TERMINUS • DICTIONARY ONE.COM • Definition of Terminus

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noun

Terminus n. (pl. termini)

Literally, a boundary; a border; a limit.

(Myth.) The Roman divinity who presided over boundaries, whose statue was properly a short pillar terminating in the bust of a man, woman, satyr, or the like, but often merely a post or stone stuck in the ground on a boundary line.

Hence, any post or stone marking a boundary; a term. See Term, 8.

Either end of a railroad line; also, the station house, or the town or city, at that place.

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Etymology of 'Terminus'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Terminus" Quotes from Famous Books

... might have found each of them armed and manned, and carrying havoc upon the rivers and the seas. West Point was simply a tongue, or spit of land, dividing the Mattapony from the Pamunkey river at their junction; a few houses were built upon the shallow, and some wharves, half demolished, marked the terminus of the York and Richmond railroad. A paltry water-battery was the sole defence. Below Cumberland (a collection of huts and a wharf), a number of schooners had been sunk across the river, and, with the aid of an island in the middle, these constituted a rather rigid blockade. The ...

— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend

... twenty past three when we reached our terminus, and after a hasty luncheon at the buffet we pushed on at once to Scotland Yard. Holmes had already wired to Forbes, and we found him waiting to receive us—a small, foxy man with a sharp but by no means amiable expression. ...

— Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

... ancient practice, still continued, of pilgrimages en masse to popular shrines, near and far. During the great days when the worship of Juganath reaches its climax and half a million pilgrims pour into Puri from all parts of India, the terminus of the branch-line from the Calcutta-Madras railway is busier than Epsom Downs station on Derby Day. A big Indian railway station—the Howrah terminus in Calcutta, the Victoria Terminus in Bombay, the Central ...

— India, Old and New • Sir Valentine Chirol

... hadn't had a chance from the beginning, for Aunt Caroline could answer objections far faster than he could make them. They arrived at the terminus just four days after the expeditionary party had ...

— The Window-Gazer • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay

... Mr. Bruff was accosted at the terminus by a small boy, dressed in a jacket and trousers of threadbare black cloth, and personally remarkable in virtue of the extraordinary prominence of his eyes. They projected so far, and they rolled about so loosely, that you wondered uneasily why they remained in ...

— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins

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