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Circumference   Listen
noun
Circumference  n.  
1.
The line that goes round or encompasses a circular figure; a periphery.
2.
A circle; anything circular. "His ponderous shield... Behind him cast. The broad circumference Hung on his shoulders like the moon."
3.
The external surface of a sphere, or of any orbicular body.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Circumference" Quotes from Famous Books



... about 1282, near the site of an important city which dated from the Chow dynasty, or some centuries before the Christian era. The city covers an enclosed space about twenty miles in circumference. It is rectangular in form, and divided into two parts, the Chinese and the Tartar cities. The walls of the Tartar city are the largest and widest, being forty to fifty feet high, and, tapering slightly from the base, about forty feet wide at the top. They are constructed upon ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 30. September, 1873 • Various

... Of vast circumference and gloom profound, This solitary Tree! A living thing Produced too slowly ever to decay; Of form and aspect too magnificent To ...
— The World's Best Poetry — Volume 10 • Various

... our boat and skirted the north-eastern point of the island. There were no beaches on the southern shore, and by early afternoon we rounded the black promontory and completed the circumnavigation of the island. I estimated its circumference at twenty-five miles, its width as varying from two to five miles; while my most conservative calculation placed on its beaches two hundred thousand seals. The island was highest at its extreme south-western point, the headlands and backbone ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London

... in pinning as that on top of brim. This must be pinned very carefully. Cut off velvet all around edge, leaving a little less than one-fourth inch to turn under. Facings are usually finished at the edge with a wire. Cut a piece of frame wire the exact circumference of the brim, plus one inch for lap. Bend to shape of brim and pin under edge of velvet, beginning at the center back. Roll velvet over wire and bring out to edge. Pin in place all the way around before beginning ...
— Make Your Own Hats • Gene Allen Martin

... it was caused by blazing bits of tow fastened to the circumference of the big wire hoops. And thus through the blazing circles Joe Strong slid down the slanting wire on his head. At the lower end of the wire, where it was fast to a stake in the ground, he caught hold of the cable in his gloved hands and so slowed his speed. Then he leaped to his feet and ...
— Joe Strong The Boy Fire-Eater - The Most Dangerous Performance on Record • Vance Barnum

... Luzon, which is the largest and chiefest of the Philipinas, has the appearance of an arm somewhat bent, according to the description of father Fray Juan Francisco de San Antonio. [13] It has a circumference of more than four hundred Spanish leguas, and lies between twelve and nineteen degrees of latitude. Not far from the point of San Tiago, which we shall pretend to be the elbow of this arm, journeying thence ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume 41 of 55, 1691-1700 • Various

... broke of a sudden as I finished straightening his body and wrapping it for burial; and I looked up in the new light, and around me, to take in that second gush of loneliness of which I told you. . . . It was appalling. It swept in on me from the whole enormous circumference of empty waters, and I fairly cowered from it over the corpse ...
— Foe-Farrell • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... with water, though with very shallow water—probably at some points by none, at others by a depth of ten or fifteen feet. From some cause—and many causes might be imagined—this earth-and-water surface of say two hundred miles in circumference, sank into the interior of the earth, and the boiling lava came to the surface. We can scarcely conceive of the awful effect when the Antarctic Sea poured over the circumference of this mass of boiling ...
— A Strange Discovery • Charles Romyn Dake

... Here he counted among his pupils Apollonius Rhodius, author of the 'Argonautica,' and Eratosthenes, famous for his wisdom in science, who knew geography and geometry so well that he measured the circumference of the earth. Callimachus was in fact one of those erudite poets and wise men of letters whom the gay Alexandrians who thronged the court of Ptolemy Philadelphus called "The Pleiades." Apollonius Rhodius, Aratus, Theocritus, Lycophron, Nicander, and ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various

... Marian Lawrence, with great natural intelligence, never read anything more serious than a novel and preferred those that were not translated into English. She took no interest whatever in anything outside her inherited circumference, and had prided herself during the war upon ignoring its existence. She was as luxurious and as dainty as a cat and one of the most ardent sportswomen in America. She looked as if she had just stepped out of a stained-glass window, and she was a hard, subtle, predatory flirt; too much ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton

... "Examination of planets and of time, starting from the centre of the world, called Arim, from which place to the four ends of the earth the distance is equal, viz., ninety degrees, answering to the fourth part of the world's circumference. It is tedious and unending to attempt to place all the countries of the world and to fix all the marks of time. So the meridian is taken as the measure of the latter and Arim of the former, and from this starting-point it is not hard to fix other countries." "Arim," he concludes, "is under the ...
— Prince Henry the Navigator, the Hero of Portugal and of Modern Discovery, 1394-1460 A.D. • C. Raymond Beazley

... accompanied by a great downpour, straining my tent to the utmost. The sergeant one day brought in a large lizard (varanus) which he shot from the prahu just as it was about to enter the river. Its length was 2.30 metres; the circumference back of ...
— Through Central Borneo: - An Account of Two Years' Travel in the Land of Head-Hunters - Between the Years 1913 and 1917 • Carl Lumholtz

... and frictions of every kind;[C] the motions of the waters of the earth, the great oceans, with their rolling tides sweeping the whole circumference of the earth twice in twenty-four hours, at a speed of one thousand miles per hour; with its frictions upon itself, the bottom, and the shores; its great storms lashing it into fury, and its gentler motions from lesser winds; also the motions of ...
— New and Original Theories of the Great Physical Forces • Henry Raymond Rogers

... having retained that and his stick in his fall, and went forward, hoping to find a habitable place of waiting. Soon the passage widened into a kind of subterranean room, one side of which admitted light. Going to this side, Harry stopped short at the verge of a well, on whose circumference the subterranean chamber abutted. The light came from the well's top, which was about ten feet above the low roof of the underground room, the passage from the cellar being on a descent. In this artificial cave were wooden chests, casks, and covered earthen vessels, these contents ...
— The Continental Dragoon - A Love Story of Philipse Manor-House in 1778 • Robert Neilson Stephens

