All 15 Uses of

focus
in
The Magic Mountain

He listened to his relative talk about the disease that formed the common professional bond for everyone here, and of people's susceptibility to it; about Hans Castorp's own modest, but chronic case, about how the bacillus irritated the cells of the tissue in the bronchi and air sacs of the lungs, about the formation of tubercles and the production of soluble intoxicating toxins, the deterioration of the cells and the process of caseation, which if it continued to petrify into chalky scar tissue meant a beneficial arrest of the disease, but if it went on to build ever-larger soft foci, created cavities that ate away at everything around them and finally destroyed the entire organ.†
Chpt 6.5

A few foci have been fully reabsorbed, the pocket has grown smaller and is more sharply defined, which, being a well-informed patient, you know indicates healing.†
Chpt 7.6 *

From then on, his mind was muddled, his focus narrow; and in his befuddlement he made mistakes in his business, resulting in serious losses for the firm of Castorp and Son.†
Chpt 2.1 *

The focus of the group, she was sitting on the sofa behind the round table at the far end of the small salon, her face turned toward the game room.†
Chpt 3.9

I would not yet call it a focus for softening tissue, but it is certainly a moist spot.†
Chpt 4.10

To be sure, in between such moments, he could be silent, too, if not to say turned in upon himself; for although his attention was directed outward, it was focused on just one point.†
Chpt 5.4

Our great cities are the perfect symbol—these centers and focal points of civilization, these crucibles of thought.†
Chpt 5.5

His black eyes were focused in a fixed, thoughtful stare at the young man's face.†
Chpt 5.5

The actors who had been cast in the play they had just seen had long since been scattered to the winds; they had watched only phantoms, whose deeds had been reduced to a million photographs brought into focus for the briefest of moments so that, as often as one liked, they could then be given back to the element of time as a series of blinking flashes.†
Chpt 5.8 *

The Renaissance, the Enlightenment, and the teachings of nineteenth-century science and economics have omitted nothing, absolutely nothing, that seemed even vaguely useful for furthering such degradation, beginning with modern astronomy—which turned the focal point of the universe, that sublime arena where God and Satan struggled to possess the creature whom they both ardently coveted, into an unimportant little planet, and, for now at least, has put an end to man's grand position in the cosmos, upon which astrology was likewise based.†
Chpt 6.3 *

And she told him to focus his eyes directly at her—yes, they definitely had a dull flicker.†
Chpt 6.5

There sat death, a humanistic rhetorician clad in a blue coat; and when you focused on this philanthropic and pedagogic god of literature, what you saw crouching there had a monkey face, with the symbols of night and sorcery on its brow.†
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

And the engagement of his personality promptly had a bracing, focusing effect.†
Chpt 7.3

Her dainty ringer resting lightly on the glass, Ellen Brand focused her large, pure, childlike eyes beyond immediate matters and directed her gaze instead at the nightstand lamp.†
Chpt 7.8

Definitions:

(1) (focus as in: Turn your focus to question #2.)
verb: to concentrate, look at, or pay attention to

noun: the act of concentration, or the ability to concentrate

(to concentrate is to direct attention or effort towards a single thing)
(2) (focus as in: The focus of our study is...)
where attention is concentrated or directed
(3) (focus as in: bring into focus; or out of focus)
a state where something has come into view or can be seen clearly; or an adjustment made to permit a clear view
(4) (focus as with technical usage)
technical usage typically involves some sense of center or concentration such as:
- physics — a point where things come together such as the point where light rays meet
- geometry — a fixed reference point (as of a parabola)
- geology — the point of origin of an earthquake
See a comprehensive dictionary for other less common meanings.