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Perpendicular   Listen
adjective
Perpendicular  adj.  
1.
Exactly upright or vertical; pointing to the zenith; at right angles to the plane of the horizon; extending in a right line from any point toward the center of the earth.
2.
(Geom.) At right angles to a given line or surface; as, the line ad is perpendicular to the line bc.
Perpendicular style (Arch.), a name given to the latest variety of English Gothic architecture, which prevailed from the close of the 14th century to the early part of the 16th; probably so called from the vertical style of its window mullions.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Perpendicular" Quotes from Famous Books



... above. From time to time only did I get peeps of almost imperceptible tracks along the declivities, tracks on which it seemed as if goats alone could obtain a footing. Once—hundreds of feet above me—I spied a couple of mules descending what seemed like a sheer perpendicular path down the mountain side. The animals appeared to be heavily laden, and I marvelled what forbidden goods lay hidden within their packs and whether in the days that were to come I too should be called upon to risk my life on ...
— Castles in the Air • Baroness Emmuska Orczy

... division of Devonshire, England, on the river Axe, 27 m. E. by N. of Exeter by the London & South-Western railway. Pop. (1901) 2906. The minster, dedicated to St Mary the Virgin, illustrates every style of architecture from Norman to Perpendicular. There are in the chancel two freestone effigies, perhaps of the 14th century, besides three sedilia, and a piscina under arches. Axminster was long celebrated for the admirable quality of its carpets, which ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various

... at work during the early stages of nest construction affords an interesting spectacle. Not being able to obtain a foothold on the almost perpendicular surface of the bank, the birds literally charge this in turn with fixed beak. By a succession of such attacks at one spot a hole of an appreciable size is soon formed in the soft sand. Then the birds are able to obtain a foothold and to excavate with ...
— A Bird Calendar for Northern India • Douglas Dewar

... On reaching the perpendicular face of the cliff, I found, as I had supposed, that the arches I had seen formed the entrance to chambers of some size, and on inspecting one of them, as far as the waning light would let me, I resolved to take up my abode in it for the night. As, however, ...
— My First Voyage to Southern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston

... the main highway over ten miles to the southwest. There, too, the river might be forded even if the Austrians had destroyed that bridge also; but here or elsewhere in the hills there could be no fording—the banks of the Ru were perpendicular cliffs. ...
— The Mad King • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... maid Tryphena be awake at such an hour? The doctor would have required sharp eyes indeed to note, as he drew rein, that the blind of an upper window at the south-east corner had been drawn aside an inch or so out of the perpendicular. Had he detected this, indeed, it would have meant no more than that the widow, awakened from her slumbers by the sound of wheels, had arisen to satisfy the curiosity ...
— Corporal Sam and Other Stories • A. T. Quiller-Couch

... investigation of the microscope shows that it is all rough and irregular. What would a builder do if he had not a T-square and a level? His wall would be ever so far out, whilst he thought it perfectly perpendicular. And remember that a line at a very acute angle of deflection only needs to be carried out far enough to diverge so widely from the other line that you could put the whole solar system in between the two. The smallest departure ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren

... intolerable upon our heads, for we had not the defence of hats. I felt my brain on fire, and was inclined to drop into the water, to screen myself from the intolerable heat. As the day advanced so did our sufferings increase. It was a dead calm, the sun perpendicular over us, actually burning that part of our bodies which rose clear of the water. I could have welcomed even a shark to relieve me of my torment; but I thought of Celeste, and I clung to life. Towards the afternoon I felt sick ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat

... collection was arranged in a specially designed case having a series of three nearly horizontal trays thirty-seven and one-half inches by eighteen and one-half inches upon each side, and an elevated central portion bearing two nearly perpendicular ones upon each side, the middle being occupied by a glass case containing an attractive natural group. A brief account of the exhibit under appropriate ...
— New York at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, St. Louis 1904 - Report of the New York State Commission • DeLancey M. Ellis

... without further comment. The recollection is weird and extravagant. I remember being surprised at finding certain stretches of pavement perpendicular, and of trying to climb them. Still we must have got a line in the paper on Saturday night, for on Monday the bell began ringing violently before we were up. Tom either did not hear it, or was wilfully unconscious. Finally I got up wretchedly and dragged on some ...
— The Van Dwellers - A Strenuous Quest for a Home • Albert Bigelow Paine

... disappointment. The stream ran through a culvert, some twelve feet wide and ten feet high, but this was closed by iron bars, crossing each other at intervals of only five or six inches, the lower ends of the perpendicular bars being fixed in a stone dam, extending across the bed of the stream. Dick waded across the pool formed by the dam, and felt the bars, but found ...
— The Tiger of Mysore - A Story of the War with Tippoo Saib • G. A. Henty

... slowly through a flat country and carrying out to the sea a quantity of fine sediment. Higher up it branches into a number of smaller channels, flowing alternately through flat valleys and between high banks; sometimes he finds a deep rocky bed with perpendicular walls, carrying the water through a chain of hills; where the stream is narrow he finds it deep, where wide shallow. Further up still, he comes to a mountainous region, with hundreds of streams and rivulets, each with its tributary rills and gullies, ...
— Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection - A Series of Essays • Alfred Russel Wallace

... sunken road on two sides of a valley that was perpendicular to the enemy's front. We now began to get a few wounded; one man with ashen face came charging to the rear with shell shock. He shook all over, foamed at the mouth, could not speak. I put him under a tent and he acted as ...
— America's War for Humanity • Thomas Herbert Russell

... tolerably light, though the sun was unfortunately enveloped in clouds. His disc was invisible, but we could clearly distinguish his situation through the watery barrier. The fall of the cataract is nearly perpendicular. The bank over which it is precipitated is of concave form, owing to its upper stratum being composed of lime-stone, and its base of soft slate-stone, which has been eaten away by the constant attrition of the recoiling waters. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 262, July 7, 1827 • Various

... This cistern is held either on the base of the cast iron bearing frame, D, of the main shaft, d, d, Figs. 1 and 2, or directly on the sewing machine table, Figs. 3 and 4, by means of two pins, e and e', so that it can oscillate about an axis which is perpendicular to the shaft, d, to which is attached the disk, F, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 611, September 17, 1887 • Various

... weary way upward. We sing "Excelsior" in our hearts, and forget our aching limbs, for the most laborious portion of the night's toil is before us. The almost perpendicular ladder is just beside the powerful pump, which, worked by a steam-engine, exhausts the water from the mine, and its busy piston, in monotonous measure, keeps time ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various

... to the very edge of the cliff and looked straight down, to where, two hundred feet below, the perpendicular was first broken by a slope of titanic bowlders, among which the trunks of dwarfed pines twisted here and there into the ...
— If You Touch Them They Vanish • Gouverneur Morris

... sea, which sweep them more energetically to certain positions, and in purity, to the depth of the water and nature of the bottom. Hence we detected their remains along every icebound shore, in the depths of the adjacent ocean, between 80 and 400 fathoms. Off Victoria Barrier (a perpendicular wall of ice between one and two hundred feet above the level of the sea) the bottom of the ocean was covered with a stratum of pure white or green mud, composed principally of the silicious shells of the Diatomaceoe. These, on being put into water, ...
— Discourses - Biological and Geological Essays • Thomas H. Huxley

... is, we shall all admit, their vast size and steepness. That a mountain is very big, and is faced by perpendicular walls of rock, is the first thing which strikes everybody, and is the whole essence and outcome of a vast quantity of poetical description. Hence the first condition towards a due appreciation of mountain scenery is that ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)

... and pleasant. Most of them had the headloads without which a negro woman seems hardly complete in the road, varying in dimensions from a huge basket of yams or bananas to an ounce vial. How such a slight thing manages to keep its perpendicular with their careless, swinging gait, is something marvellous, but they manage it to perfection. Almost every group, in addition, had a well-laden donkey—comical little creatures, looking hardly bigger under their huge hampers than well-sized Newfoundland dogs, and hurrying nimbly along, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. IV. October, 1863, No. IV. - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various

