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Meridian   Listen
noun
Meridian  n.  
1.
Midday; noon.
2.
Hence: The highest point, as of success, prosperity, or the like; culmination. "I have touched the highest point of all my greatness, And from that full meridian of my glory I haste now to my setting."
3.
(Astron.) A great circle of the sphere passing through the poles of the heavens and the zenith of a given place. It is crossed by the sun at midday.
4.
(Geog.) A great circle on the surface of the earth, passing through the poles and any given place; also, the half of such a circle included between the poles. Note: The planes of the geographical and astronomical meridians coincide. Meridians, on a map or globe, are lines drawn at certain intervals due north and south, or in the direction of the poles.
Calculated for the meridian of, or fitted to the meridian of, or adapted to the meridian of, suited to the local circumstances, capabilities, or special requirements of. "All other knowledge merely serves the concerns of this life, and is fitted to the meridian thereof."
First meridian or prime meridian, the meridian from which longitudes are reckoned. The meridian of Greenwich is the one commonly employed in calculations of longitude by geographers, and in actual practice, although in various countries other and different meridians, chiefly those which pass through the capitals of the countries, are occasionally used; as, in France, the meridian of Paris; in the United States, the meridian of Washington, etc.
Guide meridian (Public Land Survey), a line, marked by monuments, running North and South through a section of country between other more carefully established meridians called principal meridians, used for reference in surveying. (U.S.)
Magnetic meridian, a great circle, passing through the zenith and coinciding in direction with the magnetic needle, or a line on the earth's surface having the same direction.
Meridian circle (Astron.), an instrument consisting of a telescope attached to a large graduated circle and so mounted that the telescope revolves like the transit instrument in a meridian plane. By it the right ascension and the declination of a star may be measured in a single observation.
Meridian instrument (Astron.), any astronomical instrument having a telescope that rotates in a meridian plane.
Meridian of a globe, or Brass meridian, a graduated circular ring of brass, in which the artificial globe is suspended and revolves.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Meridian" Quotes from Famous Books



... to hate them, as you shall hear: In 1807, being attached to the Bureau of Longitudes, I was part of the scientific expedition sent to Spain, under the direction of my friend and colleague, Jean-Baptiste Biot, to determine the arc of the terrestrial meridian from Barcelona to the Balearic isles. I was just in the act of observing a star (perhaps the very one my rascally pupil has discovered), when suddenly, war having broken out between France and Spain, the peasants, seeing me perched with a telescope on Monte Galazzo, took it into their heads ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac

... her forehead, her mouth—but ah, impious wretch, how canst thou pretend to trace her from charm to charm! Who can dissect unbounded excellence? Who can coolly and deliberately gaze upon the brightness of the meridian sun? I will say in one word, that her whole figure was enchanting, that all her gestures were dignity, and every motion ...
— Italian Letters, Vols. I and II • William Godwin

... but a few days when this occurred. The sun had some time since passed its lowest southern declination, and at meridian now threw flaunting streaks of yellow light upon the northern sky. On the day following his mistake with the sugar-bag, Cuthfert found himself feeling better, both in body and in spirit. As noontime drew near and the day brightened, he dragged himself outside ...
— The Son of the Wolf • Jack London

... magnetic force then crossed the plate at an angle of about 70 deg.. When the plate spun round, the lines of force were intersected and induced currents generated, which produced their proper effect when carried from the plate to the galvanometer. "When the plate was in the magnetic meridian, or in any other plane coinciding with the magnetic dip, then its rotation produced no effect upon ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - Invention and Discovery • Various

... us come through Meridian to Houston and den to Hockley and den to Sunnyside, 'bout 18 mile west of Houston. Dat a country with lots of woods and us sot in to clean up de ground and clean up 150 acres to farm on. Dere 'bout forty-seven hands and more 'cumulates. Dey go back to ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves. - Texas Narratives, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration

... shamefully, so totally, let all the enemies of thy people, and all the opponents of thy dominion in the earth perish, O Lord, from before thy face forever! But let all those who are animated with a sacred zeal for thy glory resemble the morning sun as he advances rapidly to his meridian splendour; let them increase in usefulness, influence, and esteem, the honour of human nature, and the lights ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. I • Francis Augustus Cox

... ceased short of the reality. Beyond that he was breathless, as one is breathless at too great speed. The big tree was full of orioles' and vireos' nests, old and recent, representing the building of many summers. Out behind was the orchard, a dozen sturdy old apple trees, now passing the meridian of their powers. ...
— The Adventures of Bobby Orde • Stewart Edward White

... tremulous with radiance. From a coquettish little hat a long white plume fluttered over her curls, and a floating cloud of fleecy under-sleeve half concealed an arm of snowy purity. Her life, though in its spring, seemed goldened with the flush of summer; her morning flashed with the meridian luster of perfect day; and yet the eyes that scanned so closely remained undazzled. Their owner had heard of her, and of her conversation, sparkling with wit and humor and mocking irony; but he was not fascinated. He saw but a woman ...
— Trifles for the Christmas Holidays • H. S. Armstrong

... stranger loves the lady of the land, Born far beyond the mountains, but his blood Is all meridian, as if never fann'd By the black wind that chills ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. IV - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore

... upon the wane—whether, in fact, the twilight be of morning or of evening, we find in the masterpieces of such periods a placid calm and chastened pathos, as of a spirit self-withdrawn from vulgar cares, which in the full light of meridian splendour is lacking. In the Church of S. Francesco at Rimini the tempered clearness of the dawn is just about ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds

... and backward condition. Before sunset the same day we saw the island of Ferro, the most western of the group. Before the discovery of America, this was looked on as the extreme western limits of the habitable world, and till very lately some navigators calculated their first meridian from thence. There are thirteen islands in the group, which produce corn, silk, tobacco, sugar, and the wine which was so long known under their name. We caught about here the regular north-east trade-wind; away we went before ...
— A Voyage round the World - A book for boys • W.H.G. Kingston

... his study one day deeply absorbed. The sun, nearing meridian, poured a stream of white light through the south window, flooding the table at which he sat. That the reader may know something of the paths the Mystic most frequented when in meditation, we will make free with one of the privileges belonging ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace

... them to understand the time that was left. The sun, she showed, was long past the meridian and was on its return. The day was now reaching a close. And then, as the sun set, the great sacrifice would be made—had always been made—to insure ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, June, 1930 • Various

... an arc of black cloud had been growing on the horizon. There was not a breath of wind. From the engine-rooms the thud of the piston-rods came throbbing up with a singular distinctness. The arc of cloud had risen halfway to the meridian. There were streaks in it—streaks of yellow on black. Far away to the north, at the point of contact with the horizon, a single waterspout rose like a black pillar from sea to cloud. Dwellers in the cool and temperate zones would have thought that the end of the world was about to come. Men, ...
— The Grey Lady • Henry Seton Merriman

... not until the heat of the day has passed; do you not see that the hour is almost noon? there is the midday sun standing still, as people say, in the meridian. Let us rather stay and talk over what has been said, and then ...
— Phaedrus • Plato

... works in curves and delicate wave-lines, not in broken off bits and sudden changes. Rome was going down in Tiberius' reign: she was bad enough then, heaven knows; though we may put her passing below the meridian at or near the end of it;— conveniently, in the year 36. And then, what with (1) the tenseness of the gloom and the severity of suffering in the reigns of Caligula, Nero, and Domitian;—and (2) the inflow of new and ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris

... other eye, they are little more than topography. The landscape of Titian, of Mola, of Salvator, of the Poussins, Claude, Rubens, Elsheimer, Rembrandt, and Wilson, spurns all relation with this kind of map-work. To them nature disclosed her bosom in the varied light of rising, meridian, and setting suns—in twilight, night, ...
— Rembrandt and His Works • John Burnet

... of both heels at once, but at the same time the most natural kick that could be kick'd in her situation—for supposing......... to be the sun in its meridian, it was a north-east kick—she kick'd the pin out of her fingers—the etiquette which hung upon it, down—down it fell to the ground, and was shiver'd ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne

... place approximately twelve hours distant from India in time, to judge from the sun, which is not far past the meridian." ...
— Astounding Stories, July, 1931 • Various

... their ponies ahead at a fast clip and the sun was still far from the meridian when they came in sight of the entrance to the defile. Dark and sinister it loomed in contrast to the brightness of the day. ...
— The Boy Ranchers in Death Valley - or Diamond X and the Poison Mystery • Willard F. Baker

... the mediate clouds shall be dispell'd; The Son shall soon be face to face beheld, In all his robes, with all his glory on, Seated sublime on his meridian throne. ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various

... business; on the contrary, I want the rays of your rising to reflect new lustre upon my setting light. In order to this, I shall analyze you minutely, and censure you freely, that you may not (if possible) have one single spot, when in your meridian. ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield

... the meridian. On a slope to Gertrude's right hand, Sallust's House, with its cinnamon-colored walls and yellow frieze, gave a foreign air to the otherwise very English landscape. She passed by without remembering who lived there. Further down, on some waste ...
— An Unsocial Socialist • George Bernard Shaw

... falling water, and tinging them partially with crimson, had a strange preternatural and sinister effect when contrasted with the beams of the rising sun, which glanced on the first broken waves of the fall, though even its meridian splendour could not gain the third of its full depth. When he had looked around him for a moment, the girl again pulled his sleeve, and, pointing to the oak and the projecting point beyond it (for hearing speech ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... had recourse to a semicircle which they called Position, by which they represented the six great circles passing through the intersection of the meridian and horizon, and dividing the equator into twelve equal parts. The spaces included between these circles were styled the Twelve Houses, which referred to the twelve triangles marked in their theme, placing six of these houses above ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant

... those who revered him in the plenitude of his meridian glory to mourn over him in the darkness of his premature extinction: to mourn over the hopes that are buried in his grave, and the evils that arise from his withdrawing from the scene of life. Surely if eloquence ...
— The Grand Old Man • Richard B. Cook

... mathematical form, astrologers used as their material for prediction the stars or constellations which happened to be rising or setting at the time selected, or were upon the same meridian, or had the same longitude, as such constellations. One of the earliest of these astrological writers was Zeuchros of Babylon, who lived about the time of the Christian era, some of whose writings have been preserved to us. From these it is clear that the astrologers found twelve signs of the zodiac ...
— The Astronomy of the Bible - An Elementary Commentary on the Astronomical References - of Holy Scripture • E. Walter Maunder

... it rather stange, and in some sort inconsistent, that during the whole of these narrations, and in the very meridian of their enjoyment thereof, both Mr Norris the father, and Mr Norris Junior, the son (who corresponded, every post, with four members of the English Peerage), enlarged upon the inestimable advantage of having no such arbitrary distinctions in that enlightened land, where there were no noblemen ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens

... yesterday). A wall in front of the first field, a hedge in front of the second, a wall in front of the third. A gate in the middle of the wall. A spotted pig in the middle of the field. The sun at its meridian; the pig asleep. Motto, 'Whatever ...
— Six to Sixteen - A Story for Girls • Juliana Horatia Ewing

... into the cockpit the mate gave a yell and sailors sprang to haul down the topmast-and main-topmast-staysails. Off in the southwest, which had been leaden from horizon to meridian showing no distinction of water and sky, appeared a spot of light, a glow, growing rapidly brighter. Before it the misty rain was being wiped as if by ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris

... pause again, then a toll, and again a pause; then for six or eight minutes no toll is heard; then another comes strangely and solemnly amid the tall columns and, fretted arches of the sylvan temple. Sometimes of a morning, and sometimes in the evening, and even when the meridian sun has silenced all the other songsters of the grove, that strange toll is heard. At length, high up on the dried top of an aged maura, a snow-white bird may be seen, no larger than a pigeon; and yet it is the creature who is ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston

... Certainly no men, could have exhibited more undaunted cheerfulness amid bears and foxes, icebergs and cold—such as Christians had never conceived of before—than did these early arctic pilgrims. Nor did Barendz neglect any opportunity of studying the heavens. A meridian was drawn near the house, on which the compass was placed, and observations of various stars were constantly made, despite the cold, with extraordinary minuteness. The latitude, from concurrent measurement of the Giant, the Bull, Orion, Aldebaran, and other constellations—in the absence of ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... Setting down a glass of burgundy in which fine particles floated through the magenta-hued liquid. "It has lost its luster, like a woman's eyes when she has passed the meridian. Good wine, like a woman, has its life. First, sweetly innocent, delicately palatable, its blush like a maiden of sixteen; then glowing with a riper development, more passionate in hue, a siren vintage; finally, thin, waning and watery, ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham

... into something not much better than a doll. It was the same in days of old. Apollo (whom Saint Michael has supplanted), and Eros, and Aphrodite—they all go through a process of saccharine deterioration. Our fairest creatures, once they have passed their meridian vigour, are liable to be assailed and undermined by an ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas

... Father Abbot, An old man, broken with the storms of state, Is come to lay his weary bones among ye; Give him a little earth for charity! I have touched the highest point of all my greatness And, from that full meridian of my glory, I haste now to my setting; I shall fall Like a bright exhalation in the evening, And no ...
— Shakspere, Personal Recollections • John A. Joyce

... monsoon, as far to leeward as the meridian of 125 degrees, would find an advantage in putting into Hanover Bay, and remaining there until the wind should veer round: by which they would avoid the necessity of beating to windward, over such dangerous ground as extends between this part to Timor; and, by being to the southward, out of the ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia] [Volume 2 of 2] • Phillip Parker King

... winter-hardy only in the warmer coastal areas, not adapted north of Columbus, Georgia, Meridian, Mississippi, ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Incorporated 39th Annual Report - at Norris, Tenn. September 13-15 1948 • Various

... somewhat towards retarding the approach of age. He was inclined, also, to impute much good effect to a daily dose of Santa Cruz rum (a liquor much in vogue in that day), which he was now in the habit of quaffing at the meridian hour. All through the Doctor's life he had eschewed strong spirits: "But after seventy," quoth old Dr. Dolliver, "a man is all the better in head and stomach for a little stimulus"; and it certainly seemed so in his ...
— The Dolliver Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... it faced them once more. They linked arms suddenly and trudged on, hungry, parched, beset by superstitious fears, but not forgetting to turn every half hour and glance at the sun until he passed the meridian and pointed for the west. And suddenly the lake seemed to ...
— The Valiant Runaways • Gertrude Atherton

... a tyrant and his diabolical ministry, we are determined to shake off all connections with a state so unjust and unnatural. This I would tell them, not under covert, but in words as clear as the sun in its meridian brightness. ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IX (of X) - America - I • Various

