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Scale   /skeɪl/   Listen
Scale

noun
1.
An ordered reference standard.  Synonyms: graduated table, ordered series, scale of measurement.
2.
Relative magnitude.
3.
The ratio between the size of something and a representation of it.  "The scale of the model"
4.
A specialized leaf or bract that protects a bud or catkin.  Synonym: scale leaf.
5.
A thin flake of dead epidermis shed from the surface of the skin.  Synonyms: exfoliation, scurf.
6.
(music) a series of notes differing in pitch according to a specific scheme (usually within an octave).  Synonym: musical scale.
7.
A measuring instrument for weighing; shows amount of mass.  Synonym: weighing machine.
8.
An indicator having a graduated sequence of marks.
9.
A metal sheathing of uniform thickness (such as the shield attached to an artillery piece to protect the gunners).  Synonyms: plate, shell.
10.
A flattened rigid plate forming part of the body covering of many animals.



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"Scale" Quotes from Famous Books



... the sole proprietor of the Bon Marche, then only a small shop, which became under his direction the most unique establishment in the world. His idea was to establish a combined philanthropic and commercial house on a large scale. Every one who worked for him was advanced progressively, according to his length of employment and the value of the services he rendered. He furnished free tuition, free medical attendance, and a free library for employes; a provident fund affording ...
— How to Succeed - or, Stepping-Stones to Fame and Fortune • Orison Swett Marden

... he heard those pipes and watched the grave, untamed, strong faces of those wild peasant men and women, he understood that, low though they might be in scale of evolution, there was yet absent from them the touch of that deteriorating something which civilization painted into those other countenances. But whether the word he sought was degradation or whether it was shame, he could not tell. In all they did, the way they moved, their dignity and independence, ...
— The Centaur • Algernon Blackwood

... about the Indians, for they can't come till to-morrow, and perhaps they'll never come at all. But I say, this is coming to search for the old gold city! I believe I'd rather have stopped at the plantation killing blight and scratching the scale insects off the peach-twigs. ...
— The Peril Finders • George Manville Fenn

... to the serious business of bridge. Now and then those who were not playing ventured a subdued murmur of talk amongst themselves, but for the most part the silence of the room was only broken by voices declaring trumps in a rapidly ascending scale of values, and then, after a hectic interval, by the same voices calling out the score in varying degrees of ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler

... surface of the gallery extended itself in breadth and height, so greatly as to cover the entire organ-loft with it's increased plane, and it became an immense practising-board, such as, upon a small scale, teachers of mathematics use to resolve problems upon for the instruction of a class, and it immediately assumed the deep slate-coloured hue that such boards ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, May 1844 - Volume 23, Number 5 • Various

... come back. Thrusting a bill into his hand his mistress said: "Fly for your life, to Columbus and tell Col. Scale that we must have protection. There is no train. Take the old country ...
— Idle Hour Stories • Eugenia Dunlap Potts

... conditions of water: ice, fluid water, and steam. One or the other of these conditions always exists, and always under two others: pressure and heat. When the air around water reaches the temperature of thirty-two degrees by the scale of Fahrenheit, or or zero by the Centigrade scale, and is exposed to this temperature for a time, it becomes ice. At two hundred and twelve degrees Fahrenheit it becomes steam. Between these two temperatures it is water. But the change to steam which is so rapid and visible at the ...
— Steam Steel and Electricity • James W. Steele

... the Tarahumares apply to the three functions for the dead, the main idea of the first is to give food; of the second, to replenish the first supply; and of the third to give drink. The three feasts are on an increasing scale of elaborateness, the first being comparatively insignificant. Each generally lasts one day and one night, and begins at the hour at which the dead breathed his last. There is always a special patio prepared for the dead, and another one for the hikuli cult, besides the ordinary ...
— Unknown Mexico, Volume 1 (of 2) • Carl Lumholtz

... the unborn," he said, and fixed his unsmiling eye on mine, as though to hypnotise me. What happened then I shall never be able to explain. I was translated into another scale of being, into the last world in fact; and just as it is impossible to describe a symphony to a deaf mute or a sunset to a man born blind, so it is impossible for me to put down in terms of our present consciousness ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill

... five-month period of the war, Army Air Forces (p. 274) headquarters processed twenty-two separate staff actions involving black troops.[11-12] To avoid the supposed danger of large-scale social integration, the Air Forces, like the rest of the Army during World War II, had been profligate in its use of material resources, inefficient in its use of men, and destructive of ...
— Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 • Morris J. MacGregor Jr.

