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Diameter   Listen
noun
Diameter  n.  
1.
(Geom.)
(a)
Any right line passing through the center of a figure or body, as a circle, conic section, sphere, cube, etc., and terminated by the opposite boundaries; a straight line which bisects a system of parallel chords drawn in a curve.
(b)
A diametral plane.
2.
The length of a straight line through the center of an object from side to side; width; thickness; as, the diameter of a tree or rock. Note: In an elongated object the diameter is usually taken at right angles to the longer axis.
3.
(Arch.) The distance through the lower part of the shaft of a column, used as a standard measure for all parts of the order. See Module.
Conjugate diameters. See under Conjugate.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Diameter" Quotes from Famous Books



... a very pretty kind of patty when puff-paste is not to be had, and even when it is are a desirable variety. They are made from fine light baker's bread. Cut slices an inch and a half thick, then with a biscuit cutter about two inches in diameter cut circles from these slices, and with another cutter, a size smaller, press half-way through each. You will now have pieces of bread the size and shape of patties. Beat four eggs; mix with a pint of milk and a saltspoonful of salt; pour this ...
— Choice Cookery • Catherine Owen

... extinguisher attached to the lamp iron. I think there is (or was) one in Mount Pleasant, near the house with the variegated pebble pavement in front (laid down, by the way, by a blind man). The link-extinguisher was a sort of narrow iron funnel of about six inches in diameter at the widest end. It was usually attached to a lamp-iron, and was used by thrusting the link up it, when the light was to ...
— Recollections of Old Liverpool • A Nonagenarian

... It had a neat round hole some three inches in diameter, bored completely through, cover to cover! The fire in the grate was flaring ...
— The Golden Scorpion • Sax Rohmer

... Model of the Earth shows the reliefs of the land surface and ocean bed, 20 inches diameter. Used by the Royal Geographical Society, Cornell University. Normal, and other schools ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photograph [March 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various

... columns about four feet in diameter and twenty-five feet high, each cut from a single tree and beautifully polished. Naturally, the central object of interest is a figure of Confucius of heroic size but impossible features. In front is the tablet with costly lacquered ornaments and pedestals, and an altar on which were a bullock and ...
— An Inevitable Awakening • ARTHUR JUDSON BROWN

... to another interesting object called "Chimney Rock" which is not altogether unlike Bunker Hill Monument. It stands by itself on the surrounding level country, with a conical base of about one hundred and fifty feet in diameter and seventy-five feet high where the nearly square part of the column commences, which is about fifty feet on each of the four sides. It is of sandstone and certainly a very singular natural formation. Altogether it is about two hundred feet high. I will mention ...
— California 1849-1913 - or the Rambling Sketches and Experiences of Sixty-four - Years' Residence in that State. • L. H. Woolley

... curtains so arranged as to exclude the entrance of all interfering light from the windows. In the side of the tin box, at the point immediately against the tube, was a circular sheet of aluminium one millimetre in thickness, and perhaps eighteen inches in diameter, soldered to the surrounding tin. To study his rays the professor had only to turn on the current, enter the box, close the door, and in perfect darkness inspect only such light or light effects as he had a right to consider his own, hiding his light, in fact, not under the Biblical bushel, but ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. 6, No. 5, April, 1896 • Various

... led from the body of the lodge to the outer doorway, where some blankets hung as portières. The frame of logs was covered with sods and loose earth to keep out wind and rain. Internally, the lodge was eight feet in height under the apex of the cone and on an average twenty-five feet in diameter at the base. The diameter was increased at the east (to allow for the entry) and at the north. The irregularity in the circumference in the north was at first conjectured to be a mere accident; but in the ceremonies of the first night its use became apparent as affording a hiding place for the ...
— The Mountain Chant, A Navajo Ceremony • Washington Matthews

... this was another movable support, from which a thermometer was suspended and so adjusted that its bulb was immersed in molten material in the iron vessel. A thin copper cartridge case, 5/8 in. in diameter and 1-5/16 in. long, was suspended over the bath by means of a triangle, so that the end of the case was 1 in. below the surface of the liquid. On beginning the experiment the material in the bath was heated to just above ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 787, January 31, 1891 • Various

... into combination, took unto themselves the gyratory motion of the subsided vortices, and seemed to form the germ of another more vast. Suddenly—very suddenly—this assumed a distinct and definite existence, in a circle of more than a mile in diameter. The edge of the whirl was represented by a broad belt of gleaming spray; but no particle of this slipped into the mouth of the terrific funnel, whose interior, as far as the eye could fathom it, ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck

... the lake. Everybody in a hurry falls into his place the best way he can—Wakungu leading, and women behind. They rattle along, through plantains and shrubs, under large trees, seven, eight, and nine feet in diameter, till the beautiful waters are reached—a picture of the Rio scenery, barring that of the higher mountains in the background of that lovely place, which are here represented by the most beautiful little hills. ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke

... sighted land ahead, which, as we drew nearer, resolved itself into three islands lying close together, the largest of which measured about eight miles long by three miles wide, while the remaining two were roughly circular in shape, measuring about a mile in diameter. The two smaller islands presented the appearance of low pyramids with rounded tops, their highest points rising some eight hundred feet above the sea level, while the biggest of the three rose ...
— Overdue - The Story of a Missing Ship • Harry Collingwood