... to the east of St. Louis, is the isle of Sor, which is four or five leagues in circumference; it is of a long and almost triangular form: there are two extensive plains in it, where habitations might be erected. They are covered with grass two metres in height, a certain proof of the advantages that might be ...
— Narrative of a Voyage to Senegal in 1816 • J. B. Henry Savigny and Alexander Correard

... at all is used in their construction. The plain of Duvno is one of the largest in the province: its extreme length is about fifteen miles, and villages are placed at the foot of the hills, round its entire circumference. The most important of these is the seat of a Mudir, to whom I proceeded at once on my arrival. Although afflicted with a hump-back, he was a person of most refined manners. His brother-in-law, Mahmoud Effendi, who is a member of the Medjlis, was with him, and added ...
— Herzegovina - Or, Omer Pacha and the Christian Rebels • George Arbuthnot

... handles, bolts, bars and levers, paused for an instant, as if making up his mind, then said decidedly, "There it is," and stepping quickly forward, selected a small wheel amid a dozen others, all furnished at the circumference with handles like those of a pilot's wheel, and giving it a quick ...
— Edison's Conquest of Mars • Garrett Putnam Serviss

... tomb. The whole of that plain is a sepulchre for France. Thanks to the thousands upon thousands of cartloads of earth employed in the hillock one hundred and fifty feet in height and half a mile in circumference, the plateau of Mont-Saint-Jean is now accessible by an easy slope. On the day of battle, particularly on the side of La Haie-Sainte, it was abrupt and difficult of approach. The slope there is ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo

... covered with cloth and skins, White Fang was astounded. It was the colossal bulk of them that impressed him. They arose around him, on every side, like some monstrous quick-growing form of life. They occupied nearly the whole circumference of his field of vision. He was afraid of them. They loomed ominously above him; and when the breeze stirred them into huge movements, he cowered down in fear, keeping his eyes warily upon them, and prepared ...
— White Fang • Jack London

... you will, which shall bereave blushing iniquity of the fig-leaves of hypocrisy, yet will the eye of immortality discern of your painted pollutions, as the ever-living food of perdition. The humours of my eyes are the habitations of fountains, and the circumference of my heart the enclosure of fearful contrition, when I think how many souls at that moment shall carry the name of Martin on their foreheads to the vale of confusion, in whose innocent blood thou swimming to hell, shalt have the torments of ten thousand thousand sinners at once, inflicted ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury

... Sand, on a high and easily defended rock, stood the last stronghold occupied by the Macleods in Gairloch - to this day known as the "Dun" or Fort. The foundation is still easily traced. It must have been a place of consider-able importance, for it is over 200 feet in circumference. Various localities are still pointed out in Gairloch where desperate skirmishes were fought between the Macleods and the Mackenzies. Several of these spots, where the slain were buried, look quite green to this day. The "Fraoch Eilean," opposite Leac-na-Saighid, where a naval engagement was ...
— History Of The Mackenzies • Alexander Mackenzie

... pass into another sea, and visit this country of Ciguare, and, of course, arrive at the banks of the Ganges. He accounted for the circumstance of his having arrived so near to that river, by the idea which he had long entertained, that geographers were mistaken as to the circumference of the globe; that it was smaller than was generally imagined, and that a degree of the equinoctial line was but ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving

... Songaree and its tributaries. The sources of this river are in the Shanalin mountains, that separate Corea from Manjouria, and are ten or twelve thousand feet high. They resemble the Sierra Nevadas in having a lake twelve miles in circumference as high in air as Lake Tahoe. The affluents of the Songaree run through a plateau in some places densely wooded while in others it has wide belts of prairie and marshy ground. A large part of the valley consists of low, fertile lands, through ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox

... Castlereagh about 4 p.m., and although its channel could not have been less than 130 yards in breadth, there was apparently not a drop of water in it. Its bed consisted of pure sand and reeds; amid the latter, we found a small pond of 15 yards circumference, after a long search. There is a considerable dip in the country towards the river, at about two miles from it; and the intervening brush was full of kangaroo, which, I fancy, had congregated to a spot where there was abundance of food for them. The soil covering the space ...
— Two Expeditions into the Interior of Southern Australia, Complete • Charles Sturt

... horse hits it once, he will not care to repeat the experiment. It should be free from any sharp points or edges that might blemish the animal, if he "raps" it. This log should be at least 15 feet long, should have one end a little outside the circumference of the circle on which the animal works, and the other end pointing towards the centre of the circle. The log, at each extremity, may be propped up on empty wine or beer cases (Fig. 105). No wing or upright pole which might catch in the reins should be placed at the inner end of the ...
— The Horsewoman - A Practical Guide to Side-Saddle Riding, 2nd. Ed. • Alice M. Hayes

... winged car, ordering all things and superintending them. A host of deities and spirits follow him, each fulfilling his own function. Whoever will and can follows them. After taking this round, they advance by a steep course along the inner circumference of the heavenly vault and proceed to a banquet. The chariots of the gods, being well balanced and well driven, advance easily; others with difficulty; for the vicious horse, unless the charioteer has thoroughly broken him, weighs down the car by his proclivity ...
— Reincarnation • Swami Abhedananda

... flywheel, and surrounding the crankshaft, rest two rings, 3-7/8 inches in diameter. Into the opposing surfaces of these rings are cut a series of small inclined planes, appertinent to each other. On the outer circumference of the upper ring two pins pass through a pair of lugs mounted in the flywheel, causing the ring to rotate with the flywheel, yet permitting vertical movement. Underneath, the other ring is allowed to turn slightly when, by means of two connecting ...
— The 1893 Duryea Automobile In the Museum of History and Technology • Don H. Berkebile

