King James Bible Dictionary

FLUX, noun [Latin fluxus, fluo, fluxi.]

1. The act of flowing; the motion or passing of a fluid.

2. The moving or passing of any thing in continued succession. Things in this life, are in a continual flux

3. Any flow or issue of matter. In medicine, an extraordinary issue or evacuation from the bowels or other part; as the bloody flux or dysentery, hepatic flux etc.

4. In hydrography, the flow of the tide. The ebb is called reflux.

5. In metallurgy, any substance or mixture used to promote the fusion of metals or minerals, as alkalies, borax, tartar and other saline matter, or in large operations limestone or fluor. Alkaline fluxes are either the crude, the white or the black flux

6. Fusion; a liquid state from the operation of heat.

7. That which flows or is discharged.

8. Concourse; confluence. [Little used.]

FLUX, adjective Flowing; moving; maintained by a constant succession of parts; inconstant; variable. [Not well authorized.]

FLUX, verb transitive

1. To melt; to fuse; to make fluid.

One part of mineral alkali will flux two of siliceous earth with effervescence.

2. To salivate. [Little used.]

(Acts 28:8) the same as our dysentery, which in the East is, though sometimes sporadic, generally epidemic and infectious, and then assumes its worst form.

FLUXA'TION, noun A flowing or passing away, and giving place to others.

FLUX'ED, participle passive Melted; fused; reduced to a flowing state.

FLUXIBIL'ITY, noun The quality of admitting fusion.

FLUX'IBLE, adjective [from Low Latin ] Capable of being melted or fused, as a mineral.

FLUXIL'ITY, noun [Low Latin fluxilis.] The quality of admitting fusion; possibility of being fused or liquified.

FLUX'ION noun [Latin fluxio, from fluo, to flow.]

1. The act of flowing.

2. The matter that flows.

3. Fluxions, in mathematics, the analysis of infinitely small variable quantities, or a method of finding an infinitely small quantity, which being taken an infinite number of times, becomes equal to a quantity given.

In fluxions, magnitudes are supposed to be generated by motion; a line by the motion of a point, a surface by the motion of a line, and a solid by the motion of a surface. And some part of a figure is supposed to be generated by a uniform motion, in consequence of which the other parts may increase uniformly, or with an accelerated or retarded motion, or may decrease in any of these ways, and the computations are made by tracing the comparative velocities with which the parts flow.

A fluxion is an infinitely small quantity, an increment; the infinitely small increase of the fluent or flowing quantity.

FLUX'IONARY, adjective Pertaining to mathematical fluxions.

FLUX'IONIST, noun One skilled in fluxions.

FLUX'IVE, adjective Flowing; wanting solidity. [Not used.]

FLUX'URE, noun A flowing or fluid matter. [Not used.]