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Pyramidal   /pərˈæmədəl/   Listen
Pyramidal

adjective
1.
Resembling a pyramid.  Synonyms: pyramidic, pyramidical.



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"Pyramidal" Quotes from Famous Books



... is justly a general favourite: not but that you may have coffee, chocolate, punch, peach, almond, and in short every species of gratification of this kind; while the glasses are filled to a great height, in a pyramidal shape, and some of them with layers of strawberry, gooseberry, and other coloured ice—looking like pieces of a Harlequin's jacket—are seen moving to and fro, to be silently and certainly devoured by those who bespeak them. Add to this, every one has his tumbler and small water-bottle by ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Two • Thomas Frognall Dibdin

... engraaaaver. Lloyd then prints 'em: are they not fun? I doat on them; in my next venture, I am going to have colour printing; it will be very laborious, six blocks to cut for each picter, but the result would be pyramidal. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... liqueurs—all created a picture of colorful luxury, which, we are assured, struck those that looked upon it as "most agreeable." Threading their musical murmurings through all the laughter and badinage, the tossing jets of the pyramidal fountains fell away to pools ...
— The Story of Versailles • Francis Loring Payne

... similar to those on the coast line of our own country. Over these we gently ran day after day until we could see vast fields of sand and scrub that it must have taken thousands of years of gale and hurricane to deposit in the quaint pyramidal fashion in which they stand to-day. Even yet they are not fixed; occasionally a tree falls exposing the naked sand to the action of the wind, which swirls around the hole and moves the sand into a spiral ...
— With the "Die-Hards" in Siberia • John Ward

... happen to figures in the best ages of art, as if it had been boned for a pie, was called a fantoccio da cero, a tower-puppet; consequently improved taste, with Cecca to help it, had devised for the magnificent Zecca a triumphal car like a pyramidal catafalque, with ingenious wheels warranted to turn all corners easily. Round the base were living figures of saints and angels arrayed in sculpturesque fashion; and on the summit, at the height of ...
— Romola • George Eliot

... rainbow. The walls of rock, bedewed by the ever-falling water, were a series of the most brilliant greens supplied by the luxuriant ferns and mosses, while here and there, where their seeds had found nourishment in cleft and chasm, huge cedars, perfect in their pyramidal symmetry, rose spiring up to arrow-like points a hundred, two hundred feet in the pure air. Flowers dotted the grassy bottom; birds flitted here and there, and sang. There was the delicious lemony odour emitted by the deodars, and a dreamy feeling of its being good to live ...
— Fix Bay'nets - The Regiment in the Hills • George Manville Fenn

... has stopped short the buttresses are roofed with the quaintest semi-circular caps, and over the clock there are two more odd-looking pepper boxes perched upon the steep slope that projects from the square belfry. Over all there is a low pyramidal roof, stained with orange lichen and making a great contrast in colour to the weather-beaten stone-work down below. There are small patches of tiled roofing to the buttresses at the western ends of the aisles and these also add colour to this picturesque building. ...
— Normandy, Complete - The Scenery & Romance Of Its Ancient Towns • Gordon Home

... the peaks of thorium, and Rip looked them over. The tallest was perhaps forty feet high. It was roughly pyramidal, with a base about sixty feet ...
— Rip Foster in Ride the Gray Planet • Harold Leland Goodwin

... seven c. to Palacha, or Pelaiche; 80th, twelve c. to Antro, or Anter; 31st, six c. to Gualior, a pleasant city with castle; and on the top of a pyramidal hill, is a ruined building in which several great men have been interred. The castle of Gualior is on the west side of the town, on a steep craggy cliff, six coss in circuit, or, as some say, eleven, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. VIII. • Robert Kerr

... multitudes of men to whom I have preached the pure gospel? No; I esteem their salvation more than this poor body, now appointed unto death." The vestments were removed one by one, each bishop pronouncing a curse as he performed his part of the ceremony. Finally "they put on his head a cap or pyramidal-shaped mitre of paper, on which were painted frightful figures of demons, with the word 'Arch-Heretic' conspicuous in front. 'Most joyfully,' said Huss, 'will I wear this crown of shame for Thy sake, O Jesus, who for me didst wear a crown ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White

... stands at the top, but, whoever he may be, he has carried by the force of strength, determination and patient will, the whole swarm of his evil bacteria with him. They swarm through every terrace below, increasing in force as the pyramid enlarges downward. It is the pyramidal bulk of human nature with its finest brain, true to anatomic principles, at the top. That radiance at the summit is the delight and the aspiration of ...
— The Dead Men's Song - Being the Story of a Poem and a Reminiscent Sketch of its - Author Young Ewing Allison • Champion Ingraham Hitchcock

... is the prolongation of the spinal cord, extending to the pons Varolii. This portion of the brain is very large in the horse: it is pyramidal in shape, the narrowest part joining ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture

... tribes once sojourned in Northern Africa is attested by Druidical remains in Morocco and elsewhere. Mr. Richardson mentions the frequent occurrence of pyramidal stones in the Sahara, incidentally, without specifying whether they are rocks in situ, or supposed to be the work of man's hand. The language of Ghadames is one of the Berber dialects; and according to Mr. Urquhart (Pillars of Hercules, vol. i. p. 383.), these, or ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 180, April 9, 1853 • Various