... P'hra-mene is a lofty octagon; and directly under the great spire is a gorgeous eight-sided pyramid, diminishing by right-angled gradations to a truncated top, its base being fifty or sixty feet in circumference, and higher by twenty feet than the surrounding buildings. On this pyramid stood the urn of gold containing the remains of the royal child. Above the urn a golden canopy hung from the lofty ceiling, and far above ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens

... So great is his agitation, that every nerve and muscle is in action, and even the ring is forced from his finger. When the heart is affected, how great is its influence on the human frame!—it communicates its sensibility to the extreme parts of the body, from the centre to the circumference; as distant water is put in motion by circles, spreading from the place of its disturbance. The paper on the floor containing ...
— The Works of William Hogarth: In a Series of Engravings - With Descriptions, and a Comment on Their Moral Tendency • John Trusler

... places, too, where there were great whirling machines, under splendid tents and canopies, with horses, and boats, and ships, and cradles at the circumference of them, all of which were made to sail round and round through the air, carrying the children that were mounted on the horses or sitting in the ships and boats. There were also several places for shooting at a mark with little spring ...
— Rollo in Paris • Jacob Abbott

... Parthenon (no doubt used) were crude. The extraordinary refinements demonstrated in a lecture by Mr. Penrose on the spot last year, at which I had the good fortune to be present, forbid such a conclusion. A few graduated inches in the circumference of the columns, and deflection from straight line in the pediment and in the base-line, proved by measurement and examination to be carefully intentional, will not permit us for a moment to believe this could have been the case; so precise in line, rhythmical in arrangement, lovely in ...
— The Mind of the Artist - Thoughts and Sayings of Painters and Sculptors on Their Art • Various

... point, and following westward in the track of Magellaens and under the Southern Cross, coasted the shore of Patagonia, and threaded his path through unmapped and unnumbered clusters of islands in the Western Pacific; and during this spanning of the earth's whole circumference not an inch of land or water was traversed that was ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... seated upon their haunches, among which the favourite bear was repeatedly introduced. Placed in the middle of the terrace, between a sashed door opening from the house and the central flight of steps, a huge animal of the same species supported on his head and fore-paws a sundial of large circumference, inscribed with more diagrams than Edward's mathematics enabled him ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott

... minutes brought them to the ledges, around which the traps were set in a circle. They began hauling at the point in the circumference nearest to the island, following the buoys west and north. The catch ...
— Jim Spurling, Fisherman - or Making Good • Albert Walter Tolman

... as my last glass, from my one pint of sherry, was poured out, the long expected coach drew up. A minute after the coachman entered to take his dram, followed by the guard; a more lamentable spectacle of condensed moisture cannot be conceived; the rain fell from the entire circumference of his broad-brimmed hat, like the ever-flowing drop from the edge of an antique fountain; his drab-coat had become a deep orange hue, while his huge figure loomed still larger, as he stood amid a nebula of damp, that would have made ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Vol. 2 • Charles James Lever

... described as savages. We want {28} the girls to be gentle—not weak, but gentle, and kind and affectionate. We want to be sure, that wherever a girl is, there should be a sweet, subduing and harmonizing influence of purity, and truth, and love, pervading and hallowing, from center to circumference, the entire circle in which she moves. If the boys are savages, we want her to be their civilizer. We want her to tame them, to subdue their ferocity, to soften their manners, and to teach them all needful lessons of order, sobriety, ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis

... faculty in man of comprehending it, and the sense of relation and obligation to it, as the highest historic law,—the formal, the essential law of kind in him, it is the breadth of reason, it is the circumference of conscience, it is the grandeur of duty which this author arrays here scientifically against that oblivion and ignoring of the whole, that forgetfulness of the world, and the universal tie which the ignorance of the unaided sense and the narrowness of passion ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon

... doors and windows, and a variety which does not produce the effect of confusion,—a magnificent eccentricity, an exuberant imagination flowering out in stone. On high, in the great peak of the front, and throwing its colored radiance into the nave within, there is a round window of immense circumference, the painted figures in which we can see dimly from the outside. But what I wish to express, and never can, is the multitudinous richness of the ornamentation of the front: the arches within arches, sculptured inch by inch, of the ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... rest until he has associated it with some fact, so we learn that George Washington was born in 1492, that St. Bartholomew was massacred in that year, that "the Brittains were the Saxons who entered England in 1492 under Julius Csar,'' and, to cap all, that the earth is 1492 miles in circumference. ...
— Literary Blunders • Henry B. Wheatley

... what we now call the lower part of Broadway, just opposite North Pearl Street. No part of the Strand or of the Boulevards is less rural than the vast settled district about the New York Hospital at this day. It stands at least four times farther within than it then did beyond the circumference of New York civilization. I remember another illustration of its relative situation early in the century,—a story of good old Doctor Stone, who excused himself from his position of manager by saying, that, as the infirmities of age grew on him, he found the New York Hospital so ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various

... shade as well as light, you, who are gifted with two eyes, endowed with a knowledge of perspective, and charmed with the enjoyment of various colours, you, who can actually SEE an angle, and contemplate the complete circumference of a Circle in the happy region of the Three Dimensions—how shall I make it clear to you the extreme difficulty which we in Flatland experience in recognizing ...
— Flatland • Edwin A. Abbott

... teaching of the realisation of the Divine will in the hearts and minds, and through these in the lives of men—the finding and the realisation of the Kingdom of God. This is the supreme fact of life. Get right at the centre and the circumference will then care for itself. As is the inner, so always and invariably will be the outer. There is an inner guide that regulates the life when this inner guide is allowed to assume authority. Why be disconcerted, why in a heat concerning ...
— The Higher Powers of Mind and Spirit • Ralph Waldo Trine

... kingdom. After this, for a long time, nothing worth noticing occurred. In June, 1828, we erected a school on a fictitious island, which was to contain 1,000 children. The manner of the building was as follows: The island was fifty miles in circumference, and certainly appeared more like the work of enchantment than anything real," etc. ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume IV (of 6) - Authors and Journalists • Various