... great events, and preserve the chronology of them, the war Chief in each tribe keeps a war post. This post is a peeled stick of timber, 10 or 12 feet high, that is erected in the town. For a campaign they make, or rather the Chief makes, a perpendicular red mark, about three inches long and half an inch wide; on the opposite side from this, for a scalp, they make a red cross, thus, ; on another side, for a prisoner taken, they make a red cross in this manner, X', with a head or dot, and by placing such significant hireoglyphics ...
— A Narrative of the Life of Mrs. Mary Jemison • James E. Seaver

... stubble, some stark bare; Some sharp, stiletto fashion, dagger-like, That may with whisp'ring, a man's eyes outpike; Some with the hammer cut, or roman T, Their Beards extravagant, reform'd must be; Some with the quadrate, some triangle fashion, Some circular, some oval in translation; Some perpendicular in longitude; Some like a thicket for their crassitude; That heights, depths, breadths, triform, square, oval, round, And rules geometrical in Beards ...
— At the Sign of the Barber's Pole - Studies In Hirsute History • William Andrews

... of the chimneys of this part of the lower town, and upon the great river sweeping by northeastward like another Amazon. The heel of our misshapen foot extends indefinitely toward Montreal. Upon it, on a level with the citadel, are the Plains of Abraham. It was up its high, almost perpendicular, sides that Wolfe clambered with his army, and stood in the rear of his enemy one pleasant September morning over ...
— Locusts and Wild Honey • John Burroughs

... this four-legged stool, rises, at a sudden angle, the stiff corselet, disproportionately long and almost perpendicular. The end of this bust, round and slender as a straw, carries the hunting-trap, the grappling limbs, copied from those of the Mantis. They consist of a terminal harpoon, sharper than a needle, and a cruel vice, with the jaws toothed like a saw. The jaw formed by the arm ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre

... province and city of Coca, where they halted for fifty days; after which they travelled for sixty leagues along a river, without being able to find any bridge or ford at which they could pass over. In one place they found this river to form a cataract of 200 fathoms in perpendicular fall, making such a noise as was almost sufficient to deafen any person who stood near. Not far beyond this fall, the river was found to glide in a smooth channel, worn out of the rock; and at this place they constructed a bridge by which they passed to the other side, and ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. II • Robert Kerr

... 200 feet in height, and each enclosing a vast space like that of a field. There are in addition a number of towers and labyrinthine recesses, hidden and woven over by the wild growth of clinging ivy. Never was any desolation more sublime and lovely. The perpendicular wall of ruin is cloven into steep ravines, filled up with flowering shrubs, whose thick twisted roots are knotted in the rifts of the stone, and at every step the aerial pinnacles of shattered stone group into new combinations of effect, towering above the lofty yet ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Vol. V (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland III • Various

... cheek-scratching that was manifestly habitual. Before the bride arrived Mr. Polly's sense of the church found an outlet in whispered criticisms of ecclesiastical architecture with Johnson. "Early Norman arches, eh?" he said, "or Perpendicular." ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells

... several small rocky islands, on one of which we landed, and climbed its summit, but saw nothing to repay us for the trouble or the danger of the ascent: the surface was composed entirely of loose blocks of sandstone, which, when trod upon, would crumble away or roll down the nearly perpendicular face of the rock; and it was only by grasping the branches of the acacias and other trees that were firmly rooted in the interstices of the less-decomposed rocks that we were saved from being precipitated ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia] [Volume 2 of 2] • Phillip Parker King

... taken their fill, as the condition of the neighbouring bushes showed, but the wounded one had eaten nothing. He had spent the night leaning against a good-sized tree, which his weight had pushed out of the perpendicular. They had not long left this place, and could not be very far ahead, especially as the wounded bull was now again so stiff after his night's rest that for the first few miles the other two had been obliged to support him. But elephants go very quick, even when they ...
— Maiwa's Revenge - The War of the Little Hand • H. Rider Haggard

... is not noon—the sunbow's rays still arch The torrent with the many hues of heaven, And roll the sheeted silver's waving column, O'er the crag's headlong perpendicular, And fling its lines of foaming light along, And to and fro, like the pale courser's tail, The Giant steed, to be bestrode by Death, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 470 - Volume XVII, No. 470, Saturday, January 8, 1831 • Various

... leap across to the other train, stirred all my bile. It was on this current of thought that the nobleman who had been hung and the cardinal who had pined in a cage were borne upon my memory. "Small choice," said I, "whether the bars are perpendicular or horizontal. You lose your independence ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 30. September, 1873 • Various

... is drawn, extending out horizontally along one side of the blank A, this line being made on a scale, to represent 22 feet. Secondly, at the end of this line drawn a perpendicular line C, 6 feet long. A perpendicular line is always one which is at right angles to a base line. In this case B ...
— Aeroplanes • J. S. Zerbe***

... may be doubted whether Lady Mary Quin was right when she called them the highest cliffs in the world, but they are undoubtedly very respectable cliffs, and run up some six hundred feet from the sea as nearly perpendicular as cliffs should be. They are beautifully coloured, streaked with yellow veins, and with great masses of dark red rock; and beneath them lies the broad and blue Atlantic. Lady Mary's exaggeration as to the comparative height ...
— An Eye for an Eye • Anthony Trollope

... observations are taken from thermometers hung four feet from the ground on the cool side (south) of the house, and beneath an earthen roof with complete protection from wind and radiation. Noon known by the shadows being nearly perpendicular. To show what is endured by a traveller, the following register is given of the heat on a spot, four feet from the ground, protected from the wind by a reed fence, but exposed to the sun's rays, ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume II (of 2), 1869-1873 • David Livingstone

... we have here a transparent box (impermeable to photogenic rays) into which electricity may be led by means of four conductors that are arranged two by two in a line with each other, or in perpendicular positions, and that may be made to approach or recede from one another by maneuvering them from the exterior. This very simple arrangement answers every requirement, and, upon placing a sensitized plate in the vicinity of the conductors, permits of photographing the electric discharge ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 483, April 4, 1885 • Various

... candle from the flaring match with great deliberation, and dropped the match, and trod it out. Then he put the candle away from him on the table, so that he could see me, and sat with his arms folded on the table and looked at me. I made out that I was fastened to a stout perpendicular ladder a few inches from the wall,—a fixture there,—the means of ascent to the ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens

... The officers kept by the foot of the little mast, and were obliged every moment to call to those around them to go to the one or the other side to avoid the wave; for the sea coming nearly athwart us, gave our raft nearly a perpendicular position, to counteract which they were forced to throw themselves upon the side raised by ...
— Perils and Captivity • Charlotte-Adelaide [nee Picard] Dard

... long since decayed, nothing but a few rotten stakes remaining at the very verge of the precipice. Steep as it was, there were some ledges that the rabbits frequented, making their homes in mid-air. Further along, the slope, a little less perpendicular, was covered with nut-tree bushes, where you could scramble down by holding to the boughs. There was a tradition of a fox-hunter, in the excitement of the chase, forcing his horse to descend through these bushes and actually reaching the level ...
— The Amateur Poacher • Richard Jefferies

... Kee-too, which juts into the midst of the cluster of islands, the wind suddenly failed us; and the current hurried us with such velocity directly towards the point, that we expected momentarily to be dashed in pieces; but on coming within twice the length of the ship of the perpendicular precipice, which was some hundred feet high, the eddy swept her round three several times with great rapidity. The Captain would have dropped the anchor, but an old Chinese fisherman, whom we had taken on board to pilot us, made signs that it was ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow

... England, and above all Saint Hugh of Burgundy, began to make many, and at first not very successful, attempts to imitate what the men of one spot in the Cotentin had known, and must have been proud of, for a century and a half. The local invention of Perpendicular at Gloucester, and its spreading abroad by the great Bishops of Winchester forty or fifty years later, is a remarkable fact; but it is a small matter to this fiction. So strange a vagary need no longer be discussed; but it is worthy of a place in the memory among odd delusions. ...
— Sketches of Travel in Normandy and Maine • Edward A. Freeman