... subfamily. The most abundant and conspicuous of these western forms are the long-crested jays, so called on account of the long tuft of black feathers adorning the occiput. This distinguishing mark is not like the firm pyramidal crest of the eastern jay, but is longer and narrower, and so flexible that it sways back and forth as the bird flits from branch to branch or takes a hop-skip-and-jump over the ground. Its owner can raise and lower it ...
— Birds of the Rockies • Leander Sylvester Keyser

... visible and invisible—or tangible and intangible—representations of the same person before you at the same time. If a representation of the figure of the duchess be necessary, it should not be in the form of a medallion. The pyramidal back-ground would doubtless have had a ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Three • Thomas Frognall Dibdin

... light is a peculiar brightness, pyramidal or wedge-like in form, seen at certain periods of the year in the eastern or western sky, before sunrise and after sunset. Its direction is in the line of the zodiac, whence its name—not perpendicular to the horizon, but at a varying angle, being in the spring from 60 to 70 degrees. The ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 449 - Volume 18, New Series, August 7, 1852 • Various

... wrapped up in 100 goat skins, were the idols preserved in the temple of the Natchez. Many authors assert that the Amazons and many Eastern people had nothing in their temples but these pyramidal stones, which represented to them the Divinity.... "Peut-etre aussi vouloient ils (les fondateurs des Pyramides) figurer en meme tems la Divinite, et ce qui leur restoit d'idees du mystere de la Sainte Trinite, dans les trois faces de ces pyramides. Du moins est ce ainsi qu'aux ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton

... indeed surprising if Leonardo da Vinci, in whom the artist and the man of science were so wonderfully united, had not been greatly preoccupied with the mathematics of the art of painting. His Madonna of the Rocks, and Virgin on the Lap of Saint Anne, in the Louvre, exhibit the very perfection of pyramidal composition. It is however in his masterpiece, The Last Supper, that he combines geometrical symmetry and precision with perfect naturalness and freedom in the grouping of individually interesting and dramatic figures. Michael ...
— The Beautiful Necessity • Claude Fayette Bragdon

... field, for he had had the name of a good soldier. But probably he was a big man in his own line, whatever it was, for the Under-Secretary fellow had talked small in his presence, and so great a man as Gaudian clearly respected him. There must be no lack of brains inside that funny pyramidal head. ...
— Greenmantle • John Buchan

... out, and on the opposite bank of the rivulet the trees grew closer together, and the woods were almost woven into a solid mass, by the lianas and other creeping plants. These were covered with blossoms. In some places a wall of snow-white flowers rose up before you. Pyramidal forms of foliage, green and yellow, over which hung myriads of vine-blossoms, like a scarlet mantle. Still there was no path—at least to be trodden by human foot. Birds flew around, scared in their solitary haunts. The armadilla and the wolf stood at a distance ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 4 October 1848 • Various

... large brick edifice, with a pyramidal roof, covered with moss, small windows, porticos with pillars somewhat out of repair, a big, high hall, and a staircase wide enough to drive a gig up it if it could have turned the corners. A grove of great forest oaks and poplars densely shaded ...
— The Burial of the Guns • Thomas Nelson Page

... 'Talegalla Lathami' does not exactly tally with that which we should give of the Now. His description is as follows: — "For some weeks previous to laying its eggs, the Brush turkey collects together an immense mass of vegetable matter, varying from two to four cart-loads, with which it forms a pyramidal heap; in this heap it plants its eggs about eighteen inches deep, and from nine to twelve inches apart. The eggs are always placed with the large ends upwards, being carefully covered, and are then left to hatch by the heat engendered by the decomposition of the surrounding matter. The heaps ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor

... consisted of a long tapering shaft or beam, pivoted at a short distance from the butt end on a pair of strong pyramidal trestles. At the other end of the shaft a sling was applied, one cord of which was firmly attached by a ring, whilst the other hung in a loop over an iron hook which formed the extremity of the shaft. The power employed to discharge the sling was either the strength ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa

... we call that house a bungalow," added Sir Modava. "It is the house usually occupied by Europeans here. They are one story high, with a broad veranda, like the one we have just visited. Almost always they have a pyramidal roof, generally thatched, but rarely slated or tiled. When the body is of brick or stone, they call them pucka houses. Doubtless you wished to know the origin of the word, ...
— Across India - Or, Live Boys in the Far East • Oliver Optic

... "but, not long after, they began to build them of stone, and to finish all their buttresses in the same manner." Mr. Murphy observes that spires were introduced in the 12th century, about the time that the practice of burying in churches became general over Europe; and he supposes that the pyramidal form of the spire, was used as the denotation of a church comprising a cemetery. This representation he imagines to have been borrowed "from the ancient Egyptians, who placed the pyramid over their cemeteries, as denoting the soul under the emblem of a flame of fire, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 13, No. 359, Saturday, March 7, 1829. • Various

... hive-bee, placed in a double layer: each cell, as is well known, is an hexagonal prism, with the basal edges of its six sides bevelled so as to fit on to a pyramid, formed of three rhombs. These rhombs have certain angles, and the three which form the pyramidal base of a single cell on one side of the comb, enter into the composition of the bases of three adjoining cells on the opposite side. In the series between the extreme perfection of the cells of the hive-bee and the simplicity of those ...
— On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection • Charles Darwin

... kingdom, which is subject to the great khan. The inhabitants are idolaters, and have a peculiar language. There was formerly a king in this city, who being on the point of death, gave orders to erect two pyramidal monuments, or towers of marble, near his sepulchre, one at the head and the other at the foot, each of them ten fathoms high, and having a round ball on the top of each. One of these he ordered ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 1 • Robert Kerr