... did me the honour to destine me to this high office, I unaffectedly felt that diffidence, which my inexperience and scale of talents naturally suggested to me. I will not say that I was insensible to the hopes of building my honest fame upon the event of my administration, but I solemnly protest my principal object was to contribute my small ...
— Memoirs of the Courts and Cabinets of George the Third - From the Original Family Documents, Volume 1 (of 2) • The Duke of Buckingham and Chandos

... Bharia is the contemptuous form of Bhar, as Telia for Teli, Jugia for Jogi, Kuria for Kori, and that the Bharias belong to the great Bhar tribe who were once dominant in the eastern part of the United Provinces, but are now at the bottom of the social scale, and relegated by their conquerors to the degrading office of swineherds. The Rajjhars, who appear to have formed a separate caste as the landowning subdivision of the Bhars, like the Raj-Gonds among Gonds, are said to be the descendants of a Raja and a Bharia woman. ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell

... the grand gates, always opened when Madam was present, past the ruins of the Abbey Church, and drew up before a row of six little houses, fronted by six little gardens. They were built on a very minute scale, exactly alike, each containing four small rooms—kitchen, parlour, and two bedrooms over, with a little lean-to scullery at the back. On the mid-most coping-stone appeared a lofty inscription to ...
— The Maidens' Lodge - None of Self and All of Thee, (In the Reign of Queen Anne) • Emily Sarah Holt

... world of guilt Had long been wither'd with the threaten'd fire. My sins are monstrous, yet I am but one Of many millions, erring as myself. 'Tis not for us to judge. He, who reads all Our hearts, and knows how we've been tempted, Alone can poise the even scale of justice. If I'm to blame, good father, ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat

... can give up the use of them for something better and nobler. They indicate work; but if I can do real spiritual instead of corporeal work, I rise in the scale. I sacrifice my thews on the altar of my faith. But by the mere clergyman, there is no work done to correspond—I do not say to his capacity for work—but to the capacity for work indicated by such a frame as mine—work of some sort, if not of the higher ...
— Adela Cathcart - Volume II • George MacDonald

... it after death said that it was emaciated as if from want of nourishment, and the body was covered with livid bruises. It seemed that one winter night the child had sought to escape—crept out into the back-yard—tried to scale the wall—fallen back exhausted, and had been found at morning on the stones in a dying state. But though there was some evidence of cruelty, there was none of murder; and the aunt and her husband had sought ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Stories • Various

... slight decrease, then a progressive and rapid one: hope buoyed up our spirits, and we thanked the Almighty for our deliverance. As I have mentioned, I have seen floods before, but never one on so grand a scale as this, which was truly African in its ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 1 • James Richardson

... guard of the colonists destined for the new Louisiana lay in the roads at Dunkirk, their anchors ready to weigh,—three thousand men, three thousand horses, for the Man did things on a large scale. The anchors were ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... vessels filled with perfume, or household utensils, together with meat and drink. The entrance was then closed, and on the spot a cippus was erected—in popular estimation sometimes held to represent the soul—or a monument was set up on a scale proportionate to the importance of the family to which the dead man had belonged.* On certain days beasts ceremonially pure were sacrificed at the tomb, and libations poured out, which, carried into the next world by virtue of the prayers of those who offered them, and by the aid of the gods ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 4 (of 12) • G. Maspero

... pretty idiots. As people are born blind or scrofulous, so I suppose others can be born devoid of heart or conscience, inheriting from a degenerate ancestry sundry mean and vile propensities in their places. Human nature is a scale that runs both up and down, and it is astonishing how far the ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe

... believe Mauritius stands alone in the whole world for variety of scenery, of climate and of productions within the smallest imaginable space. It might be a continent looked at through reversed opera-glasses for the ambitious scale of its mountains, its ravines and its waterfalls. When once you leave the plains behind—it is all on such a toy scale that you do this in half an hour—you breathe mountain-air and look down deep gorges and cross wide, rushing rivers. Of course ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various

... no reason why Gottlieb and I should any longer conceal our partnership, and we decided, therefore, to go into things on a much larger scale than theretofore, and hired a suite of offices on Centre Street, near the Tombs, where we could be within easy reach of the majority of our clients. A sign some forty feet long and three feet wide ran along the entire front of the building, bearing the names Gottlieb & Quibble. ...
— The Confessions of Artemas Quibble • Arthur Train

... the same time, and perceiving that our hero was well-dressed, concluded to speak to him, though he regarded Dick as infinitely beneath himself in the social scale, on account of his former employment. He might not have been so condescending, but he was curious to learn what ...
— Fame and Fortune - or, The Progress of Richard Hunter • Horatio Alger, Jr.