... standing up in the boat, began to examine the surroundings with keen interest. They were close to the great crag "shaped like a giant's helmet," as Valdemar Svensen had said. It rose sheer out of the water, and its sides were almost perpendicular. Some beautiful star-shaped sea anemones clung to it in a vari-colored cluster on one projection, and the running ripple of the small waves broke on its jagged corners with a musical splash, and sparkle of white foam. Below them, ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli

... plenty of ropes, and a hatchet to cut steps in the ice. We walked quickly over the Mer de Glace, and in about three hours came to the difficult part. I had no conception of what it would be. We had to ascend perpendicular walls of ice, 30, 40, 50 feet high, by little holes which we cut with the hatchet, and to climb over places not a foot broad, with enormous crevasses on each side. I was determined not to give in, and said not a word, but I ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge

... thence we proceeded on horses, who are used to the way, to the mountain of the Chartreuse. It is six miles to the top; the road runs winding up it, commonly not six feet broad; on one hand is the rock, with woods of pine-trees hanging overhead; on the other, a monstrous precipice, almost perpendicular, at the bottom of which rolls a torrent, that sometimes is tumbling among the fragments of stone that have fallen from on high, and sometimes precipitating itself down vast descents with a noise like thunder, which is made still greater by the echo from the mountains on each side, ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IX. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton

... about it, so back over the ridge we went. About half way down the other side Uncle Jim turned sharp to the right, and as the "hog back" dropped behind us, we found ourselves out on the steep side of a mountain, the perpendicular cliff over us to the right, the river roaring savagely far down below our left, and sheets of water glazing the footing we could find among the boulders and debris. Hardly could the ponies keep from slipping sideways on the slope, as we proceeded farther and ...
— Arizona Nights • Stewart Edward White

... broadens as if into an estuary, but its outflow is here prevented by the sand, and it runs south for nearly 10 m. parallel with the shore. The sandbanks have arrested the encroachments of the sea, which submerged a former site of Aldeburgh. The church of St Peter and St Paul is Perpendicular, largely restored, and contains a monument to the poet George Crabbe, born here on the 24th of December 1754. A small picturesque Moot Hall of the 16th century is used for corporation meetings. Slaughden Quay on the Alde admits small vessels, and fishing is carried on. Aldeburgh ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... couple, and the lower end in an oblong trink in the earth or floor; and lastly, another pole was set across horizontally, having both ends tapered, one end of which was supported in a hole in the side of the perpendicular pole, and the other end in a similar hole in the couple leg. The horizontal stick was called the auger, having four short arms or levers fixed in its centre, to work it by; the building having been thus finished, as many men as could be collected in the vicinity, (being ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 323, July 19, 1828 • Various

... confounded canvas. The light was dying away, and all at once, in the greyish dusk, the scales suddenly dropped from my eyes. The background alone is pretty; the nude woman is altogether too loud; what's more, she's out of the perpendicular, and her legs are badly drawn. When I noticed that, ah! it was enough to kill me there and then; I felt life departing from me. Then the gloom kept rising and rising, bringing a whirling sensation, a foundering ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola

... mines; and iron ore is no where more abundant. Its salt-petre caves are most astonishing curiosities. One of them has been traced ten miles. Another, on a high point of Cumberland mountain, has a perpendicular descent, the bottom of which has never been sounded. They abound in prodigious vaulted apartments and singular chambers, the roofs springing up into noble arches, or running along for miles in regular oblong excavations. ...
— The First White Man of the West • Timothy Flint

... of about one month, hoeing down the weeds with a short-handled hoe; the hoe consists of a flat blade projecting at right angles from the iron haft (Fig. 13). The latter is bent downwards at a right angle just above the blade, in a plane perpendicular to that of the blade, and its other end is prolonged by a short wooden handle, into the end of which it is thrust. The woman stoops to the work, hoeing carefully round each PADI plant, by holding the hoe in the right hand and striking the blade downwards and towards her toes with a ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall

... originated much backache and general fatigue, and at the end I found that I had been so absorbed in the permanence rather than the appearance of the dwelling that one of the corner posts was out of the perpendicular and that consequently the building stood awry. Grace of style it cannot claim; but neither "white ants" nor weather ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield

... rendered lactation impossible, probably causing the death of the infant on this account. Tomes gives a description of a lower jaw the development of the left ramus of which had been arrested. Canton mentions arrest of development of the left perpendicular ramus of the lower jaw combined with malformation of the ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould

... violently on the rein that his rider had all she could do to hold him, and lacked sufficient strength to direct his course. Seeing Zibeline's danger, Henri hastened to slacken his horse's pace, but it was too late: the almost perpendicular declivity of the other side of the hill added fresh impetus to the ungovernable rush of Seaman, who suddenly became wild ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... countless deep-worn ravines. The centre of the island has been hollowed out by the crater of the volcano into a capacious basin, almost circular, and, excepting to the south, where there is a huge cleft or rent, its sides or edges rise almost perpendicular full eight hundred feet from the base. After some trouble, carefully backing in with the swell, a landing was effected on the south side, when a most extraordinary sight was displayed to our view. Before us, in the hollow of ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 3, September 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... enemy saw that the space was crossed, they left their sangars and streamed down the reverse slope of the hill. They could not face the men who had passed that terrible passage. Forming at the bend of the perpendicular rock, they waited till they had recovered their breath, and then proceeded up the zigzag path leading to the summit of ...
— Through Three Campaigns - A Story of Chitral, Tirah and Ashanti • G. A. Henty

... of the other areas. We're located a little out of the way here, and I thought perhaps some of the stations farther north or south had seen it. Yes. That's right: two locomotive limbs, two handling limbs. Big as a human, and they hold their bodies perpendicular to the ground. Yes, sir, I know it sounds silly, and I'm going out to check the story now, but you ought to see these bathygraphs. If it's a hoax, there's an expert behind it. Very well, ...
— The Asses of Balaam • Gordon Randall Garrett

... and there. My, but that night didn't we make the sand fly from the boat! By morning we could begin to see the end of the job. Then, while busy hands began to cut a landing on the perpendicular sandy bank of the Iowa side, others were preparing sweeps. All was bustle ...
— Ox-Team Days on the Oregon Trail • Ezra Meeker

... braces, the shape of which can be seen in figure 4, are shown along either side of the keyboard in figure 5. These braces are 3/4" thick. The positions of the blocks, small pieces with the grain running perpendicular to the bottom, and the wrest plank, which is 1-1/4" thick, are also shown. The two ribs are attached to the underside of the soundboard in the positions indicated. The jack guide, built up of separate pieces held together by long strips down either ...
— Italian Harpsichord-Building in the 16th and 17th Centuries • John D. Shortridge

... he said, as he regained the perpendicular; and his well-fed eyes followed Shelton with sleepy inquisition. "Curious dark horse, Shelton," ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... Taking a key from his girdle, he unlocked this door, and throwing it open, signed to me to pass in. I did so, and found myself in a plain stone-walled room with a vaulted roof, and one very large, lofty, uncurtained window which looked out upon the sea and sheer down the perpendicular face of the rock on which the Chateau d'Aselzion was built. The furniture consisted of one small camp bedstead, a table, and two easy chairs, a piece of rough matting on the floor near the bed, and a hanging cupboard for clothes. ...
— The Life Everlasting: A Reality of Romance • Marie Corelli

... its rays. The world into which she had been carried was like that in a cubist picture which someone had shown her at the studio. It bore a relation to the world she knew, but a relation in which whatever she had supposed to be perpendicular was oblique, and whatever she had supposed to be oblique was horizontal, and nothing as she had been accustomed to find it. It made her head swim. It was literally true that she was afraid to move lest she should make a misstep through an error ...
— The Dust Flower • Basil King

... for stubby yellow bushes. In a few of the little valleys, stray clusters of olive trees relieved the monotony of the view. Heights rose upon heights and along the shores of the peninsula nearly perpendicular cliffs made landings ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various

