  Sir T. Herbert, Trav. (ed. 2) 68 The river Ravee … after a stately flux of three thousand English miles, deepe enough for Juncks or threescore Tun, by Tutta flowes into Indus.

1717.  trans. Frezier’s Voy. S. Sea, 217. Fire to subsist requires a Flux of Air.

1862.  Tyndall, Mountaineer., iii. 24. If one portion of the universe be hotter than another, a flux instantly sets in to equalise the temperature; while winds blows and rivers roll in search of a stable equilibrium.

  transf. and fig.  1650–3.  trans. Hales’ Dissert. de Pace, in Phenix (1708), II. 379. Which Consequence doth also flow by a fatal and inevitable Flux from that Doctrine of Fate.

a. 1711.  Ken, Div. Love, Wks. (1838), 230. Thy works, O Lord, are wonderful and amiable. I love, and admire, and praise thy universal providence over the whole world: the perpetual flux of thy goodness on every creature: all glory be to thee.

1865–6.  H. Phillips, Amer. Paper Curr., II. 174. Such a flux of specie took place into the United States that, as before mentioned, ‘hard money was never more plenty or more easily collected.’

  4.  The flowing in of the tide. Often in phrase flux and reflux.

1612.  in Law Times’ Rep., LXV. 567/2. Lands within the flux and reflux of the sea.

1771.  Act 11 Geo. III., c. 45 § 35. Any Barge, Boat, or Vessel, that shall not be navigated beyond the Flux of the Tide.

c. 1800.  K. White, Lett. (1837), 265. Arrived in time to be grounded in the middle of the harbour, without any means of getting ashore till the flux or flood.

1854.  L. Tomlinson, Arago’s Astron., 157. The sea in every place undergoes a flux and reflux as often as the moon passes the meridian, whether superior or inferior, of the place.

  transf. and fig.  1722.  De Foe, Moll Flanders (1840), 321. I told her of my condition, and what a different flux and reflux of fears and hopes I had been agitated with.

1799.  Vince, Elem. Astron., xvii. (1810), 159. M. de la Lande supposes that the sun is an opaque body, covered with a liquid fire, and that the spots arise from the opaque parts, like rocks, which by the alternate flux and reflux of the liquid igneous matter of the sun, are sometimes raised above the surface.

1835.  Thirlwall, Greece, I. iii. 71. In the earliest times Greece was agitated by frequent irruptions and revolutions, arising out of the flux and reflux of the nations which fought and wandered in the countries adjacent to its north-eastern borders.

  5.  A flowing stream, a flood.

1637.  Heywood, Dialogues, Jupiter & Io, Wks. 1874, VI. 258.

1769.  De Foe’s Tour Gt. Brit., III. 40. The Syfer Spring is the most noted, having now four Fluxes of Water from between the Joints of great Stones, laid flat like a Wall, and joined together with Lead, probably by the Romans, being under their Wall.

  fig.  1855.  Thackeray, Newcomes, II. 264. The mouth from which issued that cool and limpid flux.

  b.  transf. A continuous stream (of people).

1600.  Shaks., As You Like It, II. i. 52.

1665.  Sir T. Herbert, Trav. (1677), 327. At the keeping of this Feast we beheld an infinite number of Tents pitched, with such a flux of Men, Women, Boyes and Girls, with Arms, Musick, Songs, and Dances, as would make one think that either the Games of Olympus were revived, or Bacchus his Orgyes.

  c.  fig. A copious flow, flood (esp. of talk, etc.).

1678.  R. L’Estrange, Seneca’s Mor. (1702), 376. He that has a Precipitate Speech, is commonly violent in his Manners: Beside, that there is in it much of Vanity, and emptiness; and no man takes Satisfaction in a Flux of Words, without choice; where the Noise is more than the Value.

1722.  De Foe, Plague (1754), 22. The Court brought with them a great Flux of Pride, and new Fashions; All People were grown gay and luxurious; and the Joy of the Restoration had brought a vast many Families to London.