... became possible accurately to determine the position of a ship at sea as regarded its latitude. But it was quite different as regarded the longitude that is, the distance of any place from a given meridian, eastward or westward. In the case of longitude there is no fixed spot to which reference can be made. The rotation of the earth makes the existence of such a spot impossible. The question of longitude is purely a question of TIME. ...
— Men of Invention and Industry • Samuel Smiles

... runs up northwards into the interior. In like manner the ranges crossed by the Expedition also ran in the same direction. The Black Rock Hill, so named by Captain Frome, is in lat. 32 degrees 45 minutes and in the 139th meridian, and is the easternmost of the chain to which it belongs. Mount Gipps on the Coonbaralba range is in lat. 31 degrees 52 minutes and in long. 141 degrees 41 minutes, but from that point the ranges trend somewhat to the westward of south, ...
— Expedition into Central Australia • Charles Sturt

... quitted, and also buried a letter for Mr. Kennedy, in which I instructed him to avoid that detour which might have otherwise led him into scrubs. We then prolonged our track from the south, northward across the open downs. I travelled in the direction of the meridian, and most of our route, this morning, marked a due north line. We came, at length, upon a watercourse which I took for our river, as the banks were finely rounded, the ponds full of water, and the woods quite open. The scenery was parklike and most inviting. The watercourse, soon, ...
— Journal of an Expedition into the Interior of Tropical Australia • Thomas Mitchell

... of Friendly Islands, we must include, not only the group at Hepaee which I visited, but also all those islands that have been discovered nearly under the same meridian to the north, as well as some others that have never been seen hitherto by any European navigators, but are under the dominion of Tongataboo, which, though not the largest, is the capital ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 15 (of 18) • Robert Kerr

... form, and extend near a quarter of a mile, and which, from the blazing fires within, have a brilliant transparency and vivid lustre, not easy either to imagine or to describe: the starry semicircle looks like an immense crescent of diamonds, on which the sun darts his meridian rays. ...
— The History of Emily Montague • Frances Brooke

... more pleasing than that of Laguna. They are distant from each other about four miles. The capital of the Great Canary, and properly of the whole government, is the City of Palms: But that place has been for some time the centre of ecclesiastical government only. The custom of reckoning the first meridian as passing through these isles was begun by Ptolemy; and perhaps it is still to be wished that the French regulations on ...
— The Voyage Of Governor Phillip To Botany Bay • Arthur Phillip

... towards the end of March when the hedgehog awoke. Gradually, since the winter solstice, the shadows of noon, cast from the wooded slope across the meadows in the glen, had become shorter; and now, when the sun reached its meridian, its beams fell directly on the spot where the hedgehog rested among the littered leaves. She felt the strange and subtle influence of spring, and crawled feebly from her retreat. The light above her nest was far ...
— Creatures of the Night - A Book of Wild Life in Western Britain • Alfred W. Rees

... islands were visible, the splendid colours of the maple shone out in gorgeous contrast with the deep verdure of the evergreens and light golden-yellow of the poplar; but lovely as they now looked, they had not yet reached the meridian of their beauty, which a few frosty nights at the close of the month was destined to bring to perfection—a glow of splendour to gladden the eye for a brief space, before the rushing winds and rains of the following month were to sweep them away, and scatter them abroad ...
— Canadian Crusoes - A Tale of The Rice Lake Plains • Catharine Parr Traill

... where the town now stood when it was virgin prairie, had watched every building it boasted rise from the earth, had hitherto observed it through the gamut of its every mood from nocturnal recklessness to profoundest daybreak remorse; but as it was now with the sun nearing the meridian, deserted, dead—. ...
— Where the Trail Divides • Will Lillibridge

... court, while enjoying the smiles of the most sacred Emperor. And happy is he whose favour, rising as the person of the sovereign emerges from the level space which extends around the throne, displays itself in the first imperial blaze of glory, and who, keeping his post during the meridian splendour of the crown, has only the fate to disappear and die with the last beam of ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott

... had only had this child, and this at the meridian of their life, so that her sudden disappearance plunged them in such great distress that day and night they mourned her loss to such a point as to well nigh pay no heed to their ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin

... Bryan Fairfax. The Fairfaxes naturally sided with the mother-country, and Bryan was much distressed by the course of Virginia, and remonstrated strongly, and at length by letter, against violent measures. Washington replied to him: "Does it not appear as clear as the sun in its meridian brightness that there is a regular, systematic plan formed to fix the right and practice of taxation on us? Does not the uniform conduct of Parliament for some years past confirm this? Do not all the debates, especially those just brought to ...
— George Washington, Vol. I • Henry Cabot Lodge

... fonder, there are limitations, believe me, to man's endurance. Three months will find me worn to a scant shadow, a mere tissue, so sharp that the dial at noonday cannot point with finer finger the passage of the sun under the meridian wire. Only the first month is now waning, and I dare not look a weighing machine in the face, for fear I might fall in the slot. I am not ...
— Cupid's Middleman • Edward B. Lent

... States, from Canada to Mexico, the advance line of farms pushed from the well-watered bottoms of the Mississippi Valley into the plains that rise toward the Rocky Mountains. Near the ninety-seventh meridian the rainfall of this region becomes insufficient for general farming in ordinary years. But the solicitations of land-sellers brought settlers into the sub-humid region, while for a few years in the eighties ...
— The New Nation • Frederic L. Paxson

... had ceased to run east and west, and had taken a turn due north, thus forming a barrier to their continuing their previous direction. It was, of course, impossible to conjecture how far this barrier extended; it coincided pretty nearly with the fourteenth meridian of east longitude; and if it reached, as probably it did, beyond Sicily to Italy, it was certain that the vast basin of the Mediterranean, which had washed the shores alike of Europe, Asia, and Africa, must have been reduced to about ...
— Off on a Comet • Jules Verne

... The South angle, meridian, or Tenth House, pertaining to honor, etc., is symbolized by Cancer; the highest point in the arc of the soul's involution, as a differentiated atom of ...
— The Light of Egypt, Volume II • Henry O. Wagner/Belle M. Wagner/Thomas H. Burgoyne

... that nation of spectators who had witnessed his performance. He was the noblest artist in his own profession that the world had seen—in archery he was the Robin Hood of Rome; he was in the very meridian of his youth; and he was the most beautiful man of his own times Ton chath eauton hathropon challei euprepestatos. He would therefore have looked the part admirably of the dying gladiator; and he would have died in his natural vocation. ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey

... constructors of the French Metric System; but the progress of science in seventy years has shown that every element of their calculations was erroneous. They tried to measure a quadrant of the earth's circumference, supposing the meridian to be circular; but Schubert has shown that that is far from being the case; and that no two meridians are alike; and Sir John Herschel, and the best geologists, show cause to believe that the form of the globe is constantly changing; so that the ancient Egyptians acted wisely in ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson

... A. M., according to seventy-fifth meridian time, the explorers awoke feeling greatly refreshed. The tank in which the liquefied oxygen was kept automatically gave off its gas so evenly that the air remained normal, while the lime contained ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds - A Romance of the Future • John Jacob Astor

... frame houses. Even the shade was hot with a sort of closeness unknown in the open air, yet as it dwindled to noontide proportions some alleviation seemed withdrawn; and though the mercury marked no change, all the senses welcomed the post-meridian lengthening of the images of bough and bole beneath the trees, and the fantastic architecture of the shadows of chimney and gable and dormer-window, elongated out of drawing, stretching across the grassy streets and ample gardens. There among ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock

... prove that the surface of the atmosphere, contiguous to fire and the surface of fire, where it ends, is the point in which the rays of the sun penetrate and bear the image of the celestial bodies which are large when they rise and set, and small when they are on the meridian. ...
— Thoughts on Art and Life • Leonardo da Vinci