... not a very interesting cave to look into. The strata of which it was composed, upheaved almost to the perpendicular, shaped an opening like the half of a Gothic arch divided vertically and leaning over a little to one side, which opening rose to the full height of the cave, and seemed to lay bare every corner of it to a single glance. ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald

... from Georgia was stooping over a pail, scouring it with sand and a cloth. Upon hearing the greeting he hung the cloth over the pail and came slowly to the perpendicular, putting his hands, during the operation, upon the small of his back, as if the hinges in that region were old and ...
— The Ape, the Idiot & Other People • W. C. Morrow

... a great deal easier to prevent wrinkles than it is to get rid of them after one has acquired them. A little study of women's faces will show how wrinkles, that no amount of massage will obliterate, are being made. They make perpendicular wrinkles between the eyes by drawing the brows together when sewing or reading, sometimes through habit and sometimes because of insufficient light. Some wrinkles are born of in-temper, of fretfulness, or sorrow. As ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter

... amphitheatres in which these Cornish plays were given; more particularly one in the parish of St. Just near the Land's End. This round as it was popularly called, was "an exact circle of 126 feet in diameter; the perpendicular height of the bank, from the area within, now seven feet; but the height from the bottom of the ditch without, ten feet at present, formerly more. The seats consist of six steps, fourteen inches wide, and one foot high, with one on the top of all, when the rampart is about seven ...
— Everyman and Other Old Religious Plays, with an Introduction • Anonymous

... accusation and recrimination took place. The army thought that the navy might have beaten down stone ramparts, ten feet thick; and the navy wondered why the army had not walked up the same ramparts, which were thirty feet perpendicular. Some of the ships accused others of not having had a sufficient number of men killed and wounded; and the boats' crews, whenever they met on shore, fought each other desperately, as if it were absolutely ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat

... A large portion of it, where water trickles and falls, is perfectly white. The walls present a specimen of how Nature packs the stone, crowding huge masses, as it were, into chinks and fissures, and here we see it in the perpendicular or horizontal layers, ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 1 • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... dignified representative of a particularly dignified State even the trees of Belgrave Square seemed at that moment a trifle too conventionally perpendicular. If they would but dance and wave their boughs he would have greeted their greenness more gladly. A good-looking nursemaid wheeled a perambulator beneath their shade, and though she never looked ...
— Count Bunker • J. Storer Clouston

... only succeeded in wounding three of them. Sylvester Scovel once explained this bad marksmanship to me by pointing out that to shift the cartridge in a Mauser, it is necessary to hold the rifle at an almost perpendicular angle, and close up under the shoulder. After the fresh cartridge has gone home the temptation to bring the butt to the shoulder before the barrel is level is too great for the Spanish Tommy, and, in his excitement, he fires most of his ammunition in the air over the heads ...
— Cuba in War Time • Richard Harding Davis

... draperies flung back over the left shoulder, the folds of which hang obliquely (from the left shoulder to the right side of the waist and thence downward almost to the right knee,) thus breaking up the monotony of the perpendicular lines formed by the folds of the tunic beneath. The movement of the uplifted right arm is characterized by a certain elan which, however, does not suggest violence; the carriage of the head is dignified, and so far ...
— The Bay State Monthly - Volume 2, Issue 3, December, 1884 • Various

... to the north, taking a precipitous trail of shale that Phyllis judged to be a short cut. It was rough going, but their mountain ponies were good for anything less than a perpendicular wall. They clambered up and down like cats, ...
— Mavericks • William MacLeod Raine

... Which pretty women—the sweet souls!—call soul. Certes it was not body; he was well Proportion'd, as a poplar or a pole, A handsome man, that human miracle; And in each circumstance of love or war Had still preserved his perpendicular. ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron

... new proposal, the girls sprang up, eagerly announcing their readiness to push on. Janus led the way to the right, instead of following the perpendicular trail. The former trail led them around a jutting point of rock, then over boulders, irregular slabs and crags, obliging them to pick their way with caution and cling to ...
— The Meadow-Brook Girls in the Hills - The Missing Pilot of the White Mountains • Janet Aldridge

... Cossack came down precipitately from above. He brushed so closely past them that a twig caught by his body struck Alkina's shoulder. But Alkina did not stir; pale, slender, and calm, she stood tightly pressing her body against the almost perpendicular wall of their refuge. The Cossack bent over Kiril, examined him attentively, then muttered ...
— The Created Legend • Feodor Sologub

... man is appointed to learn. Let the child lay his hand upon the table, and knock upon it with the first finger (i.e., the thumb) stretched out, without using the muscles of the arm, then with the second, third, and fourth fingers, in an almost perpendicular position, and with the fifth finger extended. Then let him strike a third with the first and third fingers together; a fourth, with the first and fourth fingers; first with the right hand, then with the left hand, and afterwards with ...
— Piano and Song - How to Teach, How to Learn, and How to Form a Judgment of - Musical Performances • Friedrich Wieck

... with a slight inclination away from the scratch. In other words, combine a small bending moment with a considerable tensional stress. It is important to learn to do this properly. If the proportions are not well observed, the tube will break with difficulty, and the section will not be perpendicular to the main length. If the knife is in good order it will make a fine deep scratch—the feel of the glass under the knife will enable the operator to decide when the scratch is made. The operation of cutting large tubes will be treated further on. The two halves of the tube ...
— On Laboratory Arts • Richard Threlfall

... of the shore rose a steep, perpendicular wall of limestone, that had the appearance of having been laid by the hand of man, so smooth and even was its surface. After attaining a height of about fifty feet, a natural platform of eight or ten yards broke the perpendicular line of the rock, when another wall, like the first, rose to ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie

... of society. He never established intimate relations with the rules of German. He used small initials for substantives, or capitalized verbs and adjectives according as they appeared important to him. His punctuation was arbitrary; generally he drew a perpendicular line between his words, letting it suffice for a comma or period as the case might be (a proceeding which adds not a little to the embarrassments of him who seeks to translate his sometimes ...
— Beethoven: the Man and the Artist - As Revealed in his own Words • Ludwig van Beethoven

... little hall,—made lovely by a cast of an unfinished Madonna of Michael Angelo's let into the wall,—and then to the back of it, where he opened a small cloth-covered door, when there yawned before me, below me, and above me, a great wide lofty room. Down into it led an almost perpendicular stair. ...
— The Vicar's Daughter • George MacDonald

... exactly the same angle and was lost in his hair. If the chin had weakly receded, as it often does in this type, Sir Isaac would have had a face like a spear-head, like a ram of which the sharp point was the top of his nose; but Sir Isaac's chin was square, and the wall of it perpendicular. ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett

... neither tall nor short—taller than she looked at a distance; she had not a slight waist; sooty black was her hair, with a broad forehead, perpendicular but low; she had a pair of very fine, dark, lustrous eyes, and no other good feature—unless I may so call her teeth, which were very white and even. Her face was rather short, and swarthy as a gipsy's; observant and sullen too; and she did not move, only eyed us negligently from under her ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu

... a deeply interesting volume might be written on the symbolic import of the primary relations and dimensions of space—long, broad, deep, or depth; surface; upper, under, above and below, right, left, horizontal, perpendicular, oblique:—and then the order of causation, or that which gives intelligibility, and the reverse order of effects, or that which gives the conditions of actual existence! Without the higher the lower would want its intelligibility: without the lower the higher could not have existed. The infant ...
— The Literary Remains Of Samuel Taylor Coleridge • Edited By Henry Nelson Coleridge

... going to nail it up for you myself. Won't it make a nice contrast to the humming-bird's? Over the bed, shall I? But then, if it should drop down on your nose, you know! I think the corner over the fireplace will be best. Yes, we'll have it right up perpendicular, in the angle. The branch twists a little, you see, and the nest will run out with its odds and ends like an old banner. Might I push up the ...
— A Summer in Leslie Goldthwaite's Life. • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney

... an adequate foundation located below the frost line and both chimney and flues should adhere strictly to the perpendicular. ...
— If You're Going to Live in the Country • Thomas H. Ormsbee and Richmond Huntley

... bars were heated and expanded, and the nuts screwed up as before. The lamps being again withdrawn, they contracted in cooling, and the walls were further drawn together. This process was continually repeated, until at length the walls were restored to their perpendicular position. The gallery may still be seen with the bars extending across it, and binding together ...
— The American Architect and Building News, Vol. 27, No. 733, January 11, 1890 • Various

... escape at the Pelsall Hall disaster which seem worth recording. Every mine has what is known as an 'upcast shaft'—a perpendicular tunnel which runs side by side with the working shaft, and is connected with it at the foot by an airway which serves to ventilate the workings. When the first rush of water, breaking in from some old deserted working, ...
— The Making Of A Novelist - An Experiment In Autobiography • David Christie Murray

... perfect square of which all the sides were equal to the distance between s and c, and if at the nearest end of the side towards the eye a pole were placed, or some other straight object, set up by a perpendicular line as shown at r s—then, I say, that if you were to look at the side of the square that is nearest to you it will appear at the bottom of the vertical plane r s, and then look at the farther side and it would appear to you at the height of the point n on the vertical plane. ...
— The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, Complete • Leonardo Da Vinci

... quantities of stone have been dug up from the old foundations, and utilised partly in constructing boundary walls, partly in repairs to the building. The Abbey Gateway, which is well worth inspection, is Perpendicular work, and is in surprisingly good repair, mainly owing to the fact that for many years it was in private hands. It stands very solid and square, and looks formidable with its battlements, but the view through the open doorway is very fine—the foliage on the trees ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Abbey Church of Tewkesbury - with some Account of the Priory Church of Deerhurst Gloucestershire • H. J. L. J. Masse

... river narrows considerably, and in its deep and silent flow winds for many miles between high hills which closely confine it, and in one place rise in a perpendicular cliff 800 feet sheer above ...
— Burma - Peeps at Many Lands • R.Talbot Kelly

... soon other matters to engage their attention. The brig was now approaching that part of the river where the deep channel runs under the lofty and perpendicular cliffs of San Lorenzo. The bed is as wide as in other places, but on the eastern side is a line of islands extending for several miles, and forcing the current over to the west. It was still doubtful, however, whether the enemy had observed the brig, or would venture to attack ...
— The Three Lieutenants • W.H.G. Kingston

... smart boy, and have ideas; but, like all little boys, your ideas don't go far enough. I was just the same when I was your age, always trying to climb perpendicular places, and always falling down again. When you're older, you look to see what your hold's like before you begin. Meanwhile, you're like a little dog barking at a bull, and you're precious lucky not to be over the hedge by this time—maybe the bull doesn't mind you, maybe ...
— The Iron Pirate - A Plain Tale of Strange Happenings on the Sea • Max Pemberton

... tourist wants to grasp his seat and lift. There is a wooden shelf nailed to the side of the perpendicular rockwall where his life depends upon the honesty of the man who drove the nails. He may wonder if the man was working by the day or by the job! He looks over the edge of the shelf downward, and then turns to the other side to look at the face of the cliff they are hugging, ...
— The University of Hard Knocks • Ralph Parlette

... Jerusalem from the point of view of the besieger, which is confirmed in large part by modern research.[2] On the southeast and west the city was unapproachable by reason of the sheer ravines of Kedron and Hinnom, overlooked by almost perpendicular precipices, which surrounded it. It was vulnerable therefore only on the north, where the two heights on which it was built were connected with the main ridge of the Judean hills; and here it was fortified with three walls. The outermost, which was built by Agrippa I, ...
— Josephus • Norman Bentwich

... to travel once more in single file, for the path runs along a mountain spur almost as perpendicular as a wall; we are between two precipices, down which even the boldest cannot look without a shudder. The incline, moreover, is rapid, and from time to time we come to places where the ridge is so broken and insecure that we have to dismount, let our mules go first, and creep after ...
— Mr. Fortescue • William Westall

... flying to another flower, that is to say, in half a minute, the stalks of the pollen masses bend downward from the perpendicular and slightly toward the center, or just far enough to require the moth, in thrusting his proboscis into the nectary, to strike the glutinous, sticky stigma. Now, withdrawing his head, either or both of the ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan

... a rule, stuck to their own rink, where they had a style of skating belonging to themselves. Their style was perpendicular and very stiff; it was by no means easy to attain, and when attained, hardly perhaps, to the observer, worth the efforts expended. Winn approved of it highly. He thought it a smart and sensible way to skate, and was by no means a bad exponent; ...
— The Dark Tower • Phyllis Bottome

... flood came in, six or eight inches perpendicular, with a roaring noise; and so soon as it had passed the brig, I set off with Mr. Brown and Mr. Lacy in the whale boat, to follow it up the small channel on the eastern shore; and having a fair wind we outran the tide and ...
— A Voyage to Terra Australis Volume 2 • Matthew Flinders

... descend the mountain, many sliding down on the snow, very much as they coast at the garden Beaujon, from top to bottom of the Montagnes Russes, and I followed their example. This they called "sledding." The general-in-chief also descended in this manner an almost perpendicular glacier. His guide was a young countryman, active and courageous, to whom the First Consul promised a sufficiency for the rest of his days. Some young soldiers who had wandered off into the snow were found, almost dead with cold, by the dogs sent out by the monks, and carried ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton

... could perceive by the dark parapet-like band along its crest that it was covered with a growth of timber. This was the more readily observed from contrast with the perpendicular sides, which were almost of a snowy whiteness, on account of the gypsum, chalk, or milky quartz of ...
— The War Trail - The Hunt of the Wild Horse • Mayne Reid

... roof that came to a point, and from whose peak rose a towering flagstaff. The foundation was of stone; but, at the height of a man above the earth, the sides were made of massive, squared logs, firmly united by an ingenious combination of their ends, as well as by perpendicular supporters pinned closely into their sides. In this citadel, or block-house, as from its materials it was technically called, there were two different tiers of long, narrow loop-holes, but no regular windows. The rays of the setting sun, however, glittered on one ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper

... and alert. A dapper, dignified step. Movement precise. An effect of a good deal of nose glasses. Black, heavy rims. A wide, black tape. Head perpendicular, drawn back against the neck. Grave, scholarly face, chiselled with much refinement of technique; foil to the studious complexion, a dark, silken moustache. Holding our thumb-nail sketch up to the light, we ...
— Walking-Stick Papers • Robert Cortes Holliday

... never seen the batters whom he is about to face, there are certain points to be noted as each of them takes his place at the bat. First, his position and manner of holding his bat should be observed. If he carries it over his shoulder and in an almost perpendicular position, the chances are that he is naturally a high ball hitter and is looking for that kind of a pitch, because that is the position of the bat from which a high ball is most easily hit. If, on the contrary, he carries his bat in a more ...
— Base-Ball - How to Become a Player • John M. Ward

... perpendicular pronoun too much and in the wrong places. On the hits it's 'we', but on the flops it's 'I'. Quit it. Everything on this job is 'we'. Terra's best brains are on Team One and are going to stay there. You will not—repeat NOT—be interfered with, pushed around or kicked around. ...
— Masters of Space • Edward Elmer Smith

... were accurately copied from the scheme-book of a lottery dealer in Vicksburg, Mississippi, and may be considered a fair specimen of lottery combinations generally. The tables are for a 78 numbered lottery, every three perpendicular lines of figures containing a package, and each package all the numbers, from 1 to 78, inclusive; and there are also ...
— Secret Band of Brothers • Jonathan Harrington Green

... golden fringe and side curls. She wore a purple velveteen skirt, a purple velveteen jacket with a large lace collar, and a still larger purple velveteen hat with white ostrich feathers that swayed madly from the perpendicular. ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair

... Once or twice they met a brown Indian, robed in a coloured blanket, with a huge straw hat, from beneath which he gazed with curious, though gentle eyes, upon the cavalcade. By-and-by, looking like a string of ants descending a perpendicular wall, Mary beheld a row of black specks slowly moving. She was told that these were the mules bringing down the metal in panniers—the only means of communication, until, as the lieutenant promised, a perpendicular ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. II) • Charlotte M. Yonge

... seemed to be an excellent trail opened up around the face of a high cliff. The trail was level and quite broad and led upward and in the general direction I wished to go. The cliff arose for several hundred feet on my right, and on my left was an equal and nearly perpendicular drop to the bottom ...
— A Princess of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... Bristol ships, and they have more than once flogged a cruel skipper caught ashore. Passing King George's Town, we halted (11 A.M., January 23) opposite the river and settlement of Fresco, where two barques and a cutter were awaiting supplies. Fresco-land is beautified by perpendicular red cliffs, and the fine broad beach is feathered with cocoas which suggest kopra—the dried meat of the split kernel. At 3.15 P.M. came Grand Lahou—Bosman's Cabo La Hoe—180 miles from Cape Palmas. The native settlements ...
— To The Gold Coast for Gold, Vol. II - A Personal Narrative • Richard Francis Burton and Verney Lovett Cameron

... traced upwards the course of a mountain stream to a spot where a small waterfall threw itself over a slab of perpendicular rock, which seemed to bar his farther progress. On a nearer view, he discovered a flight of steps, roughly hewn in the rock, on one side of the fall. Ascending these steps, he entered a narrow winding pass, ...
— Crotchet Castle • Thomas Love Peacock

... a coil of rope around his arm, he was dashing down the almost perpendicular "slide." When he had nearly reached the level of the abandoned trail, he fastened one end of the rope to a jutting splinter of granite, and began to "lay out," and work his way laterally along the face of the mountain. Presently he struck ...
— The Twins of Table Mountain and Other Stories • Bret Harte

... long breath, uttered a short, deep groan, and wiping the moisture from his red forehead, and resuming a perpendicular position, was evidently trying to recover the ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu

... had plowed a huge furrow, lifting boulders, trees, acres of soil upon its back. The very bluff through which the river had cut its bed was formed of the debris it had thrown off, and constituted a bulwark protecting its flank. Farther up-stream the slope, became steeper, then changed to a rugged perpendicular face showing marks of recent cleavage. This palisade extended on and on, around the nearest bend, following the contour of the Salmon as far as they could see. The sun was reflected from its myriad angles and ...
— The Iron Trail • Rex Beach

... scrambled down to the ledge. Then I began to wave my arms about—I had nothing on above the waist—and in a moment I saw a face with a uniform cap peer out through the jungle; and a hand was waved. I made signs to him to make his way to the foot of the perpendicular wall of rock beneath me. I then unwound the turban, whose length was, I knew, amply sufficient to reach to the bottom, and then looked round for something to write on. I had my pencil still in my trousers pocket, but not a ...
— Among Malay Pirates - And Other Tales Of Adventure And Peril • G. A. Henty

... eye, like the mind, hates confusion and overcrowding. All the elements in beauty, grandeur, pathos, are simple—as simple as the lines in a Nile picture: the strong river, the yellow desert, the palms, the pyramids; hardly more than a horizontal line and a perpendicular line; only there is the sky, the ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... was right. The country we travelled over was wild and rugged in the extreme. Dark rocks of varied forms rose in lofty perpendicular walls on one hand, while torrents dashed down the mountain-sides on the other. Frequently we had to ascend by a succession of rough steps cut in the rock, and then to descend by a similar description of path with a precipice on each side of it, down which, had a mule made a false ...
— The Young Llanero - A Story of War and Wild Life in Venezuela • W.H.G. Kingston

... "Me-she-nah-ma-gwai (the name of the kingfish), take hold of my bait." He kept repeating this for some time. At last the king of the fishes said, "Hiawatha troubles me. Here, Trout, take hold of his line," which was very heavy, so that his canoe stood nearly perpendicular; but he kept crying out, "Wha-ee-he! wha-ee-he!" till he could see the trout. As soon as he saw him, he spoke to him. "Why did you take hold of my hook? Shame, shame you ugly fish." The trout, being thus rebuked, ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 2 (of 12) • Various

... The cliff, perpendicular, a mass of white, striped with black here and there by lines of flint, stretched towards the horizon like the curve of a rampart five leagues wide. An east wind, bitter and cold, was blowing; the sky was grey; the sea greenish and, as it were, ...
— Bouvard and Pecuchet - A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life • Gustave Flaubert

... best bow he was capable of; and the monkey made frantic efforts to escape, as if he would enjoy twisting his paws in their perpendicular hair. ...
— Toby Tyler • James Otis

... Looking half wild with joy to leave the North,— With dusty hides, all mobbing on together,— When,—whether from a fly's malicious comment Upon his tender flank, from which he shrank; Or whether Only in some enthusiastic moment,— However, one brown monster, in a frisk, Giving his tail a perpendicular whisk, Kicked out a passage through the beastly rabble; And after a pas seul,—or, if you will, a Horn-pipe before the basket-maker's villa, Leapt o'er the tiny pale,— Backed his beefsteaks against the wooden gable, And thrust his brawny bell-rope of ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood

... the batteries, Stuart's Hill was strongly occupied by Longstreet, with Anderson's division as general reserve; and this wing of the Confederate army was gradually wheeled up, but always under cover, until it was almost perpendicular to the line of the unfinished railroad. The strength of Lee's army at the battle of Manassas was hardly more than 50,000 of all arms. Jackson's command had been reduced by battle and forced marches to 17,000 men. Longstreet mustered 30,000, and the ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson

... very first hint of some sort of order, but otherwise in a perfectly acquiescent state of mind. Suddenly, out of the companion would appear a tall, dark figure, bareheaded, with a short white beard of a perpendicular cut, very visible in the dark—Captain S-, disturbed in his reading down below by the frightful bounding and lurching of the ship. Leaning very much against the precipitous incline of the deck, he would take a turn or two, perfectly silent, hang on by the compass for a while, take ...
— The Mirror of the Sea • Joseph Conrad

... pleasantly, though the perpendicular line above his nose deepened. "I dare venture that the matter concerns the coming engagement at Quebec, and you ...
— The Grey Cloak • Harold MacGrath

... ponds with only one supply, the water should flow through an open trough with stones and other impediments in it, between the ponds. The ponds may be lined entirely with brickwork faced with cement, and in this case the sides should be made perpendicular. The cement should, however, be exposed freely to the action of the running water for a couple of months at least before any ...
— Amateur Fish Culture • Charles Edward Walker

... where the light of day freely enters, are the remains of a hearth, with bone-refuse and discarded implements mingling with the ashes to a considerable depth. A glance at these implements, for instance the small flint scraper with narrow high back and perpendicular chipping along the sides, is enough to show that the men who once warmed their fingers here were of the so-called Aurignacian type (Aurignac in the department of Haute Garonne, in southern France), that is to say, lived somewhere about the dawn of the third stage of the palaeolithic ...
— Anthropology • Robert Marett

... about will show the time as precisely as a clock. And it is quite easy to make. It has, in the first place, a face set up slanting on a pedestal. The proper slant answers to the latitude of the place. At and near New York it should be about forty-one degrees from the perpendicular, or a little more than half upright. The face is divided into hour spaces, just like the face of a clock, but the whole circle is not used. A semicircle is all that the sun can traverse, except in the long days of summer. The fourth part of a circle ...
— Harper's Young People, April 6, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... seldom seen on the monuments, but are the writing generally found on the papyrus rolls or manuscripts. They are written from right to left. The hieroglyphs proper may be written either way, or in a perpendicular line. In the demotic, or people's writing, the characters are somewhat more curtailed, or abridged, than in the hieratic, or priestly, style. There were four methods of using the hieroglyphics in historical times. First, there were the primary, representational characters, the literal pictures. ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher

... l'Ouest, and one soon becomes familiar with the very low platforms of the stations that are raised scarcely above the rails. The porters wear blue smocks and trousers of the same material, secured at the waist by a belt of perpendicular red and black stripes. The railway carriages have always two foot-boards, and the doors besides the usual handles have a second one half-way down the panels presumably for additional security. It is really in ...
— Normandy, Complete - The Scenery & Romance Of Its Ancient Towns • Gordon Home

... coasted along the island of Guadaloupe, towards the north-west, steering for Hispaniola, and discovered a very high island, which he called Montserrate, because it resembled the rocks of that place. He next found a very round island, everywhere perpendicular, so that it seemed impossible to get upon it without the assistance of ladders, and which he named Santa Maria la Redonda, or the round island of St Mary. To another island he gave the name of Santa Maria et Antigua or ancient St Mary, the coast ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. III. • Robert Kerr

... just constructed two similar right-angled triangles; the first, the smallest, has for its sides the perpendicular pole, the distance which separates the little stick from the foot of the pole and my visual ray for hypothenuse; the second has for its sides the perpendicular cliff, the height of which we wish to measure, the distance which separates the little stick ...
— The Mysterious Island • Jules Verne

... become transparent in one point of its surface, so as to enable luminous rays to pierce it;... the cornea must correspond exactly with the opening of the socket;... behind this transparent opening there must be refracting media;... there must be a retina[24] at the extremity of the dark chamber;... perpendicular to the retina there must be an innumerable quantity of transparent cones permitting only the light directed in the line of their axes to reach the nervous membrane,"[25] etc. etc. In reply, the advocate of final causes ...
— Creative Evolution • Henri Bergson

... b c d (Fig. I.) be the arc subtending a given angle. Draw the chord a d and bisect it at o. Through o draw e f perpendicular ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 787, January 31, 1891 • Various

... print, the last of a series illustrating the horrors of drunkenness, on the fiercest temperance principles. The composition—representing an empty bottle of gin, an immensely spacious garret, a perpendicular Scripture reader, and a horizontal expiring family—appealed to public favor, under the entirely unobjectionable title of "The Hand of Death." Allan's resolution to extract amusement from Castletown by main force had resisted a great deal, but it failed him at this stage ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins

... I said before, the valley was surrounded by hills, and the only outlet was by means of a ragged ravine, through which the water had forced its way, and extended to another plain about half a mile distant The hills opposite to us were nearly perpendicular, and their summit could only be gained by immense exertion on the part of a person on foot. The only places where horses could escape, or leave the valley, was by means of the ravine, or the path ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes

... a laugh, for the creature had a perpendicular neck, like a funnel, that rose out of a body like a ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade

... torpor seemed to hang over the battle-field. Sometimes, a perpendicular column of smoke rose up, in the motionless distance, and the detonation reached us a little while afterwards, as if astray, and ashamed ...
— The New Book Of Martyrs • Georges Duhamel

... erect or in a sitting posture, he sinks down upon the ground; as is seen in fainting fits, and other instances of great debility. Hence it follows, that some exertion of muscular power is necessary to preserve our perpendicular attitude. This is performed by proportionally exerting the antagonist muscles of the trunk, neck, and limbs; and if at any time in our locomotions we find ourselves inclining to one side, we either ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. I - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin

... tangled roots and fallen brush. A thirst-parched stranger might have ridden past twenty times on the bench above without suspecting its presence. The faint cattle trail leading to it entered the draw a quarter of a mile away, and led along under low but almost perpendicular banks. ...
— Desert Conquest - or, Precious Waters • A. M. Chisholm

... could reload. They struck him several times, but, instead of weakening the monster, each shot seemed only to direct him towards the hunters, till at last he pursued two of them so closely that they threw aside their guns and pouches, and jumped down a perpendicular bank of twenty feet into the river: the bear sprang after them, and was within a few feet of the hindmost, when one of the hunters on shore shot him in the head, and finally killed him. They dragged ...
— First Across the Continent • Noah Brooks

... uncertain line, that, like the prospect of our future years, impresses the mind with a deeper interest from its distant and impenetrable form. Mount St. Michael is a league in circumference; in some parts of the rock is perpendicular; it is flooded entirely at high water, but when the tide is out, the rock may be approached by the sands; some danger, however, attends the passage to those who are not perfectly well acquainted with the track, as many quicksands ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 17, No. 477, Saturday, February 19, 1831 • Various

... or below the line of the horizon, though really parallel to it, apparently approaches it, as it is produced to the right or left. The reason is obvious. One point in the wall, viz. that on which you let fall a perpendicular from your eye, is nearest to your eye. The perpendicular height of the wall, as drawn through this point, must therefore appear greater than as drawn through any other point more to the right or left. The lines which are really ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 231, April 1, 1854 • Various

... Mr. Borthwick, who was managing for Mr. J. G. Macdonald. At this station there was a water-hole 25 miles long, and in bathing one would see crocodiles basking on the rocks and bank, but they appeared to be harmless. At the lower end of this hole there was a perpendicular drop of over 40 feet, with a very deep hole at the foot, infested by sharks and alligators. The tides came ...
— Reminiscences of Queensland - 1862-1869 • William Henry Corfield

... made with the seams horizontal, to avoid the resistance perpendicular seams in so large a sail would offer to the wind. It has been calculated that the resistance of perpendicular seams, in a sail of this size, is equal to that of a plank 10 inches broad and 60 feet long, placed ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray

... indeed be made to float or swim upon the water at all; and the Admiral had now to consider, not whether he could sail on a particular point of the compass, but whether he could by any means avoid another course which the fates now proposed to him—namely, a perpendicular course to the bottom of the sea. It was a race between the water and the ships, and the only thing the Admiral could think of was to turn southward across to Jamaica, which he did on June 23rd, putting into Puerto Bueno, now called Dry Harbour. ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young

... overlooking the entire lake, with the villages on its edge, and range after range of the mountains of Jalisco and Michoacan. Our animals were more than an hour picking their way down the stony trails between all but perpendicular cornfields, the leaves of which had been stripped off to permit the huge ear at the top the more fully to ripen. A boulder set in motion at the top of a field would have been sure death to the man or horse it struck at ...
— Tramping Through Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras - Being the Random Notes of an Incurable Vagabond • Harry A. Franck

... frame, an engraving from the famous drawing of Gustave Dore, reproducing the catastrophe on the Matterhorn, met his eye. Four human bodies on the flat of their backs or stomachs were coming headlong down the almost perpendicular slope of a neve, with extended arms and clutching hands, seeking the broken rope which held this string of lives, and only served to drag them down to death in the gulf where the mass was to fall pell-mell, with ropes, axes, ...
— Tartarin On The Alps • Alphonse Daudet

... discovered in 1714 and again in 1865, near the farmhouse of Tor Marancia, at the first milestone of the Via Ardeatina, is hewn out of a perpendicular cliff, which is conspicuous from the high road (the modern Via delle Sette Chiese). The crypt is approached through a vestibule, which was richly decorated with terra-cotta carvings, and, on the frieze, a monumental inscription ...
— Pagan and Christian Rome • Rodolfo Lanciani

... weakly. He might have been five-and-twenty; but his looks, like those of too many a working man, were rather those of a man of forty. Wild grey eyes gleamed out from under huge knitted brows, and a perpendicular wall of brain, too large for his puny body. He was not only, I soon discovered, a water-drinker, but a strict "vegetarian" also; to which, perhaps, he owed a great deal of the almost preternatural clearness, volubility, and sensitiveness of his mind. But whether from his ascetic habits, or the ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al