... say, a prince? a royal highness, a reigning grand duke, a king on a small scale. Germain explained this ...
— Mysteries of Paris, V3 • Eugene Sue

... to be no help for it, unless he should persevere with the fire until the logs of the house were forced into combustion. They must yield in time, if the effort was kept up; and he was on the point of renewing the attempt on a larger scale than before when his attention was drawn to the sentinel on the hill, who uttered the startling cry that horsemen were in ...
— The Story of Red Feather - A Tale of the American Frontier • Edward S. (Edward Sylvester) Ellis

... a large quantity of oil placed on the boat, oxen, jars filled with mead[959] oil, and wine for a festival, which he institutes at the completion of the structure. The preparations are on a large scale, as for the great New Year's Day celebrated in Babylonia. The ship is launched, and, if Professor Haupt is correct in his interpretation, the ship took water to the extent ...
— The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria • Morris Jastrow

... epigram, paradox, and satire. An epigram is a very short phrase or sentence which is so full of implied meaning or suggestion that it catches the attention at once, and remains in the memory easily. The paradox is something of the same sort on a larger scale. It is a statement that we can hardly believe to be true, since it seems at first sight to be self-contradictory, or to contradict well known truths or laws; but on examination we find that in a peculiar sense it is ...
— The Art Of Writing & Speaking The English Language - Word-Study and Composition & Rhetoric • Sherwin Cody

... Borderland. Her life hung in the balance—a feather's weight on either side and she would go to the country from which there is no return, or she would become well again. Dorothy's efforts were directed to turning the balance in the scale toward life. ...
— A Girl in Ten Thousand • L. T. Meade

... lay in patience and prudence. To scale the wall I knew was impossible. To steal through the governor's office would mean instant detection. But to wait where I was ...
— Kilgorman - A Story of Ireland in 1798 • Talbot Baines Reed

... world was "a sorry scheme of things." It was grotesque with inequalities. He had no right to love her; it was wrong to give in to the impulses of the heart, the natural, human impulses. A man can beat down the stone walls of a fort, scale the impregnable heights of a citadel, master the earth and the seas, but he can not surmount the invisible barriers which he himself erected in the past ages—the quality of birth. Ah! if only she ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath

... a great difference. The Monroes had been going down slowly but steadily in the social scale, yet they were Monroes, after all. Lydia Monroe had been almost engaged to Clifford Frost, years ago, and still, at all public affairs, the Monroes, the Parkers, and the Frosts met as old friends and equals. Indeed, the Parker girls and ...
— Martie the Unconquered • Kathleen Norris

... Never! He would sit down under that fortress, and some day he meant to scale the walls. Like John Paul Jones, he had not yet begun to fight. But he did not sit down just yet, because Cynthia ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... fringy, clustered in the axils of branches. Calyx 4-parted; 4 very narrow curving petals about 34 in. long; 4 short stamens, also 4 that are scale-like; 2 styles. Stem: A tall, crooked shrub. Leaves: Broadly oval, thick, wavy-toothed, mostly fallen at flowering time. Fruit: Woody capsules maturing the next season and remaining with flowers of the succeeding year (Hama together ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan

... pretty sound. But I'd better state why I sent for you. Our trade is growing fast, and there's a risk of our running short of half-worked material. Well, if you won't sell your mill, you must enlarge it on a scale that will enable you to keep us going, besides coping with your other orders. I'm open to supply the capital, and have thought out a rough proposition. Give him the ...
— Carmen's Messenger • Harold Bindloss

... had it right, I had been looking at the Big 'Un's "map." Newman had a fine, large scale chart of the Pacific in his bag, and this he brought out every day, and traced upon it the progress of the voyage. He got the ship's position either from the steward, or from the lady, I ...
— The Blood Ship • Norman Springer

... consider her so good a dressmaker, it might be well to establish her on a larger scale, and give her some of the older girls from our Home as apprentices. Looking after and teaching them would amuse as well ...
— A Crooked Path - A Novel • Mrs. Alexander

... stricken with "the noblest of all sorrows," grief for the seeming ruin of his country, told those about him to "roll up the map of Europe," and died heartbroken. Not unnaturally at such a time Gibraltar seemed dull; a miserable place, Tom thought, a prison on a large scale. His friends wrote him letters containing an abundance of good advice, all of which he took with becoming modesty. A letter from Fraser of this character is still excellent reading; his counsels to the young soldier have added weight when we remember that the author was with Wolfe at Louisbourg ...
— A Canadian Manor and Its Seigneurs - The Story of a Hundred Years, 1761-1861 • George M. Wrong

... pastures during the day, and will be penned in the same sheepfold at night. While the sheep are sleeping, and the shepherds near by are taking their needed rest, the door of the fold is carefully locked, and another shepherd or porter is left on guard, lest perchance a hungry bear or wolf might scale the wall and destroy some member or members of the sleeping herds. Early in the morning the shepherds come in turn and rap at the door, and to each the porter opens. Then each shepherd calls his flock by name; and they, knowing his voice, follow him, and he leads them out to their pastures. ...
— The Shepherd Of My Soul • Rev. Charles J. Callan

... before observed, is the copious source of revenue to the monks, and they farm on an extensive scale. The yearly crop of wheat at Santa Clara alone, produces three thousand fanegos, about six hundred and twenty English quarters, or three thousand four hundred Berlin bushels; and from the extraordinary fertility of the soil, the harvest, ...
— A New Voyage Round the World, in the years 1823, 24, 25, and 26, Vol. 2 • Otto von Kotzebue

