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Dial   /dˈaɪəl/  /daɪl/   Listen
noun
Dial  n.  
1.
An instrument, formerly much used for showing the time of day from the shadow of a style or gnomon on a graduated arc or surface; esp., a sundial; but there are lunar and astral dials. The style or gnomon is usually parallel to the earth's axis, but the dial plate may be either horizontal or vertical.
2.
The graduated face of a timepiece, on which the time of day is shown by pointers or hands.
3.
A miner's compass.
Dial bird (Zool.), an Indian bird (Copsychus saularius), allied to the European robin. The name is also given to other related species.
Dial lock, a lock provided with one or more plates having numbers or letters upon them. These plates must be adjusted in a certain determined way before the lock can be operated.
Dial plate, the plane or disk of a dial or timepiece on which lines and figures for indicating the time are placed.



verb
Dial  v. t.  (past & past part. dialed or dialled; pres. part. dialing or dialling)  
1.
To measure with a dial. "Hours of that true time which is dialed in heaven."
2.
(Mining) To survey with a dial.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Dial" Quotes from Famous Books



... industry, and when he stood still, holding the guard-rail in front of the starting-gear, he would keep glancing to the right at the steam-gauge, at the water-gauge, fixed upon the white wall in the light of a swaying lamp. The mouths of two speaking-tubes gaped stupidly at his elbow, and the dial of the engine-room telegraph resembled a clock of large diameter, bearing on its face curt words instead of figures. The grouped letters stood out heavily black, around the pivot-head of the indicator, emphatically symbolic of loud exclamations: AHEAD, ASTERN, SLOW, Half, ...
— Typhoon • Joseph Conrad

... and as he watched the slow-moving hands upon the moonlit dial in the church tower, it seemed to him they were held back by invisible fingers, and there came to his mind a forgotten story of a man who, having been accidentally imprisoned in a sepulchre, suffered in the twenty minutes ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss

... her hands, and endeavored to shut out the grotesque and phantom-like forms that seemed to dance before her. A deathlike stillness reigned through the house, the silence alone broken by the ticking of the great dial at the head of the staircase. There is something inexpressibly awful in the ticking of a clock, when heard at midnight by the lonely and anxious watcher beside the bed of death. It is the voice ...
— Mark Hurdlestone - Or, The Two Brothers • Susanna Moodie

... to the door each time she heard the clock strike, but by degrees she learned that all the strokes had not the same value as far as regarded meals, and she frequently fixed her eyes, guided by her ears, on the dial ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant

... of about half an hour between the dial of Putney Church and my watch, which a young gentleman "intended for one of the universities" accounted for from difference of latitude. He likewise explained a phenomenon, which rather startled us, near Kew. We saw about half-a-dozen cows galloping ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 13, No. 375, June 13, 1829 • Various


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