... of white light, perhaps a foot or eighteen inches in diameter, had flitted swiftly across the ...
— The Brass Bowl • Louis Joseph Vance

... In spring the tender shoots come out of a paler green, finger-like, as if they were pointing to the violets at their feet. But when the trees have grown old, and their rough boles measure a yard and more through their diameter, they are no longer beautiful, but they have a sad solemnity all their own, too full of meaning to require the heart's comment to be framed in words. Below, all their earthward-looking branches are sapless and shattered, splintered by the weight of many winters' snows; ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... consideration of those strange and most interesting structures of the Sudan, the tombs of their ancient dead. All through the Sudan, and especially in Nigeria, are to be found great conical dome-shaped structures of baked clay ranging in size from sixteen feet in height and sixty-six feet in basal diameter to seventy feet in height and two hundred and twenty feet in basal diameter.[15a] These structures were first mentioned by Lieutenant Louis Desplaynes in his report of Une Mission archeologique au Sudan francais,[16] but the first ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 6, 1921 • Various

... the debris inside the canoe. 'In the cavity of a large bone,' says the writer, 'was also got an ornament of a peculiar stone. The digger unearthed it from the deposit at the bottom of the canoe, about 14 feet from the bow and near to a circular hole cut in the bottom about 3.5 inches in diameter.' What a funny place to hide a precious ornament, for I take this peculiar stone to be that with the human hand incised on one side and three men rowing in a boat on the other! (see plate ...
— The Clyde Mystery - a Study in Forgeries and Folklore • Andrew Lang

... the hazel, dogberry, and white thorn, with which it was here and there covered. In the bottom, there was a small, but beautiful green carpet, nearly, if not altogether circular, about a hundred yards in diameter, in the centre of which stood one of those fairy rings that gave its name and character to the glen. The place was, at all times, wild, and so solitary that, after dusk, few persons in the neighborhood wished to pass it alone. On the day in question, its ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton

... three of the guides to assist in spooring. I was also accompanied by my dogs. Having selected the spoor of a mighty bull, the Bechuanas went ahead and I followed them. It was extremely interesting and exciting work. The footprint of this elephant was about two feet in diameter, and was beautifully visible in the soft sand. The spoor at first led us for about three miles in an easterly direction, along one of the sandy foot-paths, without a check. We then entered a very thick forest, and the elephant ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 6 • Charles H. Sylvester

... the Magdalena, in the vicinity of Santa Martha and Carthagena, are famed for the excellent cacao they produce. "This tree," says Bonnycastle (Spanish America, vol. 1, p. 257), "is indigenous, seldom exceeds the diameter of seven inches, and is extremely beautiful when laden with its fruit, which are disposed on short stalks over the stem and round the great branches, resembling citrons, from their yellow color, and warty appearance. The leaves are attenuate, stalked, drooping, about a foot long and ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds

... same belfry contains cclxxiiij feet. But altogether it does not exceed five hundred and xx^{ty} feet. Also the ball of the same belfry is capable of containing, if it were vacant, ten bushels of corn; the rotundity of which contains xxxvj inches of diameter, which make three feet; the surface of which, if it were perfectly round, ought to contain four thousand lxviij inches, which make xxviij square feet, and the fourth part of one square foot. The staff ...
— A Chronicle of London from 1089 to 1483 • Anonymous

... o'clock in the forenoon, in Sleepy Hollow, a shallow space scooped out among the woods, which surround it on all sides, it being pretty nearly circular or oval, and perhaps four or five hundred yards in diameter. At the present season, a thriving field of Indian corn, now in its most perfect growth and tasselled out, occupies nearly half of the hollow; and it is like the lap of bounteous Nature, filled with breadstuff. On one verge of this hollow, skirting it, is a terraced ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 109, November, 1866 • Various

... joy, he was told that at the end of a valley called Waihanau there was a natural reservoir. He set out with two white men and some of his boys, and travelled up the valley till he came with delight to a nearly circular basin of most delicious ice-cold water. Its diameter was seventy-two feet by fifty-five, and not far from the bank they found, on sounding, that it was eighteen feet deep. There it lay at the foot of a high cliff, and he was informed by the natives that ...
— Heroes Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie

... to work at once, and built a hut, something like an Indian's wigwam, about a hundred yards from the shore. It was composed, for the most part, of branches of trees and inclosed an inner space of about fifteen feet in diameter. They gathered large quantities of leaves, which were spread upon the ground ...
— Brave and Bold • Horatio Alger, Jr.

... so much character, in a tree. Although lightning had given him a bald crown, he was still a healthy giant, and was waving evergreen banners more than one hundred and fifteen feet above the earth. His massive trunk, eight feet in diameter on a level with my breast, was covered with a thick, rough, golden-brown bark which was broken into irregular plates. Several of his arms were bent and broken. Altogether, he presented a ...
— Wild Life on the Rockies • Enos A. Mills

... more, under certain conditions of the atmosphere. This depends mainly on the circulation of the winds, especially those great movements a thousand miles in diameter known as 'lows' and 'highs' or cyclones and anti-cyclones. In the United States, an anti-cyclone generally means fair weather, and in an anti-cyclone the barometric column rises. That's why a barometer ...
— The Boy with the U. S. Weather Men • Francis William Rolt-Wheeler