... down the narrow asphalt of the parkway. At eleven o'clock, to lessen her stiffening of joints, she walked twice the circumference of the fenced-in inclosure, finally sitting again, this time beneath a gaunt oleander that was ...
— Humoresque - A Laugh On Life With A Tear Behind It • Fannie Hurst

... circumference ob de question," said Rastus, scratching his head, when this had been explained to him. "All right, Massa Frank, yo' count on me at ...
— The Boy Aviators' Polar Dash - Or - Facing Death in the Antarctic • Captain Wilbur Lawton

... had once been scarlet, but now, from use and exposure, rather resembled the colour of brickdust; boots from which all polish had been taken by the grease employed to render them snow-proof; a brace of pistols thrust into the black waist belt that encircled his huge circumference, and from which depended a sword, whose steel scabbard shewed the rust of the rudest bivouac. Let him, moreover, figure to himself that ruddy carbuncled face, and nearly as ruddy brow, suffused with perspiration, although in a desperately cold winter's night, and ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson

... extremely exciting to a student on his travels. The truth was that none of those hats would go into the cupboards. Fashion had worsted the organization completely. Departmental chiefs had nothing to do but acquiesce in this startling untidiness. Either they must wait till the circumference of hats lessened again, or they must tear down the whole structure and rebuild it ...
— Your United States - Impressions of a first visit • Arnold Bennett

... 125 pounds; balance carried off by others. This year, 1915, is almost a failure; just a light sprinkling of nuts; was full of blooms but owing to heavy cold rain, failed to pollenize. The tree is located in a cultivated field, circumference of tree is 5 feet, height about 60 feet, spread 50 ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Sixth Annual Meeting. Rochester, New York, September 1 and 2, 1915 • Various

... Lepcha threat." Then there is the nettle of Timor, or devils-leaf, the sting of which sometimes produces fatal effects. Tree-nettles in Australia are occasionally found as much as twenty-five feet in circumference. There are three species of stinging nettles in this country, the great nettle, the small nettle, and the Roman nettle; the first two are very common, the last very rare indeed. There is a curious story told of the introduction ...
— Country Walks of a Naturalist with His Children • W. Houghton

... diffused themselves through my interiors from all sides: and for this reason also they had an influx into the face, so that the face accorded with each particular, beginning at the lips, and proceeding towards the circumference in every direction. The ideas, which were in place of verbal expressions were discrete from each other, but in a very small degree. Afterwards they spoke with me by means of ideas still less discrete, so that hardly any interval was perceived: in my perception it was like the meaning ...
— Earths In Our Solar System Which Are Called Planets, and Earths In The Starry Heaven Their Inhabitants, And The Spirits And Angels There • Emanuel Swedenborg

... now gave me a little confidence, though it was nearly driven away when, able to see clearly again, I found myself holding on by one of the wooden pocket-like places formed with boards on the outer circumference of the engine—the places in fact into which, when the sluice was opened, the water rushed, and by its weight bore the ...
— Patience Wins - War in the Works • George Manville Fenn

... like a cup. This I will further describe, for the use of those that are unacquainted with it. Suppose a sphere be divided into two parts, round at the bottom, but having another segment that grows up to a circumference from that bottom; suppose it become narrower by degrees, and that the cavity of that part grow decently smaller, and then gradually grow wider again at the brim, such as we see in the navel of a pomegranate, with its notches. ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus

... had leaped in our juvenile sports, and we talked together about our boyish days, and held edifying discourse on the instability of all sublunary things, as instanced in the scene around us. He was rich in historic lore, as to the events of the last thirty years and the circumference of thirty miles, and from him I learned the appalling revolution that was taking place throughout the neighborhood. All this I clearly perceived he attributed to the boasted march of intellect, or rather to the all-pervading influence ...
— Wolfert's Roost and Miscellanies • Washington Irving

... respects similar to the instrument of Konstantinoff, which was constructed by L.F.C. Breguet and has been sometimes attributed to him (Comptes rendus, 1845). This chronograph consisted of a cylinder 1 metre in circumference and 0.36 metre long, driven by clockwork, the rotation being regulated by a governor provided with wings. A small carriage geared to the wheelwork traversed its length, carrying electromagnetic signals. The electric chronograph signal usually consists of a small armature ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various

... the trees, for its gigantic size, and bark coloured exactly like Egyptian syenite, is the burly Baobab. It often makes the other trees of the forest look like mere bushes in comparison. A hollow one, already mentioned, is 74 feet in circumference, another was 84, and some have been found on the West Coast which measure 100 feet. The lofty range of Kebrabasa, consisting chiefly of conical hills, covered with scraggy trees, crosses the Zambesi, and confines ...
— A Popular Account of Dr. Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries • David Livingstone

... based on literary rather than artistic interests, and he was too wise to pay much attention to his own rules. Another man who tried to systematise art was Leon Battista Alberti, who gave the exact measurements of ideal beauty, length and circumference of limbs, &c., thus approaching a physical canon. The absurdity of these theories is well shown in the "Rules of Drawing Caricatures," illustrated by "mathematical diagrams."[20] Development and animation ...
— Donatello • David Lindsay, Earl of Crawford

... progress of her pupils, Mary spared no pains to make perspicuous what to them appeared obscure. The little savages could not, or would net understand that the earth was like a ball, and not only turned upon its own axis, but made the entire circumference of the sun. A pair of globes could not be procured, and she taxed her ingenuity for a substitute. Selecting two apples, one enormous, the other medium size, she carefully introduced a reed through the center of the smaller apple, thus causing it ...
— Inez - A Tale of the Alamo • Augusta J. Evans

... mingled trepidation and delight. There a native zoetrope, indefatigable round of pleasure, whose top fashioned after the type of a turbine wheel enables a candle at the centre ingeniously to supply both illumination and motive power at the same time, affords to as many as can find room on its circumference a peep at the composite antics of a consecutively pictured monkey in the act of jumping a box. Beyond this "wheel of life" lies spread out on a mat a most happy family of curios, the whole of which you ...
— The Soul of the Far East • Percival Lowell

