All 48 Uses

phenomenon
in
The Magic Mountain
(Auto-generated)

In that case you are a phenomenon of greatest medical interest.†
Chpt 1.3

phenomenon = something that exists or happened -- often of special interest
The phenomenon suddenly awakened in him warm memories of his late grandfather, and instead of finding it repulsive, he took a certain pleasure in imitating the venerable chin-propping method that the old man himself had used to control his shaking head and that had so delighted Hans Castorp as a boy.†
Chpt 4.5
To the average person, the idea of a sick physician remains a paradox, a problematical phenomenon.†
Chpt 4.7
But the fact was—and Hans Castorp knew it only too well—that this deplorable phenomenon with which he was struggling was not merely of organic origin, was not attributable solely to the local air or the strain of adjusting to it, but was also the expression of an inner excitement and was bound up intimately with those same sights and tensions.†
Chpt 4.8
AND NOT we have a new phenomenon—about which the narrator would do well to express his own amazement, if only to prevent his readers from being all too amazed on their own.†
Chpt 5.1
It may also be useful to prepare the reader for other wonders and phenomena that are connected with the mystery of time and that we shall encounter while in his company—quite apart from this striking instance.†
Chpt 5.1

phenomena = things that exists or happened -- often of special interest
It is merely a secondary phenomenon.†
Chpt 5.1

phenomenon = something that exists or happened -- often of special interest
"So in my eyes at least, your catarrh is merely a tertiary phenomenon," Dr. Krokowski had added very nonchalantly.†
Chpt 5.1
My cold is almost gone, thanks to the bed rest, but it's apparently only a secondary phenomenon, or so I've been told.†
Chpt 5.1
He, too, declares illness to be a secondary phenomenon.†
Chpt 5.3
But you have misunderstood me, the natural phenomenon of which I speak is not a current event; it took place, incidentally, some one hundred and fifty years ago.†
Chpt 5.5
Those are all reactions, you see, But since all reactions and reflexes, by their very nature, serve some purpose, we physiologists are almost forced to conclude that such secondary phenomena due to psychological factors are actually meant to protect the body, are defense mechanisms, much like goose bumps.†
Chpt 5.6

phenomena = things that exists or happened -- often of special interest
Consciousness of self was an inherent function of matter once it was organized as life, and if that function was enhanced it turned against the organism that bore it, strove to fathom and explain the very phenomenon that produced it, a hope-filled and hopeless striving of life to comprehend itself, as if nature were rummaging to find itself in itself—ultimately to no avail, since nature cannot be reduced to comprehension, nor in the end can life listen to itself.†
Chpt 5.7

phenomenon = something that exists or happened -- often of special interest
It was something in between the two, a phenomenon borne by matter, like the rainbow above a waterfall, like a flame.†
Chpt 5.7
The student brooded over the phenomenon of cell colonies; he learned about transitional organisms, algae, whose individual cells, wrapped in a coating of gelatin, were often widely dispersed, but nevertheless built multicelled formations, which, had they been asked, would not have known if they should be regarded as a settlement of single-celled individuals or as a single living entity, and in providing their answer would have vacillated strangely between the use of "I" and "we."†
Chpt 5.7
The theory behind such a commonplace phenomenon as fever was self-contradictory.†
Chpt 5.7
But even so, what was such ignorance in comparison with our confusion when confronted by phenomena like memory—or the even more astounding extended memory that allowed acquired characteristics to be inherited?†
Chpt 5.7

phenomena = things that exists or happened -- often of special interest
The full, heightened, dazzling nakedness of the splendid limbs of a sick, infected organism turned out to be an experience far more potent than that day's "illusion"—a phenomenon for which there was only one response: he lowered his head again and silently repeated, "My God!"†
Chpt 5.9

