fugacity (fugasiti)

[F. fugacité = Sp. fugacidad = Pg. fugacidade = It. fugacità, Parties keep the old names, but exhibit a surprising fu gacity in creeping out of one snake-skin into another of equal ignominy and lubricity. Emerson, Future of the Republic. fug a contrarii (fūga kon-tra'ri-i). [NL.: L. fug a, flight, avoidance; contrarii, gen. of con trarium, neut, of contrarius, contrary. A general tendency of things to repel qualities the opposite of their own, and to behave in a manner conformable to habit. Some physicists of the seventeenth century held an ill-defined theory to this effect. To ascribe a fug a contrarii to hot and cold spirits is, in my apprehension, to turn inanimate bodies into intelligent and designing beings. Boyle , The Heat of Cellars in Winter.