... on first principles; but then, if a man wishes to save any coin in this world he must make great personal sacrifices; and so he was perfectly happy in his temporary aboriginal condition. There were no restrictions upon him. He was even outside the circumference of any ministerial jurisdiction, and had never been cautioned about the hereafter. Like an Indian, he moved just as the impulse seized him. How this man expected to submit to the personal restrictions and embargoes imposed by modern fashions and society was known only to himself. The ...
— Skookum Chuck Fables - Bits of History, Through the Microscope • Skookum Chuck (pseud for R.D. Cumming)

... latitude, and 29 degrees 15' west longitude. It is 540 miles distant from the coast of America, and 350 from the island of Fernando Noronha. The highest point is only fifty feet above the level of the sea, and the entire circumference is under three-quarters of a mile. This small point rises abruptly out of the depths of the ocean. Its mineralogical constitution is not simple; in some parts the rock is of a cherty, in others of a feldspathic nature, including thin veins of serpentine. ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin

... the deep crescentic (femoral) arch; in others, again, the neck of the sac itself, and produced by a thickening and contraction of the subserous and peritonaeal membranes where they lie within the circumference of the crural ring."—Morton (Surgical Anatomy of the ...
— Surgical Anatomy • Joseph Maclise

... also made, but by a different mode of operation. "For extracting tar they prepare a circular floor of clay, declining a little towards the centre, from which there is laid a pipe of wood, extending almost horizontally two feet without the circumference, and so let into the ground, that its upper side may be level with the floor: at the outer end of this pipe they dig a hole large enough to hold the barrels of tar, which, when forced out of the wood, naturally runs to the centre of the floor as the ...
— An Historical Account Of The Rise And Progress Of The Colonies Of South Carolina And Georgia, Volume 1 • Alexander Hewatt

... walls and arches, which had been plated with marble, were all they could discover, with many broken columns that had once been mighty in their altitude and strength: several fragments were fifteen feet long, and of enormous circumference. Such is the condition of that superb edifice, which was, in its glory, four hundred and twenty feet long by two hundred and twenty feet broad, and adorned with more than a hundred and twenty columns ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt

... be a great emigration this summer, because John Bull longs to see something beyond the limited circumference of his birthright - but that foreign nations will be now so watchful of his proceedings, so jealous of his correspondence, and so easily offended by his declamation or epigrams, that he will be glad to return here, where liberty, when not abused, allows ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 3 • Madame D'Arblay

... had already been "opened"; that is to say, a lane a few feet wide had been hand-cut through the wheat along the whole circumference of the field for the first passage ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy

... society, since there is no longer any compact division of the community which forms society. Rather, the community divides itself into hundreds of circles, most of which meet others at some point of their circumference. ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson

... above this weakness. The "Markland blood," as she said, was too strong within her. What puzzled her most was the cheerful heart of her brother, and the interest he took in many things once scarcely noticed. Formerly, when thought went beyond himself, its circumference was limited by the good of his own family; but now, he gave some care to the common good, and manifested a neighbourly regard for others. He was looking in the right direction for "that good time coming," and the ...
— The Good Time Coming • T. S. Arthur

... are thankful to say, carried with them some fragments of Christianity, but the Catholic Church alone possesses the whole unadulterated revelation of Jesus Christ. For over a thousand years, the Church in England formed a part of the great Universal Church, the centre of which is at Rome and the circumference of which is everywhere. From the sixth to the sixteenth century the Church in England was a province of that Church, and received her power and jurisdiction from the Holy See. It was not until the sixteenth century that she apostatised, and was cut off from the stem, out of which ...
— The Purpose of the Papacy • John S. Vaughan

... placed at the floor level of the hot rooms should be actually so, and not 3 in. or 6 in. above. Long, wide gratings 6 in. deep are preferable to those of deeper and narrower design. In theory, indeed, the whole circumference of the hot rooms should be lined round with gratings, thus making the sudatorium like a lidless box inverted, into which hot air is thrown and escapes all round the ...
— The Turkish Bath - Its Design and Construction • Robert Owen Allsop

... chestnut, which, with more reason, probably, may be described without fear of contradiction as the largest chestnut tree in the world. It rises from one solid stem to a remarkable height before it branches. At an elevation of two feet from the earth its circumference was found by Brydone to be seventy-six feet. These trees are reputed to have flourished for much more than a thousand years. Their luxuriant growth is attributed in part to the humid atmosphere of the Bosco, elevated above the scorching, arid region of the coast, ...
— The Grand Old Man • Richard B. Cook

... of thirty of the adult men of this village, and it ranges from 5 feet 4 inches to 5 feet 6.5 inches. The circumference of the heads averages 22.1 inches, and the arc, from ear to ear, 13 inches. According to Mr. Davies, the average weight of the Aino adult masculine brain, ascertained by measurement of Aino skulls, is 45.90 ounces avoirdupois, a brain weight said to exceed ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird

... north doorway timber. While making these gifts, as the proceeding is termed, the man preserves a strict silence, and then, as with a sweeping motion of his hand from left to right (cab[)i]kego, as the sun travels) he sprinkles the meal around the outer circumference of the floor, he says in ...
— Navaho Houses, pages 469-518 • Cosmos Mindeleff

... not small in circumference, and very high. It was encompassed with valleys of such vast depth downward, that the eye could not reach their bottoms; they were abrupt, and such as no animal could walk upon, excepting at two places of the rock, where it subsides, in order to afford a ...
— The Wars of the Jews or History of the Destruction of Jerusalem • Flavius Josephus