... yields 50,000 to 60,000 gallons of burning oil, in addition to about 12 tons of refined paraffin oil and a large quantity of lubricating oil. Each of the condensers contains several miles of piping. The main pipe, which collects the vapours from the retorts, is nearly a yard in diameter. One and a quarter million cubic feet of gas are manufactured at the works every day. Upwards of 1000 hands are employed. In the shale-pits adjoining, four hundred miners are regularly at work. The pits are conveniently near to the Addiewell Works, none of them ...
— Western Worthies - A Gallery of Biographical and Critical Sketches of West - of Scotland Celebrities • J. Stephen Jeans

... a round basin, some fifty or sixty feet in diameter; the banks are steep and the depth great: on the Blent Hall side there is no approach to it, except through a thick wood overhanging the water; on the other side the road up the valley runs close by, leaving a few yards of turf between itself and the brink. The scene is ...
— Tristram of Blent - An Episode in the Story of an Ancient House • Anthony Hope

... setting out of your work on canvas is usually done with charcoal, which must of course be fixed with a spray diffuser. For large work, such as a full-length portrait, sticks of charcoal nearly an inch in diameter are made, and a long swinging line can ...
— The Practice and Science Of Drawing • Harold Speed

... render the pleasure more complete, there is, in the western turret, a camera obscura, of unrivalled excellence, by which all the surrounding objects, both movable and immovable, are beautifully represented in their own natural colours, on a concave table of plaster of Paris, about three feet in diameter. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 404, December 12, 1829 • Various

... double crochet over the cord a circle of three inches and a half diameter; there should be 140 stitches round the edge, on ...
— The Lady's Album of Fancy Work for 1850 • Unknown

... ship miles out at sea. The color is given to the permanent snow by the Protococcus nivalis, one of the lowest types of the single, living protoplasmic cell. The nearly transparent gelatinous masses vary from a quarter inch in diameter to the size of a pin-head, and they draw from the snow and the air the scanty nourishment which they require. Seen from a distance, the snow looks like blood. This red banner of the Arctic has greeted me on ...
— The North Pole - Its Discovery in 1909 under the auspices of the Peary Arctic Club • Robert E. Peary

... hang-nest of some unknown bird, suspended at the four corners to the boughs; it was open at top an inch and a half in diameter, and two deep; the sides and bottom thick, the materials moss, worsted, and birch-bark, lined with hair and feathers. The stream affords the parr,[57] a small species of trout seldom exceeding eight ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume II. • Mrs. Thomson

... the mate and Scott were in the act of making the hawser fast to the ring, the chain got suddenly disentangled at the bottom, and the large buoy, measuring about seven feet in length by three in diameter in the middle, vaulted upwards with such force that it upset the boat, which instantly filled with water. The mate with great difficulty succeeded in getting hold of the gunwale, but Scott seemed to have been stunned by the buoy, ...
— The Lighthouse • Robert Ballantyne

... heard of in all the days of your life! But he will be light enough to hop like a bird, heavy enough to pull up a wire rope with about three hundred pounds on the end of it, and there will be two holes of about an inch in diameter and a foot apart in one end ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew

... was aware that the forest could supply his wants. Rising, he drew his kukri and looked around him. Among the tangle of creepers festooned between the trees he detected the writhing coils of one with withered, cork-like bark, four-sided and about two inches in diameter. He walked over to it and, grasping it in his left hand, cut it through with a blow of his heavy knife. Its interior consisted of a white, moist pulp. With another blow he severed a piece a couple of feet long. Taking a metal cup from his haversack he cut the length ...
— The Elephant God • Gordon Casserly

... lop-eared rabbits, the bony auditory meatus is conspicuously larger than in the wild rabbit. In a skull 4.3 inches in length, and which barely exceeded in breadth the skull of a wild rabbit (which was 3.15 inches in length), the longer diameter of the meatus was exactly twice as great. The orifice is more compressed, and its margin on the side nearest the skull stands up higher than the outer side. The whole meatus is directed more forwards. As in breeding lop-eared rabbits the length of the ears, and their consequent lopping ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Vol. I. • Charles Darwin

... Leake, the fact that a colossal Phallus, which once stood on the top of the tomb of the Lydian king Halyattes, is now lying near the same spot; it is not an entire Phallus, but only the head of one; it is twelve feet in diameter below and nine feet over the glands. The Phallus has even been found, so universal was this worship, among the savages of America. Dr. Arthaut discovered, in the year 1790, a marble Phallic image in a cave of the island of St. Domingo.—CLAVEL, Hist. ...
— The Symbolism of Freemasonry • Albert G. Mackey

... has suddenly been enormously extended. I no longer wonder at Wilson's demonic energy and enthusiasm. Who would not work hard who had a vast virgin field ready to his hand? Why, I have known the novel shape of a nucleolus, or a trifling peculiarity of striped muscular fibre seen under a 300-diameter lens, fill me with exultation. How petty do such researches seem when compared with this one which strikes at the very roots of life and the nature of the soul! I had always looked upon spirit as a product of matter. The brain, I thought, secreted the mind, as the liver does the ...
— The Parasite • Arthur Conan Doyle

... with great swiftness, past the distant city, and disappeared in the direction of the sea from which we had come. The solid column of rising water must have been, at its base, three hundred feet in diameter! ...
— A Columbus of Space • Garrett P. Serviss

