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Dreadnought   Listen
noun
Dreadnought  n.  
1.
(Capitalized) A British battleship, completed in 1906 1907, having an armament consisting of ten 12-inch guns mounted in turrets, and of twenty-four 12-pound quick-fire guns for protection against torpedo boats. This was the first battleship of the type characterized by a main armament of big guns all of the same caliber. She had a displacement of 17,900 tons at load draft, and a speed of 21 knots per hour.
2.
Any battleship having its main armament entirely of big guns all of one caliber. Since the Dreadnought was built, the caliber of the heaviest guns has increased from 12 in. to 13½ in., 14 in., and 15 in., and the displacement of the largest batteships from 18,000 tons to 30,000 tons and upwards. The term superdreadnought is popularly applied to battleships with such increased displacement and gun caliber. (Also spelled dreadnaught)






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Dreadnought" Quotes from Famous Books



... nine comforts of matrimony? Ah, dear soul, you do well to measure the danger by the yard of fear. For my part, I have none on't; my name is William Dreadnought. As for heart, I have more than enough on't. I mean none of your sheep's heart; but of wolf's heart—the courage of a bravo. By the pavilion of Mars, ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais

... "Clydebank" will be associated in my mind with the ceaseless ring and din of riveting-hammers, where, day by day, hour by hour, a new fleet is growing, destroyers and torpedo boats alongside monstrous submarines—yonder looms the grim bulk of Super-dreadnought or battle cruiser or the slender shape of some ...
— Great Britain at War • Jeffery Farnol

... of Broadstairs were interested in a lugger—the Dreadnought—which had for years done good service on the Goodwins. One night they went off in a tremendous sea to save a French barque; but though they secured the crew, a steam-tug claimed the prize and towed her into ...
— Battles with the Sea • R.M. Ballantyne

... skies—who shall attempt at this day of the infancy of the science to limit their scope? Aerial battle-planes of colossal size and power are as certain to come in time, and in not a very long time, as the dreadnought of to-day was certain to follow the first armored ship of only a half-century ago. Never yet has man opened up a new avenue of war that he has not pursued it relentlessly to its final conclusion. It is certain that he will not fail to ...
— Opportunities in Aviation • Arthur Sweetser

... the rigging to save The wild woman-kind below, With a rope's end round the man, handy and brave— He was pitched to his death at a blow, For all his dreadnought breast and braids of thew: They could tell him for hours, dandled the to and fro Through the cobbled foam-fleece, what could he do With the burl of the fountains of air, buck and ...
— Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins - Now First Published • Gerard Manley Hopkins

... size afloat, whether for war or trade, and the whole electrical development of the world. The fact was to be driven home even to my feminine ignorance of mechanics when, a fortnight later, the captain of a Flag-ship and I were hanging over the huge shaft leading down to the engine-rooms of the Super-dreadnought, and my companion was explaining to me something of the driving power of the ship. But on this first meeting, how much I might have asked of the kind, great man beside me, and was too preoccupied to ask! May ...
— The War on All Fronts: England's Effort - Letters to an American Friend • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... fighting could not be gainsaid and the Ariadne pursued, although the fog made it impossible to estimate the strength of the enemy. Presently, not far from the Ariadne, two hostile cruisers loomed out of the mist—two dreadnought battle cruisers of 30,000 tons' displacement, armed with eight 13.5-inch guns. What could the Ariadne, of 2,650 tons and armed with ten 4-inch guns, do against those two ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol 1, Issue 4, January 23, 1915 • Various

... Fig. 175 is a sketch of a portion of a dreadnought file. This has superseded the old-fashioned home-made float used to clean out the sides ...
— Woodwork Joints - How they are Set Out, How Made and Where Used. • William Fairham

... the Powers had agreed upon an armistice and accepted a proposition of mediation on the part of the United States looking toward permanent peace. The news of the devastation and flood caused by this strange and terrible dreadnought of the air created the profoundest apprehension and caused the wildest rumours, for what had happened in Tunis was assumed as likely to occur in London, Paris, or New York. Wireless messages flashed the ...
— The Man Who Rocked the Earth • Arthur Train

... apparent individual production turn out on a moment's examination to be the products of an elaborate social organization, what is to be said of such products as dreadnoughts, factory-made pins and needles, and steel pens? If God takes the dreadnought in one hand and a steel pen in the other, and asks Job who made them, and to whom they should belong by maker's right, Job must scratch his puzzled head with a potsherd and be dumb, unless indeed it strikes him that God is the ultimate ...
— Preface to Androcles and the Lion - On the Prospects of Christianity • George Bernard Shaw

... whale had turned about, and, on the surface, was charging straight back at them. Such was her speed that a bore was raised by her nose like that which a Dreadnought or an Atlantic liner raises ...
— Michael, Brother of Jerry • Jack London

... Cromwell's Ironsides had already learned, if they had not yet formulated, the maxim, "Fear God and keep your powder dry." Some of the ships in the English navy had religious names, but many were called by more secular appellations: The Bull, The Tiger, The Dreadnought, The Revenge. To meet the foe a very formidable and self-confident force of about forty-five ships of the best sort had gathered from the well-tried ranks of the buccaneers. It is true that patronage ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith

... he might be quite capable of playing spy or turning king's evidence; that, in short, it would be well to rid themselves of his domineering presence. Still there was that physical power in this lazy Hercules—still, if the Do-nought, he was so fiercely the Dreadnought—that they did not dare, despite the advantage of numbers, openly to brave and defy him. No one would bell the cat—and such a cat! They began to lay plots to get rid of him through the law. Nothing could be easier to such knowing adepts in guilt than to transfer ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... recognise in this disconcerted dodger, an individual very pale from sea- sickness, who had shaved his beard and brushed his hair, last, at Liverpool: and whose only article of dress (linen not included) were a pair of dreadnought trousers; a blue jacket, formerly admired upon the Thames at Richmond; no stockings; and ...
— American Notes for General Circulation • Charles Dickens

... Brand-sands, the Vulture, Captain Nabob; the Tortoisesnow, from Lapland; the Pet-en-l'air, from Versailles; the Dreadnought, from Mount Etna, Sir W. Hamilton, commander; the Tympany, Montgolfier; and the Mine-A-in-a-bandbox, from the Cape of Good Hope. Foundered in a hurricane, the Bird of Paradise, from Mount Ararat. The Bubble, Sheldon, took fire, and was burnt ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie

... a hoarse voice. And Mr. Quillpen became aware of the presence of an "ancient mariner," enveloped in a very rough dreadnought, and finished off with a large amount ...
— The Three Brides, Love in a Cottage, and Other Tales • Francis A. Durivage

... have mustered more hope in response to Aunt M'riar's plucky rally against despair. The tiny, white, motionless figure on the bed in the accident ward, that had uttered no sound since he saw it on first arriving at the Hospital, might have been destined to become that of a young engineer on a Dreadnought, or an unfledged dragoon, for any ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan

... naval circles no very cordial feeling for the Italians. The Austrian dreadnought, Viribus Unitis, was torpedoed in a most ingenious fashion by two resolute officers, Lieutenant Raffaele Paolucci, a doctor, and Major Raffaele Rossetti. In October 1917 they independently invented a very small and light compressed-air motor ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 2 • Henry Baerlein

... covered with a dazzling mantle of six inches in depth) when two horsemen rode up to the Wallace Inn. The first was a strong, tall, powerful man, in a grey riding-coat, having a hat covered with waxcloth, a huge silver-mounted horsewhip, boots, and dreadnought overalls. He was mounted on a large strong brown mare, rough in coat, but well in condition, with a saddle of the yeomanry cut, and a double-bitted military bridle. The man who accompanied him was apparently his servant; he rode a shaggy little grey ...
— The Black Dwarf • Sir Walter Scott

... the St. Luke, the St. Matthew, the St. Philip, the St. John, the St. James, the St. John Baptist, the St. Martin, and many other great galleons, with saintly and apostolic names, fought pellmell with the Lion, the Bear, the Bull, the Tiger, the Dreadnought, the Revenge, the Victory, the Triumph, and other of the more profanely-baptized English ships, the Spaniards were again baffled in all their attempts to close with, and to board, their ever-attacking, ever-flying ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... is founded not upon the British Bible or the British dreadnought but upon Ireland. The empire that began upon an island, ravaged, sacked and plundered shall end on an island, "which whether it proceed from the very genius of the soil, or the influence of the stars, or that ...
— The Crime Against Europe - A Possible Outcome of the War of 1914 • Roger Casement

... million soldiers; Germany, five; Austria, four—and England had, perhaps, a hundred thousand men, perhaps more, on board this fleet which defended the English land and lands far overseas without firing a shot. A battalion of infantry is more than sufficient in numbers to man a Dreadnought. How precious, then, the skill of that crew! Man-power is as concentrated as gun-power with a navy. Ride three hundred miles in a motor-car along an army front, with glimpses of units of soldiers, and you have seen little of a modern army. Here, moving down the lanes that separated ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer

... may, I was once the owner of a pedigree thoroughbred called Dreadnought, which was presented to me when a colt. Dreadnought's dam Collingwood was by Muley Moloch out of Barbelle. Dreadnought was good for nothing as a racer, and had broken down in training. As a castaway he was offered to me, and I gladly ...
— The Reminiscences Of Sir Henry Hawkins (Baron Brampton) • Henry Hawkins Brampton

... exquisitely painted; wonderful cake covers, powder-boxes, blotters, brackets;—every single thing a little gem of clever design and individual workmanship. It is more fascinating than Toyland or Santa Claus' shop. These "rocking toys" are particularly fascinating: the dreadnought that careens at perilous angles, and the kicking mule which knocks its driver over as often as you like to make it. Shelves on shelves of these wonder-things complete, and a whole great table laden with them in half-finished ...
— Greenwich Village • Anna Alice Chapin



Words linked to "Dreadnought" :   dreadnaught



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