... o'clock, meridian, funeral service will be performed in the hall of the House of Representatives, and immediately after the procession will move to the place of interment, in ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)

... accustomed manner, I have a more dreadful apprehension than I ever heretofore have had of lighting on bad wine. Note and observe that this doth argue and portend I know not what of the west and occident of my time, and signifieth that the south and meridian of mine age is past. But what then, my gentle companion? That doth but betoken that I will hereafter drink so much the more. That is not, the devil hale it, the thing that I fear; nor is it there where my shoe pinches. The thing that ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais

... any conspicuous marks—as, for instance, hills off it—and by noting the watershed—in short, all topographical objects. On arrival in camp every day came the ascertaining, by boiling a thermometer, of the altitude of the station above the sea-level; of the latitude of the station by the meridian altitude of the star taken with a sextant; and of the compass variation by azimuth. Occasionally there was the fixing of certain crucial stations, at intervals of sixty miles or so, by lunar observations, or distances of the moon either ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke

... Huish. "I remember I had that written in my Bible. I remember the Bible too, all about Abinadab and parties.—Well, Gawd!" apostrophising the meridian, "you're goin' to see a rum start ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XIX (of 25) - The Ebb-Tide; Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson

... three, had not the making tide aroused me with its cool wash around my ankles. The sun, too, was stealing our resting-place from us, or the comfort of it, cutting away the cliff's shadow as it neared the meridian. . . . The boat, utterly neglected by us, had floated up, broadside on, with the quiet tide, almost to our feet. The dog sat on his haunches, waiting and watching for one or other of us to ...
— Foe-Farrell • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... difficult now to determine exactly which is this island of Tendaya, called Isla Filipina for some years. According to Father Urdaneta's relations, this island was far to the east of the group, past the meridian of Maluco. Mercator locates it in Panay, and Colin in Leyte, between Abuyog and Cabalian—contrary to the opinion of others, who locate it in Ibabao, or south of Samar. But according to other documents of that period, ...
— History of the Philippine Islands Vols 1 and 2 • Antonio de Morga

... deg. 04' S., 116 deg. 31' W. We had now lost the regular trades, and had the winds variable, principally from the westward, and kept on, in a southerly course, sailing very nearly upon a meridian, and at the ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana

... Am I i'th' full Meridian of my Wisedom Cheated by a stale Quean! what kind of Lady Is ...
— Rule a Wife, and Have a Wife - Beaumont & Fletcher's Works (3 of 10) • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher

... generation had fixed and ascertained the use of words; whereas, the previous generation of Thucydides, Xenophon, Plato, &c., was a transitional period: the language was still moving, and tending to a meridian not yet attained; and the public eye had been directed consciously upon language, as in and for itself an organ of intellectual delight, for too short a time, to have mastered the whole art of managing its resources. All these were reasons for studying ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey

... later years—how were they making it up to him? He recalled what to him was the most awful thing he had ever heard about the State penitentiary: they never saw the sun rise down there, and they never saw it set. They saw it at its meridian, when it climbed above the stockade, but as it rose into the day, and as it sank into the night, it was denied them. And there, at the penitentiary, they could not even look up at the stars. It had been years since Alfred Williams raised his face to God's ...
— Lifted Masks - Stories • Susan Glaspell

... so afterwards, just when the primroses and Lent-lilies were at the meridian of their beauty and all the air was full of song, Angela heard more about her cousin George. Mr. Fraser was one day sent for to Isleworth; Lady Bellamy brought him the message, saying that George was in such a state of health that he wished ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard

... not favorable to the multiplication of observatories. He predicted the failure of that at Albany. He says that he would gladly destroy one-half of the meridian instruments of the world, by way of reform. I told him that my reform movement would be to bring together the astronomers who had no instruments and the ...
— Maria Mitchell: Life, Letters, and Journals • Maria Mitchell

... the sun converted into a horary angle by the instrument itself; but the method by which such conversion operates is a little different. Fig. 1 shows the instrument open for observation. We find here the meridian circle, M, and the equator E, of the diagram shown in Fig. 3 (No. 4); but the circle with alidade is here replaced by a small aperture movable in a slide that is placed in a position parallel with the axis of the world. Upon this slide are marked, on one side, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 810, July 11, 1891 • Various

... I was sent to Meridian, Miss., to stay with an older sister and attend school. The advantages there were far superior to those provided for me at my home. After remaining two years at Meridian I went to Memphis, again in search of better school facilities. I have said that even ...
— Tuskegee & Its People: Their Ideals and Achievements • Various

... liaisons of all sorts and shades. Some, now acknowledged as innocent, were blared abroad by tongues less skilled in pure invention than in distorting truth. On others, as commonplaces of a temperament "all meridian," it were waste of time to dwell. Byron rarely put aside a pleasure in his path; but his passions were seldom unaccompanied by affectionate emotions, genuine while they lasted. The verses to the memory of a lost love veiled as "Thyrza," of moderate artistic merit, were not, as Moore alleges, ...
— Byron • John Nichol

... must we find the Parallax of the Planets by wayes not yet practiced; and to this end, I cannot imagine any better way, then the Observations of them by two persons at very far distant parts of the Earth, that lye as neer as may be under the same Meridian, or Degree of longitude, but differing as much in latitude, as there can be places conveniently found: These two persons, at certain appointed times, should (as near as could be) both at the same time, observe the way of the Moon, ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke

... he leaves the plane of the pure or speculative reason and rises to the level of the practical reason or the will, then the full truth bursts upon his astonished gaze, clearer than the meridian light. He sees no more "half shade, half shine," but the truth pours itself "upon the new sense it now trusts with all its plenitude of power". It is the will, not the mind, which discloses the full revelation ...
— Morality as a Religion - An exposition of some first principles • W. R. Washington Sullivan

... just as Captain Fairfield was going on shore—I disremember the precise time, but it was about five o'clock, post meridian." ...
— Freaks of Fortune - or, Half Round the World • Oliver Optic

... seventeen years. Newton's great discovery is likewise the result of mental labor; he was enabled to accomplish it by means of the laws of Kepler, the laws of falling bodies established by Galileo, and Picard's exact measurement of a degree of a meridian. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 286 - June 25, 1881 • Various

... martial reputation of their country. To this high and honorable purpose General Brown may be truly said to have sacrificed his life, for the disease which abridged his days and has terminated his career at a period scarcely beyond the meridian of manhood undoubtedly originated in the hardships of his campaigns on the Canada frontier, and in that glorious wound which, though desperate, could not remove him from the field of battle till it ...
— A Compilation of Messages and Letters of the Presidents - 2nd section (of 3) of Volume 2: John Quincy Adams • Editor: James D. Richardson

... 1819 and 1820, the famous Parry made his way into Lancaster Sound. In spite of numberless difficulties he reached Melville Island, and won the prize of five thousand pounds offered by act of Parliament to the English sailors who should cross the meridian at a latitude higher than the ...
— The Voyages and Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne

... with rising and falling hopes and fears, forcing her lips to a smile when he came near her, and hiding her tears at other times; till the shadows stretching well to the east of the meridian, admonished her she had been there long enough; and she left him still going backward ...
— Queechy, Volume II • Elizabeth Wetherell