phenomenon = something that exists or happened -- often of special interest
Joachim did not ask; but if one of us chose not to follow his example and posed the question, then, by way of general observation, it might very well be noted that considerable material was available for an intellectual exchange between such men and comrades, both of whose basic perspectives bore an idealistic stamp—one of them having educated himself to believe that matter is the spirit's Original Sin, a nasty rank growth in response to a stimulus, whereas the other, as a doctor, was accustomed to teaching that organic illness was a secondary phenomenon.†
Chpt 6.1
His tongue grew a little thick as he talked, although he need not have let it disturb him, since his companion's eerie tolerance apparently extended to that phenomenon as well.†
Chpt 6.5
And this discovery had stirred the mature, refined man to the depths of his soul, thrilling him as if this were a totally new, unexpected, unheard-of phenomenon.†
Chpt 6.5
For festering sores were not only conspicuous reminders of the body's sunken state, but also, in reflecting the venomous corruption of the soul, they awakened a desire for edifying spiritual compensation; whereas the bloom of health was a deceptive phenomenon, an offense to the conscience that it was best to disavow by bowing low in profound humility before human frailty.†
Chpt 6.6
Ah, but of course Naphta would like nothing better than for humankind to retain its irrational attitude toward biological fact; of course he would defend the primitive religious level on which death was a terror wrapped in horrors most mysterious and so prevent the phenomenon from being viewed with the clear eye of reason.†
Chpt 6.6
No, death was neither a terror nor a mystery, it was an unambiguous, reasonable, physiologically necessary, and welcome phenomenon, and to dwell on the thought of it longer than was seemly was to rob life itself.†
Chpt 6.6
It was fun—he stood there for a long time, just trying out this little optical phenomenon over and over.†
Chpt 6.7 *
Hans Castorp took a certain satisfaction in recognizing the standard phenomenon, though it frightened him, too, and he slapped his thighs in rage and astonishment that something so universal had arrived right on schedule even in his own unique, individual situation.†
Chpt 6.7
I would be surprised, would be astonished, if Wendish-Slavic-Sarmatian blood was not at work there, and if it was not this massive phenomenon of a man—and who would deny him that—who proved to be a fatal weight placed on one of the two precariously balanced scales of your nation, on the Eastern scale, which caused—and still causes—the Western scale to fly heavenward.†
Chpt 6.8
Even the most manly men succumb to credulous, oblivious self-deception; the phenomenon is as natural as it is melancholy when the process of deterioration approaches its fatal end—natural and impersonal and beyond all individual conscious effort, much as the temptation to wander in circles overcomes someone who is lost or sleep ensnares someone freezing to death.†
Chpt 6.8
Hans Castorp's grief and worry did not prevent him from focusing objectively on this phenomenon, and he formulated awkward, but clearheaded observations about it in his conversations with Naphta and Settembrini, when he would report to them about his cousin's condition;†
Chpt 6.8
In response to all such questions—assuming someone had posed them to him, which, however, no one did, not even he to himself, for he was probably afraid of posing them—Hans Castorp would have drummed his fingertips on his brow and most assuredly known no definite answer: a phenomenon no less disquieting than the temporary inability to tell Herr Settembrini his own age on his first evening here; indeed, it represented a worsening of that incapacity, for he now seriously no longer knew at any time just how old he was.†
Chpt 7.1
The phenomenon is possible because we lack an internal organ for time, because, that is, if left on our own without external clues, we are totally incapable of even approximate reliability when estimating elapsed time.†
Chpt 7.1
A primal phenomenon.†
Chpt 7.3
A phenomenon of first—of highest—no, no, that is—" This "that is—that is indeed—" supplied the keynote for the directive, explanatory comments with which he steered!†
Chpt 7.3
I have confirmed my observation too often, and it is not improbable that the same notion has occurred to the others—with one difference, that possibly, indeed probably, they know the explanation for this phenomenon.†
Chpt 7.4
The body of sound, though not in any way distorted, had suffered a diminution in perspective; it was, if one may use a visual comparison for an audible phenomenon, as if one were gazing at a painting through the wrong end of opera glasses, so that it looked distant and small, but without forfeiting any definition of line or brilliance of color.†
Chpt 7.7
Herr Settembrini had characterized the phenomenon of backsliding as a "sickness"—and from his pedagogic viewpoint, even the worldview, the intellectual epoch, toward which one "slid back" might appear "sick" as well.†
Chpt 7.7
and his fortnightly lectures in the dining hall—the sanatorium's main attraction, the pride of its brochure—which were always delivered from behind a cloth-covered table in an exotic, drawling accent, to an immobile audience of Berghof residents and for which he always wore a frock coat and sandals, no longer dealt with masked forms of love in action or the transformation of illness back into conscious emotion, but with the abstruse oddities of hypnotism and somnambulism, the phenomena of telepathy, prophetic dreams, and second sight, the wonders of hysteria;†
Chpt 7.8