... question, stood on the shore and was about six inches in diameter and about sixteen feet in height. The boss of another group of beavers tested the tree by placing his fore-paws against the trunk and spreading out his hind legs as a bracer. He sat upon his tail and took a ...
— Polly and Eleanor • Lillian Elizabeth Roy

... before he had been caught up by some of his machinery and mangled in a frightful manner. We came to a brick wall plastered over, and a little below a shaft that ran through it was a ragged hole nearly three feet in diameter. ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker

... 29: The broad quoit.—Ver. 177. The 'discus,' or quoit, of the ancients, was made of brass, iron, stone, or wood, and was about ten or twelve inches in diameter. Sometimes, a heavy mass of iron, of spherical form, was thrown instead of the 'discus.' It was perforated in the middle, and a rope or thong being passed through, was used ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso

... rolling the pudding into balls, and dipping the balls into oil and date-sauce. A great piece of carpetting was laid round the bowl, to be used as a napkin to wipe the hands and mouth. The wooden dish or bowl might have been three feet in diameter, and was replenished as fast as emptied with masses of boiled dough, oil, and date-sauce. There was suspended over it, two or three feet above, a wicker roof, to prevent the dirt from falling into it when the people stood up all around and ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson

... and absolutely free from knots. If it is impossible to obtain clear pieces of this length, shorter ones may be spliced, but this is not advised as it adds materially to the weight. The twelve stanchions should be 4 feet long and 7/8 inch in diameter and rounded in form so as to offer as little resistance as possible to the wind. The struts, there are twelve of them, are 3 feet long by 11/4 x 1/2 inch. For a 20-foot biplane about 20 yards of stout silk or unbleached muslin, of standard one yard width, ...
— Flying Machines - Construction and Operation • W.J. Jackman and Thos. H. Russell

... canon were shaggy and rough, beyond anything I had ever seen. Huge bowlders, hundreds of feet in diameter, were embedded in them. The bottom also was strewn with ...
— The Girl in the Golden Atom • Raymond King Cummings

... go next, that she might be ready to receive her charges; they, laughing, quickly followed her, the major and the other gentlemen bringing up the rear. They found themselves in a circular vestibule about twenty feet in diameter and fourteen in height, with an irregular concave ceiling covered, as were the sides, with innumerable glittering stalactites, reflecting on their polished surfaces the light of the torches held by the guide and the young ...
— The Missing Ship - The Log of the "Ouzel" Galley • W. H. G. Kingston

... of the entire Universe. The Planet Jupiter is enveloped in deep gloom and Darkness. Gives much information. Vesta, an Asteroid, is about 500 miles in diameter. Says that communications between Planets of our Solar System and our Earth will soon be realized, and that the initial Message will be from Mars. It will herald a New Era for the people of Earth, and will break down our ...
— The Planet Mars and its Inhabitants - A Psychic Revelation • Eros Urides and J. L. Kennon

... crown of branches and the greater the clear length. The individual tree has no object in assuming a desirable commercial form and does so only when deprived of side light by numerous neighbors. Then it sacrifices diameter growth to height growth in reaching for the top light necessary for its life. At the same time the lower branches are killed by shade and drop off, the scars being healed and eventually buried. The pin knots near the center ...
— Practical Forestry in the Pacific Northwest • Edward Tyson Allen

... simple and quickly made. Each man armed himself with a stick three feet long and about three-quarters of an inch in diameter. Rough weapons they were, cut from boughs of scrub-oak, knotty and tough as horn. Long-Hair unbound Beverley and stripped his clothes from his body down to the waist. Then the lines formed, the Indians in each row standing about as far apart as the width of ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson

... that found in the cavity of the pleura. In tracing the bronchi from the lungs to the bifurcation, the mucous membrane, which was smeared with fluid carbon, appeared much irritated, and considerably thickened, diminishing the diameter of these passages; and there were found externally at the root of the lungs, and around the bronchi, several large glands, containing a fluid to all appearance carbonaceous. The trachea showed a similar irritated condition with that of the bronchi. A little above the bifurcation, and at the ...
— An Investigation into the Nature of Black Phthisis • Archibald Makellar

... the polygonal monument founded by Charlemagne in Aix-la-Chapelle is a dome 104 feet high and 48 feet in diameter. The reference is ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning

... power to make him lose his brain, his life, his art; that he, meanwhile, having abandoned all desire or intention of saving his life, lost it while he was inquiring, perhaps, into the proportion of the curve to the straight line, of the diameter to the circle, or other similar mathesis, as suitable for youth, as it were unsuitable for one who, being old, should be intent upon things more worthy of being put as the end of ...
— The Heroic Enthusiast, Part II (Gli Eroici Furori) - An Ethical Poem • Giordano Bruno

... appearance. Its lower hull, 122 feet long and 34 wide, was protected by a raft-like overhanging upper hull, 172 feet long and 41 wide. Midway upon her low deck, which rose only a foot above the water, stood a revolving turret 21 feet in diameter and nine in height. It was made of iron eight inches thick, and bore two eleven-inch guns throwing each a 180-pound ball. Near the bow rose the pilot-house, made of iron logs nine inches by twelve in thickness. The side armor of the hull was five inches thick, ...
— History of the United States, Volume 4 • E. Benjamin Andrews