... centre of that little circle of highborn wits and poets, the elder wits and poets of the Elizabethan age, that were then in their meridian there. Sir Philip Sidney, Thomas Lord Buckhurst, Henry Lord Paget, Edward Earl of Oxford, and some others, are included in the contemporary list of this courtly company, whose doings are somewhat ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon

... the castle which fancy's eye has builded, (and which might even be realized); and lest their morning sun, which is now going forth in splendor, be not shrouded in darkness ere it has yet attained its meridian height. ...
— The Young Man's Guide • William A. Alcott

... the mighty power of the current, when it made its annual progress of devastation over the surrounding country. Now, however, it was like a thin streak of silver, flashing back the fierce rays of the meridian sun. Through the blinding clouds of fine white sand we could at times, during a temporary lull, see its ruined surface. And we were glad when we came on the tracks of the tiger, which led straight from the stream, in the direction of some thick tree jungle at no great distance. We gladly turned ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis

... present distinguishes that community. It was the unforeseen eve of the great change, that, whatever was its purpose or have been its immediate results, at least gave the first shock to the pseudo-aristocracy of this country. Then all was blooming; sunshine and odour; not a breeze disturbing the meridian splendour. Then the world was not only made for a few, but a very few. One could almost tell upon one's fingers the happy families who could do anything, and might have everything. A school-boy's ideas ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli

... Then there were scores of squireen gentry, easily recognized on common occasions by a green coat, brass buttons, dirty cords, and dirtier top-boots, a lash-whip, and a half-bred fox-hound; but now, fresh-washed for the day, they presented something the appearance of a swell mob, adjusted to the meridian of Galway. A mass of frieze-coated, brow-faced, bullet-headed peasantry filled up the large spaces, dotted here and there with a sleek, roguish-eyed priest, or some low electioneering agent detailing, for the amusement of the company, some ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever

... commanded me saying that I should never kill thee. It is for this reason, O Vali, that I do not hurl my thunderbolt upon thy head. Go whithersoever thou wishest, O chief of the Daityas! O great Asura, peace to thee! No time will come when the Sun will shine from only the meridian. The Self-born (Brahman) hath before this ordained the laws that regulate the Sun's motions. Giving light and heat to all creatures, he goes on ceaselessly. For six months he travels in a northward course and then for the other six in a ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown

... own household response not least, breathed heavily through Hard Times, Bleak House and Little Dorrit; the seeds of acquaintance with Chuzzlewit and Dombey and Son, these coming thickly on, I had found already sown. I was to feel that I had been born, born to a rich awareness, under the very meridian; there sprouted in those years no such other crop of ready references as the golden harvest of Copperfield. Yet if I was to wait to achieve the happier of these recognitions I had already pored over Oliver Twist—albeit now uncertain of the relation borne by ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James

... Eclipses, Judgment of the Weather, the Spring Tides, Moon's Rising and Setting, Sun's Rising and Setting, Length of Days, Seven Stars Rising, Southing and Setting, Time of High-Water, Fairs, Courts, and observable Days. Fitted to the Latitude of 40 Degrees, and a Meridian of Five Hours West from London. Beautifully Printed in Red and Black, on One Side of a large Demi Sheet of Paper, after the London Mariner. To be Sold by the Printers hereof, at the New Printing-Office near the Market, for 3 s. ...
— Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin • Benjamin Franklin

... fact, painted them almost as fully as himself; and who might not have been proud to find a place in such a gallery? The tastes and habits of six of those men, in whose intercourse Scott found the greatest pleasure when his fame was approaching its meridian splendour, are thus preserved for posterity; and when I reflect with what avidity we catch at the least hint which seems to afford us a glimpse of the intimate circle of any great poet of former ages, I cannot but believe that posterity would have ...
— Marmion • Sir Walter Scott

... began to be sensible as early as the first week in March, and the daily range of the thermometer increased considerably from that time. The increase in the average temperature of the atmosphere, however, is extremely slow in these regions, long after the sun has attained a considerable meridian altitude; but this is in some degree compensated by the inconceivable rapidity with which the days seem to lengthen when once the sun has reappeared. There is, indeed, no change which continues to excite so ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry

... moon appears to us dichotomized it offers to our view a great circle (or actual meridian) of its circumference which divides the illuminated ...
— A History of Science, Volume 1(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams

... called the attention of two governments to this matter, and he hoped that before long there would be proposed an international congress—such as the postal, telegraph, and sanitary congresses, and the international convention to fix the common meridian—by one of the maritime powers, by which would be founded an international institution to diminish casualties at sea. He recommended a universal system of buoys. The great losses of life and property every year were worthy the devotion ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 514, November 7, 1885 • Various

... picture on a subject which strikes his fancy: an offer so magnificently liberal that his commerce must command my art; and the nature of the subject compels me to seek the banks of the Rhine as soon as may be. I must have all the hues of the foliage in the meridian glories of summer. I can but stay at Grasmere a very few days; but before I leave I must know this, am I going to work for Lily or am I not? On the answer to that question depends all. If not to work for her, there would be no glory in the ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... aid of the heliometer or a double-refracting prism,* determines the diameter of planetary bodies; who measures patiently year after year, the meridian altitude and the relative distances of stars, or who seeks a telescopic comet in a group of nebulae, does not feel his imagination more excited — and this is the very guarantee of the precision of his labors — than the botanist who counts ...
— COSMOS: A Sketch of the Physical Description of the Universe, Vol. 1 • Alexander von Humboldt

... boys could not realise the fact, the sun had crossed the meridian and was slowly beginning to descend, when there was a sudden arousing from the torpor-like state, brought about by the mule coming to a standstill with its legs spread-out widely, hanging its head, while its drooping ...
— The Peril Finders • George Manville Fenn

... twenty pence each.[327] This letter was sent off on 24th April, 1794, seventeen days after the holding of a mass meeting on Castle Hill, Sheffield, at which the chairman, Henry Yorke (alias Redhead), declared that, when the sun of Reason shone in its fullest meridian, the people would turn out the 558 gentlemen from Westminster. The meeting resolved that, as the people ought to demand universal suffrage as a right, and not petition for it as a favour, they would never again petition the House of Commons on this subject.[328] ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose

... about two hours past the meridian; the red walls of the desert were closing in; the V-shaped split where the Colorado cut through was in sight. The trail now was wide and unobstructed and the distance short, yet August Naab ever and anon turned to face the canyon and shook his head ...
— The Heritage of the Desert • Zane Grey

... Celtes—the hyperborean Apollo, sojourning, in the revolutions of time, in the sluggish north for a season, yet Apollo still, prompting art, music, poetry, and the philosophy which interprets man's life, making a sort of intercalary day amid the natural darkness; not meridian day, of course, but a soft derivative daylight, good enough for us. It would be necessarily a mystic piece, abounding in fine touches, suggestions, innuendoes. His vague proposal was met half-way by the very practical ...
— Imaginary Portraits • Walter Horatio Pater

... in-meest."[2] "The greatest deep in which the water spreads,"[3] began then his words, "except of that sea which garlands the earth, between its discordant shores stretches so far counter to the sun, that it makes a meridian where first it was wont to make the horizon.[4] I was a dweller on the shore of that deep, between the Ebro and the Magra,[5] which, for a short way, divides the Genoese from the Tuscan. With almost the same sunset and the same sunrise sit Buggea ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 3, Paradise [Paradiso] • Dante Alighieri

... is exactly south of us, or, in other words, exactly opposite to us in his course round the earth, he is said to be in our meridian; for the word meridian means a line drawn exactly north or south ...
— The Teacher • Jacob Abbott