1817.  Southey, Lett. (1856), III. 60. If I had my old flux of the muse, it might soon be done.

1855.  M. Arnold, New Sirens, 195.

1875.  F. Hall, Early Traveling Experiences in India, in Lippincott’s Mag., XV. March, 338/2. Listened attentively for the barbaric representative of ‘yes’ or ‘no’ in the Babel of sounds that followed, neglecting the flux of verbiage that engulfed it with the same lofty indifference which a mathematician professes toward infinitely small quantities.

  6.  The passing away (of life, time or a portion of time). Also, a passing period. Obs.

1612.  J. Davies, Muses Sacrifice, Wks. (Grosart), II. 47/2.

1641.  ‘Smectymnuus,’ Vind. Answ., vi. 78. That which Hierome speakes in the present tense, as true in all the moments and fluxes of time, he would remit to the time past.

1727–46.  Thomson, Summer, 34.

1759.  Johnson, Rasselas, iv. The moon, by more than twenty changes, admonished me of the flux of life; the stream that rolled before my feet upbraided my inactivity.

  7.  A continuous succession of changes of condition, composition or substance.

1625.  Bacon, Ess., Vicissitude of Things (Arb.), 569. The Matter, is in a Perpetuall Flux, and neuer at a Stay.

1691.  Locke, Lowering Interest, Wks. 1714, II. 31. What the stated rate of Interest should be in the constant change of Affairs, and flux of Money, is hard to determine.

1726–7.  Swift, Gulliver, III. x. The Language of this Country being always upon the Flux, the Struldbruggs of one Age do not understand those of another, neither are they able after two hundred Years to hold any Conversation (farther than by a few general Words) with their Neighbours the Mortals; and thus they lie under the disadvantage of living like Foreigners in their own Country.

1736.  Butler, Anal., I. i. 27. The Bodies of all Animals are in a constant Flux, from that never-ceasing Attrition which there is in every Part of them.

1862.  Merivale, Rom. Emp. (1865), III. xxvii. 240. The condition of the Ofellus of Horace’s satire, who cultivates as a labourer the fields of which he had been dispossessed as a landlord, and consoles himself with sage reflections on the perpetual flux of property from hand to hand, was realized by a large class of rural proprietors, among whom the descendants of the Sullan colonists were perhaps the most indignant and the least commiserated.

1878.  Sully in Encycl. Brit. (ed. 9), VIII. 755/2. Heraclitus conceives of the incessant process of flux in which all things are involved as consisting of two sides or moments—generation and decay—which are regarded as a confluence of opposite streams.

1885.  Clodd, Myths & Dr., I. iii. 23. The languages of savages are in a constant state of flux, even the most abiding terms, as numerals and personal pronouns, being replaced by others in a few years.

  8.  Math. A continued motion (of a point).

[1597.  Hooker, Eccl. Pol., V. lxix. § 2. Time considered in it selfe, is but the flux of that very instant, wherein the Motion of the Heauen began.]

1656.  trans. Hobbes’ Elem. Philos. (1839), 508. For though some things are touched in one point, yet rough and smooth, like quantity and figure, are not perceived but by the flux of a point, that is to say, we have no sense of them without time; and we can have no sense of time without memory.

a. 1696.  Scarburgh, Euclid (1705), 3. Not that hereby a Line is A Flux of a Point, as some define It.

1796.  Hutton, Math. Dict., I. 484/1. Fluxion.… A line considered as generated by the flux or motion of a point, or a surface generated by the flux of a line.

  b.  = FLUXION 5.

1878.  Clifford, Elements of Dynamic, I. ii. 63. This rate of change of a fluent quantity is called its fluxion, or sometimes, more shortly, its flux.

  9.  Physics. The rate of flow of any fluid across a given area; the amount which crosses an area in a given time; it is thus a vector referred to unit area. Line of flux, see quot. 1881. Flux of force, see quot. 1885.

