dissolvent
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
It acts upon the frame of an antique society as a powerful dissolvent, heating weak brains, stimulating rash ambitions, raising inordinate expectations of which the disappointment is bitterly resented.
From Indian Unrest by Sir Valentine Chirol
A dissolvent, made by pouring a strong spirit of Nitre on the rectified Oyl of the Butter of Antimony, and then distilling off all the liquor, that would come over, &c.
From Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society - Vol 1 - 1666 Giving some Accompt of the present Undertakings, Studies, and Labours of the Ingenious in many considerable parts of the World by Henry Oldenburg
As in the case of Hume's metaphysical studies, they constitute the most powerful dissolvent the century was to see.
From Political Thought in England from Locke to Bentham by Harold Joseph Laski
And how did Goethe, that grand dissolvent in his age when there were fewer of them than at present, proceed in his task of dissolution, of liberation of the modern European from the old routine?
From Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold by William Savage Johnson
If dissolvent ideas do make their way, it is because the society was already ripe for dissolution.
From On Compromise by John Morley