... (trachea or windpipe), and consists of a framework of cartilages articulated or jointed with one another so as to permit of movement (vide fig. 4). The cartilages are called by names which indicate their form and shape: (1) shield or thyroid, (2) the ring or cricoid, and (3) a pair of pyramidal or arytenoid cartilages. Besides these there is the epiglottis, which from its situation above the glottis acts more or less as a lid. The shield cartilage is attached by ligaments and muscles to the bone (hyoid) in the root of the tongue, a pair of muscles also connect this ...
— The Brain and the Voice in Speech and Song • F. W. Mott

... 'Coatepantli,' or 'wall of serpents.' This wall was pierced by huge battlemented gateways, opening upon the four principal streets of the city, and over each gate was a kind of arsenal filled with arms and warlike gear. The teocalli itself was of the usual pyramidal shape, and five stories high, coated on the outside with hewn stones. The ascent was by flights of steps on the outside, and Cortes found two priests and several caciques waiting to carry him up them as they had just carried ...
— The True Story Book • Andrew Lang

... sportiveness, the same maternal tenderness, are developed with more harmonious refinement. A larger picture, belonging to the middle time of his Florentine period, is in the Munich Gallery—the Madonna Canignani, which presents a peculiar study of artificial grouping, in a pyramidal shape. Among the best pictures of the latter part of this Florentine period are the S. Catherine, now in the National Gallery, formerly in the Aldobrandini Gallery at Rome, and two large altar-pieces. One ...
— Six Centuries of Painting • Randall Davies

... through Magenta, situated amid fertile corn-fields and plantations of mulberry trees. This was the scene of one of the greatest battles in the war which gained Italy her freedom from the hated rule of Austria. Close to the railway station is a huge pyramidal monument, indicating the spot where the brunt of the battle was borne, and erected to the memory of the brave French who fell in the contest. All along the route are mementoes of the late war. Casting our eyes over the level plains, occasionally broken by the river Ticino, and undulating towards ...
— Fair Italy, the Riviera and Monte Carlo • W. Cope Devereux

... one day, in the palace of Prince Alexis, of Kinesma. This edifice, with its massive white walls, and its pyramidal roofs of green copper, stood upon a gentle mound to the eastward of the town, overlooking it, a broad stretch of the Volga, and the opposite shore. On a similar hill, to the westward, stood the church, glittering with its dozen bulging, golden domes. These ...
— Beauty and The Beast, and Tales From Home • Bayard Taylor

... the spot of my captivity, but it had entirely changed its appearance. A storm of equinoctial violence had broken off its pyramidal height, and the drift of sand and gravel, and fragments of rocks, had given a new face to the whole recess. I sent for the seaman to ascertain the very spot: this he did; but told me that a similar change took place commonly twice ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 3 • Madame D'Arblay

... parallel lines from east to west, and bounding longitudinal valleys. These valleys are intersected at right angles by an infinite number of small ravines, scooped out by the torrents: the consequence is, that the lateral ranges are transformed into so many rows of paps, some round and others pyramidal. The ground in general is a gentle slope as far as the Imposible; Farther on the precipices become bold, and continue so to the shore of the gulf of Cariaco. The form of this mass of mountains reminded us of the chain of the Jura; and the only plain that presents itself is the valley ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt

... Bob and I went home with a new sensation! Apples and marbles to Bob; to me, something to study, to fuss over, to care for. How refreshing, after the excitement of balls and late suppers, to retire, and still better to rise, upon alligators! How primitive, how scriptural, how pyramidal in suggestion! A large tub with sufficient water to cover them well, was placed in the yard, and tilted a little, so that they could crawl out into the sun; a choice of vegetables and meats thrown in for supper; and the whole ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, April 1844 - Volume 23, Number 4 • Various

... tooth or dog-tooth ornament, a kind of pyramidal-shaped flower of four leaves, which is generally inserted in a hollow moulding, and, when seen in profile, presents a zig-zag or serrated appearance. The tooth moulding appears to have been introduced towards the close of the twelfth century; and an early instance where it ...
— The Principles of Gothic Ecclesiastical Architecture, Elucidated by Question and Answer, 4th ed. • Matthew Holbeche Bloxam

... humoral pathology of Hippocrates. The world, he thought, was composed of four elements: fire consisting of pyramidal, earth of cubical, air of octagonal, and water of twenty-sided atoms. The marrow consists of triangles, and the brain is the perfection of marrow. The soul dominates the marrow and the separation of the two causes death. The purpose of the bones and muscles is to ...
— Outlines of Greek and Roman Medicine • James Sands Elliott

... woman with delicate but insignificant features, with crooked teeth, like a hare's, in a tiny little mouth, with a multitude of finely crimped little yellow curls on her forehead, and painted eyebrows. She invariably wore a pyramidal cap with pink ribbons, a high ruff round her neck, a short white dress, and prunella slippers with red heels; and over her dress she wore a jacket of blue satin, with a sleeve hanging loose from her right shoulder. This was precisely the costume ...
— A Desperate Character and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev

... narrow, are rendered picturesque by several old houses, the architecture of which is striking; and the place—for even St.-Remy has its Place Publique and Hotel-de-Ville—is not without pretensions to ornament. In the centre of this place is a pretty fountain, of a pyramidal form. ...
— The Idler in France • Marguerite Gardiner

