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Stylus   Listen
noun
Stylus  n.  
1.
An instrument for writing. See Style, n., 1.
2.
That needle-shaped part at the tip of the playing arm of phonograph which sits in the groove of a phonograph record while it is turning, to detect the undulations in the phonograph groove and convert them into vibrations which are transmitted to a system (since 1920 electronic) which converts the signal into sound; also called needle. The stylus is frequently composed of a hard metal or of diamond.
3.
The needle-like device used to cut the grooves which record the sound on the original disc during recording of a phonograph record; it is moved by the vibrations given to the diaphragm by a sound, and produces the indented record.
4.
(Computers) A pen-shaped pointing device used to specify the cursor position on a graphics tablet.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Stylus" Quotes from Famous Books



... twice, and speaking with signal clearness of intonation. The little creature bowed its head, apparently as a sign of intelligence, and in a few minutes returned with what seemed like a pencil or stylus and writing materials, and with a large silver-like box of very curious form. To one side was affixed a sort of mouthpiece, consisting of a truncated cone expanding into a saucer-shaped bowl. Across the wider ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg

... gramophone, megaphone, phonorganon^. [device to convert sound to electrical signals] microphone, directional microphone, mike, hand mike, lapel microphone. [devices to convert recorded sound to electronic signals] phonograph needle, stylus, diamond stylus, pickup; reading head (electronic devices). hearer, auditor, listener, eavesdropper, listener-in. auditory, audience. [science of hearing] otology, otorhinolaryngology. [physicians specializing in hearing] otologist, otorhinolaryngologist. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... You will know what it cost me, without my telling you. I wrote it with the same wooden stylus which had put upon parchment the first words ever dictated by Joan of Arc—that high summons to the English to vacate France, two years past, when she was a lass of seventeen; it had now set down the last ones which she was ever to dictate. Then I broke ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... bestowed on Edison for this startling invention (sometimes called his most original) was not due to its efficiency. Recording with the tinfoil phonograph is too difficult to be practical. The tinfoil tears easily, and even when the stylus is properly adjusted, the reproduction is distorted and squeaky, and good for only a few playbacks. Nevertheless young Edison, the "wizard" as he was called, had hit upon a secret of which men had dreamed for centuries.[2] ...
— Development of the Phonograph at Alexander Graham Bell's Volta Laboratory • Leslie J. Newville

... consider the pointed peak as the stylus of an immense sun-dial, the shadow of which pointed on one given day, like the inexorable finger of fate, to the yawning chasm which led into the ...
— A Journey to the Centre of the Earth • Jules Verne

... learned to write by first tracing, with the stylus, letters cut in wax tablets, and later by copying exercises set for him by his teacher, using the wax tablet and writing on his knee. Still later the pupil learned to write with ink on papyrus or parchment, though, due to the cost of parchment in ancient times, this ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY

... the morrow in accordance with the directions which I had received. I had provided myself in Cincinnati with a field dispatch book in form of a manifold letter-writer which I myself carried in a sabretasch during all the rest of the war. In this, by means of the carbon sheets and agate-pointed stylus, a dispatch and its copy were written at once, and a valuable record kept of every day's business. I could sit by the bivouac fire and write upon my knee without troubling a weary aide-de-camp to make a ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V2 • Jacob Dolson Cox

... the slaves upon the benches. Their motions, precise, and exactly the same on both sides of the vessel, after a while became monotonous; and then he amused himself singling out individuals. With his stylus he made note of objections, thinking, if all went well, he would find among the pirates of whom he was in search better men for ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace

... of innate ideas had agreed in regarding all knowledge as something given, from without or from within. The knowing mind was only a passive recipient of impressions thus imparted to it. It was as wax under the stylus, tabula rasa, clean paper waiting to be written upon. Kant departed from this radically. He declared that all cognition rests upon the union of the mind's activity with its receptivity. The material ...
— Edward Caldwell Moore - Outline of the History of Christian Thought Since Kant • Edward Moore

... others enjoyed. "The bulk of the Whigs appears rather to be linked to a certain set of persons, than any certain set of principles." To these persons also he directed his grim attention, Somers, Cowper, Godolphin, Marlborough, and Wharton were each drawn with iron stylus and acid. To Wharton he gave special care (he had some private scores to pay off), and in the character of Verres, he etched the portrait of a profligate, an unscrupulous governor, a scoundrel, an infidel to his religion and country, a reckless, selfish, low-living ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IX; • Jonathan Swift

... 1: Tablets were thin boards of wood smeared with wax. The writing was done with a stylus, a pointed instrument like a pencil, made of bone or metal, with a knob at the other end. The knob was used to smooth over the wax ...
— Latin for Beginners • Benjamin Leonard D'Ooge

... book-rolls, lyres, drinking vessels, baskets for books, and perhaps some simple geometric instruments. The pupils sit on rude, low benches, each lad with his boxwood tablet covered with wax[*] upon his lap, and presumably busy, scratching letters with his stylus. The master sits on a high chair, surveying the scene. He cultivates a grim and awful aspect, for he is under no delusion that "his pupils love him." "He sits aloft," we are told, "like a juryman, with an expression ...
— A Day In Old Athens • William Stearns Davis



Words linked to "Stylus" :   stylus printer, tool, diamond point, device, needle, style, cartridge



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