phenomena = things that exists or happened -- often of special interest
The realm of the subconscious, the "occult" realm in the etymological sense of the word, very quickly turns out to be occult in the narrower sense as well and forms one of the sources for phenomena that emerge from it and to which we apply that same makeshift term.†
Chpt 7.8
Any man who recognizes an organic symptom of illness to be the product of forbidden emotions that assume hysterical form in conscious psychic life also recognizes the creative power of the psyche in the material world—a power he is then forced to declare to be the second source of magical phenomena.†
Chpt 7.8
Like everyone else, over the course of his life Hans Castorp had heard one thing or another about arcane natural, or supernatural, phenomena—there has already been mention made of his clairvoyant great-aunt, whose melancholy story had been passed down to him.†
Chpt 7.8
At the periphery of its field of movement it would then chance upon letters of the alphabet, and if those toward which it moved formed words that made some sort of sense, it would be the result of a very complex phenomenon, almost impure in its intricacy, a blend of conscious, half-conscious, and subconscious elements—assisted and driven by the wishes of each person present, whether they admitted it to themselves or not—and of a secret sanction granted by unillumined layers within the souls of them all, a subterranean cooperation for strange ends, with each individual contributing more or less of his or her own darkness, the strongest contribution probably being that of sweet little Elly.†
Chpt 7.8

phenomenon = something that exists or happened -- often of special interest
There had been fierce, involuntary manifestations of energy much like those that had occurred in Hermine Kleefeld's room; at such meetings, Comrade Krokowski would use his skill to hypnotize little Elly, putting her into a waking trance, and then, under all possible safeguards of authenticity, systematically obtain and cultivate phenomena: the turning on and off of lights, hangings on tables and walls, and much, much more.†
Chpt 7.8

phenomena = things that exists or happened -- often of special interest
They were, so he explained in lectures and private conversations, "telekinetic" events, movements of objects from place to place; the doctor included them in a range of phenomena that science had baptized with the name of "materialization," and it was to these events that all his aspirations were directed in his experiments with Ellen Brand.†
Chpt 7.8
It was a common error, by the way, an error that could even bring about failure, to believe one had to concentrate one's will and thoughts on the prospective phenomenon.†
Chpt 7.8

phenomenon = something that exists or happened -- often of special interest
The breath of speech directly on his ear caused our friend to experience that creeping epidermal phenomenon popularly known as "goose bumps," which the director had explained to him once long ago.†
Chpt 7.8
Those who had been sitting at the far end of the semicircle, near the doctor, all agreed that several times they had clearly felt the cool draft that regularly prepared the way for any phenomena and that originated with the medium herself, always streaming in one particular direction.†
Chpt 7.8

phenomena = things that exists or happened -- often of special interest
Hans Castorp had never seen the phenomenon before, had never believed it could really occur—but Herr Wiedemann's hair stood up stiff and straight as nails.†
Chpt 7.9

phenomenon = something that exists or happened -- often of special interest
It probably had no real subject, but instead wandered about freely in intellectual realms, broaching this and that, but essentially it was aimed at proving in dismal fashion that all life's intellectual phenomena are ambiguous, that nature is equivocal and any grand concepts abstracted from her are strategically useless, and at demonstrating how iridescent are the robes that the Absolute dons on earth.†
Chpt 7.9

phenomena = things that exists or happened -- often of special interest

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Definitions:

(1) (phenomenon)
something that exists or happened -- especially something of special interest -- sometimes someone or something that is extraordinary

"Phenomenons" and "phenomena" are both appropriate plural forms of this noun. "Phenomena" is generally used in scientific or philosophical contexts.
(2) (meaning too rare to warrant focus)
In philosophy, a phenomenon is something as known through the senses. It is contrasted with a noumenon.

phenomenon in The Magic Mountain (Auto-generated)

phenomenon
in
The Magic Mountain
(Auto-generated)