... where it has a pyramidal form. In Mozart, Viotti, Turnsteg, Dussek, and Crescenti, where it is distinguished by a fullness and roundness of the lateral parts of ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 20, Issue 558, July 21, 1832 • Various

... well how to accomplish the flow of line, the balance of masses, the symmetry of outline, which produce a harmonious effect. A variety of designs were at his command, from the well-worn but always effective pyramidal form illustrated in many single figures, to those more novel forms he invented for groups such as Lady Cockburn ...
— Sir Joshua Reynolds - A Collection of Fifteen Pictures and a Portrait of the - Painter with Introduction and Interpretation • Estelle M. Hurll

... successful in the designing of parish churches in London. St. Stephen's, Walbrook, is the most admired of these, with a dome resting on eight columns. Wren may be called the inventor of the English Renaissance type of steeple, in which a conical or pyramidal spire is harmoniously added to a belfry on a square tower with classic details. The steeple of Bow Church, Cheapside, is the most successful example of the type. In secular architecture Wren's most important works were the plan for rebuilding London after the Great ...
— A Text-Book of the History of Architecture - Seventh Edition, revised • Alfred D. F. Hamlin

... shaded this road; on one side a deep hollow or cup in the green plain excited my curiosity; on the other, lying a little down the bank, a military work of some odd sort planted with guns. Then one or two pyramidal heaps of cannon-balls by the side of the road, marked this out as unlike all other roads I had ever traversed. At the farther side of the plain we came to the row of houses I had seen from a distance, which ran north and south, looking ...
— Daisy • Elizabeth Wetherell

... hypercriticism where so much is perfect, and it becomes our happy privilege, in this notice, to commend and to point out, to "lay" readers about Art, the manifold beauties of its technical execution. A critical examination will show that the composition is on the pyramidal principle, and the arrangement of groups principally in threes. In the central portion of the canvas, where the marble pillars of the porch fall off in perspective, the Profligate stands holding up ...
— The Aldine, Vol. 5, No. 1., January, 1872 - A Typographic Art Journal • Various

... floral arch, spanning the steps to the choir-level and the broad aisle beyond. All the pillars are twined with smilax; all the chancel rail is similarly decked, while roses, carnations, and "snowballs" are everywhere. Each side of the altar is ornamented by tall pyramidal groups of palms and tropical plants, while the upper portion of the church is filled here and there and everywhere with foliage and blossoms. A great marriage-bell of carnations hangs over the altar steps; the altar itself is one mass of daisies; the air is heavy with perfume and ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King

... excellent makes of machines. In one style, the hulling takes place between a rotating disk and the casing of the machine. In another, it takes place between a rotary drum covered with a steel plate punched with vertical bulbs, and a chilled iron hulling-plate with pyramidal teeth cast on the plate. Both are adjustable to different varieties of coffee. In still another type of machine, the hulling takes place between steel ribs on an internal cylinder, and an adjustable knife, or hulling blade, in front ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers

... the angles of the leaves. The fruit is a gray-green berry growing in scant, drooping clusters. This gray drooping berry is the sumac poison sign, for the fruit of the harmless sumach is crimson and is held erect in close pyramidal clusters. ...
— On the Trail - An Outdoor Book for Girls • Lina Beard and Adelia Belle Beard

... the slopes of the Assassif, the hill of Sheikh-Abd-el-Qurnah and the district of Qurnet-Murrai—in fact, all that part which the people of the country called the "Brow" of Thebes. On the borders of the cultivated land a row of chapels and mastabas with pyramidal roofs sheltered the remains of the princes and princesses of the royal family. The Pharaohs themselves were buried either separately under their respective brick pyramids or in groups in a temple, as was the ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 5 (of 12) • G. Maspero

... types of Army tents, except shelter and conical wall tents: Mark line of tents by driving a wall pin on the spot to be occupied by the right (or left) corner of each tent. For pyramidal tents the interval between adjacent pins should be about 30 feet, which will give a passage of two feet between tents. Spread tripod on the ground where the center of tent is to be, if tripod is used. Spread the tent on the ...
— Infantry Drill Regulations, United States Army, 1911 - Corrected to April 15, 1917 (Changes Nos. 1 to 19) • United States War Department

... remarked that there is an infinite variety in the forms of trees, as well as in their habits. By those who have observed them as landscape ornaments, trees have been classified according to their shape and manner of growth. They are round-headed or hemispherical, like the Oak and the Plane; pyramidal, like the Pine and the Fir; obeliscal, like the Arbor-Vitae and Lombardy Poplar; drooping, like the White Elm and the Weeping Willow; and umbrella-shaped, like the Palm. These are the natural or normal varieties in the forms of trees. There are others which ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various

... Philippe-le-Hardi the parlements of Metz and Dijon interdicted the planting and cultivation of. The prevalent white grapes are the large and small pineau blanc, the bunches of the former being of an intermediate size, broad and pyramidal in shape, and with the berries close together. These have fine skins, are oblong in shape, and of a transparent yellowish-green hue tinged with red, are very sweet and juicy, and as a rule ripen late. As for the small pineau, the bunches are less compact, the berries ...
— Facts About Champagne and Other Sparkling Wines • Henry Vizetelly

... rapidly; it flourishes best in a sandy, somewhat moist loam, and attains a height of 50 to 60 or more ft., assuming a pyramidal outline. Its boughs are strong and spreading. The buds, conspicuous for their size, are protected by a coat of a glutinous substance, which is impervious to water; in spring this melts, and the bud-scales are then cast off. The leaves are composed of ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 1 - "Chtelet" to "Chicago" • Various