... one could say they had suffered by their translation to a new country, which was chiefly due to Colonel Carrington. He had been successful hitherto at wheat-growing on an extensive scale, and though few of the settlers liked him they could not help admiring the bold far-seeing way in which he speculated on the chances of the weather, or hedged against a risky wheat crop by purchasing western horses. Still, not content with building up the finest property thereabout, ...
— Lorimer of the Northwest • Harold Bindloss

... blister that will draw Laid on the conscience of the Man of Law Whom blindfold Justice lends her eyes to see Truth in the scale that holds his promised fee. What! Has not every lie its truthful side, Its honest fraction, not to be denied? Per contra,—ask the moralist,—in sooth Has not a lie its share in every truth? Then what forbids an honest man to try To find the truth that lurks in every lie, And just as fairly ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... commit till the day of his death. Higher than heaven itself, and pure, and created and bestowed by the trident-bearing god, there in that tirtha is an image of Mahadeva beholding which a mortal goeth to the region of Siva. Placing on one scale Ganga and the other rivers with their waters, and on the other, the Payoshni, the latter, in my opinion would be superior to all the tirthas, together, in point of merit! Then, O foremost of the Bharata race, on the mountain called Varunasrotasa is the sacred and auspicious wood of Mathara ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli

... nation erect 'thingless names' into substantial realities, and woe to those, who follow not the insane example. The consequences—the fatal consequences—are everywhere apparent. In our own country, one consequence is social disunion on the grandest possible scale. Society is split up into an almost infinite variety of sects, whose members imagine themselves patented to think truth, and never to be wrong in the enunciation of it. This if no idle or frivolous charge, as the Author of this Apology can ...
— An Apology for Atheism - Addressed to Religious Investigators of Every Denomination - by One of Its Apostles • Charles Southwell

... he had come to live with them Mr. and Mrs. Moreen suddenly gave up the villa at Nice. Pemberton had got used to suddenness, having seen it practised on a considerable scale during two jerky little tours—one in Switzerland the first summer, and the other late in the winter, when they all ran down to Florence and then, at the end of ten days, liking it much less than they had intended, straggled back in mysterious depression. They had returned ...
— The Pupil • Henry James

... Encouraged by the success of her published work,—delayed till so sadly late in life,—tasting the stimulating elixir of appreciation, and knowing the fascinating encouragement of public applause, she now began composition on a larger scale than anything she had before attempted. "I am working a good deal," she wrote, "and feel that I get on,—a consciousness which, added to the glorious weather, gives me a feeling of content and happiness such as I have, ...
— Among the Great Masters of Music - Scenes in the Lives of Famous Musicians • Walter Rowlands

... a dog living on Staten Island, who has for some time been acting the part of a philanthropist, on a large scale. He makes it a great share of his business to administer to the necessities of the sick and infirm dogs in the neighborhood. As soon as he learns that a dog is sick, so that he is unable to take care of himself, he visits the invalid, and nurses him; and he even goes from house to house, ...
— Stories about Animals: with Pictures to Match • Francis C. Woodworth

... was the first wrong, when I betrayed thy budding youth into a false and unnatural relation with my decay. Therefore, as a man who has not thought and philosophized in vain, I seek no vengeance, plot no evil against thee. Between thee and me the scale hangs fairly balanced. But, Hester, the man lives who has wronged us both! ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... they are as much a part of the family as the children of the house. Domestic service in Japan is a most honourable calling, and ranks far higher than trade. A domestic servant who married a tradesman would be considered as going down a step in the social scale. In Japan trade has been left until lately to the lower classes of the population, and tradespeople have ranked with ...
— Peeps at Many Lands: Japan • John Finnemore

... surreptitiously conducted and perilous in certain of its aspects, was believed by the initiated to be really more lucrative than his legitimatized and avowed calling. Mr. Rosen was by way of being—by a roundabout way of being—what technically is known as a bootlegger. He bootlegged upon a larger scale than do most of ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb

... pressure of the rod against the levers was kept constant by a small counterweight, so that the slightest change in the length of the rod was instantly shown on a dial about three feet wide multiplied about thirty-two thousand times. The zero-point was gained by packing the rod in wet snow. The scale was so large that the big black hand on the white-painted dial could be seen distinctly and the temperature read while we were ploughing in the field below the house. The extremes of heat and cold caused the hand to make several revolutions. The number of these revolutions ...
— The Story of My Boyhood and Youth • John Muir

... putting a few searching questions—which Mr. Sponge skilfully parried—advising his daughters to be cautious, lessening the number of lights, and lowering the scale of his entertainments generally, Mr. Jawleyford did not take any decided step in the matter. Mr. Spraggon comforted Lord Scamperdale with the assurance that Amelia had no idea of Sponge, who he made no doubt would very soon be out of the country—and his lordship went to church ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees

... escorted by a large contingent of their male relatives. All the married settlers round had brought their wives, and—theme of all tongues!—there were actually as many as four young single ladies! This was evidently going to be a spree on a most superb scale. Dandy Jack fairly beamed with rapture, and the gallant O'Gaygun almost burst with the overflow ...
— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay

... their true significance. He had said to himself, "Let the spirit die that the body may live." He had wished, he still wished, to pull down. He had a sort of demented desire for ruins and dust. But he longed for action, on the grand scale. Small secrecies, trickeries, tiptoeing through the maze—all these things revolted that part of his nature which was, perhaps, unchangeable. They seemed to him unmanly. In his present condition he could quite easily have lain down in the sink of Pera's iniquity, careless ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens

... Gazette.—"A really entertaining account of a wonderfully successful and useful rag on an unusually big scale." ...
— At Ypres with Best-Dunkley • Thomas Hope Floyd

... sympathy by presenting you with a pair of good, warm blankets for your own bed; then those you have could go to Willy Croup, and you both would be comfortable all winter. Of course, what we have done has not been upon an expensive scale. We have had many calls upon us,—poor old Mrs. Bradley, for one,—and we could not afford to spend much money. But we have bought you a good pair of blankets, which are warm and serviceable, and we hope you will not be offended, and we do not ...
— The Adventures of Captain Horn • Frank Richard Stockton

... see only three possibilities of remedying this situation. The first would be to export gold, the other to export Russian commodities on a large scale, and the third—to get a ...
— The New York Times Current History: the European War, February, 1915 • Various

... out into the open where the winds of life are blowing. Look at me! I weighed eighteen stone when I left England. I had the muscles of a prize fighter and nerves of steel. Today I turn the scale at ten stone and am afraid to ...
— The Malefactor • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... fell to 29 degrees" should be "the barometer fell to 29 inches" to agree with the French version and the measurement scale of barometers. ...
— The Voyages and Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne

... taking photographs of the persons fingerprinted. This is known as a "mugging" camera and various types are on the market. It is believed that the photographs should include a front and side view of the person. In most instances a scale for indicating height can be made a part of the picture even though only the upper portion of the individual photographed is taken. Of course, if the scale is used, the person photographed should be standing ...
— The Science of Fingerprints - Classification and Uses • Federal Bureau of Investigation

... one noticed or reproduced the delicate distinctions of action which Gaddi had put into his two Annunciations of the Cappella Baroncelli; the shepherds henceforth sprawled no matter how; and the scale of expression in the vision of the Three Kings was not transferred to the more popular theme of their visit to the stable at Bethlehem. In Giotto's Presentation at the Temple in the Arena chapel at Padua, the little Mary is pushed up the steps by her ...
— Renaissance Fancies and Studies - Being a Sequel to Euphorion • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)

... chart of Terra Australis, showing the whole of my discoveries, examinations and tracks in abridgment, this packet for the Admiralty contained nine sheets upon a scale of four inches to a degree of longitude, and three sheets of particular parts in a larger size; also five chapters of a memoir explanatory of their construction, of the changes in the variation on ...
— A Voyage to Terra Australis Volume 2 • Matthew Flinders

... herself what she would do if she were told that she would have to spend all her life in Scale on Humber. Scale is prevailingly, conspicuously commercial. It is not beautiful. Its streets are squalidly flat, its houses meanly rectangular. The colouring of Scale is thought by some to be peculiarly ...
— The Helpmate • May Sinclair

... been charged to throw your influence into the scale,' I said, laughing; and the poor thing had to confess that he had said to her, with an air so noble, so amiable, that here was an opportunity of being of some real use to him if she would persuade Madame de Bellaise to marry ...
— Stray Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge

... he bade me a civil good-bye, and went his way. Then I saddled-up and started for the Trinidad; mentally placing Mr. Smythe, Bert, and myself, in one dish of the moral scale, and this undesirable alien in the other, with an unflattering upshot to the ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy

... and this greatest of all wars has become part of England's history, you will be proud and happy to remember that your own father, at the first call for volunteers, laid down the pencil and scale of his peaceful profession, went out to fight for his country in the trenches in France, was wounded almost to death, and was saved only by the skill and devotion of one of the greatest surgeons of the day.[2] All the best blood of England, Scotland, and Ireland went marching together ...
— The Glory of English Prose - Letters to My Grandson • Stephen Coleridge

... scale of the restaurants, the difference is not so noticeable in the prices of the same dishes, as in the substitution of cheaper varieties of food. At the best eating-houses, the Gallic traditions bear sway more or less, but in the poorer sort the ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells

... than with plants. If our systematic arrangements can be trusted, that is, if the genera of animals are as distinct from each other as are the genera of plants, then we may infer that animals more widely distinct in the scale of nature can be crossed more easily than in the case of plants; but the hybrids themselves are, I think, more sterile. It should, however, be borne in mind that, owing to few animals breeding freely ...
— On the Origin of Species - 6th Edition • Charles Darwin