... higher powers under whose protection the tribe believed itself to be placed. The tapop, as chairman of the meeting, occupied the middle, together with the principal religious functionaries,—the yaya, or mothers of the tribe. On the outer circumference were placed the nashtio, or fathers, the delegates of the clans. The Koshare Naua and his colleague of the Cuirana held an intermediate position. Topanashka, as military head, and the assistant governor, who had neither voice nor vote, sat beside ...
— The Delight Makers • Adolf Bandelier

... swiftness and sagacity his building spirit leaps and lightens to and fro and backward and forward, as it lives along the animated line of its labour, springs from thread to thread, and darts from centre to circumference of the glittering and quivering web of living thought, woven from the inexhaustible stores of his perception, and kindled from the inexhaustible fire of his imagination. He never thinks but at full speed; and the rate of his thought is to that of another ...
— An Introduction to the Study of Browning • Arthur Symons

... turn round on its axis once in twenty-four hours, or that thousands of mighty stars should circle round the earth in the same time, many of them having to describe circles many thousands of times greater in circumference than the circuit of the earth at the equator? The obvious answer pressed upon Copernicus with so much force that he was compelled to reject Ptolemy's theory of the stationary earth, and to attribute ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various

... Island; but it is better known by the name of Tahiti. It is of volcanic formation, and consists of two peninsulas joined by a neck of low land, about two miles across. The whole island is about thirty miles in circumference. The smaller portion, called Tairaboo, is the most fertile; but as Tahiti proper has the best harbour, it is the most frequented, and is ...
— A Voyage round the World - A book for boys • W.H.G. Kingston

... shorts, stouts, and mediums are not respectively standard according to bust-measure. A gentleman, for example, may simultaneously be short in the legs, medium in the chest, and stout in the circumference: the secret of the ready-to-wear clothier lies in his ability to meet on the spot conditions which no single pattern could hope to anticipate. We must go back toward nature, and stop short at Adam, to find a costume that any ...
— The Perfect Gentleman • Ralph Bergengren

... made by excavating a circular hole about 2 ft. 9 in. deep and, say 12 ft. in diameter. An outer and inner wall are then constructed of slabs 2 ft. 6 in. in height to ground level, the outer wall being thus 30 ft. and the inner 15 ft. in circumference. The circular space between is floored with smooth hardwood slabs or boards, and the whole made secure and water-tight. In the middle of the inner enclosure a stout post is planted, to stand a few inches ...
— Getting Gold • J. C. F. Johnson

... feet; circumference in the middle, 3 feet 2 inches; diameter of the bore 3 inches. There are some old cannon also at Lyngkyrdem and at Kyndiar in the Khyrim State, of the same description as above. These cannons were captured from the Jaintia Raja by the Siem ...
— The Khasis • P. R. T. Gurdon

... long, straggling way through the narrow street of a little village of the Piano, when I lingered behind my companions, attracted by a handcart with several large baskets of oranges. The cart stood untended in the street; and selecting a large orange, which would measure twelve inches in circumference, I turned to look for the owner. After some time a fellow got from the open front of the neighboring cobbler's shop, where he sat with his lazy cronies, listening to the honest gossip of the follower of St. ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... the Whispering Gallery, which is constructed on the very simple principle of an unbroken communication. It is 140 yards in circumference, and a stone seat runs round the gallery along the foot of the wall. On the side directly opposite to the entrance door, Dashall and his friend seated themselves, when the person who shewed the gallery whispered ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan

... seen on the approach. With bugle blasts and savage shouts they rushed in at the gates, swept the streets with their sabers, pillaged houses and churches, and set the city on fire in all directions. The city was at that time, according to the testimony of the cotemporary annalists, forty miles in circumference. The weltering flames rose and fell as in the crater of a volcano, and in six hours the city was in ashes. Thousands perished in the flames. The fire, communicating with a powder magazine, produced ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott

... at times and urged them swiftly on towards the circumference, but it fled as fast as they approached. Then it fell calm, and the weary men resumed their oars, and with heavy hearts and weakened arms tugged at the boat which seemed to have turned into a mass of lead. At such ...
— The Red Eric • R.M. Ballantyne

... under the surface was a thick layer of burnt clay, which probably formed the roof. In tracing out the circumference a hard clay floor was found beneath, and between the two several inches of ashes, but no skeletons. There were a great many pieces of broken dishes so situated as to lead one to believe they were on top of the house at the time ...
— Archeological Investigations - Bureau of American Ethnology, Bulletin 76 • Gerard Fowke

... storm, beast and bird, acid and alkali, preexist in necessary Ideas in the mind of God, and are what they are by virtue of preceding affections, in the world of spirit. A Fact is the end or last issue of spirit. The visible creation is the terminus or the circumference of the invisible world. "Material objects," said a French philosopher, "are necessarily kinds of scoriae of the substantial thoughts of the Creator, which must always preserve an exact relation to their first origin; in other words, visible ...
— Nature • Ralph Waldo Emerson

... the sensations of awe, horror, and admiration with which I gazed about me. The boat appeared to be hanging, as if by magic, midway down, upon the interior surface of a funnel vast in circumference, prodigious in depth, and whose perfectly smooth sides might have been mistaken for ebony, but for the bewildering rapidity with which they spun around, and for the gleaming and ghastly radiance they shot forth, as the rays of the full moon, from that circular rift ...
— Selections From Poe • J. Montgomery Gambrill

... with three (of course) long legs, a strange-looking personage with a curled wig and a pair of green spectacles, who no doubt must be the pelican himself. As she appeared in the room with the umbrella, not much shorter or less in circumference than herself, the gentleman looked curiously at her, wondering no doubt what the errand of so strange a little ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Vol. XXIII. • Various

... self-conscious people in the world, and the most addicted to the belief that the other nations of the earth are in a conspiracy to undervalue them. They are conscious of being the youngest of the great nations, of not being of the European family, of being placed on the circumference of the circle of civilisation rather than at the centre, of the experimental element not having as yet entirely dropped out of their great political undertaking. The sense of this relativity, in a ...
— Hawthorne - (English Men of Letters Series) • Henry James, Junr.