... for an unusually long time to one subject. Orders had been received from King Edward for the erection of an extraordinary cage or tower, curiously worked in stone and iron, on the very highest turret of the castle, visible to every eye, of a circular form, with pyramidal points, supporting gilded balls, giving it the appearance, when completed, of a huge coronet or crown. It was barred and cross-barred with iron on all sides, effectually preventing egress from within, but exposing its inmate, whoever that might be, to every passer-by. The impatient king ...
— The Days of Bruce Vol 1 - A Story from Scottish History • Grace Aguilar

... a pyramidal height, her ample moire dress swelling behind her, her gray head magnificently crowned by its lace cap and black velvet bandeau, she swept across the room to where the Dean's wife, Mrs. Winston, sat in fascinated silence observing Lady Kitty. The silence and the attention annoyed her hostess. ...
— The Marriage of William Ashe • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... work, entitled, The Analysis of Beauty, Mr. Hogarth believes that the triangular glass, which was dedicated to Venus in her temple at Paphos, contained in it a line bending spirally round a cone with a certain degree of curviture; and that this pyramidal outline and serpentine curve constitute the principles of Grace ...
— The Botanic Garden. Part II. - Containing The Loves of the Plants. A Poem. - With Philosophical Notes. • Erasmus Darwin

... dressed deer skins. The 14 deer skins were wrapped in what those present called blankets. They were made of bark, like those found in the cave in White county. The form of the baskets which inclosed them, was pyramidal, being larger at the bottom, and declining to the top. The heads of the skeletons, from the neck, were above the summits ...
— Prehistoric Textile Art of Eastern United States • William Henry Holmes

... three-quarters front, one-quarter profile, so as to show the whites of the eyes and the down of the upper lip. "Splendid!" said the Widow, —and to tell the truth, she was not far out of the way, and with Helen Darley as a foil anybody would know she must be foudroyant and pyramidal,—if these French adjectives may be naturalized for this ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various

... trees and some [136] finer species of garden-plants, as Sophora japonica, have given rise to weeping varieties, and the yew-tree or Taxus has a fastigiate form which is much valued because of its ascending branches and pyramidal habit. So it is with the pyramidal varieties of oaks, elms, the bastard-acacia and ...
— Species and Varieties, Their Origin by Mutation • Hugo DeVries

... some considerable rocks; and one which is blacker, and found in detached pieces, incloses bits of coarse quartz. A red, a dull yellow, and a purplish sand-stone, are also found in small pieces; and pretty large lumps of semi-transparent quartz, disposed irregularly in polyedral pyramidal crystals of long shining fibres. Some small pieces of the common sort are met with in the brooks, made round by attrition; but none hard enough to resist a file. Nor were any of the other stones acted on by aquafortis, or attracted by ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 15 (of 18) • Robert Kerr

... ascend till I put my head unexpectedly through a trap-door, and found myself on the roof on the tower: it was spacious, defended by battlements, and contained the only signs of warlike preparation I had met with; videlicet, two cannons, or culverins, as they are called, and a pyramidal heap of balls, rusted by the ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson

... tall, robust, and well-shaped;" they appeared to me rather below the average of West Coast size and weight. Both sexes, even when running to polysarcia, have delicate limbs and extremities, and the features, though negroid, are not the negro of the tobacconist's shop: I noticed several pyramidal and brachycephalic heads, contrary to the rule for African man and simiad. In the remarkable paper read (1861) by Professor Busk before the Ethnological Society, that eminent physiologist proved that the Asiatic ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton

... if she can find out. The cheek of the young party is pyramidal,' said Mr. Tom, as ...
— The Beautiful Wretch; The Pupil of Aurelius; and The Four Macnicols • William Black

... and, with the ensemble of the entire structure, were their towers completed, there would be produced, not only a unique example, but a towering effect only a degree less interesting than the perfectly proportioned pyramidal form so much admired ...
— The Cathedrals of Northern France • Francis Miltoun

... with commendatory letters from Mr. Gevaert and several notabilities. If, by means of his figures and measures, Tysz. succeeds, as you claim for him, in demonstrating that X...is a "pyramid," this will be a more pyramidal glory even than ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 2: "From Rome to the End" • Franz Liszt; letters collected by La Mara and translated

... at Gashwiler as was consistent with five feet three (the extra three inches being a pyramidal structure of straw-colored hair), a frond of faint curls, a pair of laughing blue eyes, and a small belted waist. Then she said, with a ...
— The Story of a Mine • Bret Harte

... these monuments of ignorance and despair, I noticed a monument of another sort, and of later date,—a tribute to one of the most gallant and genial of men, in whom it was fully demonstrated that "the bravest are the tenderest." It was a pyramidal pile, about eight feet high, of carefully selected stones, laid without mortar, but with mathematical precision; and on one stone near the top was scratched a name ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various

... Spanish, Pena) on which the monastery is built is one of the numerous isolated rocky points which have given their names to the Pennine Alps and Apennines. The Penna de la Vernia rises very steeply from the rolling ground below, and towers above the traveller with its pyramidal point in very suggestive fashion. The well-wooded sides of the conical hill are diversified by emergent rocks, and the plume of trees on the summit seems to suggest a Latin rather than a ...
— What I Remember, Volume 2 • Thomas Adolphus Trollope