... them do that, so the seeds from the old trees will seed up the bare ground again. Gosh! You'd ought to hear him light into the choppers when they forget to leave the seed-pines or when they cut under six inches butt diameter." ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher

... million shell. We have already emphasised the question of design in chemical warfare, and its importance is borne out by the comparative failure of these German projectiles. Geyer explains how only minute particles less than 1/10,000 of a millimetre in diameter are of any use to penetrate a mask, and he develops the difficulties experienced by Germany in obtaining such fine pulverisation without decomposing the substance. He explains the difficulties which they had in arriving ...
— by Victor LeFebure • J. Walker McSpadden

... and laurel roses; the latter, growing in great luxuriance, looked beautiful, the sun having not yet scorched them. The fountain, too, in its natural bed, which is not less than seventy-two French feet in diameter, and twenty feet in depth, was pellucid as crystal, and through it the long leaves that nearly cover the gravel appeared green ...
— The Idler in France • Marguerite Gardiner

... going to make a circle four feet in diameter," he said. "We have to dig the well as ...
— The Magic Egg and Other Stories • Frank Stockton

... 44, was kicked by a horse on the leg, above the inner ankle, two years ago. The part has never healed, but still remains in the state of an open ulcer, attended by some inflammation. When I first saw this ulcer it was about two inches in diameter and nearly circular, with high edges, a surface of a greenish colour, and without any healthy granulations. I applied the lunar caustic ...
— An Essay on the Application of the Lunar Caustic in the Cure of Certain Wounds and Ulcers • John Higginbottom

... says, is considerable and becomes apparent in the increase of transverse diameter of the cranium. The Negrito element is apparent only in the waviness of the hair, the height and prominence of the forehead, and the ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan

... set up my tent I drew a half-circle before the hollow place, which took in about ten yards in its semi-diameter from the rock, and twenty yards in its diameter from ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various

... the mouth of the Little Gimlet, Paul dug a well so deep that it took all day for the bucket to fall to the water, and a week to haul it up. They had to run so many buckets that the well was forty feet in diameter. It was shored up with tamarac poles and when the camp was abandoned Paul pulled up this cribbing. Travelers who have visited the spot say that the sand has blown away until 178 feet of the well is sticking up into the air, ...
— The Marvelous Exploits of Paul Bunyan • W.B. Laughead

... explore the Buller at the bottom. We entered the arch, which the water had made, and found ourselves in a place, which, though we could not think ourselves in danger, we could scarcely survey without some recoil of the mind. The bason in which we floated was nearly circular, perhaps thirty yards in diameter. We were inclosed by a natural wall, rising steep on every side to a height which produced the idea of insurmountable confinement. The interception of all lateral light caused a dismal gloom. Round us was a perpendicular rock, above us the distant sky, and ...
— A Journey to the Western Isles of Scotland • Samuel Johnson

... the clearest idea of its size by a comparison. The earth is 7920 miles in diameter, that is, as measured right through the centre. Now suppose it to be only one inch, or about as large as a plum or a half-grown peach; then we would have to regard the sun as three yards in diameter, so ...
— Harper's Young People, January 20, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... shaped somewhat like a great shell, such as they use in warfare, or, more properly speaking, built like a cigar or a torpedo, is the only feasible means of reaching Mars. We shall go in a projectile, two hundred feet long, and ten feet in diameter at the largest point. That will offer the least resistance to the atmosphere of the earth, though when we get within the atmosphere of Mars, and are subjected to its attraction of gravitation, we shall ...
— Through Space to Mars • Roy Rockwood

... quite true that owing to the rapid evaporation of water in the comparatively thin atmosphere of Mars, the dewfall for quite a radius from the center of the reservoirs is considerable, with the result that vegetation springs up, giving the "Oases" the appearance of a diameter of about 75 miles. The reservoirs are about 60 miles across and hold ...
— The Planet Mars and its Inhabitants - A Psychic Revelation • Eros Urides and J. L. Kennon

... believe that this sandbar, grown to switch willows which increased to poles six or seven inches in diameter, had once been a big island covered with stalwart trees, with earthworks, cannon, and desperate soldiers. Its serene quiet, undulating sands and casual weed-trees, showing the stain of floods that had filled the bark with sediment, proved the indifference of the river ...
— The River Prophet • Raymond S. Spears

... curved side allow every inch of space to be utilized. It is almost impossible to upset them, and their only disadvantage is lack of speed. For their guidance all that is required is a steersman with a paddle, as indicated in the Epic. It is true that the larger kuffah of to-day tends to increase in diameter as compared to height, but that detail might well be ignored in picturing the monster vessel of Ut-napishtim. Its seven horizontal stages and their nine lateral divisions would have been structurally ...
— Legends Of Babylon And Egypt - In Relation To Hebrew Tradition • Leonard W. King

... was a tremendous world. The Merchant, especially, had been taken aback. He had known the figures that expressed the planet's diameter, but from a distance of two light-seconds, he had stood at ...
— Youth • Isaac Asimov

... in such a fashion that in every one of the six corners there was built a great round tower, sixty paces in diameter, and were all of a like form and bigness. Upon the north side ran the river Loire, on the bank whereof was situated the tower called Arctic. Going toward the east there was another called Calaer, the next following Anatole, the next Mesembrine, the next ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VII (of X)—Continental Europe I • Various