... has operated. As he describes it, it has simply been an arrangement of phenomena into classes, and the study of each class by itself. He does not recognise the constant effect of progress in each class upon all other classes; but only on the class succeeding it in his hierarchical scale. Or if he occasionally admits collateral influences and intercommunications, he does it so grudgingly, and so quickly puts the admissions out of sight and forgets them, as to leave the impression that, with but trifling exceptions, the sciences aid each other only ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer

... may yon Blue Ridges the northern rifle hear, Nor see the light of blazing homes flash on the Negro's spear, But let the free-winged angel Truth their guarded passes scale, To teach that right is more than might, ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand

... effort that promised little, there having been but few articles on the table capable of concealing even such a small object as this I was in search of; but when one is at their wits' ends, they do not stop to discuss probabilities, or even to weigh in too nice a scale the prospect of success. ...
— The Mill Mystery • Anna Katharine Green

... of the Cathedral, excepting its dome, of the Campanile, and of the Church of Or San Michele. During the later years of the century their adornment was begun. A host of sculptors was employed, the number and scale of statues required being great. There was a danger that the sculpture might have become a mere handmaid of the architecture to which it was subordinated. But this was not the case; the sculptors preserved a freedom in adapting their figures to the existing architectural ...
— Donatello • David Lindsay, Earl of Crawford

... King's word was truer than any scale, whereon the bags were tied up again and sealed. Then I produced the bow, or rather its counterfeit, and having shown it to the princes, wrapped it and six of my own arrows in a linen cloth, to be taken to the King, with a message that though hard to draw it was the deadliest weapon ...
— The Ancient Allan • H. Rider Haggard

... the house had about half an acre of land, which constituted his garden. It was laid out with winding walks and fanciful plats of ground, filled with the richest-hued flowers. It contained a pond and a canal, on a small scale; for a Dutchman would not be at home without a water prospect, even if it were only in miniature. At the end of the garden, overlooking the pond, there was a grotesque little summer house, large enough to ...
— Dikes and Ditches - Young America in Holland and Belguim • Oliver Optic

... think of that. You are not much of a burden to me at present. I don't suppose you add many pounds a year to the expenses of this house. And if I have to face the inevitable, and see my name in the Gazette, we must begin life again upon a smaller scale, and in a cheaper place—some out-of-the-way corner of France or Belgium. The governess notion will keep till I am dead. You can always be of some use to me as ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon

... heads than mine, Uncle Terry, that have never been able to answer your question," he replied, "and I doubt if they ever will. To my mind the origin of life is an enigma, the wide variations in matters of health and ability an injustice, and the end a blank wall that none who scale ever recross with tidings of the beyond. As some one has expressed it: 'Life is a narrow vale between the cold and barren peaks of two eternities! We strive in vain to look beyond the heights; we cry aloud, and the only answer is the echo of ...
— Uncle Terry - A Story of the Maine Coast • Charles Clark Munn

... food for thought as he meditated on the subtle relations created between himself and his audiences, as they have watched in his impersonations the shifting tariff—the ever gliding, delicately graduated sliding-scale of dramatic right and wrong. He may have gloated, if he be a cynic, over the depths of ghastly horror, or the vagaries of moral puddle through which it may have been his duty to plash. But if he be an honest man, he will acknowledge that scarcely ...
— The Drama • Henry Irving

... decline of apprentice training in the shops is due partly to the fact that employers find that much of the time and money it costs goes toward providing a skilled labor force for competitors who make no effort to train young workers. The cooperation of employers on a comprehensive scale will be secured only when the ...
— Wage Earning and Education • R. R. Lutz

... place, and there were not wanting proofs that the Major's income was commensurate with the scale of his establishment. A wise economy had to be a guiding rule in Major Strickland's life, otherwise Mr. George's college expenses would never have been met, and that young gentleman would not have had a proper start in life. Deborah was the only servant that ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 2, February, 1891 • Various

... from its rest, and swung abruptly across the meter scale. With an audible ping, it slapped against the stop beyond ...
— Millennium • Everett B. Cole

... copra, but Java is a close second and Ceylon not far behind. If we do not look out we will be beaten both by the Dutch and the British, for they are undertaking the cultivation of the coconut on a larger scale and in a more systematic way. According to an official bulletin of the Philippine Government a coconut plantation should bring in "dividends ranging from 10 to 75 per cent. from the tenth to the hundredth year." And this being printed in 1913 figured the price of copra at 3-1/2 ...
— Creative Chemistry - Descriptive of Recent Achievements in the Chemical Industries • Edwin E. Slosson

... of his having been honestly hung at 'Execution Dock,' in London, on the 12th of May, 1701. Yet, when compared with the nobler villains, Lolonois and Morgan, Kidd must have been a pirate upon an insignificant scale—a mere bottle imp by the side of Satan, as portrayed in stupendous ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 2, August, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... commonly held, that in morphological development and physical appearance the Bantu stand nearer in the scale of evolution to our common ape-like ancestors than do the white people does not seem to be warranted by facts. Careful investigations by trained observers all over the world have shown that the various simian features discernible ...
— The Black Man's Place in South Africa • Peter Nielsen