... whose crowded shore now stands the great city of New York; the same fair river above whose banks now towers the noble front of the massive State Capitol at Albany. And that lofty edifice stands not far from the very spot where, beneath the pyramidal belfry of the old Dutch church, the boy patroon sat nodding through Dominie Westerlo's sermon, one drowsy July Sunday in the summer ...
— Historic Boys - Their Endeavours, Their Achievements, and Their Times • Elbridge Streeter Brooks

... generally monolithic, tapering to a pyramidal pointed top, erected in connection with temples in Egypt, and inscribed all over with hieroglyphs, and in memorial, as is likely, of some historical personage or event; they are of ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood

... accepted by a very large portion of his Netherland Subjects. From afar there rose upon the provinces the prophetic vision of a coming evil still more terrible than any which had yet oppressed them. As across the bright plains of Sicily, when the sun is rising, the vast pyramidal shadow of Mount Etna is definitely and visibly projected—the phantom of that ever-present enemy, which holds fire and devastation in its bosom—so, in the morning hour of Philip's reign, the shadow of the inquisition was cast from afar across ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... susceptible manhood. He lifted moist eyes to the stars; the night was delicious. He rested upon a cushioned couch of stone. About him the moonlight painted the trees, until they seemed like liquefied ermine; the palace arose in pyramidal surges of marble to the sky, meeting the moonbeams as if in friendly defiance, and casting them back to heaven with triumphant reflections. And the stillness, profound as the tomb, was punctuated by glancing fireflies. Pobloff ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker

... the Teotihuacan he learned afterward, and he still saw before him the low mountain, the name of which was Cerro Gordo. But his attention was drawn from the mountain by two elevations rising almost at the bank of the river. They were pyramidal in shape and truncated, and the larger, which Ned surmised to be anywhere from 500 to 1000 feet square, seemed to rise to a height of two or three hundred feet. The other was about two-thirds the size of the larger, both in ...
— The Texan Star - The Story of a Great Fight for Liberty • Joseph A. Altsheler

... the peach in the northern states, a pyramidal form will be desirable. To secure this, four or five side branches with three or four buds each, should be allowed to grow and the center shoot should be cut off at a height of 10 to 12 inches. After growth ...
— Manual of Gardening (Second Edition) • L. H. Bailey

... aft of "midships" a pyramidal lump of fatty substance projected several feet above the line of the vertebras. It was the spurious or rudimentary dorsal fin, with ...
— The Ocean Waifs - A Story of Adventure on Land and Sea • Mayne Reid

... belt of the body marked with vertical lines and oblique diamonds; upper belt with inverted pyramidal figures. ...
— Illustrated Catalogue Of The Collections Obtained From The Indians Of New Mexico And Arizona In 1879 • James Stevenson

... resemblance to a woman is called "a most beautiful Virgin Mary." Fantastic flutings become "an organ," and a level rock "an altar." Only once we were not disappointed, when, having been told to look for a pulpit, we found one that appeared as if man must have fashioned it, supported on a slender pyramidal base, the upper part very symmetrical, and ornamented with a perfect imitation of bunches of grapes ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 508, September 26, 1885 • Various

... afrite's acrid crypt. And mildewed skulls and ashen bones That lie before each pillared mount, Speak tidings of a leprous flood. And where giants' carcants flare and sit, The battle-crests and surging foams That toss each swoll'n Cauldron's Count As pyramidal realms unsunned Glare at the stricken, tamper'd souls, Stark wenches seek blind seers of lust And curse each monster's hairless head. Where fungus-fagots gleam unstunned As witches dig unfathomed holes And bury Helms in ...
— Betelguese - A Trip Through Hell • Jean Louis de Esque

... cantons. It is never large, and consequently having no false elevation of character, and being always seen with eyes which have been prepared for it, by resting on the details of the Swiss cottage, is less disagreeable than might be imagined, but ought never to be imitated. The pyramidal form is generally preserved, but the design is the ...
— The Poetry of Architecture • John Ruskin

... horse jogged evenly along over the wooden pavement, its head down, the little bell at its neck jingling pleasantly as it went. The cocher, a torpid, purplish lump of gross flesh, pyramidal, pearlike, sat immobile in his place. The protuberant back gave him an extraordinary effect of being buttoned into his fawn-colored coat wrong side before. At intervals he jerked the reins like a large strange toy, ...
— Jason • Justus Miles Forman

... or, The Culture of Pyramidal and Bush Fruit-Trees. By Thomas Rivers. First American, from the Thirteenth English Edition. New York. Orange Judd & Co. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 107, September, 1866 • Various

... the hair stand up and the words be few; the St. Matthew, not yet disengaged from his sepulchre, bound hand and foot by his grave clothes, it is left for us to loose him; the strange spectral wreath of the Florence Pieta, casting its pyramidal, distorted shadow, full of pain and death, among the faint purple lights that cross and perish under the obscure dome of St^a. Maria del Fiore, the white lassitude of joyous limbs, panther like, yet passive, fainting with their own delight, that gleam among the Pagan formalisms ...
— Modern Painters Volume II (of V) • John Ruskin

... the best-known example of these leaf-clad mummers is the Jack-in-the-Green, a chimney-sweeper who walks encased in a pyramidal framework of wickerwork, which is covered with holly and ivy, and surmounted by a crown of flowers and ribbons. Thus arrayed he dances on May Day at the head of a troop of chimney-sweeps, who collect pence. In Fricktal a similar frame of basketwork is called ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer

... I had brought. From it he took a cedar box, oblong, with a sort of black disc fixed to an arm on the top. In the face of the box were two little square holes, with sides of cedar which converged inward into the box, making a pair of little quadrangular pyramidal holes which ended in a small black circle in ...
— The Gold of the Gods • Arthur B. Reeve

... city of Tenochtitlan, standing in the midst of the five great lakes, upon verdant and flower-covered islands, a western Venice, with thousands of boats gliding swiftly along its streets, long lines of low houses, diversified by the multitudes of pyramidal temples, the Teocalli, or houses of God—canoes covering the mirrored lakes—the lofty trees, the flowers, and the profusion of water now wanting to the landscape—the whole fertile valley enclosed ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca

... prematurely dried, while the effect would be equally detrimental to their fair vendor. The easy mode of access, assisted by the narrow kerbstone, together with many attractions within the shop, tempted many passers to drop in for a chat and a cigar. There was a little counter, with little pyramidal heaps of cigarette packets and cigars, of the genuine Havana brand, distributed upon it. Affixed to a wall at the back was a glass show-case, fitted with shelves like a book-case, and laden with bundles of the ...
— The Pearl of the Antilles, or An Artist in Cuba • Walter Goodman

... public, before the sale of its curious and costly furniture, it contained an amber cabinet, as beautiful in workmanship as material. It was quadrangular, and about fifteen inches by twelve at the base, standing on four legs, that raised it about half an inch from its pedestal. It was pyramidal in form, about fourteen inches high, and divided into eleven stages. These were separated by a ledge of yellow amber, about one-eighth of an inch in thickness, projecting a little over the under stage, like a cornice. The front of each stage was ornamented with recumbent figures in white amber, in ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 419, New Series, January 10, 1852 • Various

... is the pyramidal tomb opposite Titian's that was designed to hold his remains. It is now the tomb of Canova. Why it was not put to its maker's purpose, I do not know, but to my mind it is a far finer thing than the Titian monument and worthier of Titian than of Canova, as indeed Canova would ...
— A Wanderer in Venice • E.V. Lucas

... mariners of impending danger as it rocked upon the bewildered sea. The water was invisible save where the long flashing lines of the surf plunged from the gray gloom. Their immense volumes rose in pyramidal heaps, whose tops shone white where they seemed to gather at one point and then their silvery lines spread slowly away on both sides as though unseen hands were pulling them out in even terraces that broke tip on the rocks with a deafening roar. Back of ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand

... illustration on page 422 is a single pyramid rather than four pyramids. It is composed of four triangular walls, each of which is called a pyramid for convenience and represents a certain phase of your nature. The great pyramidal I AM is complete only as all sides of your selfhood are fully built up. You are LOOKING DOWN ...
— Mastery of Self • Frank Channing Haddock

... the Pacific. The Middle Farallon is a single rock, from fifty to sixty yards in diameter, and twenty or thirty feet above the water. It lies two and a half miles north-west by west from the light-house. The North Farallon consists, in fact, of four pyramidal rocks, whose highest peak, in the centre of the group, is one hundred and sixty feet high; the southern rock of the four is twenty feet high. The four have a diameter of one hundred and sixty, one hundred and eighty-five, one hundred and twenty-five, and thirty-five yards respectively, and ...
— Northern California, Oregon, and the Sandwich Islands • Charles Nordhoff

... standing beside his wife, with his arm round her waist, and they both looked out into the distance to see what he was alluding to. They at length perceived some pyramidal rocks which the vessel rounded presently to enter an immense peaceful gulf surrounded by lofty summits, the base of which was covered with ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant

... tosses over a stony bed, having on either side green slopes and shady ways. Those travellers, like myself, contented with a bit of modest mountaineering, will delight in the three hours' climb of Mount Rivol, a broad pyramidal mountain, eight hundred yards in height, dominating the town. A very beautiful walk is this for fairly good walkers, and though the sun is intense, the air is sharp and penetrating. On our way, we find plenty of ripe wild mulberries with which to refresh ourselves, and abundance ...
— Holidays in Eastern France • Matilda Betham-Edwards

... m. SE. of Mexico; the largest city of the Aztecs, with a pyramidal temple, now a ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood

... of the river through its gorge, and the great waves generated by its collision with, and rebound from, the obstacles in its way. In the middle of the river the rush and tossing are most violent; at all events, the impetuous force of the individual waves is here most strikingly displayed. Vast pyramidal heaps leap incessantly from the river, some of them with such energy as to jerk their summits into the air, where they hang momentarily suspended in crowds of liquid spherules. The sun shone for a few minutes. At times the ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall

... long way through difficult fissures, a square chamber is at length reached, measuring 300 feet in length and breadth, with a height of about 80 feet. The walls and roof and floor are beautifully decorated with ice, and reflect all the colours of the rainbow. There are groups of pyramidal and round columns, and in some parts of the cave screens or curtains of ice 10 or 12 feet broad hang down ...
— Ice-Caves of France and Switzerland • George Forrest Browne

... of which there are nearly a hundred to each flower, when they fall to the ground might almost be mistaken for painters' brushes. The tree (as its name implies) loves the shore of the sea, and its large quadrangular fruits, of pyramidal form, being protected by a hard fibrous covering, are tossed by the waves till they root themselves on the beach. It grows freely at the mouths of the principal rivers on the west coast, and several noble specimens of it are found near ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent

... each of them. She is welcome to wait at table in white cotton gloves and to perch a huge silk bow on her hair, which is redolent of the kitchen, but when it comes to trimming her poor work-worn nails to the fashionable pyramidal shape—she really ...
— The Dangerous Age • Karin Michaelis