... the tongue of the Saxon was loosed, and the Norman knight lost somewhat of his superb gravity. It was just as what a Danish poet called the "sun of the night," (in other words, the fierce warmth of the wine,) had attained its meridian glow, that some slight disturbance at the doors of the hall, without which waited a dense crowd of the poor on whom the fragments of the feast were afterwards to be bestowed, was followed by the entrance of two strangers, for whom the officers appointed ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... these waggons first rode four or five horsemen, well mounted, who might be the principals of the party, for they were men past the meridian of life; straggling in the rear, or scattered along the edges of the forest, walked eight or nine younger men, rough-and-ready-looking fellows, each with his rifle in his hand. Wild pigeons abounded along the cover-edge, and the sharp crack which every now and then rang through the thin ...
— Impressions of America - During the years 1833, 1834 and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Tyrone Power

... southernmost point of Prince of Wales Island and running along Portland Channel to the continental coast at 56 degrees north latitude. North of that degree the boundary was to run along mountain summits parallel to the coast until it intersected the 141st meridian west longitude, which was then to be followed to the frozen ocean. In case any of the summits mentioned should be more than ten marine leagues from the ocean, the line was to parallel the coast, and be never more than ten ...
— History of the United States, Volume 5 • E. Benjamin Andrews

... "twenty Oneida scouts will join us about two o'clock this afternoon if we travel at the same rate that we are traveling. This white circle traced here represents the sun; the straight line the meridian. Calculating roughly, I should set the time of meeting at two o'clock. Now, Jack, take the stone to the stream yonder and scrub off the paint with moss and gun-oil, then drop the stone into the water. And you, Tim Murphy, go quietly among the men and caution them not to fire on a friendly ...
— The Reckoning • Robert W. Chambers

... the 1st the party started; and these two days I occupied myself in making magnetic and astronomical observations. Our latitude I found by two meridian altitudes of the moon to be 16 degrees 0 minutes 45 seconds south, and our longitude by chronometer 125 ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 1 (of 2) • George Grey

... is in the horizon of any place (whether in Japan or elsewhere), he is the length of half the earth's diameter more distant from that place than in his meridian at noon. As the earth's semi-diameter is nearly 4,000 miles, the sun must be considerably more than 3,000 miles nearer at noon than at his rising, there being no valley even the hundredth part of ...
— Amusements in Mathematics • Henry Ernest Dudeney

... and Southwestern Railway traverses the arid country west of the 100th Meridian in New Mexico, Texas, and Arizona, as shown on the map, Fig. 1. The water supply herein described serves that division of this road lying between Carrizozo and Santa Rosa, a distance of ...
— The Water Supply of the El Paso and Southwestern Railway from Carrizozo to Santa Rosa, N. Mex. • J. L. Campbell

... persons not yet past the meridian of life the impossibility of traversing by Steam Engine the channels and seas that surround and intersect these islands was regarded as the dream ...
— A Letter from Major Robert Carmichael-Smyth to His Friend, the Author of 'The Clockmaker' • Robert Carmichael-Smyth

... a mountain stained with the blood of various wild beasts; and now the day had contracted the meridian shadow of things, and the sun was equally distant from each extremity {of the heavens}; when the Hyantian youth[17] {thus} addressed the partakers of his toils, as they wandered along the lonely haunts {of the wild beasts}, with gentle accent: "Our nets are moistened, my friends, and our ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso

... all to find their exceeding great reward. I did not look for it so soon. Far in advance of the present I saw the long road each had to travel, still stretching its weary length. But suddenly the pilgrimage has ended. The goal is won while yet the sun stands at full meridian—while yet the feet are strong, and the heart brave for endurance or battle. Heroes are ye, ...
— The Hand But Not the Heart - or, The Life-Trials of Jessie Loring • T. S. Arthur

... them, those of Alabama, at Montgomery; of Louisiana, at New Orleans; of Mississippi, at Meridian; and of North Carolina, at Dudley. The first three came the first part of April; the last came the 1st of May. Alabama received two new ministers, Revs. A. J. Headen and C. L. Harris, and two new churches, those of Birmingham ...
— The American Missionary — Volume 38, No. 06, June, 1884 • Various

... can scarcely be due to accident in rooms built on such widely differing sites. The intention seems to have been to arrange these ceremonial chambers approximately on the north and south line, though none of the examples approach the meridian very closely. Most of them face southeast, though some, particularly in Walpi, face west of south. In Walpi four of the five kivas are planned on a southwest and northeast line, following the general direction of the mesa edge, while the remaining one faces southeast. The difference ...
— A Study of Pueblo Architecture: Tusayan and Cibola • Victor Mindeleff and Cosmos Mindeleff

... had long passed the meridian before the felicitations on our success were at an end; and then, having recommended the bear's carcass to the custody of our ancient and well-tried friend, the Anglo-Norwegian, who promised to preserve the skin for us till our return, (and who, by the way, was the first to meet us and thank ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross

... the end—the week's high noon. The morning hours do speed away so soon! And, when the noon is reached, however bright, Instinctively we look toward the night. The glow is lost Once the meridian crost. ...
— Maurine and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox

... banks of the rivulet Zerka Mayn (Arabic), which is not to be confounded with the northern Zerka. Its source is not far from hence; it flows in a deep and barren valley through a wood of Defle trees, which form a canopy over the rivulet impenetrable to the meridian sun. The red flowers of these trees reflected in the river gave it the appearance of a bed of roses, and presented a singular contrast with the whitish gray rocks which border the wood on either side. All these mountains are calcareous, mixed with some flint. The water of the ...
— Travels in Syria and the Holy Land • John Burckhardt

... Mrs. Gurney sat in their cosy sitting-room, which was plainly but tastefully furnished; but though quiet, one could not fail to realize that it was the home of people of more than ordinary intelligence and culture. They both had passed life's meridian, and were, at the time we introduce them to our readers, verging upon three score years. They were dressed in deep mourning, and the look of subdued sadness which overcast their thoughtful faces told they had lately "passed under the rod." But suffering had not made them hard and cynical, but ...
— From Wealth to Poverty • Austin Potter

... old public scribe with the gray beard and white turban, writing letters, the motionless veiled figures squatting around him—is he not Baba Mustapha? and the soft-eyed girl whispering into his ear none other than Morgiana, fair as the meridian sun? ...
— Outdoor Sketching - Four Talks Given before the Art Institute of Chicago; The Scammon Lectures, 1914 • Francis Hopkinson Smith

... Mitchell, "I became a tutor in Mr. Walter Scott's family. He was a Writer to the Signet in George's {p.092} Square, Edinburgh. Mr. Scott was a fine-looking man, then a little past the meridian of life, of dignified, yet agreeable manners. His business was extensive. He was a man of tried integrity, of strict morals, and had a respect for religion and its ordinances. The church the family attended was the Old Greyfriars, of which the celebrated Doctors ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume I (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart

... stout; and the lines from her nose to the corners of her mouth, and the wisps of gray hair which had blown about her face, indicated that she had passed the meridian of life. At first glance there was nothing striking about her appearance; but there was a subtle expression about the mouth, a twinkle about the large gray eyes behind the glasses she wore, that indicated a sense of humor which had probably been a God-send to her. She was strong ...
— Hepsey Burke • Frank Noyes Westcott