... ought to succeed. Providence acts advisedly, it crowns him who deserves the crown; do you pretend to know better than Providence? When matters are settled—when one rule has replaced another—when success is the scale in which truth and falsehood are weighed, in one side the catastrophe, in the other the triumph; then doubt is no longer possible, the honest man rallies to the winning side, and although it may happen to serve his fortune and his family, ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo

... the opening years of the nineteenth century, immediately after his marriage, he bought a little estate in North Wales, on the slopes of Snowdon. Here he seems to have lived in a pretentious way, keeping a pack of hounds and entertaining on an extravagant scale. He had a wife who encouraged him in this vivid life, and three children, my Mother and her two brothers. His best trait was his devotion to the education of his children, in which he proclaimed himself a disciple of Rousseau. But he can hardly have followed the teaching of 'Emile' very closely, ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse

... openings in the sides of the light-box. By moving the strips of leatherette, one of which appears in the figure, C, the lamps could be changed in position with reference to the bottom of the electric-box. A scale, S, at the edge of each slit enabled the experimenter to determine the distance of the lamp from the floor of the electric-box. The front of the light-box was closed, instead of being open as it ...
— The Dancing Mouse - A Study in Animal Behavior • Robert M. Yerkes

... further refracted into four secondary or complementary colors, rays or attributes, the seven constituting the active principles of Nature, the seven rays of the solar spectrum, the seven notes of a perfect musical scale, there being throughout a perfect correspondence, and all are but different modes of vibration or activities of ...
— The Light of Egypt, Volume II • Henry O. Wagner/Belle M. Wagner/Thomas H. Burgoyne

... Fortune should not some day make him a comfortable man; she had never done so yet, having sent him into the world as the fifth child of a Protestant pastor in a French-speaking canton, and never having given him so much as a well-to-do relative (even Madame de Kries' villa was on a modest scale) until Mina married Adolf Zabriska and kept that gentleman's money although she had the misfortune to lose his company. His death seemed to Duplay at least no great calamity; that he had died childless did not appear to have disappointed Mina and was certainly ...
— Tristram of Blent - An Episode in the Story of an Ancient House • Anthony Hope

... large owners, and is still, as in his time, cultivated by metayers on the half-profit system. At the present day, however, another class has sprung up, that of tenant farmers on a considerable scale; these, in their turn, sublet to peasants who give their labour and with whom they divide the profits. Now, the half-profit system does certainly answer elsewhere; in the Indre, for example, it has proved a stepping-stone to the position ...
— East of Paris - Sketches in the Gatinais, Bourbonnais, and Champagne • Matilda Betham-Edwards

... I had twice the opportunity of witnessing the operation on a grand scale, of capturing wild elephants, intended to be trained for the public service in the establishment of the Civil Engineer;—and in the course of my frequent journeys through the interior of the island, I succeeded ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent

... next day encountered the enemy. For some time the fate of the battle poised in favor of the British, as the principal American ship, the Lawrence, struck her colours; but a sudden breeze turned the scale against them, and the whole of their squadron was compelled to surrender, after a desperate engagement of upwards of three hours. Captain Barclay was dangerously wounded; Captain Finnis, of the Queen Charlotte, ...
— The Life and Correspondence of Sir Isaac Brock • Ferdinand Brock Tupper

... are opened; working capital declared; a select number go in on the "ground floor;" and the estates of widows and orphans are swept into the vortex. Very little discredit is connected with any such transaction, if it is only on a large scale. We cannot bear small and insignificant dishonesties, but take off our hats and bow almost to the ground in the presence of the man who has made one hundred thousand dollars by one swindle. A woman was arrested in the streets of one of our cities for selling molasses candy on Sunday. ...
— The Abominations of Modern Society • Rev. T. De Witt Talmage

... now high in the heavens and it became very hot, but the autumn fields looked beautiful, and, as there were no hedges or fences, the low rolling hills gave one the sense of great expanse, and were an ideal ground for a battle on a large scale. While I was looking after the wounded I heard the cheering of the 16th Battalion who had reached their objective and were settling down to rest and to have some food. I made my way to them and found the Colonel in high glee over what his men had ...
— The Great War As I Saw It • Frederick George Scott

... authority or provision for the common defense, and without a sense of subordination or collective responsibility among its citizens, would be out of all question under existing circumstances of politics and international trade. Nor would such a commonwealth be workable on the scale and at the pace imposed by modern industrial and commercial conditions, even apart from international jealousy and ambitions, provided the sacred rights of ownership were to be maintained in something ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen

... of man; but Captain Williams, against Murphy's urgent and earnest plea for more meat on the forecastle menu, persisted in sticking to the original diet. The Albatross was a "full-and-plenty" ship—that is, one in which, with the supposed consent of the crew, the government scale was discarded in favor of one containing more vegetables and less meat. But these men knew nothing of this, or the reasons for it; and while believing that there was no whisky in the ship, they had accepted ...
— The Grain Ship • Morgan Robertson

... he watched the busy world go to and fro to its scale of tips and bargaining, and gladly mingled with it, trying to laugh and study guidebooks, and listen to half-fledged explanations, but always seeing the comedy of his poor attempts. Not all those little donkeys, bells tinkling, beads shining, trotting beneath their comical ...
— Four Weird Tales • Algernon Blackwood

... up here all by itself. It was the deck on which one could occasionally see the patients playing an odd game with long sticks and bits of wood—not shuffleboard but something even lower in the mental scale. This morning, however, the devotees of this pastime were apparently under proper restraint, ...
— Three Men and a Maid • P. G. Wodehouse

... Gaul, We fall the first; would that our lot had been Beneath the Eastern sky, or frozen North, To lead a wandering life, rather than keep The gates of Latium. Brennus sacked the town And Hannibal, and all the Teuton hosts. For when the fate of Rome is in the scale By this path war advances." Thus they moan Their fears but speak them not; no sound is heard Giving their anguish utterance: as when In depth of winter all the fields are still, The birds are voiceless and no sound ...
— Pharsalia; Dramatic Episodes of the Civil Wars • Lucan

... the new hotel. The stage business was taken away from the Richardson tavern, and transferred to this one. The house was enlarged, spacious barns and stables were erected, and better accommodations given to man and beast,—on too large a scale for profit, it seems, as Parker and Emerson failed shortly afterward, This was in the spring of 1818, during which year the tavern was purchased by Joseph Hoar, who kept it a little more than six years, when ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Vol. 1, Issue 1. - A Massachusetts Magazine of Literature, History, - Biography, And State Progress • Various

... better, than they. I now know from experience that I was wrong in this opinion, and that the man of strong digestion, accustomed to a generous diet, is likely to sustain more injury to his health by a sudden change to a very low scale of dietary, than those of weak digestion who have not been accustomed to any other. The only concession made to me was a slight addition to the time for exercise in the open-air cribs provided for that purpose. My ...
— Six Years in the Prisons of England • A Merchant - Anonymous

... what is behind all this, Mr. Snedden? What recalculations were you trusting, when our physicists had demonstrated months ago that the helium loaf was safely stackable in light airs and gentle breezes—winds up to Beaufort's scale 3. Why should a change from heavier to lighter wrappers result ...
— Bread Overhead • Fritz Reuter Leiber

... is the latter which is generally understood as the minium of the illuminators, though both were used in manuscript work. The red paint was employed to mark the initial letters or sections of the MS. Its connection with portraiture and other pictorial subjects on a small scale is entirely owing to its accidental confusion by French writers with their own word mignon, and so with the Latin minus. In classical times, among the Romans, the "miniator" was simply a person who applied the minium, and had nothing to do with pictures or portraits at all, but with ...
— Illuminated Manuscripts • John W. Bradley

... out of the description of a Frenchman, a Pilot very skilfull in those partes, and presented to the worthy Prince George of Austria, bishop of Liege: for the trending of the coast, and the eleuation of the pole, I doubt not but they are very neere the trueth: For the Charte had beside a scale of degrees of latitude passing through the middest of it, another particularly annexed to the coast of New France, wherewith the errour of the latitudes committed by reason of the variation of the compasse might be corrected. The historie of the voyage of Iacobus Cnoyen ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation v. 4 • Richard Hakluyt

... better known 'Milor') to escape the branding he deserves for his attempted villainy, it is but fair to add that Isambard de la Pierre, as well as Manchon, qualify his conduct as that not of a would-be violator, but of a tempter—a not inconsiderable difference in the scale ...
— Joan of Arc • Ronald Sutherland Gower

... why she lost the title of city at her going into captivity is, because then she lost her situation and strength; she followed others than Christ, wherefore he suffered her enemies to scale her walls, to break down her battlements; he suffered, as you see here, the great red dragon, and beast with seven heads and ten horns, to get into her vineyard, who made most fearful work both with her and all her friends; her gates also were ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... creating—be it a bureau or a battleship—the process is as above described. First, a pattern to scale; next, an actual linear framework; then planes defining a solid. Consider almost any of the industries practiced throughout the ages: they may be conceived of thus in terms of dimensions; for example, those ancient ...
— Four-Dimensional Vistas • Claude Fayette Bragdon

... in the form Hari-Hara. The names of the kings end in Varman and this termination is also specially frequent in names of the Pallava dynasty.[261] The magnificent monuments still extant attest a taste for architecture on a large scale similar to that found among the Dravidians. These and many other indications justify the conclusion that the Indian civilization and religion which became predominant in Camboja ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, An Historical Sketch, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Charles Eliot



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