... by no means all opium-smokers; some of them smoked tobacco, of a vile quality, in metal pipes, with an under-hanging curved portion containing water, through which the smoke passed. The opium-pipe is a quite different thing. It is a reed of about an inch in diameter, and the aperture in the bowl for the admission of the opium is not larger than a pin's head. The drug is prepared by boiling and evaporation to the consistence of treacle. Very few whiffs can be taken from a single pipe, but one is enough to have an ...
— Under the Dragon Flag - My Experiences in the Chino-Japanese War • James Allan

... that man," said he. "I was cleaning up the pasture for my beasts, when I found this"—kicking a great redwood, seven feet in diameter, that lay there on its side, hollow heart, clinging lumps of bark, all changed into grey stone, with veins of quartz between what had been ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... it contains nothing, not even air. Accordingly in the seventeenth century, one Francisco Lana, another priest, proposed to build an airship supported by four globes of copper, very thin and light, from which all the air had been pumped. The globes were to be twenty feet in diameter, and were estimated to have a lifting force of 2650 pounds. The weight of the copper shells was put at 1030 pounds, leaving a margin of possible weight for the car and its contents of 1620 pounds. It seemed at first ...
— Aircraft and Submarines - The Story of the Invention, Development, and Present-Day - Uses of War's Newest Weapons • Willis J. Abbot

... four feet above the pavement, there indeed they saw the inestimably sacred stone, which every Moslem believes once formed a part of Paradise and was given by Allah to the first man. To the Legionaries' excited eyes it seemed to be an irregular oval, perhaps seven inches in diameter, with an undulating surface composed of about a dozen smaller stones joined by cement and worn blackly smooth by ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England

... which the herons built stand a little up from the lake. There are several groves of them; many of the trees were gnarled, for which reason the lumbermen had rejected them; some of them were four and five feet in diameter ...
— When Life Was Young - At the Old Farm in Maine • C. A. Stephens

... themselves, and avoid contusion almost without the help of my eyes. Then I came to a large and rapid river called the Kishun-gunga crossed by a rope bridge. Let me describe the bridge. Three or four leather ropes about one inch in diameter tied into a bundle to walk upon, three feet above this, a couple of ropes, two feet apart, the upper ropes connected to the lower one at intervals of four or five yards by stakes. This formed a V shape, and you walk on ...
— Three Months of My Life • J. F. Foster

... engine was cylindrical in form, flat at the ends, and made of wrought iron. The furnace and flue were inside the boiler, within which the single cylinder, eight inches in diameter and four feet six inches stroke, was placed horizontally. As in the first engine, the motion of the wheels was produced by spur gear, to which was also added a fly-wheel on one side, to secure a rotatory motion ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles

... Mahomet proof of his skill by casting the largest cannon which had ever been fabricated. He had already placed one of extraordinary size in the new castle of the Bosporus, which carried across the straits. The gun destined for the siege of Constantinople far exceeded in size this monster, and the diameter of its mouth must have been nearly two feet and a half. Other cannon of great size, whose balls of stone weighed one hundred fifty pounds, were also cast, as well as many guns of smaller calibre. All these, together with ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 8 - The Later Renaissance: From Gutenberg To The Reformation • Editor-in-Chief: Rossiter Johnson

... gregarious, globose, bright yellow, very minute, .5 mm. high, .3 mm. in diameter, stipitate; stipe short, one-third the total height, pale brown or yellow; hypothallus none; capillitium loose, freely expanding, not deciduous, honey-yellow, the threads generally wide, 4-5 mu, toward the periphery more ...
— The North American Slime-Moulds • Thomas H. (Thomas Huston) MacBride

... strong upon, and was evidently fond of urging, was the material pomp and circumstance which should environ a great seat of learning. He considered it was worth the consideration of the government, whether Oxford should not stand in a domain of its own. An ample range, say four miles in diameter, should be turned into wood and meadow, and the University should be approached on all sides by a magnificent park, with fine trees in groups and groves and avenues, and with glimpses and views of the fair city, as the traveller drew near it. There is nothing surely absurd in the idea, though ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various

... After breakfast, the Four set out to explore, with trout-rods and shot-guns. Bear Island is, with the exception of the cove into which we had put, as nearly round as an island can be, and perhaps three miles in diameter. It has two clear brooks which, owing to the comparative inaccessibility of the place, still contain trout and grayling, though there are few spots where a fly can be cast on account of the dense underbrush. ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... continues at intervals, to the foot, of the mountains. It reminded me of a glacier of rocks instead of ice. A little higher up, lies a massive block of granite called the "Giant's Column." It is thirty-two feet long and three to four feet in diameter, and still bears the mark of the chisel. When or by whom it was made, remains a mystery. Some have supposed it was intended to be erected for the worship of the Sun, by the wild Teutonic tribes who inhabited this forest; it ...
— Views a-foot • J. Bayard Taylor

... truly called. The chapel of Lanleff is composed of two concentric circular enclosures separated by twelve round arches, with cushion-shaped capitals, having heads, human and animal, rudely sculptured upon them at the four angles. Its whole diameter is about twenty-two feet. It was probably built by some Templar Knight in the beginning of the twelfth century on his return from the Holy Land. The number of arches may allude to ...
— Brittany & Its Byways • Fanny Bury Palliser