... The spruces are pyramidal-shaped trees, with tall and tapering trunks, thickly covered with branches, forming a compact crown. They are widely distributed throughout the cold and temperate regions of the northern hemisphere, where they often form thick forests ...
— Studies of Trees • Jacob Joshua Levison

... dwarfed to puny proportions by the bulk of the structure in the mazes of which he stood. The man was O'Neil; he was perched upon one of the girders near the center of the longest span, where he could watch the attack upon the pyramidal ...
— The Iron Trail • Rex Beach

... again in the great conflagration, A. D. 80. Domitian was the second restorer; Hadrian, Commodus, Caracalla, and Alexander Severus improved and beautified the group, from time to time. At the beginning of the fourth century of our era it contained the propylaia, or pyramidal towers with a gateway, at each end of the dromos; one near the present church of S. Stefano del Cacco, one near the church of S. Macuto. They were flanked by one or more pairs of obelisks, of which six have been recovered up to the present time, namely, ...
— Pagan and Christian Rome • Rodolfo Lanciani

... happily, to make my way (where so many were vainly longing and struggling to enter) into the lobby of the chamber of the House of Representatives. Once in, I was safe; for had I even been seen by the officers in attendance, it would have been impossible to get me out again. I saw near me a large pyramidal stove, which, fortunately, had but little fire in it, and on which I forthwith clambered, until I had attained a secure perch, from which every part of the hall could be deliberately and distinctly surveyed. Depend upon it, I made use ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing

... greatest beauty in town, la Venus de Moscou.—When I knew her she was already a gaunt old woman, with delicate but insignificant features, little curved hare-like teeth in a tiny little mouth, with a multitude of tight little curls on her forehead, and dyed eyebrows. She constantly wore a pyramidal cap with rose-coloured ribbons, a high ruff around her neck, a short white gown and prunella shoes with red heels; and over her gown she wore a jacket of blue satin, with the sleeve depending from the right shoulder. She had worn precisely ...
— A Reckless Character - And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev

... the open fire in the middle of a room, such as may be desired occasionally in the lounging room of a large club. Such an apparent anomaly could be secured by suspending a metal flue and hood from the roof, so that the lower edge of the truncated pyramidal form at the bottom would form the upper side of the fireplace "opening" at a convenient height above the hearth of brick, stone, tile or concrete. It is conceivable that an effective and thoroughly practical fireplace could be thus devised, having ...
— Making a Fireplace • Henry H. Saylor

... thatched with reeds and long grass, like the dwelling-houses. At Salem is still preserved one of the early churches. The second and more dignified form of New England meeting-house was usually a square wooden building with a truncated pyramidal roof, surmounted often with a belfry, which served as a lookout station and held a bell, from which the bell-rope hung down to the floor in the centre of the church aisle. The old church at Hingham, Massachusetts, ...
— Home Life in Colonial Days • Alice Morse Earle

... Proc. Roy. Irish Acad., 9-337, there is an account of a stone wedge that fell from the sky, near Cashel, Tipperary, Aug. 2, 1865. The phenomenon is not questioned, but the orthodox preference is to call it, not ax-like, nor wedge-shaped, but "pyramidal." For data of other pyramidal stones said to have fallen from the sky, see Rept. Brit. Assoc., 1861-34. One fell at Segowolee, India, March 6, 1853. Of the object that fell at Cashel, Dr. Haughton ...
— The Book of the Damned • Charles Fort

... is a neurone? What is its structure, its function, how does it act? A neurone is a protoplasmic cell, with its outgrowing fibers. The cell part of the neurone is of a variety of shapes, triangular, pyramidal, cylindrical, and irregular. The cells vary in size from 1/250 to 1/3500 of an inch in diameter. In general the function of the cell is thought to be to generate the nervous energy responsible for our consciousness—sensation, memory, reasoning, feeling and all the rest, and for our movements. ...
— The Mind and Its Education • George Herbert Betts

... as a rule tall and bulky, long-bodied and short-legged, and with fairly large pyramidal skulls, showing well-developed perceptive faculties. Their colour varies from maize to dusky olive, and their features from classic to negroid; but usually the nose, though not flat, is wide, and the mouth, though not blubber-lipped, is heavy and sensual. Shorter and more coarsely built than ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves

... shaped the inside of his church. And how did he shape the outside? Look for yourselves, and judge. But look, not at Chester, but at Salisbury. Look at those churches which carry not mere towers, but spires, or at least pinnacled towers approaching the pyramidal form. The outside form of every Gothic cathedral must be considered imperfect if it does not culminate ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley

... I bind myself to erect on some eminence near the shore of the island, which can be seen from Cape Olonek, a signal tower of driftwood or earth, like a Cossack mound, not lower than seven feet. On this foundation I shall raise a pyramidal frame of three or more thick logs, on the top of which I shall fix a flagstaff with a pulley block for the flag. The flag is to be flown at least 42 feet from the ground. I shall guard the landmark thus erected until the river freezes. For ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold

... so called, whether of cloth or fur, were evidently the invention of some out-of-door people; but then they were not the brimless pyramidal canisters of the present fashion, but were either caps with dependent brims, or else broad and flexible Spanish sombreros. The very idea of a hat is that of utility—something to keep off the sun and the rain—any thing will do for warmth that will aid the hair in keeping ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various



Words linked to "Pyramidal" :   pointed, pyramid



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