... produced strata of several thousand feet thick of coarse conglomerate. (7/1. See "Geological Observations on South America" (London, 1846), Chapter VII.: "Central Chile; Structure of the Cordillera.") These islands were covered with fine trees; in the conglomerate, I found one 15 feet in circumference perfectly silicified to the very centre. The alternations of compact crystalline rocks (I cannot doubt subaqueous lavas), and sedimentary beds, now upheaved fractured and indurated, form the main range of the Andes. ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin

... you please. For six days I had been oscillating within a pretty complete circumference of alarms. It is small blame to me, I hope, that with my nerve on so nice a pivot, I quivered and swung to this new apprehension like ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... roused that it will have this liberty; and if there are any institutions of religion or of civil law which can not stand this scrutiny, they are doomed to die. The human mind will move with untrammeled sweep through the whole range of religious doctrine, and around the whole circumference and into the very ...
— Henry IV, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott

... there, fastened to the circumference of a wheel ceaselessly revolving; and Sisyphus, whose task was to roll a huge stone up to a hill-top, but when the steep was well-nigh gained, the rock, repulsed by some sudden force, rushed again headlong down to the plain. Again he toiled ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch

... but the nave of a wheel to which is attached seven hundred and twenty spokes representing as many days and nights. The circumference of this wheel represented by twelve months is without end. This wheel is full of delusions and knows no deterioration. It affects all creatures whether to this or of the other worlds. Ye Aswins, this wheel of time is ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa - Translated into English Prose - Adi Parva (First Parva, or First Book) • Kisari Mohan Ganguli (Translator)

... wrangling almost equals that of the gulls that clamour in crowds about the small harbour, and that are always on the look-out for refuse thrown from the boats or from the quaysides. A special haunt of these gulls is the little Looe Island lying off West Looe, which is about a mile in circumference and 170 feet in height. This islet, also called St. George's Isle, because a chapel to St. George once stood here, is of great value to the river-mouth as a natural breakwater, and was once of further ...
— The Cornwall Coast • Arthur L. Salmon

... upon him, I gave chase, and shot him through the body with one of my pistols. The noose at every cast formed such an exact circle, and fell with such precision, the centre above my head, and the circumference reaching from the neck to the tail of my horse, that if I had not thrown away my rifle, lance, bow, and quiver, I should immediately have been dragged to the ground. All the western Indians and Mexicans are admirably expert in handling this ...
— Monsieur Violet • Frederick Marryat

... would instantaneously bubble up into insufferable flames; no, but from the nucleus of a circle, of which this vial would be the center, lurid radii of flames would gradually shoot outward, until the blazing circumference would roll in vast billows of fire, upon the uttermost shores. Not all the dripping clouds of the deluge could extinguish it. Not all the tears of saints and angels could for an instant check its progress. On and onward it would ...
— The Case of Summerfield • William Henry Rhodes

... creeds, or five decades; and be it known, that the fifty prayers were offered up to the Virgin Mary, and the odd five to God! I then commenced getting round the eternal beds, during which I repeated, I think, fifteen paters and aves more; and as the bods decreased in circumference, the prayers decreased in length, until a short circuit and three paters and aves finished the last and innermost of these blessed couches. I really forgot how many times each day the prison and these beds ...
— The Station; The Party Fight And Funeral; The Lough Derg Pilgrim • William Carleton

... more are worn by one woman. These disks are made by men, who may be called "jewelers to the tribe," from silver quarters and half dollars. The pieces of money are pounded quite thin, made concave, pierced with holes, and ornamented by a groove lying just inside the circumference. Large disks made from half dollars may be called "breast shields." They are suspended, one over each breast. Among the disks other ornaments are often suspended. One young woman I noticed gratifying her vanity with not only eight disks ...
— The Seminole Indians of Florida • Clay MacCauley

... think of them: All discord without this circumference Is only to be pitied, and not fear'd: Yet, should they know it, time will ...
— The Duchess of Malfi • John Webster

... breeze,—the emblem of sovereignty, spiritual and temporal. No one can judge of the immense extent of St. Angelo from the interior. The ashes of the great Emperor, how small a space could they have occupied in that vast circumference—the tomb of the one day, the citadel of the morrow—the grave of the Pagan, the fortress of Christianity! During the recent revolution at Rome the people broke down the viaduct which connects it with the Vatican, and the ruined wall ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various

... is in heaven a light whose goodly shine Makes the Creator visible to all Created, that in seeing him, alone Have peace; and in a circle spreads so far, That the circumference were too loose a zone To ...
— The Symbolism of Freemasonry • Albert G. Mackey

... large wheel makes one revolution, P falls a distance equal to the circumference of the wheel. While P moves downward, W likewise moves, but its motion is upward, and the distance it moves is small, being equal only to the circumference of the small axle. But a small force at P will sustain a larger force ...
— General Science • Bertha M. Clark

... deeper into the secrets of the divine, even though the ultimate revelation will not be given us until the hereafter. The fittest instrument of speculation is furnished by mathematics, in its conception of the infinite and the wonders of numerical relations: as on the infinite sphere center and circumference coincide, so God's essence is exalted above all opposites; and as the other numbers are unfolded from the unit, so the finite proceeds by explication from the infinite. A controlling significance in the serial construction of the world is ascribed to the ten, ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg

... twenty-two keys, fourteen diatonics and eight chromatics, extending from B natural up to A; and twenty bellows blown by ten men. Its larger pipe B stood in front, and was thirty-one Brunswick feet in length and three and a half feet in circumference. This note would now be marked as a semitone below the C of thirty-two feet. In this organ for the first time a provision was made for using the soft stop independently of the loud one. This result was ...
— A Popular History of the Art of Music - From the Earliest Times Until the Present • W. S. B. Mathews