... altitude. I am apt to imagine, likewise, that height is less grand than depth; and that we are more struck at looking down from a precipice, than looking up at an object of equal height; but of that I am not very positive. A perpendicular has more force in forming the sublime, than an inclined plane, and the effects of a rugged and broken surface seem stronger than where it is smooth and polished. It would carry us out of our way to ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... spot to camp on. At last the corporal gave up the quest for hay, and we were faced with the problem of spending the night on a narrow road bounded on one side by cliffs beneath which ran the Ebar, and on the other by an almost perpendicular bank. The night was black, the mud a foot deep, and a stream ran across the road. The carriages drew up in single file and we discussed the sleeping problem, while Cutting cooked bovril on an ill-behaved Primus stove. Our drivers had to sleep on the ...
— The Luck of Thirteen - Wanderings and Flight through Montenegro and Serbia • Jan Gordon

... large trees arose from its sloping sides. The horizontal passage was kept in a safe state by a lining of bricks, and I walked through it into the heart of the Indian sepulchre. It was a damp, dark, weird interior; but the perpendicular shaft, which ascended to the apex, kept up an uninterrupted current of air. I found it anything but a pleasant place in which to linger, and soon retraced my steps to the boat, where I once more embarked ...
— Four Months in a Sneak-Box • Nathaniel H. Bishop

... crept on all-fours. They formed an unbroken, threadlike stream extending from timberline to crest, each individual being dwarfed to microscopic proportions by the size of his surroundings. They flowed across the floor of the valley, then slowly, very slowly, they flowed up its almost perpendicular wall. Now they were lost to sight; again they reappeared clambering over glacier scars or toiling up steep, rocky slides; finally they emerged away up under the arch of ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach

... cranium are intermediate between those of the child and the adult man; they are softer, more graceful and delicate, and the apophyses and ridges for the attachment of muscles are less pronounced,... the forehead is ... more perpendicular, to such a degree that in a group of skulls those of the two sexes have been mistaken for different types; the superciliary ridges and the glabella are less developed, often not at all; the crown is higher and more horizontal; the brain weight and cranial capacity are less; the ...
— Sex and Society • William I. Thomas

... the conversation about the donkey, he went down to the beach, where, it being the bathing hour, the whole visiting population of Ault was assembled. The coast met the sea at this point as a perpendicular wall of rock a hundred and fifty feet high, stretching away to the west in an endless line, but on the east side, sloping gradually down, till about two miles further on, it lost itself in the flat line of the shore. Where the sweep of the bare, gray cliff made a slight backward curve, the sea ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau

... already mentioned, was called Flinty Point, the other Needle Point, and between these two points there was no gangway within the semicircle up the wall of cliff. Indeed, within the cove the cliff was perpendicular, or rather overhanging, as far as such crumbling earth would admit of its overhanging. To reach a gangway, a person inside the cove would have to leave the cliff wall for the open sands, and pass round ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton

... rectangular piece of wood about 3/4 of an inch thick, and about 3x1-1/2 feet of surface. It is painted white, and the horizontal bars are green, so that the divisions may be apparent at a distance; it has perpendicular divisions breaking it up into three columns, each of which contains rows of nine small dresser hooks. It can be hung on an easel or supported by its own hinge on a table. Each of the divisions represents a numerical grouping, the one on the right is for singles or units, the ...
— The Child Under Eight • E.R. Murray and Henrietta Brown Smith

... on-rushing water, swept off my feet, overwhelmed, whirled helplessly hither and thither in the midst of a medley of whirling wreckage, flying ropes'-ends, and struggling men. Opening my eyes I beheld the hull of the schooner, a short distance away, standing almost perpendicular, and slowly gliding downwards, bows first. Even as I looked she vanished into the dark profundity beneath, and then I directed my glances above me. It seemed that I was fathoms deep, for the phosphorescent foam that boiled overhead looked almost as far aloft as a frigate's lower yard; and ...
— A Middy of the King - A Romance of the Old British Navy • Harry Collingwood

... the stranger hit the saddle, old Dunny quit the earth And traveled right straight up for all that he was worth. A-pitching and a-squealing, a-having wall-eyed fits, His hind feet perpendicular, his front ...
— Cowboy Songs - and Other Frontier Ballads • Various

... at the gully. The ground descended gently, the gully was about twelve feet wide, but its perpendicular sides descended to an unseen depth-stones and rocks were ...
— The Duke's Prize - A Story of Art and Heart in Florence • Maturin Murray

... and everything was ruled out and set in place again. A wonderful man! I think it would be true to say it was Linnaeus who set the world on its present twist of thinking, and levered our mental globe a little more perpendicular to the ecliptic. He actually gathered the dandelion and took it to bits like a scientific child; he touched nature with his fingers instead of sitting looking out of window—perhaps the first man who had ever done so for seventeen hundred years or so, since superstition blighted ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies

... between two stars, then if the angle be not too large it can be determined in the following manner. Let the rod AB be divided into inches and parts of an inch, and let another rod, CD, slide up and down along AB in such a way that the two always remain perpendicular to each other. "Sights," like those on a rifle, are placed at A and C, and there is a pin at D. It will easily be seen that, by sliding the movable bar along the fixed one, it must always be possible when the stars are not too ...
— Great Astronomers • R. S. Ball

... my idea. Do you see that narrow ledge on the top of the perpendicular cliff on the right? It must be thirty fathoms, if not more, from there to the bottom; and, down below, there are sharp rocks. Each of us will stand right at the extremity of the ledge—in such manner even a slight wound will be mortal: that ought to be in accordance with your desire, as ...
— A Hero of Our Time • M. Y. Lermontov

... spot seemed hopelessly far away as the rain began to drive down and the horizon to open here and there in lurid slashings of stormy sunset; and when the road, which for some time had been one long descent, suddenly confronted us with a rough, perpendicular lane, overgrown with bushes, that seemed more like a cart-track to the stars than a sensible thoroughfare, we realized, with a certain indignant self-pity, that we were walking in real earnest, out in the night and the ...
— October Vagabonds • Richard Le Gallienne

... was simple. First he took a metal stylus or a pencil and drew perpendicular lines in the side margins of his parchment, and horizontal lines at equal distances from top to bottom of the page. Then the task of copying was straightforward. If the book was to be embellished he left spaces for the illuminator ...
— Old English Libraries, The Making, Collection, and Use of Books • Ernest A. Savage

... England, 24 m. W.N.W. of London by the Metropolitan railway. Pop. (1901) 2674. It is pleasantly situated in the narrow valley of the Misbourne stream, which is flanked by the well-wooded slopes of the Chiltern Hills. The church of St Mary is almost entirely Perpendicular, and has a beautiful south porch, brasses of the 15th, 16th and 17th centuries and numerous monuments, several of which, in a chantry, commemorate members of the family of Drake, lords of the manor. The town hall was built by Sir ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... a very ancient musical instrument, and was called clarsach. It had thirty strings, with the peculiarity that the front arm was not perpendicular to the sounding board, but turned considerably towards the left, to afford a greater opening for the voice of the performer, and this construction showed that the accompaniment of the voice was a chief province of the harper. Some harps had but four strings. Great pains were taken to decorate ...
— An Historical Account of the Settlements of Scotch Highlanders in America • J. P. MacLean

... a negative made. Then a print is made and a wet plate negative is printed on a sheet of sensitised tinfoil which has been treated with a single-line screen. You know a halftone consists of a photograph through a screen composed of lines running perpendicular to each other - a coarse screen for newspaper work, and a fine screen for better work, such as in magazines. Well, in this case the screen is composed of lines running parallel in one direction only, not crossing at right angles. A halftone is composed of minute points, some light, some ...
— The Poisoned Pen • Arthur B. Reeve

... down, and just opposite the catafalque so that it is perpendicular to the direction of vision, stand the central powers of our government, its President and counsellors. President Johnson is facing the middle of the coffin upon the lowest step; his hands are crossed ...
— The Life, Crime and Capture of John Wilkes Booth • George Alfred Townsend



Words linked to "Perpendicular" :   rectangular, upended, straight line, plumb rule, right, English-Gothic architecture, upright, horizontal, plumb line, Gothic architecture, parallel, sounding line, English-Gothic, perpendicular style, lead line, perpendicularity, steep, cord, orthogonal, oblique, normal, plumb, plummet, plumb bob, Tudor architecture, inclined, face



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