... but one of the natives gave me, as I afterwards found, the true direction of them. We observed that in all, or most of their sugar plantations, were dug holes or pits, four feet deep, and five or six in diameter; and on our enquiring their use, we were given to understand that they caught rats in them. These animals, which are very destructive to the canes, are here in great plenty. The canes, I observed, were planted as thick as possible round the ...
— A Voyage Towards the South Pole and Round the World Volume 2 • James Cook

... amber, 7 shades of lilac, 4 shades of green. 4 Skeins of each colour. 5 Steel Needles, No. 14. Cardboard foundation, covered with white or amber cambric, 8 inches in diameter. ...
— The Ladies' Work-Book - Containing Instructions In Knitting, Crochet, Point-Lace, etc. • Unknown

... of high water, that we were much afraid of our bergs floating; they remained firm, however, even though the ice came in with so much force as to break one of our hand-masts, a fir spar of twelve inches in diameter. As the high tides, and the lightening of the Fury, now gave us sufficient depth of water for unshipping the rudders, we did so, and laid them upon the small berg astern of us, for fear of their being damaged by any pressure of ...
— Narratives of Shipwrecks of the Royal Navy; between 1793 and 1849 • William O. S. Gilly

... with his clothes on, ready to slip into the boat at a moment's notice. The ship was standing some distance off the land, and though the sea was generally open, here and there masses of ice were to be seen floating about from enormous icebergs down to small pieces of a few feet in diameter. Archy hoped that before long the boats would be lowered to go in chase of a whale. He tried to keep awake, but sleep soon overpowered him. He was aroused by hearing the sound of stamping overhead, and the looked for cry of "a fall, a fall." He sprang on deck, ...
— Archibald Hughson - An Arctic Story • W.H.G. Kingston

... fuel and shelter from the keen night air which blew off the distant mountains, we had unsaddled and unpacked our horses and mules, the packs being placed so as to form a circular enclosure about eight paces in diameter. ...
— Adventures in the Far West • W.H.G. Kingston

... amazed to find that through a hole less than a quarter of an inch in diameter the brass tube enabled me to see the entire ...
— The Ear in the Wall • Arthur B. Reeve

... down and cut through the forest of tender small roots below; but when they had passed the main body of the stump and worked under it, they found that their hole around the trunk was not large enough in diameter to enable them to reach to the taproot and cut through it. They could only reach it feebly with the hatchet, fraying it, but there was no chance for a free swing to sever the tough wood. Instead of widening the hole at once, they kept laboring at the root, working the ...
— Bull Hunter • Max Brand

... were pulled across each other. With the wire teeth now angled in the same direction, the action rolled the carded fibers into a sliver (a loose roll of untwisted fibers) that was the length of the hand card and about the diameter of the finger. This placed the wool fibers crosswise in relation to the length of the sliver, their best position for spinning.[1] Until the mid-18th century hand cards were the only type of implement available ...
— The Scholfield Wool-Carding Machines • Grace L. Rogers

... Castle Street stands the Salvation Army Citadel, an effective castellated mansion, the most imposing "barracks'' possessed anywhere by this organization. In front of it is the Market Cross, a beautiful, open-arched, hexagonal structure, 21 ft. in diameter and 18 ft. high. The original was designed in 1682 by Jnhn Montgomery, a native architect, but in 1842 it was removed hither from its old site and rebuilt in a better style. On the entablature surmounting the Ionic columns ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... nearest fixed star. —[His figures were far too small. A map drawn on the scale of 400,000 miles to the inch would need to be 1,100 miles long to take in both the earth and the nearest fixed star. On such a map the earth would be one-fiftieth of an inch in diameter—the size of a small grain of sand.]—So one cannot put the modern heavens on a map, nor the modern God; but the Bible God and the Bible heavens can be set down on a slate and ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine

... old. The circular scroll, which at one time had doubtless borne an inscription, was smooth save for a few dimples which indicated faintly where words had been. The centre was a slightly raised disc about an inch and a quarter in diameter. Upon this, of blue enamel, cracked and chipped with age and usage, was the figure of a lion rampant, a royal crown upon its head. From the central disc, intersected by the scroll, radiated points of equal ...
— Trusia - A Princess of Krovitch • Davis Brinton

... Subglobose, 10 cm. in diameter, simple: tubercles long (15 to 20 mm.) and spreading, with woolly axils: radial spines 3, rigid and recurved, 5 mm. long; central spines 3, very stout and much recurved, 20 to 30 mm. long, alternating with the radials; all ashy colored and often ...
— The North American Species of Cactus, Anhalonium, and Lophophora • John M. Coulter

... connection. On the other hand, constructive proportion, or the adaptation of quantities to functions, is agreeable not to the eye, but to the mind, which is cognizant of the function to be performed. Thus the pleasantness or rightness of the proportions of a column depends not on the mere relation of diameter and height, (which is not proportion at all, for proportion is between three terms at least,) but on three other involved terms, the strength of materials, the weight to be borne, and the scale of the building. The proportions of a wooden column are wrong in a stone one, and of a small building ...
— Modern Painters Volume II (of V) • John Ruskin

... a second. It would, therefore, go out from the star at the rate of a million of miles in between five and six seconds. In the lapse of one of our days, the light would have filled a sphere around the star having a diameter more than one hundred and fifty times the distance of the sun from the earth, and more than five times the dimensions of the whole solar system. Continuing its course and enlarging its sphere day after day, the sight presented to us would have been that of ...
— Side-lights on Astronomy and Kindred Fields of Popular Science • Simon Newcomb