... Poland, menaced by the Turks, made peace with Russia, and purchased her alliance by the surrender of the vast province of Smolensk and all the conquered territory in the Ukraine. In the year 1687, Sophia sent the first Russian embassy to France, which was then in the meridian of her splendor, under the reign of Louis XIV. Voltaire states that France, at that time, was so unacquainted with Russia, that the Academy of Inscriptions celebrated this embassy by a medal, as if it had come from India.[10] The Crimean Tartars, in confederacy with ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott

... now rapidly approaching the meridian, and in the vibrating light the wheels of the most distant collieries could almost be counted, and the stems of the far-off factory chimneys appeared like ...
— A Mummer's Wife • George Moore

... It is a clear, rapid stream, and we did not wonder the trout still loved to linger in its cool waters. On a rustic bridge we sat down and ate our simple lunch of gingerbread, crackers, plums, and almonds. The sun was in the meridian, and counselled return, but curiosity led ...
— Continental Monthly, Volume 5, Issue 4 • Various

... metrical system, which most people have come to believe is the best in the world. I suppose everybody here knows what a meridian is, for it was explained when we were talking about great circles and geographical or sea miles. A meridian is a great circle reaching around the earth, and passing through the equator and the poles. A quadrant of a meridian is the quarter of a meridian, extending ...
— Asiatic Breezes - Students on The Wing • Oliver Optic

... refulgent car, From the pale sphere of every twinkling star, 85 From each nice pore of ocean, earth, and air, With eye of flame the sparkling hosts repair, Mix their gay hues, in changeful circles play, Like motes, that tenant the meridian ray.— So the clear Lens collects with magic power 90 The countless glories of the midnight hour; Stars after stars with quivering lustre fall, And twinkling glide along the whiten'd wall.— Pleased, as they pass, she counts the glittering bands, And stills their murmur ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin

... hoisted, and everybody in the place—from Patsy Kernaghan, the casual, at one end of the scale, and the Young Doctor, so called because he was young-looking when he first came to the place, who represented Askatoon in the meridian of its intellect, at the other—had sudden paralysis. That was the outstanding feature of Askatoon. Some places made a noise and flung things about in times of distress; but Askatoon always stood still and fumbled with its collar-buttons, as though to get more air. When ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... glimmer, dazzling in the direct rays of the sun now well past its meridian, a glimpse of a flashing river instantaneously impressed itself on the Master's sight, with cascading rapids among palm-groves, as it foamed from beneath the city walls. Then all was blotted out by the gleaming side of ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England

... been his intention that morning to get back to the corral at an earlier hour than usual; and as the sun was well past meridian he ordered the dog out to turn the flock, the leaders of which were now about a quarter of a mile away. The collie, eager for work, skirted round and brought them all face-about suddenly, barking his threats along the van, and then closed in some stragglers, according ...
— The Wrong Woman • Charles D. Stewart

... said territory of New South Wales, or South Cape, in the latitude of forty-three degrees, thirty-nine minutes south, and of all the country inland to the westward, as far as the one hundred and thirty-fifth degree of east longitude, reckoning from the meridian of Greenwich, including all the islands adjacent in the Pacific Ocean, within the latitudes aforesaid of 10 deg.. 37'. south, and 43 deg.. 39'. south, and of all towns, garrisons, castles, forts, and all other fortifications, or other military works which may be hereafter erected upon the said ...
— The Voyage Of Governor Phillip To Botany Bay • Arthur Phillip

... and placed at the head of the library. His great achievement was the determination of the circumference of the earth. This was done by measuring on the ground the distance between Syene, a city exactly under the tropic, and Alexandria situated on the same meridian. The distance was found to be five thousand stadia. The meridional distance of the sun from the zenith of Alexandria, he estimated to be 7 degrees 12', or a fiftieth part of the circumference of the meridian. Hence the circumference of the earth was fixed at two hundred ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord

... of the month, the position of the sun in the ecliptic, the number of days since the beginning of the year, the phase of the moon, its age in days, the hour of the day at which it souths (that is crosses the meridian), and thence the time of highwater at London Bridge". It may be said that the clock needs a deal of learning, and those who merely wish to know the time of day can find it more expeditiously by consulting the conventional dial that fronts on the ...
— Hampton Court • Walter Jerrold

... gunboats ahead, the 'Furious' and 'Retribution' abreast, sometimes one, sometimes the other, taking the lead. After awhile we (the 'Furious') put out our strength, and left gunboats and all behind. When the sun had passed the meridian, the masts and sails were a protection from his rays, and as he continued to drop towards the water right ahead of us, he strewed our path, first with glittering silver spangles, then with roses, then with violets, through all ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin

... they give it that uncivilized name?" continued Miss Campbell in an injured tone of voice. "Why not Sunset Camp or Meridian Camp or even Moonrise Camp? There is nothing restful to me in the ...
— The Motor Maids at Sunrise Camp • Katherine Stokes

... still cause dispute and controversy between the kings of Castilla and those of Portugal, concerning the boundaries which should separate their navigation and discovery—the limit and bound which is to be drawn from pole to pole on this side of our hemisphere, and concerning the other bound and meridian line which is to be drawn in the hemisphere ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1803 - Volume III, 1569-1576 • E.H. Blair

... spoken of to those fruitful and wealthy islands, which we do usually call Moluccas, continually haunted for gain, and daily travelled for riches therein growing. These islands, although they stand east from the meridian, distant almost half the length of the world, in extreme heat under the equinoctial line, possessed of infidels and barbarians, yet by our neighbours great abundance of wealth there is painfully sought in respect of the voyage dearly bought, and from thence ...
— Voyages in Search of the North-West Passage • Richard Hakluyt

... came in. The family were obliged to give up one room after another, taking refuge where the roof was still sound. He himself was indifferent to all this; after drinking two or three glasses of brandy he would take his seat in what used to be the kitchen garden, on a stone bench near a meridian, the figures of which had worn away, and there he would get quite cheerful in the sunshine, calling to people over the hedge to come in and drink with him. Decay and poverty, however, made rapid strides in the chateau. ...
— Rene Mauperin • Edmond de Goncourt and Jules de Goncourt

... the meridian I ventured again into the cabin, and returned with the necessary instruments to determine our position. With these and the pricked chart, I managed fairly well in determining our location, and choosing ...
— Wolves of the Sea • Randall Parrish

... the old year's food to the outside of the sacred square. These provisions were then fetched in and set before the famished multitude, but all traces of them had to be removed before noon. When the sun was declining from the meridian, all the people were commanded by the voice of a crier to stay within doors, to do no bad act, and to be sure to extinguish and throw away every spark of the old fire. Universal silence now reigned. Then the high priest made ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer

... sun had now reached the meridian, and the hot blood of the Moors was inflamed by its rays, and by the sight of the defeat of their champion. Muza ordered two pieces of ordnance to open a fire upon the Christians. A confusion was produced in one part of their ranks: Muza called ...
— Washington Irving • Charles Dudley Warner

... was barely past noon meridian before the Svants, who had ventured down into the fields at sunrise, were returning to the mound-village. In the snooper-screen, they could be seen coming up in tunics and breechclouts, entering houses, ...
— Naudsonce • H. Beam Piper

... who'll win thee many a battle! And crest thy glory with meridian stars! He's worth the price though pity lent no coin! Save him, my lord! A bridal boon I ask! ...
— Semiramis and Other Plays - Semiramis, Carlotta And The Poet • Olive Tilford Dargan

