See Also: Ferber, Edna(encyclopedia)
Edna's Restaurant(tourism)
Dame Edna(dictionary)
Edna, Dame(dictionary)
Edna (as used in expressions)(encyclopedia)
Millay, Edna St. Vincent(encyclopedia)
Everage, Dame Edna(dictionary)
Proulx, (Edna) Annie(encyclopedia)
Inside Water - Water Polo(gambling)
water ice(dictionary)

water-hammer (iou) and Ferber, Edna (sh)


water-hammer (iou)



water-hammer noun. E19.
[from WATER noun + HAMMER noun.]
An evacuated tube partly filled with water which falls on the end with a noise like that of a hammer when the tube is reversed, used to illustrate the fact that in a vacuum liquids and solids fall at the same rate. E19.
The (sound of) concussion or reverberation in a water pipe when the flow is suddenly stopped, when there is an airlock, or when steam is admitted. L19.
Medicine. Used attrib. to designate a jerky pulse with a full expansion followed by a sudden collapse. L19.

Ferber, Edna (sh)




born Aug. 15, 1887, Kalamazoo, Mich., U.S.
died April 16, 1968, New York, N.Y.

U.S. novelist and short-story writer.

Ferber began her career at age 17 as a reporter in Wisconsin. Her early stories were collected in Emma McChesney & Co. (1915) and Other volumes. She won critical acclaim for such novels as So Big (1924, Pulitzer Prize) and Show Boat (1926), which, with Music by Jerome Kern, became a seminal work of the American musical theatre. Among her later works is the novel Giant (1952; Film, 1956). Her works offer a compassionate, lively portrait of middle-class Midwestern America.