... turning sharp off to the right, just wide enough and high enough to travel through comfortably on one's hands and knees. It wound round in what seemed to me to be about a half-circle of about fifty yards in diameter, and its inner end gave access to an enormous cavern, very roughly circular in shape, and about four hundred ...
— A Middy in Command - A Tale of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood

... known as "Brant House." The room in which the old chief was so unhappy as to slay his son is pointed out to visitors, with stains—said to be the original blood stains—on the floor. Among the historical objects in the immediate neighbourhood is a gnarled old oak nearly six feet in diameter at the base, known as "The Old Council Tree," from the fact that the chief and other dignataries of the Six Nations were wont to hold conferences beneath its spreading branches. Close by is a mound where lie ...
— Canadian Notabilities, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent

... had been struck just at the water line and the hole made in her side was all of six inches in diameter. Through this the water was pouring into the ...
— The Rover Boys on the Ocean • Arthur M. Winfield

... subsequent experiments of a similar kind made at Pravali, in Carinthia, and elsewhere, have led the author, who is specially occupied in the building of Bessemer works, to design a plant suitable for operation upon small charges. This consists essentially of a converter about 1 meter outside diameter, and 1.5 meters high, connected by a single trunnion to a horizontal steel shaft carried by the arm of a hydraulic crane which is very similar in character to the ladle crane of a large sized converter. The sweep of the crane is such as to allow the converter to be ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 492, June 6, 1885 • Various

... food are grasshoppers, caterpillars and beetles. It should have a house measuring about 5" in length and width, inside measurements, and 8" or more in depth. The entrance hole should be 1-1/2" in diameter and placed near the top, so that the young birds cannot get out until strong enough to have some chance of escape from their enemies after they leave the nest. While authorities differ as to the need of cleaning after a season's use, it seems wise to provide the ...
— Bird Houses Boys Can Build • Albert F. Siepert

... paper opened and fell away, a short, truncated cone of tin was disclosed, with another smaller one loosely held within it. The two sections, when adjusted, made a plain megaphone, about twenty-four inches in length and some five inches in diameter ...
— The Shadow World • Hamlin Garland

... was the instrument chosen by fate to bring about this terrible end. The power of the sunbeams is twice as great here as upon the earth, and the heat in the focus of a mirror a couple of feet in diameter would suffice to set fire to the flimsy materials which abounded on the tower. Once started in such a place it ran like sparks ...
— A Columbus of Space • Garrett P. Serviss

... for plants, for the next crop. The stalk is then cut off close to the ground—and it is that which furnishes the juice for sugar. It is from three to twelve feet long, and from one to two inches in diameter, according to the quality of the soil, the seasonableness of the weather, &c. The cutters are followed by gatherers, who bind up the plants and stalks, as the cutters cast them behind them, in different bundles. The carts follow in the train, and take ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society

... 1564, was completed by D. Fontana in 1604. It is the most majestic creation of the Renaissance, and one of the greatest architectural conceptions of all history. It measures 140 feet in internal diameter, and with its two shells rises from a lofty drum, buttressed by coupled Corinthian columns, to a height of 405 feet to the top of the lantern. The church, as left by Michael Angelo, was harmonious in its proportions, though the ...
— A Text-Book of the History of Architecture - Seventh Edition, revised • Alfred D. F. Hamlin

... dams, the beaver does not thrust the ends of the stakes into the bed of the river, but lays them down horizontally, holding them in place by piling mud and stones upon them. The logs which compose the dams are mostly from six to eight inches in diameter, though some have been found nearly two feet through. The enormous number of such logs used may be imagined perhaps, when the ponderous character of the dams is remembered, and when it is stated that some of them are more than an eighth of a mile wide. ...
— The Life of Kit Carson • Edward S. Ellis

... minutes he was on deck. A sense of disappointment stole over him. He had, while he was dressing, entertained the hope that on going on deck he should see an English cruiser in pursuit; but the wind had dropped and it was still thick, and his vision was confined to a circle a quarter of a mile in diameter. Jacques nodded to him good-temperedly, for all on board the privateer were in high spirits. Their voyage had begun propitiously; the darkness of the preceding night had enabled them to ran the gantlet of the British cruisers in the narrow ...
— One of the 28th • G. A. Henty

... in Dearborn Street. This particular saloon, a feature of political Chicago at this time, was a large affair containing among other marvelous saloon fixtures a circular bar of cherry wood twelve feet in diameter, which glowed as a small mountain with the customary plain and colored glasses, bottles, labels, and mirrors. The floor was a composition of small, shaded red-and-green marbles; the ceiling a daub of pinky, fleshy ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser

... fish, as long as my arm, would slowly rise and fall, and paddle away beneath us. We dropped nickels and copper cents down to the bottom, and we could plainly see them lying there. In some parts of the bottom there were "wells," or holes, about two feet in diameter, which seemed to go down indefinitely. These, we were told, were the places where the water came up from below into the spring. We could see the weeds and grasses that grew on the edges of these wells, although we could not see very far ...
— A Jolly Fellowship • Frank R. Stockton



Words linked to "Diameter" :   diametral, windage, radius, bore, diam, calibre, gauge, caliber, diametrical



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