1863.  Tyndall, Heat, vli. § 268. The line of flux from m′ to m was parallel to the fibre.

1881.  Maxwell, Electr. & Magn., I. 10–1. The flux of heat in any direction at any point of a solid body may be defined as the quantity of heat which crosses a small area drawn perpendicular to that direction divided by that area and by the time. Ibid., 12. If two of these surfaces intersect, their line of intersection is a line of flux.

1882.  Minchin, Unipl. Kinemat., 159. The flux across each end of the tube would be zero.

1885.  Watson & Burbury, Math. Th. Electr. & Magn., I. 102. Flux of Force.… This product, from its analogy to the flux of a fluid flowing through a small tube with velocity u = F, is called the flux of force across dS; the limiting value of the ratio of the flux of force across any elementary area to the area is the intensity of the force in the field at that elementary area and perpendicular to it.

  III.  A state or means of fusion.

  † 10.  Liquefaction or fusion. In phr. in (the) flux.

1684.  trans. Bonet’s Merc. Compit., VI. 199. The morbifick matter … while it is in flux; is most destructive.

1799.  G. Smith, Laboratory, I. 107. Let it stand a little in the flux, and then, after you have rubbed your ingot with wax, pour it in.

  11.  Metall. Any substance that is mixed with a metal, etc., to facilitate its fusion; also a substance used to render colors fusible in enameling and in the coloring of porcelain and glass. Cf. FLUSS sb.²

  For black, crude, white flux: see quots.

1763.  W. Lewis, Philos. Commerce Arts, 68. Borax, one of the most powerful dissolvents of earthy matters, is, in this respect, one of the best fluxes for gold.

1795.  W. Nicholson, Dict. Chem., I. 337. Crude flux is a mixture of nitre and tartar, which is put into the crucible with the mineral intended to be fused.

1826.  Henry, Elem. Chem., II. xiv. 586. The black flux is formed, by setting fire to a mixture of one part of nitrate of potassa, and two of bi-tartrate of potassa; which affords an intimate mixture of sub-carbonate of potassa with a fine light coal. White flux is obtained by projecting into a red-hot crucible equal parts of the same salts.

1832.  G. R. Porter, Porcelain & Gl., 76. The fluxes which are necessary to render these [colours] fusible, which unite them to the wares, and in many cases impart brilliancy to their tints.

1875.  Fortnum, Maiolica, i. 7–8. A certain amount of lead has been found in some of the blue coloured glazes of Babylonia, and (says Dr. Percy) ‘probably employed as a flux.’

  b.  collect. Substances used as fluxes.

1890.  Kapunda Herald, 26 July, 2/6. The Trade in Flux. The following are the quantities of flux dispatched from the Kapunda Railway-station.

  IV.  12. = FLUSH sb.⁴ [So F. flux.]

1798.  Sporting Mag., XII. 142. The flux [in game of Ambigu] is four cards in the same suit.

  V.  13. attrib. and Comb., as flux ale, ale likely to cause diarrhœa; flux-powder (see quot. 1704); flux root, ‘the Asclepias tuberosa from its use in dysentery and catarrhs’ (Syd. Soc. Lex., 1884); flux-spoon (see quot. 1874); flux- or flix-weed, the plant Sisymbrium Sophia, formerly a supposed remedy for the flux or dysentery.

1742.  Lond. & Country Brew., I. (ed. 4), 53–4. By the many sad Examples that I have seen in the Destruction of several lusty Brewers Servants, who formerly scorned what they then called *Flux Ale, to the Preference of such corroding consuming stale Beers.

1704.  J. Harris, Lex. Techn., *Flux-powders … are Powders prepared to facilitate the Fusion of the harder Metals, and to melt Ores in order to discover what Proportion of Metal they hold or contain.

1874.  Knight, Dict. Mech., I. 894/2. *Flux-spoon. (Metallurgy.) A small ladle for dipping out a sample of molten metal to be tested.

1578.  Lyte, Dodoens, I. lxxix. 117. The seede of *Flixeweede or Sophia … stoppeth the bloudy flixe.

1878–86.  Britten & Holland, Plant-n., Flixweed or Flixwort.