... and, favoured by wind and tide, sailed swiftly forward in a direction almost due north. The aspect of the river now frequently changed: its breadth varied from one to two and three miles. We often came into large reaches many miles in circumference, and surrounded by magnificent scenery. We sailed past pretty hilly islands adorned with lofty spreading trees, and every where found a sufficient depth of water to admit the largest ships. The steep banks sometimes opened to delightful plains, where ...
— A New Voyage Round the World, in the years 1823, 24, 25, and 26, Vol. 2 • Otto von Kotzebue

... life. Religion is a matter of rules, of minute obedience to a code of morals and of ceremonial imposed from without, not of a fellowship of the human with the Divine. In fact, God is banished to a point on the far circumference, and the centre is occupied by the Law. He is retained in order to give authority to that Law, as the source of sanctions in the way of rewards and punishments. In short, the idea of the living God degenerates into the necessary convention ...
— Gloria Crucis - addresses delivered in Lichfield Cathedral Holy Week and Good Friday, 1907 • J. H. Beibitz

... 12, moving bodies suffer a shortening in the direction of the motion. On the other hand, the measaring-rod will not experience a shortening in length, as judged from K, if it is applied to the disc in the direction of the radius. If, then, the observer first measures the circumference of the disc with his measuring-rod and then the diameter of the disc, on dividing the one by the other, he will not obtain as quotient the familiar number p 3.14 . . ., but a larger number,[4]** whereas of course, for a disc which is at rest with respect to K, this ...
— Relativity: The Special and General Theory • Albert Einstein

... senseless, ceaseless manoeuvers, towed by the currents which swept through from the cataract at its upper end. They formed long battle-lines, they assembled into flotillas, they filed about the circumference of a devil's whirlpool at the foot of the rapids, gyrating, bobbing, bowing until crowded out by the pressure of their rivals. Some of them were grounded, like hulks defeated in previous encounters, and along the guardian bar which imprisoned them at the outlet of the lake others were huddled, ...
— The Iron Trail • Rex Beach

... only to the eyes; it is a foreshortening of infinitude that it may enter our sight; there is no imagining of a limit to it; it is a sphere only in this, that in no one direction can we come nearer to its circumference than in another. This infinitive sphere, I say then, or, if you like it better, this spheric infinitude, is the only figure, image, emblem, symbol, fit to begin us to know God; it is an idea incomprehensible; we can only believe in it. In like manner God cannot by searching be ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald

... by the size and magnificent appearance of one of these cherry- trees, which grew close to the road side, not far from the Big Thames. Two years afterwards, passing the same tree, I got out of my sleigh and measured the circumference as high as I could reach, which I found to be ten feet seven inches, and, I should think, it was not less than fifty feet in height from the ground to the first branch: it is a great pity to see such noble trees as these either ...
— Twenty-Seven Years in Canada West - The Experience of an Early Settler (Volume I) • Samuel Strickland

... sails, facing tempests and squalls, reefs, lee shores, and all the vicissitudes of the deep—for others! He laid down the brush beside him, and in a somber reverie looked toward Apia. His eyes scarcely took in the bigger buildings that were dotted here and there round the circumference of the beach: the stone cathedral, the great yellow warehouses of the Firm, the two hotels, the consulates, churches, and stores. What attracted him, what held him in a sort of spell, were the lesser roofs showing through the green of trees and gardens, the tiny cottages on the ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne

... sensibilities; the sense of grandeur, the sense of space, the sense of natural beauty, and the sense of human pathos; that deep internal faculty we call historic sense; that it cannot be defined. First comes the immense surrounding space—a space measured in each arc of the circumference by sections of at least fifty miles, limited by points of exquisitely picturesque beauty, including distant cloud-like mountain ranges and crystals of sky-blue Apennines, circumscribing landscapes of refined loveliness in detail, always ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds

... tradition. Claverack Falls is well worth a visit, which can easily be made in an afternoon stroll. Copake Lake, to the southeast, can be reached by a drive of about twelve miles, a fine sheet of water ten miles in circumference, with a picturesque island connected to the main land by a causeway. Forty years ago a romantic ruin of a stone mansion still stood on this island, where the writer, when a boy, used to wander around the deserted rooms looking for ghosts, but the ...
— The Hudson - Three Centuries of History, Romance and Invention • Wallace Bruce

... the city are in length equal to the breadth—and 1500 miles in circumference, or 375 miles square. The length is in all parts equal; and so is the breadth, and the height,—the ...
— A Brief Commentary on the Apocalypse • Sylvester Bliss

... wholesome, steady, every-day, interesting lives, plain common sense seems to be the first and the simplest need. In the working out of any problem, whether it be in science or in art or in plain everyday living, we are told to go from the circumference to the center, from the known to the unknown, from simplest facts to those which would otherwise seem complex. And whether the life we are living is quiet and commonplace, or whether it is full of change and adventure, to be of the greatest and most permanent use, a life must have ...
— Nerves and Common Sense • Annie Payson Call

... a vast twilight; it filled the cradle of the planet with colourless fire. I felt a rippling motion which impelled me away from the centre to the circumference. At that centre a still flame began to lighten; a new change took place, and space began to curdle, a milky and nebulous substance rocked to and fro. At every motion the pulsation of its rhythm carried it farther and farther away from ...
— AE in the Irish Theosophist • George William Russell

... Cheiracanthus; its anterior dorsal fin placed, as in the Dipterus, Diplopterus, and Glyptolepis, directly opposite to its ventral fins; the enamelled surfaces of the minute scales were fretted with microscopic undulating ridges, that radiated from the centre to the circumference; similar furrows traversed the occipital plates; and the fins, unfurnished with spines, were formed, as in the Dipterus and Diplopterus, of thick-set, enamelled rays. The posterior fins and tail of the creature were not preserved. I may ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller



Words linked to "Circumference" :   circuit, length, border, delimitation, borderline, perimeter, boundary line, mete, sextant, straight angle, girth, circumferential



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