... Imperial fact; Vulnant she felt What pin-stab should have stained Another's pelt Puncture her own Colonial lung-balloon, Volant to nigh meridian. Whence rebuffed, The perjured Scythian she lacked At need's pinch, sick with spleen of the rudely cuffed Below her breath she cursed; she cursed the hour When on her spring for him the young Tyrannical broke Amid the unhallowed wedlock's vodka-shower, She ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various

... years; nor when exposed for sale could it tempt a purchaser. 'You must do something with it,' said my Artemisia—an excellent housewife, gentlemen, who wasted nothing if she could help it. I remember her giving me the same advice about an astrolabe, and again about a sun-dial corrected for the meridian of Bury St. Edmunds. 'My dear,' I answered, 'there is but one thing to be done with a flute, and that is to learn it.' In this way I discovered what I will go no further than to describe as ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine

... a man in the meridian of manhood, of a calm, sedate, but somewhat haughty aspect; the other was in the full bloom of youth, of lofty stature, and with a certain majesty of bearing; down his shoulders flowed a profusion of long ...
— Pausanias, the Spartan - The Haunted and the Haunters, An Unfinished Historical Romance • Lord Lytton

... the convolutions of the multiplier, and the upper above them. The latter was by much the most powerful magnet, and gave terrestrial direction to the whole; fig. 8. represents the direction of the wire and of the needles when the instrument was placed in the magnetic meridian: the ends of the wires are marked A and B for convenient reference hereafter. The letters S and N designate the south and north ends of the needle when affected merely by terrestrial magnetism; the end N is therefore the marked pole (44.). ...
— Experimental Researches in Electricity, Volume 1 • Michael Faraday

... and fell asleep from sheer weariness of mind and body; but he was young, and sleep came quickly and held him in a fast embrace. The silence and darkness of this underground place were favourable to a long spell of repose. The youth did not open his eyes till the sun had passed its meridian many hours, though no ray of daylight glinted ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green

... by bearers of smoking censers and waving fans. Armed warriors guard the jewelled thrones, and the popular attitude in every scene of the royal progress evidences the semi-sacred character awarded to Indian sovereignty. The eighth century A.D. was the meridian of the Javanese Empire, and in the subsequent changes of nationality the facial type of the past has altered beyond recognition, for in the ancient civilisation depicted on these sculptured terraces, ...
— Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings

... January, Hili-li was so warm as scarcely to be habitable—certainly not comfortably habitable for natives of the central temperate zone of North America; yet at this same period of time, there was a small island on the meridian of Hili-li, and only thirty miles from the large surface-crater, on which the temperature was about 65 deg. F. There was, just across 'The Mountain'—as the Hili-lites frequently spoke of the rings ...
— A Strange Discovery • Charles Romyn Dake

... caused by inequality of the outer surface of the front of the eyeball, and rarely by a similar defect in the surfaces of the lens. The curvature of the eyeball in the astigmatic eye is greater in one meridian than in the opposite. In other words, the front of the eyeball is not regularly spherical, but bulges out along a certain line or meridian, while the curvature is flattened or normal in the other meridian. ...
— The Home Medical Library, Volume II (of VI) • Various

... meridian when Little returned, his men carrying fifteen small, heavy canvas bags. The dust was duly entered in a brand new book, after being roughly weighed on the cook's scales. Then the ship's company went to dinner, while the mate remained ...
— Gold Out of Celebes • Aylward Edward Dingle

... almost none—and were doing 390 miles an hour. You cannot bank or turn very well at such a speed; it is injurious to the human body. But our course was straight north. Dr. Brende showed it to me on his chart—north, following the 70th West Meridian. Compass corrections as we got further north—and astronomical readings, these would take us direct to the Pole. I could never fathom this air navigation; I flew by tower lights, and landmarks—but to Dr. Brende and Georg, the mathematics of it ...
— Tarrano the Conqueror • Raymond King Cummings

... better chance than ever before to become acquainted with your favorites by the sense of touch. How you feel for them, reaching to the right and left! Now you have got a Tolman sweet; you imagine you can feel that single meridian line that divides it into two hemispheres. Now a greening fills your hand, you feel its fine quality beneath its rough coat. Now you have hooked a swaar, you recognize its full face; now a Vandevere or a King rolls down from the apex above, and ...
— Birds and Bees, Sharp Eyes and, Other Papers • John Burroughs

... of. At thirteen miles struck the channel of a considerable river coming from the south. As this offered us a fair prospect of working inland, and we had already attained nearly to longitude 116 degrees, or about the meridian of the mouth of the Alma, the stream was followed up for an hour, its average breadth being over 200 yards. At 4.40 encamped at a fine spring on the bank of a deep pool, under a cliff of metamorphic sandstone nearly 300 feet high; a cane, much resembling ...
— Journals of Australian Explorations • A C and F T Gregory

... confidence of the people, and who can be relied on for good judgment, that they may be brought to the support of the Government at once." He paid a high tribute to the patriotism of the Southern men who had stood up against secession. "But," said he, "they are, as a rule, beyond the meridian of life, and their counsel and example do not operate quickly, if at all, on the excitable nature of young men who become inflamed by the preparations for war, and who in such a war as this will be, if it goes on, are apt to ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne

... employment must have had some credit in which Tully and Germanicus engaged; but unless we suppose, what is perhaps true, that the plays of Terence were versions of Menander, nothing translated seems ever to have risen to high reputation. The French in the meridian hour of their learning were very laudably industrious to enrich their own language with the wisdom of the ancients; but found themselves reduced by whatever necessity to turn the Greek and Roman poetry into prose. Whoever could read an author could ...
— Lives of the English Poets: Prior, Congreve, Blackmore, Pope • Samuel Johnson

... one of my joys. I want to wash myself, soak myself in it; hang myself over a meridian to dry; dissolve (still better) into rags of soppy disintegration, blotting paper, mash and splash and hash ...
— The Upton Letters • Arthur Christopher Benson

... guilty wretches was dreadful; there they lay, each man on the deck where he had crouched down, when the lightning had flashed upon him: the sun rose upon them, yet they moved not; he poured his beams on their naked bodies when at his meridian height, yet they still remained: the evening closed in, and found them in the same positions. As soon as it was dark, as if released from a spell, they crawled below, and went into their hammocks: at midnight again the bell struck; again the voice was ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Frederick Marryat

... meridian, which crosses North and South Dakota, the western part of Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, and Texas, and including the states west of them, lies a vast region that used to be known as the "great American desert." It comprises almost ...
— Checking the Waste - A Study in Conservation • Mary Huston Gregory

... The air was troubled by the roarings of the numerous herds of elephants and buffaloes which wander over this land, whose fertility is simply marvelous. For forty-eight hours the whole of the region between the prime meridian and the second degree, in the bend of the Niger, was viewed ...
— Rubur the Conqueror • Jules Verne

... his tale, which swept the mirth again from Valentina's eyes, and painted very white her cheek. Strong and brave though she was, she felt her senses swimming at that sudden revulsion from confidence to fear. Was all indeed ended at the very moment when hope had reached its high meridian? ...
— Love-at-Arms • Raphael Sabatini

... more than half way from the horizon to the meridian, Nature begins to wake up. A chickadee emerges from his hole in the decaying trunk of a red oak and cheeps softly as he flies to the branch of a slippery elm. His merry "chick-a-dee-dee-dee-dee" brings others of his race, and away they all go down to the red birches ...
— Some Winter Days in Iowa • Frederick John Lazell



Words linked to "Meridian" :   dateline, stage, town, mature, meridional, prime, peak, level, ms, degree, Mississippi, noon, summit, pinnacle, point, superlative, height, acme, prime meridian



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